SpaceX claims another Starship success, but fumbles the catch SpaceX has notched up another test flight of its Starship behemoth, but chose not to try catching the Super Heavy Booster this time. The rocket launched from SpaceX's Boca Chica facility in Texas at 2200 UTC on November 19 without incident. Following stage separation, the Super Heavy booster executed its typical flip maneuver …
The Starship survived the entry looking less crispy, but I watched Scott Manley's video and he made a comment about the color change in the stainless steel. This can be a bad thing, no? From what I understand, those color changes can indicate structural changes, ie annealing or tempering and the steels properties being altered?
It just means it got hot. Typical colours I work with when welding stainless, brown = it welded, but it could have been hotter, blue = it welded and reached a perfect temperature. Metalic blue, it was too hot and is likely to be brittle. Crystal silver colour, not hot enough and likely to be brittle. Black = who welded mild steel with zinc plating by mistake :p
As someone else said, people make art out of stainless by applying heat, so I wouldn't read too much into it, other than it got hot. It's when it becomes molten you should worry :p
As someone else said, people make art out of stainless by applying heat, so I wouldn't read too much into it, other than it got hot.
Cheers all. I make jewellry sometimes and have sometimes used heated steel because I like some of the colors, but always for aesthetics rather than properties. Also anodised titanium for the same reasons..
It's when it becomes molten you should worry
Molten you say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hnu5DspBso
In which a blacksmith attempts to pattern/forge weld steel and titanium together. And I know enough about metal to know squirting titanium across the workshop is bad. But part of my retirement plan is to build a workshop and learn some more welding, blacksmithing and machining. But probably not in that order because I know I know enough to be dangerous, and would prefer a long retirement to tinker with stuff. But why YT can be great for educational stuff. In pt.2, he continues and tries to figure out why Ti is melting below its melting point, and commentors explain why. I learned something new, but doubt Musk has to worry about me building a better Starship in my back garden any time soon.
but since that colour was not glowing red
Back on tetra-firma in Brownsville, TX, there were reports of an orange glow during the launch...
"They had an older heat shielding than Ship5 had, and also had purposefully compromised some heat shielding spots to see how that performed."
I find the excuses odd. Wouldn't it be better to find the point where it isn't failing by planning a less aggressive decent?
"Wouldn't it be better to find the point where it isn't failing by planning a less aggressive decent?"
Uses more fuel == less payload
This is all about finding the best compromise of cost and efficiency. Every kg of heat shielding or extra fuel is one less kg of payload mass
This stuff is HARD to model on computers and empirical testing is required to validate predictions
"This stuff is HARD to model on computers and empirical testing is required to validate predictions"
I completely understand that. When I work on similar problems, I try and bracket the limits. SpaceX is aiming at reusability and melting the craft or heat stressing the materials to the extent that it can't be used again stomps the fuel use/payload mass problem. It's also hard to tell how much more work is left to get it right. If they try an entry half as aggressive and still have heat issues, they'd know they have a really big way to go vs if that test returned a craft ready to go again. They might also see what's the first issue they're having.
The starship doesn't end behind the colorized part.
Yep. Scott Manley's video also showed it developed a few wrinkles. But still a long way to go before Starship becoms human rated, or can even function as a pez dispenser for Starlink V3s and then fairings to launch regular satellites. Which is going to be one of those interesting commercial things. Like the number of satellite launches that would need Starship's payload mass or volume, and how much changes needed for heat shielding etc will affect its mass budget.
Shame they didn't show what happened to the space banana on the way down and if that got roasted or not. Which at this stage doesn't really matter much, and presumably SpacX's engineers and scientists can recover wreckage and learn from that. The 2nd upcoming launch could be fun as Musk mentioned they might try to catch Starship. Which may also go back to economics and reusability, especially given rumors of a $140bn-ish SpacX IPO soon. That should give a better look at their financials via the prospectus.
"especially given rumors of a $140bn-ish SpacX IPO soon."
Latest private share offer puts the value between $200bn and $250bn. Doubt SpaceX willl be IPO'ed just yet, their funding model is working OK at the moment. If they do need a big injection of cash then the obvious thing to do would be to spin off Starlink.
Doubt SpaceX willl be IPO'ed just yet, their funding model is working OK at the moment. If they do need a big injection of cash then the obvious thing to do would be to spin off Starlink.
That's why a prospectus would make interesting reading. I very much doubt Starlink could be spun off yet given that probably has a collosal debt pile and is a money pit. So SpacX should be charging Starlink a lot of money for all the launches, plus there's the costs to build and operate all the satellites, earth stations, transit connections etc etc. All supported by what is currently a fairly small revenue stream from subscribers.. Which I doubt is very far from covering current opex, let alone paying down existing debt. But most of that financial engineering is currently hidden from us mere mortals.
Then there's SpacX. Existing investors might want to cash out, and IPOs are usually the solution. Musk is obviously one of those investors. And there's some fun political consequences coming up, if Musk takes up the job of Trump's 'Efficiency Tsar' and most of Musk's companies feed off government pork. Russia hiked their seat prices for sending astronauts to the ISS, SpacX raised their prices as well. Funny how that works. Especially given 'efficiency' would involve looking at those contracts with an eye to cost+, and Musk is clearly on the wrong side of those discussions and very much conflicted.
So Musk may have to do a Dick Cheney and (pretend to) deconflict. So resign as CEO(s), put his holdings into trust etc, but Musk is far more involved in his companies than Cheney was with Haliburton. Shotwell may breathe a sigh of relief that Musk can't interfere, or fire off X's that end up moving his share price, either intentionally or unintentionally.
"Russia hiked their seat prices for sending astronauts to the ISS, SpacX raised their prices as well. Funny how that works. Especially given 'efficiency' would involve looking at those contracts with an eye to cost+, and Musk is clearly on the wrong side of those discussions and very much conflicted."
At the end of when NASA was paying for seats on Soyuz, they were charging $85mn each. SpaceX charges NASA $80mn each currently. Even factoring in some inflation, that's a little rich.
"SpaceX charges NASA $80mn each currently"
This is WHY "Commercial Crew" requires multiple vendors. As soon as you have only one they can charge what they want
Two reduces it to "what the market will bear" and more than that starts bringing meaningful competition to the table
"I very much doubt Starlink could be spun off yet given that probably has a collosal debt pile and is a money pit. "
It's a money pit until it's not - and then it becomes IMMENSELY profitable with only a few customers - the rest is gravy
The arbitrage possibilities of the laser linking are worth tens of billions, particularly if they can connect the east Asian bourses to Europe (there's a reason those laser birds went into polar orbit and it wasn't just to provide service into Alaska)
"especially given rumors of a $140bn-ish SpacX IPO soon."
A publicly traded SpaceX would mean having to publish financials, bringing in investors that want to see realistic plans to earn a return and the end of Elon's Mars dreams. Not likely. There have been some statements from Elon about spinning off Starlink, but they'd have to get that earning money first and in a position that it could pay SpaceX a proper fee for launching the satellites. I'm not optimistic about that happening either.
"The 2nd upcoming launch could be fun as Musk mentioned they might try to catch Starship."
To catch Starship (the upper stage) would mean going all the way around the Earth at least once with lots of touchy permissions if the path is over land as it descends. That's if the flight path is possible launching from Texas since that has a limited trajectory to launch through.
SpaceX is unlikely to go public. That would require Elon to deal with the SEC and subject the company to all sorts of regulations. The board of directors would also have to take the stockholders wishes more seriously so Elon's pet Mars project would be thoroughly dead. No ROI, no way.
IF IFT-7 goes to plan with a successful relight in space again (yes, they managed it in IFT-6 which was one of concerns) and ship lands again on target (internal report that ship was less than 5m from target on IFT-6) then the plan is a ship catch attempt on IFT-8 / ship 34. As you say it will need to be orbital though not just one orbit but most likely going to be 18 to 24 hours between take-off and landing for re-entry to be on the right flightpath, just depends on the cross-range capability. Shuttle was around 800 miles with its delta wings but I can't see Starship being anywhere near that. So at least it gives them enough time to safe the booster and get it out of the way.
Now, the interesting thing is the arms are not point the right way for that flight path so either the ship will need to overshoot and glide round but that would need to be at quite low altitude so not likely, or go vertical and fly round the tower and into the arms. Its going to fly over land but at the moment we don't know at what altitude, will it turn round and come but up the gulf in the last stage of re-entry. Don't know until they file request for approval.
And there is a question if they decide to use the second tower for catching the ship.
Its going to exciting for sure.
"he made a comment about the color change in the stainless steel. This can be a bad thing, no? From what I understand, those color changes can indicate structural changes, ie annealing or tempering and the steels properties being altered?"
