Two scrubs, one Starship: Third time lucky for SpaceX? Elon Musk's monster rocket, Starship, remains firmly on the launchpad after two scrubs in a row, first due to an oxygen leak and then some clouds. The first scrub came on Saturday, shortly after SpaceX began fueling the rocket for its tenth test flight. The countdown clock was abruptly stopped just after the 40-minute mark, …
Apollo 12 was famously extremely *unhappy* about flying through the thunderstorm and would have been aborted if it wasn't for the quick thinking of John Aaron who knew the systems for which he was responsible inside and out. "try SCE to Aux" forever a reminder that the Mark I Human Brain[tm] is capable of feats of recognition and intuition that very likely can't ever be matched by LLMs and their ilk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aaron
Exactly that, Apollo 12 is the whole reason why we have had "anvil cloud rules" as strict launch criteria ever since, as lightning is very bad for space rocketry systems in general and you dont want your gigantic metal rocket filled with millions of lbs of propellant suddenly losing control authority.
It took SpaceX the better part of 12 years (2004-2016) to develop the Falcon 1 into a (useful) Falcon 9 v1.2 and later Falcon Heavy that exhibit the perfected reusability, reliability and streamlined operations we have come to expect from SpaceX and that are a precondition to get anything man-rated.
I find the development of the SuperHeavy booster and its return capability absolutely fascinating, however, there is still a chance that Starship problems might not be correctable at all within the available mass/weight budget, especially since every flight seems to hit different problems, ends in an explosion and root causes need to be guessed.
I see pretty strong parallels between Starship and Falcon 1 in terms of reaching a reliability/capability plateau well below expectations before being abandoned for a modified design.
So my money is on HLS based on Starship Block 3 going nowhere, especially not within any near-term schedule.
Does anyone really care about resuming manned missions to the moon?
Personally, I'm glad to see any mission pulled for technical reasons rather launching and watching it go bang. But this is a bit new for SpaceX which has so far been happy watch things explode and exclaim loudly about all the data collected. If I were a cynic, I'd be suggested to say that accounts called and said money is tighter than it used to be.
Can we have more news about other rocket launches around the world?
"Does anyone really care about resuming manned missions to the moon?"
Yes, because without the moon, we aren't going to Mars. The moon is the gateway, or staging post, on the way to Mars. It's the stepping stone on the way to the monumental feat that would be Mars and back. We need to have crewed operations in lunar space to learn how to manage an 18 month (minimum) round trip to Mars and back. That learning isn't just the hard stuff like rockets (and how to fuel them) but also the soft (maybe even harder) stuff like getting a crew to function for a year or two in complete isolation. The ISS has taught us a lot about crewed operations in space, but there has always been the security of earth being on the end of a near zero lag telephone call, and if it all goes really wrong, you can pull the handle and be back on earth in a few hours. The moon is nothing like that, Mars even less so.
> less complicated to put everything together in Earth orbit and start from there
but a bigger gravity well when instead you can use the moon and big companies get lots of government handouts to develop Moon Base Alpha to support it all.
What could possibly go wrong ?
"but a bigger gravity well when instead you can use the moon and big companies get lots of government handouts to develop Moon Base Alpha to support it all."
There's a rather limited amount of commercial companies on the moon that could produce the needed hardware for spacecraft. That means it would come from Earth and if first landed on the moon, that the gravity well of each has to be overcome.
A lot of reasons, starting with the obvious "Next decades must-see vacation spot for the seriously wealthy"
The real problem is finding a reason for them to stay
And despite all the usual space-opera BS about this subject finding that reason (or reasons) is kind of tough.
Best case it ends up like the planet "Beta Colony" in GM Bujolds novels.
A place with "Kind of a low tolerance for social failures" as Miles Naismith describes it.
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"A lot of reasons, starting with the obvious "Next decades must-see vacation spot for the seriously wealthy""
I dunno about that. One would have to be really bored with all of the excesses they can get up to on Earth to decide to risk the life/health on a trip to Mars. If you are the first, your name becomes well known. If you are the 21st, it's just bookkeeping.
