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Starship V3

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Re: Starship V3

#411

Post by mapt »

arijun wrote: post #270
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #252

Quick update for the folks passionate about space things (since this thread is full of unrelated comments): V3 is their first Starship family big upgrade, containing lots of learnings from previous tests, and the big engine upgrades. V3 engines are the first iteration of a production engine, with lots of sensors and auxiliary systems integrated into the engine itself. Besides the improvements in thrust, they've strea…

> moved a lot of stuff "inside" the engine The level that they managed to fit everything inside of a simple-looking package was so high that the CEO of ULA (the Boeing/Lockheed Martin rocket company) thought they were lying when they first showed pictures [1]. [1] https://www.benzinga.com/news/24/08/40279896/spacex-presiden...

The way it was explained to me early on was that the newest Raptor engines had simply eliminated many of the different types of test sensors, specifically because sufficient testing had been performed that they weren't getting useful data out of them any more.

I'm not some kind of insider, though.

Re: Starship V3

#412

Post by mikeyouse »

christophilus wrote: post #390
ActorNightly wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that we don't have technology (or at least not proven) to make a habitat on earth that can reliably provide isolation from harsh atmosphere. When you are sending people to space on an experimental rocket, with experimental supply for an experimental habitat, all of that shit better be engineered to a huge safety factor, because its not a matter of if things will go wrong, its how often will they go wrong…

Plus insane storms and winds that I’m not sure Antarctica will properly simulate.

Antarctica might be okay as a demo site on that front; https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QK5M_UfofRU

Re: Starship V3

#413

Post by Geof25 »

adastra22 wrote: post #406
svantana wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hot do you think black objects in space get? Something like 10°C. Look up thermal equilibrium of an ideal black body.

In the vicinity of the Earth, they get to about the temperature of the Earth. That’s not a coincidence. Hotter if they are actively generating heat.

So you can have datacenters in space, you are just not allowed to use them

Re: Starship V3

#414

Post by GuB-42 »

cameronh90 wrote: post #337
GuB-42 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compute in space is doable, we already send plenty of computers up there, technologically, it is not even a challenge. It just doesn't make sense economically, even with Starship, it is making things harder for no good reason. Starlink is different, it makes sense. Covering the entire Earth, including the oceans with cell towers for global internet connectivity is harder than having a satellite constellation. The opp…

It’s trading political difficulty for engineering difficulty. There are now quite a few politicians running on a platform of banning data centre construction projects.

It is another common argument, but again trading a problem for a much harder one.

If politicians ban datacenter construction projects, do you think they will take kindly of the process of building them in space? Rockets are really bad from an environment perspective. We tolerate them because we don't do that many launches and the negative effects are small on a global scale.

Re: Starship V3

#415

Post by mapt »

echoangle wrote: post #360
ActorNightly wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Permanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere. None of those are self sustaining.

> Permanent means self sustaining. I.e biodome completely isolated from outside with its own atmosphere. According to whom exactly? For me, permanent means "permanently without breaks".

If you want another word for that, go with "Continuous".

The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2, 2000. But it was not, in fact, expected by anyone to be a permanent station; It is made of non-replaceable parts that age and fail (decade scale), it only has very limited life support supplies on board (month scale).

Re: Starship V3

#416

Post by Geof25 »

damnitbuilds wrote: post #371
AntiUSAbah wrote: post #294

He again mentions data center in space. He has to be the biggest richest idiot on the planet. It should be a lot cheaper to just buy massive solar (wait, couldn't he just make them himself with his tesla roofs?) and batteries (which Tesla also makes) and put Datacenter in some dessert and put fiber to that place... But it seems he needs some angle to push all this necessary investment into something? Are we now in th…

Elon is smart and employs many smart people. If the thermodynamics didn't work, they would know. I do wonder if shielding the multi-billion transistor GPUs will be a difficult.

Like point to point rocket travel?

Re: Starship V3

#417

Post by hagbard_c »

christophilus wrote: post #390
ActorNightly wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that we don't have technology (or at least not proven) to make a habitat on earth that can reliably provide isolation from harsh atmosphere. When you are sending people to space on an experimental rocket, with experimental supply for an experimental habitat, all of that shit better be engineered to a huge safety factor, because its not a matter of if things will go wrong, its how often will they go wrong…

Plus insane storms and winds that I’m not sure Antarctica will properly simulate.

Those "insane storms and winds" in an atmosphere with 2% of the density of earth's atmosphere won't be much of a problem.

Re: Starship V3

#418

Post by mapt »

AntiUSAbah wrote: post #294

He again mentions data center in space. He has to be the biggest richest idiot on the planet. It should be a lot cheaper to just buy massive solar (wait, couldn't he just make them himself with his tesla roofs?) and batteries (which Tesla also makes) and put Datacenter in some dessert and put fiber to that place... But it seems he needs some angle to push all this necessary investment into something? Are we now in th…

On the military side, "Starlink V3 with data center" looks a hell of a lot like an orbital Synthetic Aperture Radar asset, which requires both a big antenna and a good deal of onboard computation to mitigate bandwidth requirements.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A and specifically for the economics of AI vs surveillance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA-S1JGzph4

Re: Starship V3

#419

Post by myrmidon »

jjmarr wrote: post #171
legitster wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the underrated topics about space right now is the potential supply of rockets outstrips demand by a lot. We're simply out things we can profitably send to space so SpaceX and others are trying to come up with ideas to induce demand. My understanding is that Starlink mostly grew out of the same need to justify scaling up rocket production.

I don't know why space marines aren't a thing yet. The USA could put a rapid reaction force of Tier 1 Special Forces onto a space station and deploy them through atmospheric re-entry anywhere on Earth within 30 minutes. I can only assume "too easy to track" is part of the logic. Ditto for kinetic strikes. That was super hyped up.

The whole kinetic strike concept is 100% complete idiocy.

There is zero merit and zero gain from lobbing pole sized object at terrestrial targets, and I blame people having negative understanding of orbital dynamics for the whole concept getting popular in the first place.

Problems are:

1) You pay every single Joule of impact energy (and more!) in rocket fuel for getting the thing up there in the first place, which is an abysmal deal.

2) You can't actually "drop" anything from orbit once its there, you have to accelerate it while being trivially observable (and trackable) from earth by 30 year old radar technology.

3) You could literally do the same thing by launching purely kinetic ballistic missiles at targets. Non one ever does that for a reason-- its difficult, expensive and ineffective at the same time. Basically the only benefit is demonstrating that you could have delivered an actual nuclear payload in the same way.

Re: Starship V3

#420

Post by [deleted] »

chrisco255 wrote: post #285
ivolimmen wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think showing a flag is a sign of pride, and as I watch the news it is currently a very misplaced pride in America.

Your biggest problem is watching the news. It is designed to make you angry. Meanwhile, I've never been prouder to be American.

[deleted]
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