That discoloration can mean that the structure of the material has been changed as could be seen with the wrinkles in the body as well. The exterior of the rocket is also the exterior of the propellant tanks so that make reuse a dangerous thing of the metal has been materially changed.
Mr Musk said the booster was planned to land harder on the tower. Apparently the automated diagnostics decided this wasn't a good idea, and so it went for a swim instead.
But the relight (for about a second) in orbit[1] was one of the big gains. They are looking for permission to launch 25 times next year: that's once every two weeks. And these early flights are deliberately pushing the boundaries to gather data. I expect this time next year no one will really care, as, like the Falcon launches now, it will be routine. What? They landed a 70m 250 ton skyscraper on a pair of metal arms 100m above the ground. Again? Yawn.
Gwynne Schotwell has said she wouldn't be surprised if there will have been 400 Starship flights by 2028. And if their plan works out, it will almost just be the cost of a bit of oxygen and natural gas to get to orbit. The $40m, or whatever it costs a Falcon second stage, will not need to be paid any more. Just as the Internet transformed the world in the 90s, so the 2030s are going to be unimaginably different to today.
[1] It was in orbit, it's just that perigee was below the Earth's surface. :-)
[1] It was in orbit, it's just that perigee was below the Earth's surface. :-)
Well, yes. Not to take anything away from SpaceX's accomplishment here, but by that standard, every time I jump in the air, I'm in orbit. And now you've nerd-sniped me into figuring out my orbital elements at a time when I should be getting useful work done.
I'm at latitude 44 north, so the orbit has an inclination of 44 degrees. Due to the earth's rotation, I'm moving at about (cos 44) * 500 m/s = about 350 m/s relative to the earth's center. My jumping adds a small component to that, but it's trivial compared to the speed from the earth's rotation.
My apogee is basically one earth radius (plus maybe half a meter if I really strain at the jump), or about 6378 km above the center of the earth.
Skipping some math here, my perigee is about 7 km. (That is to say, if the earth suddenly collapsed to a black hole underneath me and left me trundling along at ~350 m/s, I'd fall along an elliptical orbit until I came within 7 km of said black hole, passing it at a speed of about 300 km/s. Then I'd go back up to apogee, and so forth. As with Starship, my perigee is below ground; it's just that mine is a lot further underground than Starship's.)
So the eccentricity of my orbit is 1-(7/6378), or about 0.9989. The sort of elongated elliptical orbit you usually associate with long-period comets; P/Halley, for example, has e=0.9679.
The semimajor axis of my orbit is about half that of an object in low-earth orbit, so my orbital period (Kepler's Third Law) is 0.5 ^ (3/2) = about a third that of a LEO object. Tree-scraping LEO orbits have periods of about 90 minutes, so my orbital period is about 30 minutes, of which I complete about 0.01% of an orbit before thudding back to the ground. (Again, if the earth collapsed underneath me, I'd take about 15 minutes to fall to perigee near the black hole.)
Okay, back to work for me...
Silliness like this is why we love El Reg commentards.
Yep, although if a police officer stops you for speeding and asks how fast you think you were going, including the Earth's rotational and orbital velocity will likely be the wrong answer. Especially in countries that fine you based on how much over the speed limit you were travelling. The jumping one is also a fun thought experiment, plus with SF concepts like 'zero-g'. So you jump in the air. Yey! Then get splatted into a fast moving building. Or just more practical physics like the Coriolis force and reference frames. Wiki describes that as a fictional force, but it's very real, as I discovered when I did long-range rifle shooting.
"Wiki describes that as a fictional force, but it's very real, as I discovered when I did long-range rifle shooting."
They're only fictitious if you limit yourself to an inertial reference frame (which is a common model, but not accurate on the spinning globe we live on).
I thought you needed to run at that speed? I don't think it matters much what your vertical speed is.
Neither and both. <Adams>All you need to do is jump, miss the landing and avoid incoming objects.</Adams> Then you can reach orbit, leave it and eventually leave the solar system all without moving. It is strongly advised not to attempt this form of space flight indoors. If you do, you may very rapidly discover the meaning of terminal velocity, the door may hit you on the way out (or through), and your next of kin will be liable for the rather large crater, should they be identifiable from either your, or their remains.
I should probably write this up as a funding proposal to DESNZ. Perfectly modern form of future transport! Contains all the energys! Massive amounts of kinetic & potential energy just waiting to be unleashed!
Ah... note that I said that by the OP's standard, I'd be in orbit. Please read carefully.
You are correct that the minimal speed (at one earth radius) would be ~8 km/s for an orbit with perigee above ground level. Launches of the sort Starship did, or that I do when I jump in the air, are usually called "suborbital". Aside from the perigee being underground [0] (quite far underground in my case), however, the math/physics are the same as for orbiting objects.
Some time back, I got an e-mail from a gent wanting to use my orbit determination software, normally used for asteroids and comets and sometimes for satellites, to determine the "orbit" of a tennis ball. The idea was that he'd set up two cameras, measure where the ball appeared in the resulting images, and determine the "orbit" (which would have closely resembled the sort I described above, except with apogee maybe a few meters higher).
Mathematically, this would have been no different from the usual use of the software : people observe an object from a variety of telescopes, measuring the coordinates of the object in each image, and the software figures out the best-fit trajectory to those measurements. Nothing ever came of the idea -- I think he found another solution -- but there was nothing implausible about it.
[0] In fairness, Starship's orbit had a perigee at 50 km. That was low enough to hit the atmosphere and re-enter, but not below ground level. It was, as one might expect/hope, about as close to being in orbit as you can get without actually ending up in orbit.
"suborbital". Aside from the perigee being underground, however, the math/physics are the same as for orbiting objects
not quite : you have to resort to the Gauss theorem for "orbits" that are below Earth's surface
That is to say, if the earth suddenly collapsed to a black hole underneath me...
On the other hand, if Earth didn't collapse underneath you you'd hit the rock
So how's your rocket coming along?
SS/SH are testing prototypes at the moment, not junk, just not finished yet.
We're not used to seeing this method of development on rockets, but it's seriously interesting to watch.
Of course then people like you come along, watch a snippet and declare the whole thing a failure without ever understanding the point of the flight.
"The $40m, or whatever it costs a Falcon second stage, will not need to be paid any more."
There have been some estimates that the internal cost for a starlink launch is around $20M. And that includes a new second stage.
When you are launching as often as SpaceX the second stage production line becomes "mass production" driving down costs per unit. They are probably building 8-10 new boosters a year between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy - that's more than most non reusable rockets. Driving down costs. Launch and test facilities have high usage which require more maintenance but spread over so many launches drives down costs per launch.
And since SpaceX hasn't reduced the price of launches for customers they are raking in massive profits. They don't need to because they are still the cheapest launch provider, have an amazing reliability record getting the payload to space (which drives down the cost of launch insurance, too) and have the excess capacity to add launches.
It's going to take more than a reusable rocket to compete with SpaceX - it will take having a large launch cadence to drive down all of the costs. Maybe Blue Origin with Kuiper or a Chinese launch provider with China's internet satellite constellation.
SpaceX capabilities and services docs has just shy of $70m for 5T to GTO - so I presume the same for up to ~14.5mT to LEO
In 2020 SpaceX director of vehicle integration Christopher Couluris said it "costs $28 million to launch it, that’s with everything."
I can well believe that that price has come down somewhat with their higher cadence and better production, though possibly not as far as £20m.
"I can well believe that that price has come down somewhat with their higher cadence and better production, though possibly not as far as £20m."
Even with the cadence they have now, the incremental cost reductions aren't that much. The number of rockets would have to go way up to get noticeable savings from what they do now.
If I went from making 5 widgets a year to 100 widgets per year, would you expect I could drop the price by 50%? It's not impossible, but it's highly dependent on the details. Going from 100 to 200 is going to be a much smaller percentage savings.
The cost of a reused booster has to assume a rational number of reuses to amortize the build costs, plus the amount spent on recovery and refurbishment/recertification. There's also a certain allowance that has to be made for not using up all the life of a booster. If you find a flaw or discover a new way to make them better, it might be pointless to keep using the old model.
So? Cost to customers rarely reflects the actual cost to provide a service. There's always a profit margin tacked on. In some cases, a very large margin.
Why wouldn't they charge Starlink at cost, and charge customers what they believe customers will be willing (and clearly are willing) to pay?
What its COSTS and what they CHARGE are two entirely different items
Until there's competition they can essentially charge what they like as long as it's cheaper than the preceeding designs
and WHEN the competition shows up they can simply undercut them whilst still making money. It's the capitalist way of putting that competiution out of business
"But the relight (for about a second) in orbit[1] was one of the big gains. "
That's hard to say. It looked light a clean light and shut down, but the image wasn't all that good. Would it have stayed lit if left to run longer? Is there enough fuel in the header tanks to both have a deorbit burn AND a landing burn as well?