Look at how many have taken a jaunt to ISS out of the number of people that could set aside $25mn (ish) for the experience. I met Ms.Ansari and she's very lovely, but had been a space nut from childhood. I've also met numerous other people with the same sort of money and they would rather make shorter trips such as taking The Ghan in Australia where booking 1/2 of a whole rail car for one's self is possible. There are also islands much less expensive to rent for the season with or without catering.
"Why should we want to send people to Mars?"
People can be much more versatile for doing research. A big issue with Mars is the travel time. If nuclear rocket engines are perfected, that might cut the transit time down significantly enough and to accelerate the entire way to mitigate health issues due to freefall. Until then, rovers, landers and satellites will be much more budget friendly.
SpaceX have already said that they plan on expanding the weather tolerances for Starship, much like they did for F9. Early days at the moment, plenty of testing needed first before looking at weather tolerances.
As for Soyuz, being based on a R-7 ICBM design means better weather tolerance from day 1. Can you imagine trying to respond to a first strike and saying we are waiting for the clouds to clear.
> As for Soyuz, being based on a R-7 ICBM design means better weather tolerance from day 1. Can you imagine trying to respond to a first strike and saying we are waiting for the clouds to clear.
Not really. A missile still malfunctions from a lightning strike. The difference is you launch a LOT of missiles hoping some get through, and they don't have people on them.
"SpaceX have already said that they plan on expanding the weather tolerances for Starship, much like they did for F9. "
OK, Fine. But to expand something would mean there needs to be something solid to expand from. Crewed F9 missions still have much tighter requirements and I would expect that some payload customers would also require more stringent weather requirements.
For an ICBM, there isn't a crew onboard who would be expendable if there were and worrying about payload safety isn't a concern. For those it's more about having a high enough percentage expected to reach what's left of their targets rather than being as close to 100% reliability as possible.
> For an ICBM, there isn't a crew onboard who would be expendable if there were and worrying about payload safety isn't a concern.
And if you are launching your ICBM(s) then you have much bigger problems to worry about
I'm no rocket scientist but it seems to me that, given the amount of leaking pipes, lines and tanks on the Block-II Super Heavy, SpaceX could do with a good plumber or two. Pipes or tanks rupturing, fittings popping loose and LOX spills are not a failure of the rocket science itself, it's pretty much a plumbing issue.
Cryogenic liquids, needing to be pumped by 100,000HP of turbopumps, which then feed to hyper-hot combustion, all while vibrating due to the 100,000HP turbopumps being just the fuel delivery energy.
Then the whole bloomin' thing is intended to be reused. Quickly. This is rocket engineering (which, I'll define as taking the orbital mechanics of Rocket Science and making it happen in the real world).
"This is rocket engineering (which, I'll define as taking the orbital mechanics of Rocket Science and making it happen in the real world)."
Where I used to work, we called ourselves rocket "engineers" as science projects were discouraged. There's plenty of science so it was down to taking it and making something that works IRL. There was even some discouragement when it came to spending too much time on sims. A perfect simulation is completely wrecked by real world tolerances so it can be pointless. That doesn't mean I didn't analyze the circuitry I designed, but if it took 0.01% tolerance resistors with tiny thermal coefficients to make go, I had to find another way. The one thing I really wanted to build was a whole rocket system on a piece of plywood to do better "hardware in the loop" tests. First flights were always nail biters. We didn't have the funding to be tossing away multi-hundred thousand dollar test articles several times a year. The first lander test bed I ever worked on is still in one piece with over 200 flights on the odometer.
The COPV was a communications issue. There is a long list of handling requirements for COPVs that SpaceX/Florida are well aware of when assembling Falcon 9s. That knowledge did not reach SpaceX/Texas until it was too late.
Issues with the ground support equipment is not much of a surprise as they have had to rebuild it several times. Discovering faults while commissioning a new large complex system is not something to be ashamed of. On the other hand, the reasons why they have had to rebuild multiple times...
When I was at school, swivel-eyed members of the Scripture Unions used to tell me how great it was that Christ had died for our sins. Would it have been better, I would ask them, if everybody had accepted Jesus' preaching and he hadn't been put to death. This invariably flummoxed them.
