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Starship V3

spacex.com

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Re: Starship V3

#571

Post by laughing_man »

damnitbuilds wrote: post #370
laughing_man wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Glenn's engines are quite a bit less efficient than those at SpaceX. Lower chamber pressures, lower thrust:weight ratio, and they're partial flow staged combustion. I assume BO will increase their performance over time, but for now they company is about a decade behind SpaceX.

Spacex's work is out there ( and I am grateful for the excitement that generates ) but BO work in the shadows, surprising us sometimes with major advances. I suspect BO not as far behind as you think.

That would surprise me, given how much trouble they had supplying engines for Vulcan.

Re: Starship V3

#572

Post by Klaster_1 »

kyriakos wrote: post #450
adastra22 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your country?

Cyprus I get "The owner of this website (spacex.com) has banned the country or region your IP address is in (CY) from accessing this website."

Same here! New Firefox VPN feature comes in really handy here - just toggle it on and the access is back, load the page and turn off again.

Re: Starship V3

#573

Post by adastra22 »

Symmetry wrote: post #557
adastra22 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running a data center generates heat.

Not if you first absorb heat with your solar panels. Conservation of energy and all that.

I'm not sure if you're being serious or not? Any use of power turns useful work into heat (conservation of energy and all that), which raises the temperature of the satellite, until radiative cooling can equalize within incoming heat (solar irradiation).

Re: Starship V3

#574

Post by fatbird »

Schiendelman wrote: post #549
fatbird wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're hucksters who know that adding "in space!" to a sales pitch is a free booster for tech enthusiasts. It's the same way that Sam Altman talks about the risks of AI deciding to kill humanity: because that's dramatic and attention grabbing, and also the most unlikely outcome. Talking about it keeps us from talking about the real, ground level problems like the massive, unplanned-for disruption in jobs and educati…

So you've only looked at the very loud people talking about this, and not the hundreds of quiet people working on this?

How many smart people worked quietly on Zuck's metaverse for years? How many knew it was never going to work at some point on the line to $70 billion wasted, but thought "hey, maybe I'm wrong, and it's an interesting job that pays well"?

How many smart people worked quietly at Theranos, knowing that a drop sample from a thumb was incapable of carrying sufficient blood volume for a legitimate sample, but thought "hey, maybe someone will figure something miraculous out that violates a basic tenet of my professional experience"?

Re: Starship V3

#575

Post by NetMageSCW »

causal wrote: post #539
db48x wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very easy to overestimate the difficulty of cooling things in space, unless you actually run the numbers. So please follow along as Scott Manley runs the numbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80 >. Basically a Starlink v3 satellite has an estimated power budget of 20kW. Add in the heat absorbed from the environment (both directly from sunlight and reflected off of the Earth) and you’ll find that it m…

What doesn't make sense to me here is that even on Earth, where we have an atmosphere to disperse heat into, we find that closed-loop cooling is too expensive and so use evaporative cooling. If the economics make it too expensive not to use freshwater on Earth, I don't see how closed-loop cooling suddenly becomes affordable in space where dispersing heat is already more difficult.

Those economics only apply when there is a cheaper alternative available. Closed loop becomes economic when alternatives aren’t available.

Re: Starship V3

#576

Post by jjmarr »

laughing_man wrote: post #257
jjmarr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost would be insane. Yeah, that's why it'd be a good way for SpaceX to make money.

But it doesn't make sense for the marines. For the same money you could spin up a bunch more QRFs and scatter them over the globe.

Technically it'd make sense for Space Force, which is trying to get money for their own SOCOM unit.[1] The Marines might not be happy since they'd prefer the budget for themselves.

> For the same money you could spin up a bunch more QRFs and scatter them over the globe.

The argument Space Force could make is this would allow for higher talent density than dispersed QRFs. The same unit could also attack satellites or space stations.

[1] https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/12/space-force-specia...

Re: Starship V3

#577

Post by Dylan16807 »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #570
Dylan16807 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're still doing all the mining and manufacturing on Earth, and there's so much empty land. The final product of self-powered datacenter is among the lowest priority of things to get away from us, and not an effective place to spend environmental mitigation money. And then when they re-enter they pollute pretty badly.

Ok, this is not a reasoned argument anymore is it?

What do you think isn't reasoned?

You came up with an extremely arbitrary choice. I pointed out that if you were in a position to make that choice, you have much better options somewhere in between.

Then you talked about the more general idea of moving all industry off the planet, and sure that's nice but this is not the industry you want to start with, it should be one of the last ones you worry about.

If someone's offering to build space datacenters for free, probably go ahead and take them up on the offer. But if you have any influence on the decisionmaking, don't push for space datacenters, just push for non-polluting datacenters. You'll get better results for cheaper.

Re: Starship V3

#578

Post by dotancohen »

moralestapia wrote: post #521
kotaKat wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It honestly makes sense now that I'm looking at a progression down the line - https://i.redd.it/f7prq0x08qgd1.jpeg Just continual tweaks and refinement to keep slimming down the packaging.

Hey, where did you get that image from? First time I see it!

That photo is thrown around a lot in the Spacex fan community. At least it was. I think the photo is at least two years old.

I suspect that many of those pipes are for testing instrumentation of the early models. And those that remain necessary, might be built into channels in the engine body now, like how a carburettor is built. That's much simpler and cheaper to manufacture and maintain, not to mention more reliable.

Re: Starship V3

#579

Post by dotancohen »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #483
avmich wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't see TVC there. I think Shotwell was exaggerating.

Here it is, already mounted on Starship - https://i.redd.it/q5dea3tsf60h1.jpeg

The TVC is clearly visible on one of the center engines in that photo, thank you. It's just about the only thing on there other than the thrust chamber, turbopumps, and bell!

Re: Starship V3

#580

Post by dotancohen »

lopsotronic wrote: post #543
BoxedEmpathy wrote: post #52

I really hope I get to see a permanent settlement on Mars or the moon. I don't care who settles it I just want to see humanity reach for the stars.

Depends on how you define "permanent" but the closed ecological systems (CES) problem is nowhere near solved. Best case all the Martians get eaten alive by their own skin fungus and/or bacteria in a generation or two. There'll be a collapse in the personal or macro biome - biological systems have Kalmagorov complexity in a vertical like direction. Shorter term, drawing from actual ISS problems, you get really weird a…

So there is a problem to be solved. Great!

The history of human spaceflight is pretty much: Problem -> Difficult to find solution -> Solution leads to better spaceflight -> Solution leads to better life for humans on Earth. Then repeat that cycle for each new problem.

Think of the new medicine and hospital protocols that are waiting to be developed as biologists explore the solution to this problem.

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