"Gwynne Schotwell has said she wouldn't be surprised if there will have been 400 Starship flights by 2028. "
I'd say we have a good time frame for her retirement. Not that she needs to keep working at this point unless there's a tropical island she has an eye on. Very few are made anymore so they tend to be spendy.
SpaceX still has a way to go to prove to NASA and the Spaceforce that Starship is safe to launch from Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg. It's doubtful that an environmental assessment is going to allow pipelines to be run to Boca Chica to supply LNG along with building a large power plant and a facility to make LOx. I don't think that Vandeberg has enough clearance to population for something as large as a Starship stack. Just a wee bit more hyperbole from Gwynne.
"I don't think that Vandeberg has enough clearance to population for something as large as a Starship stack."
Just looked on Google earth and the launch facilities are about 4.5 miles from the nearest inhabited area, and that's all military facilities from a quick look at it - it's 6 miles to the closest a street view car has been.
Boca Chica (i.e. clearly enough clearance) is only 4.9 miles from South Padre island, they apparently have a viewing platform at 3.5 miles.
Yeah - I think there is enough clearance there.
"Boca Chica (i.e. clearly enough clearance) is only 4.9 miles from South Padre island, they apparently have a viewing platform at 3.5 miles."
Boca Chica is an anomaly that won't be allowed at Vandenberg. The last time I was there to photograph the launch of a NASA mission, the press viewing area was a bit over 10 miles away for a Falcon 9. There are much closer places that offer a good view, but for safety reasons, they put us where they did. A Starship launch is far more dangerous so the exclusion zone would be much further out. Boca Chica is also about 2km from the border with Mexico so it's amazing that launches are allowed from there at all.
Yes, it's a damm big lump of metal and yes those are 3rd generation staged combustion methane engines running at even higher pressures than those on the Shuttle (which never needed to relight), or the Soviet era NK 33/43 (IIRC the highest chamber pressure engines ever)
But this is no longer unknown territory as F9 has over 400 successful flights. Barring a massive (and undetected) design flaw in the stg1 design sooner or later it will be routinely recovered.
But a reentry from orbital velocity needs to shed roughly 11x the amount of KE and PE per Kg of vehicle, with a shape that's got a very difficult aspect ratio.
It also needs to cope with a massive shift in centre-of-pressure and centre-of-gravity.
The stg2 did very well this time (apparently it even floated on the surface for a time, but this was another sub orbital flight.
Until SX can return from full orbital velocity they cannot seriously consider phasing out F9, just as they phased out F1 ASAP after they got F9 running.
"Until SX can return from full orbital velocity they cannot seriously consider phasing out F9, just as they phased out F1 ASAP after they got F9 running."
F9 isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Its human rated for a start and has plenty of missions to ISS (which starship can't do) for crew and cargo to keep it busy.
As for Starship orbital velocity, they are pretty much there, at an altitude of 185km which starship flew at, orbital velocity is around 28,000 km/h and Starship was doing around 27,000 km/h.
"F9...has plenty of missions to ISS (which starship can't do)"
YET
More to the point, a working Starship is a fairly good haulage truck to take up modules for ISS replacement
A working Starship means things are going to change much more funadmentally than many readers realise even at the smaller 9m size (a 13m version has been proposed)
Let's not forget that RocketLabs have Neutron in the works in addition to the much delayed BO stuff
Both or neither may come to fruition, but it's an exciting time to observe space activities
"Until SX can return from full orbital velocity"
I'm not aware of the actual numbers involved, but in effect, that was part of what they were testing this time around. They came in at a much steeper angle deliberately to stress things. IIRC, they had theoretical numbers based on modelling as to the stress limits and deliberately went above them to see what the real world result would be. Likewise, they removed a large number of heat tiles and used a few tiles of different type in places, again just to see what would happen and if reality matched the theory. There was the distinct possibility of destroying the Ship.
Likewise, Starship is barely past Falcon 1 in terms of development, so still plenty of R&D, test flights etc to go. IIRC, the next "ship" will be the block 2 design, this was the last flight of the initial block 1 model.
Yes, it IS the easy bit, which is why no one's ever recovered a second stage yet, not even SpaceX.
And catching a rocket with "chopsticks" most certainly IS unknown territory. To date, it's only been done once in the history of mankind.
It was also only barely sub-orbital. They hit 26K kph vs 28K kph for orbit. Not that much different in energy.
They're not phasing out F9 as it will serve a totally different market segment. F1 was phased out ASAP because it was a barely viable design to start with.
Excluding the 135 Shuttle missions of course. Usually called a "One and a half stage" design.
But they call came back (with varying degrees of success) from full orbital velocity.
And KE varies to the square of the velocity, In fact that comes to 15.9% low. That's still quite significant.
You're quite right. F9 is going nowhere for at least a couple of years, possibly till ISS is de-orbited (which SX already has the contract for).
"But they call came back (with varying degrees of success) from full orbital velocity."
The testing prototypes didn't come back from full orbital velocity though. Enterprise never got above airliner altitudes. Likewise, SpaceX is flying prototypes too, but are going much, much higher now and testing the real world rather than spending huge amounts of computing time and hoping that the modelling results match the real world on a first attempt with people on board. It's an entirely different development process and really can't be compared with the Shuttle. Hell, even Saturn V only ever did a single unmanned test launch before being accepted as "man rated". Can you imagine NASA doing that now? And nothing has really changed, it's still contractors building the hardware and NASA approving/disapproving the designs.
Even now, I still find it quite hard to get my head around how cheaply (relatively speaking!!) SpaceX are building these things such that they can knowingly throw them away just for testing on a fairly frequent basis after only ever seeing the "traditional" design process where it takes years and years to even get to a first flight and possibly years to rebuild if the first flight fails. Also worth noting that many of the new startups are following a similar model. Likewise, worth noting the Blue Origin seem to be following the old style methods and are as yet still to reach orbit (although it's looking good they will do so soon, best of luck to them in attempting to out-Starship SpaceX at their first attempt, even if it's taken 20-odd years to reach the point with essentially no launch income in all that time. :-)
"the "traditional" design process where it takes years and years to even get to a first flight and possibly years to rebuild if the first flight fails"
There's a simple reason for this
Until SpaceX came along, virtually all launches weren't about the space, they were flagwaving exercises (in the Colonial sense) - politicians see a rocket exploding in midair as a "failure" even if it was intended to do so
The difficulty of getting money to keep missions running is a testament to this issue. It's not "visible" therefore it's expendible in their minds (Ditto if they don't understand it)
Of course to deorbit they necessarily need to slow down such that their perigee is inside the atmosphere, so it's not quite 15%...
The ship is generating lift to remain in a sustainable heating regime, so they're not nearly as far off as it looks.
"And catching a rocket with "chopsticks" most certainly IS unknown territory. To date, it's only been done once in the history of mankind."
Look at it from a gymnastics standpoint. If you are on the parallel bars and land on your hands (arms straight) or inner arms vs dismounting and landing on your feet. You've just changed the point at which you stop moving down and come to rest. A landing pad gives more room for error, but with differential GPS and improvements in inertial measurement gear, it's not as stunning of a move as some people think. What it's doing is deducting the mass of landing gear in exchange for risk. Technically, it's not tremendously difficult if you are willing to take the risk of it not working and breaking things.
These are not the third generation engines. They still have a backlog of old tech to crash into the sea. There are a couple of hints that the problem was with the tower because it took some damage during the launch. Take that with a big pinch of speculation.
You can re-enter at well above LEO orbital velocity with a sub-orbital flight. Keep the perigee low but increase the apogee. The obvious limit is Earth escape velocity but you can increase above that with a powered descent. The angle makes a huge difference. Come in shallow and you can bleed of a large chunk of velocity slowly while the atmosphere is thin. Come in steep and you will rush through the thin atmosphere barely slowing down then hit the upper atmosphere hard. That will slow the ship down rapidly and seriously increase the power and temperature.
SpaceX cannot get rid of Falcon 9 completely until NASA is happy returning astronauts from the ISS in a Starship. Falcon 9 will ramp down significantly when its biggest customer (Starlink) switches to Starship.
"SpaceX cannot get rid of Falcon 9 completely until NASA is happy returning astronauts from the ISS in a Starship. Falcon 9 will ramp down significantly when its biggest customer (Starlink) switches to Starship."
Don't think that will happen before the ISS is deorbited.
Would be amazing for spaceX to bring bits back in a custom SS...
Quite true, as the US demonstrated in the (IIRC) "Gaslight" tests on ICBM reentry vehicles in the 50's*
But TBH these were more flying sounding rocket trajectories, straight up and down.
I'm sure with their backlog of old tech we can look forward to a bunch more crashes in the sea from SX.
"Falcon 9 will ramp down significantly when its biggest customer (Starlink) switches to Starship."