In a similar way it is always fun to ask Musk's fanboiz - the ones who say that every exploded Starship is a Great Leap Forward - if it really would be worse for them not to blow up[1].
And the plan is now, apparently, to use a spacecraft which has failed in every single launch attempt over two years to land humans on the moon in eighteen months, without even considering minor details like "refuelling in orbit" and so on. Yeah, right.
[1] Some of them are made[2] so they don't blow up at all.
[2] Cardboard's out.
I had a lovely conversation with a colleague who is a very devoted follower of religion.
He insisted his time of birth and death were predetermined by his god to a grand plan but could not accept that I would be working to god's plan and doing god's will if I decided to murder him.
It's odd how their minds (don't) work sometimes.
Faith has one strange property: It allows multiple, logically conflicting faiths, without creating an actual conflict in the mind of a believer.
There are priests and whole religions that take advantage of this to fight rational and logical people.
As for the example above:
The correct (and probably acceptable) scenario would of course have been that God decided that the OP would kill him, not the OP himself ...
Some of the testing scenarios deliberately push the envelope, so failures are almost expected. However they gain valuable info from telemetry before the RUD experience. However the Starship RUDs recently seem to have been rather unexpected. Nevertheless they get useful data. The booster is mostly meeting milestones as far as I can see.
Version 2 raptors are a disaster. The recent explosions often trace back to bodges required to use version 2 engines. A better name than "Block 2 Starship" would be "Improvised prototype heat shield test equipment (currently defective)". Flight 10 and 11 will be the last of this fiasco. The only good thing about it has been the long list of "don't do it like that" examples that informed the design of V3 ship, booster, engines and ground support equipment. Perhaps one of these two launches will provide proper test data for the heat shield that can be used to retrofit existing Block 3 ships.
Version 3 raptors have not been available because they were blowing up on the test stand (probably fixed). Block 3 Starship requires a new integration tower, launch stand and flame trench (mostly built). Some twit from SpaceX says V3 will launch by the end of the year. Early next year is more believable. V3 eliminates the need for a bunch of hefty unreliable bodges that trashed block 2. I am sure it will provide a host of new opportunities for RUDs, after the ground support equipment for pad B becomes functional.
How much misinformation can you cram into one post ?
Version 2 raptors are fine, over 500 produced and used on 9 flights so far, so 351 uses though number of engines is less as they are already doing engine reuse. AFAIK the failure rate is around 2% to 3% with no loss of ascent due to engine failure. Flight 9 booster was lost due to relight issue but they were pushing the envelope way past the designed profile. Ship failures have not been linked to engine failures.
I don't know how you can tell anything much about V3, unless you have access to secret SpaceX information as they haven't made public much details about testing. I think they have publicly announced It won't be flown until Booster v2 and Ship v3. It has completely different plumbing and its not a straight swap out for V2 so won't be used in current design. You can check with geeks on NSF as they have 24x7 coverage at McGregor but by August it looks like there had been 300 successful test firing totalling over 16,000 secs. Hard to tell for sure as V2 and V3 share the same test stands. Any failures we don't know if they failed within the intended profile and how many failed outside of profile as they do testing to failure as part of the test program.
How much inability to read can you cram into one post?
Until recently you could easily track the progress you mention with Raptor 2 on Ringwatchers. The problem with Raptor 2 is not test firing, it is integrating it onto a rocket requires bodges to the rocket that have caused problems. Check out Starbase CSI for in depth analysis.
Yes you do know exactly how I can tell anything much about V3 Raptor (third party 24x7 camera coverage at McGregor ). There was a long delay between the first photos of Raptor 3 and the first video of a full duration test fire. Testing the limits comes after getting something to survive a test. It is much easier to learn from a mostly intact engine than from fragments. There is little point in finding the exact limits of a prototype that does not survive the full duration test.
"It['Raptor 3]s not a straight swap out for V2". /sarcasm: Really? Is that why V3 needs a new integration tower, and launch table?