Agreed. Rolling out a 12 000 vehicle constellation using F9 has made the Starlink rollout much more expensive. I'm not sure if SX would have ever pushed reuse above 10. Now it's 23.
Even a spreadsheet cost model will show that reuse massively increases the profit margin if you can absorb the costs of developing it. Something the cost-plus-only-do-what-the-government-tells-us-to-design-by-accountant model never shows. That last part is the reason ULA can "prove" that reusability is not worth it as it is so difficult, because the core Vulcan is built to the smallest payload with everything else done by strap-on-boosters-at-extra-cost. A design "feature" driven by LM and Boeing's desire to simply milk ULA as a cash cow.
*Some of which were designed and built in the UK.
Substantial? Yes.
Gamechanging? To whom, exactly?
Because pre-SX it cost 10s of millions of $ or Euros to put multi-tonne payloads in LEO.
And, oh look in 2024 it still takes 10s of millions of $ or Euros to put multi-tonne payloads in LEO. The price (to the customer) has not changed much, if at all.
OTOH SX's profit margin has gone through the roof.
To an accountant mixing up costs and prices is as unthinkable as an engineer mixing up stress and strain. Both have very specific meanings.
Gamechanging: Absolutely. The fact that SX is making a massive profit on each launch does not take away from the engineering achievement. It is also temporary, until the rest of the industry catches up.
the comparison with previously having had to throw away an airliner after a single transoceanic flight is apt. SX have demonstrated that it can be done, that it works sufficiently well to become boring. This opens up completely new options and markets. Gamechanger is a VERY accurate description of the situation.
"The fact that SX is making a massive profit on each launch does not take away from the engineering achievement. It is also temporary, until the rest of the industry catches up."
By the time the rest of the industry catches up, SpaceX will already be on Starship.
Part of the "catch up" is Blue Origin, and if they succeed, will be more or less on par with Starship in one fell swoop. Others, including a number of Chinese companies are snapping at the heels of Falcon 9. I think SpaceX will have serious competitors sooner rather than later, although SpaceX's experience with building fast and cheap might keep them ahead a little longer.
I think you forgot a few more bullshit words in your speech.
Gamechanger my arse.
SpaceX is no where near deliverying a man to the moon, and will never delivery anyone too mars.
Breads and circuses,
How many hours did you work this year compared to before space X ?
How many homeless people are in your local city ?
How many holidays did you get this year ?
Thats right your life has not gotten better, this is nothing but bullshit that makes absolutely no difference in your life.
Except SX continues to charge customers for the whole rocket, when they only replace the upper stage.
SX costs have dropped a lot, but customer prices have not.
That is not "Game changing"
SX have a)Shown the industry cost models have a 10 fold overestimate of the development costs of a TSTO ELV due to the decades of cost overruns in the source data.. b)Running your own in house thermal-vacuum test setup and not relying on legacy hardware designed 20 years ago can save a lot of money. c)All the first stage recovery plans in the 60's and 70's (and there were a lot of them) were total BS as attitude authority by engine gimbling is completely inadequate (hence the grid fins on F9's).
Game changing will be when there is actual competition and SX cannot charge what they like.
"Because pre-SX it cost 10s of millions of $ or Euros to put multi-tonne payloads in LEO."
Try 100's of million of $ for multi-ton payload. SX is around $80m to $100m for a basic service without any special integration for around 15T to LEO. AFAIK adjusting for inflation there is 10x saving and greater capability.
Two wrongs dont make a right.
Basically everything SpaceX is thrown away anyway.
How many rockets today are actually greater than a year or two old ? None, because they keep changing things and moving ahead.So the claim of reusability is bogus regarding SS.
"Basically everything SpaceX is thrown away anyway."
On it's own, that is a fact that can't be argued with.
On the other hand, Falcon 9 first stages are often used many times over before being "thrown away". It depends on the mission, some get "thrown away" because of the mission requirements, although they are most likely to be "used" first stages. They have landed over 350 times and flown as many as 23 missions with the SAME first stage.
So far, every other launch vehicle[*] launching a payload to orbit has launched exactly once and not been recovered in a way that it can be (easily) re-used, usually just being dumped in the ocean.
* The Space Shuttle being the one exception, but the amount of refurbishment and the turnaround times made it very, very expensive.
Is SpaceX making 23x the profits because it is using Falcon 9's 23x times ?
Of course not, its making modest profits because the reality is it is not reusing rockets anywhere near the exaggerated claims you are implying.
If F9 were being reused like a car is reused for journeys around the place, they would be making tens of billions because the launch cost would be only a ew million for fuel giving tens of millions in profit.
I did answer your response.
You like to cherry pick an example of a reused rocket, and you completely fail and ignore to provide the true re-use count for each individual rocket.
My point is the reuse count for each rocket is far less than you claim, and i provide my profits as my proof.
Why are you so nasty all the time? People engage with you in good faith to have a discussion, and you consistently respond with insults and ad-hominem attacks.
It's incredibly childish, and proves nothing other than that you have no basis for your arguments.
I think your ratio of upvotes vs downvotes tells the story better than anything else.
Your utterings here are… well. I was going to say ‘actively disliked’ by the vast majority of commentards, but I think even that’s giving you too much credit. They think of you like an annoyingly vocal 5 year old who insists on being part of a conversation he knows nothing about.Tolerated with condescending amusement, bordering on ridicule when you get a bit huffy.
"My point is the reuse count for each rocket is far less than you claim, and i provide my profits as my proof."
That's the problem. Your point is irrelevant and wrong. I didn't make a claim for each and every F9. I said they have been used "up to" 23 times.
But even so, the average reuse is absolutely guaranteed to be more than one if even only one ever got re-used a single time. And apart from the Shuttle, no other rocket has managed that to date. Now, what was your point again?
Here, go play with numbers your self and see if you can make them fit your perspective. They more than bolster my point, even allowing for the early ones they didn't even try to make re-usable. It looks even better if you remove the prototypes, experimental landings and the early ones never intended to be re-used.
cow: Basically everything SpaceX is thrown away anyway.
Erm - up to November 16th they had flown 414 missions with F9/FH, with three failures, one partial failure (secondary payload too low) - there was also one pad failure, but obviously that doesn't show up as a launch.
351 of those have been reflown boostes...
"As of 15 October 2024, SpaceX has put into service a total of 43 new B5 boosters, of which 27 have been destroyed (19 have been expended, six have been lost due to failed landings, and two have been lost during recovery)."
That's not "everything spacex" being thrown away, not even remotely.
Get your facts straight, it would make for a much more interesting conversation.
Learn to provide links for your sources.... like an adult.
Secondly you have selectively highlighted certain items, you have not actually shared total counts.
The B5 is not the first generation, its obviously an iteration. All the old rocket have been retired, they are not being actively reused, try and count ALL the built rockets and all the flown missions and then give your average reuse count.
They've been paid for specific development programs and for providing launch services...
They're also not the only ones who get paid by NASA for various programs, indeed they're usually the less costly option (Boeing for instance were paid 27% more than SpaceX to provide commercial crew services)
SpaceX has achieved none of the moon landing mission, they are years behind.
Yes I know Boeing is no better, but please be honest about SpaceX.
It may be a good entertainment, but they are no where near landing a man on the moon.
"please be honest about SpaceX."
Would be good for you to try that as well.
They are actually making progress towards that goal - whereas SLS and orion seem to sinking deeper into a perpetual money pit.
Whilst SLS has made a flight it won't make another for nigh on a year, and even that's conditional on alot of things going right.
SO im dishonest because you say so... well done, not because you quote and point out an actual mistruth from me, but because YOU SAY so, then it must be true.
You claim honesty in your replies but you fail to provide links and your comments about launches and rockets reused shows two different number counts. Yes thats honesty, very different numbers for the same question.
Very true. There is a chemist and accountant on youtube who has been carefully monitoring the Starship programme. The first test flight of starship wasted three billion dollars of taxpayer money. The second flight was a waste of three billion dollars of taxpayer money, as was the third and so on.
Also, and I don't know if anyone else has spotted this, Spacex has yet to land a single colonist on Mars. It is all broken promises.
Very.
OTOH if you want to put 1 million people* on Mars before Musk is too old to take the trip fingers are going to need to get pulled out quite a long way.
* The logistics of doing so (even assuming a very healthy birth rate, bearing in mind no human child has been born anywhere outside 1g) are staggering.
"The problem is spacex keeps trying "unnecessary" things that cause delay. Apollo went to the moon without refueling tanks in space and mechzilla catching..."
So you're saying that single use vehicle would be faster, better, cheaper than SS?
The reusability isn't "unnecessary", it's the raison d'etre of the SS program. A refuelled SS in LEO has the dV to go pretty much anywhere in the solar system (might struggle to get to mercury).
And it's got fuel that can be synthesised on Mars for a return flight a well..
john: So you're saying that single use vehicle would be faster, better, cheaper than SS?
cow: Can you actually quote me saying anything remotely like that ?
SpaceX is trying many many new and different things, im just saying some of them are completely unecessary if the target is to get to the moon.
The contract with NASA was to deliver and return a few people from the moon in a few years. It was not to create a mechzilla etc etc... Not going to discuss whether mechzilla is necessary or a good idea, im just saying its a distraction that gets i nth eway of the timeline of the actual mission.
Lastly SS isnt cheap if you count the billions in donations from the tax payer.
"The contract with NASA was to deliver and return a few people from the moon in a few years. "
The contract was to get a lander to the moon's surface and back to lunar orbit by Jan 2024. HLS Starship will only be a shuttle to and from the lunar surface and lunar orbit.
The question unanswered is how SpaceX will get propellants to the moon to resupply HLS Starship. It will take a load of flights to fill up HLS Starship to get to the moon and I would expect that it could get to the surface and back up if it didn't sit too long, but after that.......
"Tankers...
It's not unanswered."
It's completely unanswered. There are no documents from SpaceX describing that mission architecture. I wouldn't doubt there are loads of fan-fiction, but all of that counts for nothing.
If it takes 20 flights to fill an orbital depot to send the HLS Starship on to the moon, it would take another even larger number of flights to refill the tanker's storage tanks AND the propellant tanks so that it could get itself to lunar orbit. Everything is using cryogenic Methane and Oxygen that boils off over time. How much time is unknown but might be able to be estimated. It will mean that a tanker sent to refill HLS Starship in lunar orbit can't be sent too much in advance or it would empty from boil-off. For Apollo, they chose storable hypergolics for the safety and reliability of the total architecture.
SpaceX is nowhere?
You do realise that SpaceX puts about 80% of all mass to orbit at the moment, and whilst a good portion of that is StarLink, even if you exclude StarLink they're still 50% ahead of China, who remain in #2 spot.
They're also developing and testing an absolute beast of a rocket, which is designed to be rapidly and completely reusable.
The entire mass to orbit in 2023 starts to look like just 17 launches of SS/SH. That's somewhere between just the un-crewed landing flight for Artemis and that as well as the first manned landing.
It's a seismic shift in capability, and without throwing away the entire rocket stack every time.
"it should have already almost completed the man landing"
Even if everything SpaceX had gone flawlessly and at the hilariously optimistic early timescales... they still couldn't have done that because none of the other bits of the program are ready. SLS has had one test flight, and the mobile launcher needed a $383m replacement - though an OIG audit in August has it likely to cost $2.5b. What a bargain!
Artemis 2 is now scheduled for September '25, with delays likely if there are any issues during testing or integration (ground systems, launch tower, Orion itself)
In the next ten months SpaceX could really start motoring on with SS/SH development - Block 2 is next up.
The important thing here is that it's a development program... It's just a rather public one, and very different from basically any previous effort.
John: You do realise that SpaceX puts about 80% of all mass to orbit at the moment, and whilst a good portion of that is StarLink, even if you exclude StarLink they're still 50% ahead of China, who remain in #2 spot.
cow: The mission is not to put 80% of mass into LEO, th emission is to send a human team and return them to earth. You cant be half pregnant, there are many technical challenges in addition to putting mass into LEO, each must be completed successfully for the next too continue.
~
John: though an OIG audit in August has it likely to cost $2.5b. What a bargain!
cow: How many other government grants has SX recei ved ?
Why do you continue to dishonestly skip mentioning the tens of billions SX has received in other grants ?
Are you so fucking rich that billions are stationary costs ?
~
John: Artemis 2 is now scheduled for September '25, with delays likely if there are any issues during testing or integration (ground systems, launch tower, Orion itself)
cow: Whather ART works or doesnt is a separate unrelated matter.
Stop changing the subject .
~
John: The important thing here is that it's a development program
cow: All missions away from earth orbit are development programs, why share the obvious except for purposes of bullshit ?
Focus on facts.
"It's completely unanswered. There are no documents from SpaceX describing that mission architecture."
You mean apart from their explicit description of "utilising parking orbit refuelling" in their SS/SH documentation.
No, it's definitely there, on a SpaceX document on the SpaceX website.
FFS it's one of their main callouts on the SS webpage:
"ON-ORBIT REFILLING
Starship leverages tanker vehicles (essentially the Starship spacecraft minus the windows) to refill the Starship spacecraft in low-Earth orbit prior to departing for Mars. Refilling on-orbit enables the transport of up to 100 tons all the way to Mars. And if the tanker ship has high reuse capability, the primary cost is just that of the oxygen and methane, which is extremely low."
"Everything is using cryogenic Methane and Oxygen that boils off over time"
Yes - but with active cooling then that becomes a completely controllable problem. Even a relatively simple heatshield (compared with something like JWST) would make a significant difference, and they're certainly plotting enough solar power generation to be able to actively cool quite abit. The current estimates are a three month loiter time in lunar orbit.
"You mean apart from their explicit description of "utilising parking orbit refuelling" in their SS/SH documentation."
John, that's for Earth orbit, not lunar. There's no plan to deploy a heat shield. That might work, but there's nothing being worked on. Active cooling would be a whole new science project to work out. There's no Starship tanker currently being built. No orbital depot craft being built. Starship as built thus far aren't close to moving 100t and nobody is clamoring for a way to move that much mass to Mars (a paying customer). The cost to fill up with petrol is a tiny fraction of 1% of the cost of my car and it's not a huge factor in spacecraft. LOx/RP1 is even cheaper and having the fuel non-cryogenic is a cost saver. Getting any reuse out of Starship is still to be worked out so talk of reuse and all the benefits that it might bring aren't eggs in the nest yet to even be counted for an estimate.
"John, that's for Earth orbit, not lunar. There's no plan to deploy a heat shield. That might work, but there's nothing being worked on. Active cooling would be a whole new science project to work out. There's no Starship tanker currently being built. No orbital depot craft being built. Starship as built thus far aren't close to moving 100t and nobody is clamoring for a way to move that much mass to Mars (a paying customer). The cost to fill up with petrol is a tiny fraction of 1% of the cost of my car and it's not a huge factor in spacecraft. LOx/RP1 is even cheaper and having the fuel non-cryogenic is a cost saver. Getting any reuse out of Starship is still to be worked out so talk of reuse and all the benefits that it might bring aren't eggs in the nest yet to even be counted for an estimate."
Have you bothered to look at the current state of prototypes and the capabilities of block2/3?
You seem to think that nothing can possibly be learned from anything other than a completely finished rocket... Falcon9 went through several generations even after it was in production:
The v1 was capable of lofting ~9,000 kg.
The v1.1 improved that to ~13,000 kg
The FT, as well as Blocks 4&5, took that to ~22,800 (18,500 reused) kg
The v1 starship is a test prototype article, without significant payload capacity (but since none were ever destined for orbit, it would be a complete waste).
Vlock 2 are looking at a smaller volume, but 100t of payload capacity (reused), block 3 even more...
"The cost to fill up with petrol is a tiny fraction of 1% of the cost of my car and it's not a huge factor in spacecraft."
Huh? So why don't you buy an HGV with a tanker on the back to drive down to the shops? Or throw your car away every time you go anywhere...
The cost of fuel is relatively small for rockets too (maybe as little as $1m per launch for SS/SH at the moment), so the concept of reusing the rocket, which is actually a significant value is the same.
John: FFS it's one of their main callouts on the SS webpage:
"ON-ORBIT REFILLING
cow:
Web pags are not architecture documents.
Im pretty sure SX does not author and publish everything they do on a webpage. Web pages are summaries for lay people, they can say anything and they are not contracts or design documents.
~
Mach: Everything is using cryogenic Methane and Oxygen that boils off over time"
John: Yes - but with active cooling then that becomes a completely controllable problem
cow: No one has every done it or anything remotely close that on earth and yet you claim it will be done in space becuase YOU GIVE YOUR PERSONAL ASSURANCES.
Got it.
My comments have always been primarily about the Moon Mission. SX has been paid to go to Mars, the things i question maybe be about Mars, but they are delaying any progress to the Moon.
"There are no documents from SpaceX "
John: Here are some...
cow: Oh, I don't count documents you can get from their website
No of course you don't, because you can't accept anything other than complete hatred for SpaceX.
cow: My comments have always been primarily about the Moon Mission. SX has been paid to go to Mars, the things i question maybe be about Mars, but they are delaying any progress to the Moon.
So you're commenting on a moon mission, which is going to have cost NASA $2.8b (assuming there aren't contract extensions required, and I haven't heard any indication that there will be).
Ok - so what exactly is your complaint?