There are important things I do not know about V3 raptors. Does it still use pre-burner exhaust for autogenous pressurisation? Pre-burner exhaust contains CO2 and steam. In the tanks these gasses become snow that block the propellant filters and starve the engines. The problem could be fixed by taking a tiny proportion of the propellants from just before the pre-burners, running it through a heat exchanger and using that for pressurisation. For Raptor 2 SpaceX decided to save weight on the engine by not using a the heat exchanger. The cost in added weight to the tanks did not become clear until after a significant number of R3 prototypes had been made.
Does R3 include accumulators? R2 doesn't. One Starship blew up because of pogo. The traditional way to reduce pogo is to add accumulators to the engine. This was one of the upgrades to Merlin. We only heard about that from an extra callout in the control room audio versions of Falcon launch live streams and the reduced amount vibration payloads have to survive.
Have you noticed a pattern here? "Optimisations" on R2 that are OK on the test stand caused problems when integrated into a rocket. R3 definitely removes some problems that will simplify Starship and eliminate some paths to RUD. Some problems (or at least the full cost of the work-arrounds) did not become apparent until after R3 was on the test stand.
"There is little point in finding the exact limits of a prototype that does not survive the full duration test."
If there are issues, it would be nice to do a short test and an autopsy to see if there are indications of where something might be starting to let go. Trying to sort things out from fragments spread to hell and beyond is tough. With the v3 Raptor, they may have to analyze small bits as they are 3D printed and welded to the point where doing much inspection might not be possible. It won't help to do a full burn test and call that engine good for flight until engines routinely do 3+ full duration burns at full spec.
I've heard this called a "Burp test."
These things can be surprisingly informative, despite very short durations.
The question to ask (and ideally answer yes to ) is "Has the engine reached steady state?"
If yes, then the fact it lasts (and I mean this literally) 1 second or 20mins doesn't matter.
"The question to ask (and ideally answer yes to ) is "Has the engine reached steady state?"
If yes, then the fact it lasts (and I mean this literally) 1 second or 20mins doesn't matter."
The engine design will make a big difference. If a pressure fed engine hits steady state, there's not much to keep it from going and going. Pump-fed engines may wear out bearings or have harmonics related to the moving parts (pressure fed can have resonances as well).
A quick burp test is often used to map throttle settings to make sure the mix is kept slightly rich (usually) at all times. It's just needs to run past startup transients to get good readings from the flow meters.
"Is that why V3 needs a new integration tower, and launch table?"
It might have something to do with the V3 being more powerful, 280 tons (per wikipedia) vs V2 230 tons. Not a lot but it gets multiplied 33 times so 9240 tons vs 7590 tones. V2 Super Heavy launches already put tremendous pressure on massively reinforced launch facilities (videos on Utube) so building facilities that are more robust and can withstand multiple launches with minimum maintenance is pretty much a requirement.
"R3 definitely removes some problems that will simplify Starship and eliminate some paths to RUD. Some problems (or at least the full cost of the work-arrounds) did not become apparent until after R3 was on the test stand."
Yeah, for the most part that is how it works. I'm fairly certain that all of the Super Heavy/Starship launches up to this point, and probably for most of next year are in every sense of the word experimental and a few more will not end as planned. Overall given the Falcon 9 reliability and reusability record I think the SpaceX rocket engineers may be able to make "the big one" work, especially if Elon is kept busy, by hook or by crook, elsewhere. However I am certain that more experiments using actual launches for the full effect of any and all changes on the most complex rocket system to actually fly will be required.
At this point I am more concerned with Starship reentry as I have not seen much progress when watching the video feed during reentry. While the Space Shuttle made numerous reentries structural and replacement problems with the the heat shield tiles were a major reason it never achieved anywhere near the reuseability that was originally planned. Not to mention that one of these problems, they were brittle as ceramics tend to be, was instrumental in the complete loss of a Space Shuttle during reentry. Something I'm sure SpaceX does not want to happen. The moveable fins on the Starship are not unexpectedly proving to be a major headache. There is at least one possible remedy, using a nonreactive gas to carry away the heat, but it adds considerable weight and more complexity so it will probably only be tested as a last resort if no other solution can be found.