The fact that it's behind schedule? That's entirely typical - Orion, SLS, Gateway... i.e. every other part of Artemis is also well behind schedule, because the original schedule was hilariously optimistic.
The fact that it's a fixed price contract, as opposed to the cost+ of other contracts?
The fact that it's development of more than a one trick pony?
I've got news for you.
LM, and later ULA have continued to do work on the Centaur stage and could even manage that at liquid hydrogen temperatures. I think their studies got up to a week with completely passive insulation. Beyond that they were looking at cryo coolers, which are tough at LH2 temps, but much more straightforward at LO2 and LMethane temps.
Yes - the comment I replied to declared reusability to be unnecessary:
"The problem is spacex keeps trying "unnecessary" things that cause delay. Apollo went to the moon without refueling tanks in space and mechzilla catching..."
Saturn 5 had the capacity to put 41 tons to the moon, and cost well over 200 billion USD (adjusted), SS is targeting 100 tons, and has cost well under 10 billion so far (of which under 3 is from NASA - and it's not a donation, it's a purchase of services).
"The contract with NASA was to deliver and return a few people from the moon in a few years"
From a gateway which doesn't exist... where astronauts will be taken there by a spaceship which has only had 2 test flights on fully expendable rockets (and one abort test), SLS has cost NASA about nine times as much as starship so far ($26.4b vs $2.9b).
John: and has cost well under 10 billion so far (of which under 3 is from NASA - and it's not a donation, it's a purchase of services).
cow: It has not cost under $10B, it has cost far more. The US gov has given all sorts of grants and overcharged missions for military satellites and more to funnel money to SpaceX.
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John: From a gateway which doesn't exist...
cow: Apollo didnt need a gateway, or a space station or many other things. Musk and his team keep inventing new extras to do ... while Apollo actually went to the moon.
~
John: where astronauts will be taken there by a spaceship which has only had 2 test flights on fully expendable rockets (and one abort test),
cow: Wiki says that they have launched 6 times and lost 2, it would appear you cant even count to 4.
In what universe is 6 equal to 2 ? Your maths is dishonest and broken just like your claims about cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship
"John: where astronauts will be taken there by a spaceship which has only had 2 test flights on fully expendable rockets (and one abort test),
cow: Wiki says that they have launched 6 times and lost 2, it would appear you cant even count to 4.
In what universe is 6 equal to 2 ? Your maths is dishonest and broken just like your claims about cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship"
Well I was talking about orion, since that the astronaut <-> gateway ship.
EFT-1 and Artemis-1 have been flight tests with, and I apologise for my error, three abort tests and one Ares test also listed on the relevant Wiki page.
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cow: Apollo didnt need a gateway, or a space station or many other things. Musk and his team keep inventing new extras to do ... while Apollo actually went to the moon.
No it didn't - and your car doesn't run on oats/hay.
SpaceX aren't the ones who specified the gateway decision - that was NASA. And it's been in the plans since ~2012 in various forms - that's before F9 was routimely landed.
--
cow: It has not cost under $10B, it has cost far more. The US gov has given all sorts of grants and overcharged missions for military satellites and more to funnel money to SpaceX.
Grants and "overcharged missions". You're really struggling to justify your hatred aren't you.
The HLS contract is under $3b, and total development costs are going to exceed $5b by the end of this year (according to court filings)
SLS however is well known to have cost $24bn, and that has a very limited lifespan ahead of it.
"cow: Wiki says that they have launched 6 times and lost 2, it would appear you cant even count to 4."
If the intent is reusability, SpaceX has lost all of the pieces they have launched to date. The crowing about a "quick turnaround" between 5 and 6 is only a reuse of the launch tower, not the vehicles. It's sort of hoped that the ground support doesn't need a total rebuild after each launch. One would really hope it only takes a quick inspection just to be sure and not an assessment to determine how much has to be rebuilt.
Mach: The crowing about a "quick turnaround" between 5 and 6 is only a reuse of the launch tower, not the vehicles. I
cow: Quick turnaround is irrelevant for one or two missions to the moon. Secondly they have not put any manned mission anywhere near the moon, so they have ZERO quick turn around, because they have not acehived the goal or anything like it.
"cow: Quick turnaround is irrelevant for one or two missions to the moon."
Except in that you need rapid turnaround for the fuelling flights - it's absolutely essential for lunar travel using HLS as designed.
The fact that you seem to want to repeat an unsustainable and *massively expensive* project rather than moving forward towards actually space travel capabilities speaks volumes.
john: The fact that you seem to want to repeat an unsustainable and *massively expensive* project rather than moving forward towards actually space travel capabilities speaks volumes.
cow: the entire concept of manned space program is unsustainable and massively expensive.
The $B given to SX is a massive expensive cost. THe fact all of these programs require government funding makes them unsustainable and massively expensive. The only sustainable progream is one that doesnt require government funding.
Apollo (or technically Apollo/Saturn) was a national priority stated by a President (in 1961) and NASA had 5% of the US Federal Budget to do so (which was already big due to Vietnam).
In 2024 the NASA budget is more like 0.9% of the US Federal Budget. It is less than a)What the US DoD spends on aircon for it's overseas bases. b)US citizens spend on home delivered pizza.
When people talk about large number I find it helps to get some perspective.*
*Like, for example 1% of the UK Govt budget is about £13Bn. Something British readers might like to consider. That is what one percent looks like. You're going to need a lot of savings to reach that £22Bn "Black hole" your Chancellor has found since Slippy left office.
"If the intent is reusability, SpaceX has lost all of the pieces they have launched to date."
Booster 12 would like to disagree.
Though they likely have no intent to refly B12 they certainly haven't "lost" it.
Falcon 9 boosters are reusable - that's undeniable at this point.
Yet we have this lovely montage on YouTube.
Rapid turnaround is important, it speaks not only to repair work, but also to restocking consumables etc. So yes, it is important that that number can keep coming down, and all the milestones along that path can, and will, be celebrated by SpaceX.
John: Rapid turnaround is important, it speaks not only to repair work, but also to restocking consumables etc. So yes, it is important that that number can keep coming down, and all the milestones along that path can, and will, be celebrated by SpaceX.
cow: Will reusability help if something is broken near Mars ? No it wont.
RE-use is a distraction.
We will never goto Mars until humanity discovers and uses a signficantly more powerful boost system than chemical rockets. Thats a fact. The current cost and limits of chemical rockets are simply not good enough and will limit manned travel to the Moon or one way trips in a box like a caged rat to Mars.
John: Well I was talking about orion, since that the astronaut <-> gateway ship.
EFT-1 and Artemis-1 have been flight tests with, and I apologise for my error, three abort tests and one Ares test also listed on the relevant Wiki page.
cow: this is the problem you selectively word things to sound positive and omit major facts, all in the name of presenting a dishonest account of facts. You have done exactly the same with your accounting of spaceX "cost".
"cow: this is the problem you selectively word things "
Erm - what?
"From a gateway which doesn't exist... where astronauts will be taken there by a spaceship"
In what way would you think that the spaceship referenced in that sentence was starship as opposed to orion?
No, there is no selective wording here - just reading what you want to criticise as opposed to what's actually being said.
SS/SH are well behind the original schedule, but that's at least partially because the original schedule was hilariously optimistic.
Apollo went to the moon and didnt reuse its entire luanch stack and the lunar module.
The SX mission to the Moon will also not reuse the lunar module and it will also sacrifice all those refueling tankers in space. After the mission they will be waste and never reused. THe tanks will leak, they will not hold fuel for any period of time they will be a waste.
Trying to make the tank thing work in space will fail it just needs time. Its far too hard to build anything in space.
In both cases its all waste.
"Apollo went to the moon and didnt reuse its entire luanch stack and the lunar module."
No Apollo reused nothing, which is why it was cancelled so fast, it was insanely expensive.
"The SX mission to the Moon will also not reuse the lunar module and it will also sacrifice all those refueling tankers in space."
The NASA mission to the moon will also not reuse the lunar module, but those refuelling tankers won't be sacrificed, they'll be landed and reused. Heck most of them will be reused during the mission, as well as the boosters.
"Trying to make the tank thing work in space will fail it just needs time. Its far too hard to build anything in space."
Everything is hard in space. Good thing you weren't around when the ISS was envisaged - no point in trying you'd moan.
Good thing you were around when ships or aircraft were developed - no point in trying.
Good thing you weren't around when the wheel was invented - no point in trying.
"SLS has cost NASA about nine times as much as starship so far ($26.4b vs $2.9b)."
SLS has gone around the moon. Starship hasn't even completed a successful sub-orbital mission. The contract for demonstrating an HLS Starship landing on the lunar surface is a bit less than $2.9bn, but SpaceX has spent more than that on the program thus far and is still woefully late on the published timeline which was January of 2024 for the demonstration of an uncrewed lander. You are comparing a real cost to a contract award. SpaceX is going to need another couple of large cash infusions to keep gong with their full-scale, hardware-rich development program.
"Starship hasn't even completed a successful sub-orbital mission"
Wow - what the hell do you call the last six flights. I can't imagine your hatred could justifiably call particularly IFT5 anything other than a success.
- Launch, separation, flip, catch, re-entry, soft landing on target.
"You are comparing a real cost to a contract award"
I'm comparing the numbers people are throwing around, I've looked both at NASA costs (which people seem to care about) and SpaceX costs (as revealed in court filings), and it's still an absolute pittance compared with SLS.
Yes, SLS has had a first successful test flight, but SpaceX have had 6 test flights in substantially less time, and show good progress. Each test has had some things to learn, and some great successes to take away.
SLS has a capacity of 27 tons to the moon, with a planned increase to 46 tons. SS/SH has a 100-200t target, and are making progress towards that.
They are very different vehicles, one is designed to throw away excellent, and reusable, engines - the other is designed not throw anything away but propellant.
"Wow - what the hell do you call the last six flights. I can't imagine your hatred could justifiably call particularly IFT5 anything other than a success."
They didn't successfully complete an entire test card of everything they need to adhere to their mission architecture. It's not hatred, it's experience in aerospace and a knack for spotting BS when it comes to declaring a failure, a success. Starship (upper stage) from IFT5 was rather melty when it landed in the Indian ocean carrying zero payload and skipping a deorbit engine burn as planned. Catching the booster was flashy, but not technically as impressive as people who aren't in the industry think it is.
So you make up your own definitions of success.
Including, but not limited to, things which are clearly outside the design parameters of the test article in question.
And then call it a failure.
So does that mean that your laptop is a complete failure as a computer, because it can't make a cup of coffee?
"SpaceX is trying many many new and different things, im just saying some of them are completely unecessary if the target is to get to the moon."
SpaceX target is Mars. The Moon stuff is being driven by NASA(*) which in turn is politically driven regardless of practicalities. The fact that SpaceX development can be used for the Moon is nice but it's not their target
(*) Thanks to the dust(**), most expectations for space exploration beyond LEO tended to skip around it in favour of standalone habitats, asteroid or Mars missions
(**) Moon dust wrecked Apollo surface EVA suits in a matter of hours. The stuff is even more abrasive than fresh volcanic dust and likely to be a silicosis hazard for long-term lunar explorers. A lot of time and effort is being put into ways of keeping people and dust from ever coming into contact along with protecting equipment from it.. Make no mistake that the Moon is likely to be one of the most difficult space environments we encounter and concentrating on it may turn out to be a colossal error in the long term
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_regolith#:~:text=Lunar%20dust%20is%20highly%20abrasive,as%20the%20number%20one%20challenge.
Alan: SpaceX target is Mars. The Moon stuff is being driven by NASA(*) which in turn is politically driven regardless of practicalities. The fact that SpaceX development can be used for the Moon is nice but it's not their target
cow: perhaps it is, ALL of my comments have been about the simple fact they cant even get a man to the moon.
Its a joke they cant do that, they will never get a man to Mars at this rate.
"cow: perhaps it is, ALL of my comments have been about the simple fact they cant even get a man to the moon."
If SpaceX wanted to put people around the moon then they could do so - a Falcon Heavy with a dragon would be able to replicate the Artemis 1 profile (that's the original dear moon profile).
All your comments have been snarky criticisms of a prototype and development process that you seem to be deliberately misunderstanding or misrepresenting.
Sorry but a FH with Dragon CANNOT replicate Artemis 1 profiles. Even fully expended FH doesn't have enough capabilities to put that much mass into a direct lunar injection orbit. Second issue is that dragon is not rated for lunar orbit and its not rated for re-entry from lunar obit speed which is much higher than a LEO mission.
It can send a capsule round the moon and bring it back - which is what the Artemis 1 mission did. It won't put the *same* capsule round the moon, but it could repeat the flight.
It's also the original design criteria for the dragon heat shield (Though AFAIK it's never been tested at that speed, and the current version is a lighter/lower performant version).
John: All your comments have been snarky criticisms of a prototype and development process that you seem to be deliberately misunderstanding or misrepresenting.
cow: So im wrong because i disgree with you ?
Every criticism i have made is completely true. Nothing i have said is untrue.
Apollo delivered the lander with no space refueling, today SX requires MULTIPLE tanks in space. Thats FUCKING WASTE. Apollo did it with a small fuel supply and SX needs 100x more fuel and you think thats progress ? SX is wasting soo much time on tanks in space, they will never advance, the tanks will fail... its the self driving in 6 months thing again, where its only 6 months away and ten years pass.
No - you're continuing to deliberately misrepresent what's being done.
Apollo went to the moon without refuelling.
SS/SH is aiming to make access to space rapidly reusable, and therefore much cheaper.
That's a completely different project... so comparing SS/SH to Apollo isn't particularly sane anyway. But even if you focus in on HLS then you still end up with a very different class of vehicle, doing a different thing. It's capable of putting more than twice as much payload on the surface of the moon, and will cost easily orders of magnitude less to do so - even if they never reuse an HLS.
Refuelling isn't a waste - throwing away all of your engineering every flight, now that's a waste.
SLS is designed to be thrown away every time it's flown.
SS/SH is designed to be entirely reused. With HLS being a specifically contracted outlier to that plan.
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john: A refuelled SS in LEO has the dV to go pretty much anywhere in the solar system (might struggle to get to mercury).
cow: but the problem is they have gone no where in over 5 years, they are still launching to LEO, nobody is anywhere near the moon.
Stop the PP slides and bullshit talks and talk reality
A small technical point.
Without on-orbit refuelling Starship goes nowhere.
On orbit refuelling has always been a key enabling technology to get that much payload to its destination, be it moon or mars.
The difference between between Apollo and NASA's current plans (apart from the NASA budget as a portion of the US Federal budget being 1/10 what it was in Apollo) is it is designed to be sustainable as opposed to the flags-and-footprints-America-wins-the-propoganda-war of Apollo, where Saturn V rocket production ended in 1968.
"Apollo went to the moon without tankers in space... perhaps the entire strategy is broken...hang on it is... 1960rocket managed it ln less time and you want to tell me a failure is better ?
Talka bout spin..."
What the hell are you smoking?
I do hope you buy a car with out a refuelling port, after all refuelling is a broken strategy, it can't possibly work.
"Without on-orbit refuelling Starship goes nowhere."
They need to get to orbit first with a payload before they can start work on proving out orbital refueling.
I get grief when I mention it, but why hasn't Elon used the F9 to work a bunch of this out? I often work on a smaller scale to save money and figure things out more quickly before I go to full size. My other "CAD" system is Cardboard Aided Engineering. A used box and a razor blade lets me work out a lot of issues before the Walnut slides across the table saw. There's also several F9 launch facilities already approved with sound suppression and everything.
"I get grief when I mention it, but why hasn't Elon used the F9 to work a bunch of this out?"
A bunch of *what* exactly?
As you have previously correctly pointed out the F9 has a different fuel, so it's not just a smaller scale SS/SH.
F9 has provided serious input into the booster landing systems - even if they do look very different.
"A bunch of *what* exactly?"
Orbital refueling to start with. Nobody has ever tried to transfer propellants while in orbit, much less cryogenic materials. NASA has even given SpaceX a contract (still open) to design and demonstrate the connectors needed. Since none of this has ever been done, there's no data on the sorts of issues that might crop up with an orbital depot, tanker rockets and all of the other pieces involved. F9 could launch a scale model of Starship to try out different TPS approaches. The fuel in the booster isn't a factor for the bulk of these tests so it's no big deal that F9 uses something different. The boil-off mitigation techniques that you have mentioned, but SpaceX hasn't, can be tried once it's determined how much of that needs to be in place for the best ROI.
Fuel is usually a tiny fraction of mission costs, but burning up thousands of tons at a go isn't cheap and the tanks its going in aren't cheap either. Reuse has been proven with F9. They can loft a bunch of upper stages while reusing boosters to speed up the process. You could run a F1 car to do track FOD patrol, but it's cheaper to use something much cheaper with space for people and tools even though you would never think of entering a pickup truck. If you were only driving around the course to get a feel for the layout, again, the race car would be a very expensive way to do that up the point where you need to run at speed.
For me orbital refuelling is the big unknown. They have done some testing transferring between header and main tanks (I think IFT-4) and IFT-6 had a in orbit relight so they are getting there slowly. I also believe there has been some testing on a tiny scale on ISS.
Last I heard is IFT-7 might be January which will be the first block 2 ship. IFT-8 by end of Q1 will be first in orbit flight and ship to ship refuelling test by end of Q2 which to me seems very optimistic but they have shocked us before. AFAIK they have the next 6 boosters and ships under construction with the next ship and booster ready to cryo test and static fire before the end of the year.
Also they have said that for HLS which they want to test in 2026, they will NOT be using a depot but have HLS in LEO have it fuelled directly from tankers. Tankers will be block 3 design (not confirmed but likely to need new tower) with estimate 150T of fuel which is more than initial 100T estimate, don't know how many refuel flights they will need, read its anything from 5 to 20. At the end of the day I am sure they have done a lot of simulations that they haven't released data for publicly.
All I know for sure is that the development pace has been incredible and every launch has been a step forward.
"The difference between between Apollo and NASA's current plans (apart from the NASA budget as a portion of the US Federal budget being 1/10 what it was in Apollo) is it is designed to be sustainable as opposed to the flags-and-footprints-America-wins-the-propoganda-war of Apollo, where Saturn V rocket production ended in 1968."
The Apollo level of expenditure is not possible. It was a giant dick-waving gesture that even JFK didn't care that much about as long as it was something grand that could be used to taunt the Soviets.
There needs to be a much better reason to send people again and do it for far less money. The hope is there is some technology spin-off that will earn the investment back. A government program is the only way to blaze that trail so that private industry can follow.
"Apollo went to the moon without refueling tanks in space and mechzilla catching..."
Yes.... on razor thin safety margins and because it was the only viable method with 1960s technology
The Moon Race put space launch development back about 40 years by turning it into a political football.
There's a danger that the New Moon Race will have similar effects and with the USA rapidly disappearing up its own asshole I'm a tad worried about how the Americans will react if China establishes a moon base first
"cow: One problem, the mission is ONE THING only, put a man on the moon."
Which mission?
That's certainly not the mission for starship...
It's not even the mission for Artemis - which includes the phrase to put "the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon", but that's part of a much longer mission statement.
"and just like earth there is no reusable rocket to get back home"
Erm - Starship can do that.
Mars has a very tenuous atmosphere, and a very much shallower gravity well than the earth.
It is also designed to be refuel-able on the surface on Mars (using that tenuous atmosphere), so that it can take off with full tanks.
Show me model T ford with cruise control, air conditioning and a 6 litre W16 engine.
You can't? Oh it can't have been a car then. Of course it was a car, in fact is was quite a successful car (assuming you think that spreading the reach of the car was a success).
SS/SH is currently in the *prototyping* stage of development.
For one thing a SS launching from mars would absolutely have a support team, it would in fact have two - one of which would be remote, and therefore not in a useful position in the end period of the countdown - the other would be local, probably on board in fact.
For another SS (without SH) probably won't ever take off from earth again - it did so for certain early tests, but it's not designed to be launched from earth without SH.
Launching from Mars is a *whole lot* easier - to get from Earth to orbit takes ~9.4km/s, from mars it takes ~3.8km/s. Ascent losses on earth typically add another 1.5-2km/s requirement, but on Mars it's ~0.5 (NASA quote 4.4km/s to a 500km orbit, I had been looking at "maps" to a 200km orbit on mars and a 250 on earth).
Another 2.5km/s gets you all the way back to the earth. That's 4.4+2.5 = 6.9km/s in a fully fueled SS with 100t of payload... and the planned dV is.... pretty much exactly that. Hmm - I guess they must have been planning for a return trip when they said they were planning for a return trip.
From our previous discussion, i assume that you count me as one of them bois.
Trust me, I am NOT.
Regrettably, the world is not black and white, instead, it is full of shades of gray. Even with Elon having come out of the closet as a human dirtbag, a company like SX was needed to break the stalemate of business as usual in the space industry, and SX needed someone like Musk at the top, willing to bet the bank on outrageous new ideas. Is Elon over-promising on timelines? Absolutely. Is SX burning through engineers with little regard for work-and-life balance? Absolutely -And I say this as someone who with open eyes might have joined, were it not for nationality and family.
Regrettably, narcissists often reach the top, simply through a willingness to step on everyone else. With SX, it seems to have worked out, both despite and because of Elon.
And because SX has demonstrated that it is possible, as well as one way in which it is possible, this has opened up the gates to investment in many other similar ventures (most of which will eventually fail, same as E-VTOLS and AI companies).
Well, I enjoyed the article, but 'Fumbled the Catch' ?
The pedant in me would suggest that infers there was an attempt to catch - there wasn't.
There was an aspiration to catch, an expection even, but as they did not attempt it, it couldn't be fumbled. They aborted the aspiration early - due to a hardware issue with Tower telemetry I'm led to believe (bent an arial and started picking up Freeview perhaps)
Still the law of headlines applies, and I do appreciate the punning involved with the juxtaposition of "Catch" I therefore humbly refrain from any suggestion for improvement.
"There was an aspiration to catch, an expection even, but as they did not attempt it, it couldn't be fumbled."
It does point out that there's a number of things going on for a catch that all have to work for it to happen. If a rocket is just landing on a pad, there's not a worry that the concrete is going to suffer some sort of issue in the 8-9 minutes from lift-off to landing. Maybe it would be a better idea to launch from one tower and catch on another for each cycle. That way if there is damage to the tower on launch, it won't prevent recovering the booster. If they don't catch it, they have to ditch it in the sea. If they are going to deploy a barge, the booster must have landing legs. If the booster has landing legs, why bother catching it?
"only because I want to see a really big explosion."
Odds are that it will have a failed landing caught on camera all full velocity at some point, what is less likely is that they go a go for catch, adjust course and then stuff it up. Apparently have thousands of parameters they check before giving a go for catch. BTW, the abort zone is around 30km off shore so there is a good chance of getting a decent view of any failures.
Don't know why people are comparing SS to Apollo, its a launch system, better comparison would be Saturn V or SLS.
Apollo was a program that cost $250 to $300bn adjusted for inflation and at one point was consuming 2.5% of national GDP. That put 5 x 2 person landings with longest stay of 75 hours. Artemis objects are on a different scale.
BTW, Eric Berger is reporting a higher than 50/50 chance of SLS being cancelled before the end of the current program.
"Apollo was a program that cost $250 to $300bn adjusted for inflation and at one point was consuming 2.5% of national GDP. That put 5 x 2 person landings with longest stay of 75 hours. Artemis objects are on a different scale."
Those amounts are inclusive of all the R&D that went into the program. It was nowhere near that to only build the rockets and do the missions. Of course, Saturn V's don't sprout fully formed on drafting vellum. The engineering that hasn't been shredded is still available and more so the knowledge to design such a thing. I've got a book case full of technical books on space machines and spent several years in the business. I'm a firm believer in standing on the shoulders of giants or even shorter people that have come before. I didn't throw away everything that had been done before in avionics and design everything I did from first principles. If I did, I'd still be well short of the things I did design a decade ago. That's how engineering works, you take what has worked and tweak it to your needs. Even if there were budget, it would have been silly to design a raft of custom ASICS for a bespoke solution that was easy enough to do on a PC-104 stack for a tiny fraction of the cost/time. The very custom solution would have some advantages, but a lot of downsides as well. A couple more years of salary for the engineering staff would have been a big one.
What SpaceX is trying to do is a complex architecture so the Apollo comparison is valid. If it was just a single rocket that could do the proposed mission from just one launch, you're right, the better comparison is Saturn V or SLS.
"What SpaceX is trying to do is a complex architecture so the Apollo comparison is valid. If it was just a single rocket that could do the proposed mission from just one launch, you're right, the better comparison is Saturn V or SLS."
Artemis is complex, SpaceX AFAIK is only supplying HLS and maybe launching Lunar gateway if that ever happens. Getting HLS to lunar orbit so it can dock with Orion is complex due to the mass they need to land to support 4 people on the surface for over a week. Actual propulsive landing process looks similar to Apollo aside form being on a different scale. Ascent is different as they are bring the whole the vehicle back for reuse.
So they no, they aren't starting from scratch and I am sure they will be using as much NASA data as is useful.
"Artemis is complex, SpaceX AFAIK is only supplying HLS and maybe launching Lunar gateway if that ever happens."
SLS will take astronauts to lunar orbit and return them home with one rocket. SpaceX is only supplying a ferry for the astronauts to go from lunar orbit to the surface and back but requires nearly two dozen rockets. To say "only" minimizes the complexity of what it will take if they can perfect the mission architecture they are proposing. Once the HLS Starship has made one cycle, there doesn't seem to be any thought laid out to reuse that craft again (refuel, reprovision).
For most of the things the astronauts will need, I'd hope that would go in a strictly cargo flight. That way, only what's necessary for travel is included with the astronauts plus a bit of margin. The cargo craft can be single use craft and if designed well, can be disassembled into component parts that are useful for projects similar to a Mechano set.
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