I just hope that like the man heard saying so far so good at each story as he fell from a 100 story building that it will not end the same way.
"Some of the testing scenarios deliberately push the envelope,"
I'm more in the camp of ticking on the boxes on a test card by making the scenario realistic but not too difficult. If every test leaves things still to do from test one, that's not useful. To say "The last one blew up so this time we'll test a much steeper, more aggressive flight profile and see how that goes", is silly. I've never hit a baseball thrown by a professional pitcher. After a string of misses, to say I'm going to try to get one over the fence is a bit rich. It's been ages, but the one time I stood at the batting cages and had a profession speed pitch whizz by me, I knew I didn't have a chance. I moved down a few notches where I could get a bat on the ball at least a few times for my money.
I'm also not seeing usefulness of data when the vehicle version is already deprecated. When v3 is ready to launch, they should start with doing all of the things they have been able to get to work and see if that can be replicated with plenty of margin. Until they do those things, they can't take for granted that they can be done.
Need I point out that for all it's faults, the Starliner capsule made it back to Earth in one piece1, albeit sans crew?
I actually appreciate the level of caution which NASA and Boeing showed, given that they had a reliable backup.
And, while I'm here, let me propose a thought experiment to all the SpaceX apologists: If Starliner was a SpaceX project instead of Boeing's, given similar circumstances, what would your reaction be?
Compare and contrast.
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1 NASA, Boeing Welcome Starliner Spacecraft to Earth, Close Mission
Perhaps, but that wasn't really the question.
I was just wondering what the Muskyteers would be saying if it was a SpaceX capsule instead of Boeing's.
Personally, I have no particular allegiance to either.1
Regarding capsules, an observation: While Jeff Bezos has flown in the Phlying Phallus and Richard Branson has flown in his contraption, as I've noted elsewhere, Elon "Gotta Colonize Mars" Musk has not flown in his.
Either he has some undisclosed health problem that precludes him from passing the physical, he's "too important," or, just maybe, he knows something that he's not telling.
_________________
1 Disclosure, I think one of my IRAs has Boeing stock in it but I'm honestly not certain and don't care to take the effort to log into my brokerage account to be certain. In any event, the amount woud be tiny -- not enough for it to influence my opinion one way or antther.
(Still not answering your question as I am not a SpaceX apologist.)
Cargo dragon was initially designed as a crew vehicle. That did not work out but it did identify problems that could be planned around in crew dragon. Ground testing caused a Dragon to explode. The fragments were studied until the problem was understood and fix was tested and installed. Drop testing uncovered issues with Dragon parachutes leading to upgrades to fix the problem. SpaceX is largely vertically integrated so they do not suffer from price gauging by suppliers.
That last one makes a huge difference. Boeing is used to cost plus: price gauging by suppliers can be passed straight on to the customer. Boeing tried to apply their cost plus experience and supply chain to a firm fixed price contract. Their skilled lobbyists did get some extra money. Their test budget was thoroughly squeezed. I do not know to what extent that was from the supply chain or from management. There was no opportunity to learn from operating a cargo Starliner before going for crew. Some of Boeing's most expensive problems could have been prevented with a more generous test budget.
I would not expect any of that nuance from a SpaceX apologist.
"Cargo dragon was initially designed as a crew vehicle."
Elon had said it was designed from the beginning with crew in mind, but once the contract was awarded, it took a long long time to get done. I expect that once they started doing the real work, it suddenly become far more complicated than Elon thought it would be.
The explosion of Crew Dragon was due to the propulsive landing system that the aren't using now. Elon's idea was to return to land like the Soyuz or New Sheppard but splashing down at sea is much simpler and the cost of development/risk for the remaining number of flights before ISS is shut down didn't make the investment worthwhile.
"While Jeff Bezos has flown in the Phlying Phallus and Richard Branson has flown in his contraption, as I've noted elsewhere, Elon "Gotta Colonize Mars" Musk has not flown in his."
The disparaging term for New Sheppard is silly. The design is very clever to be able to have good aerodynamics going up and having something that shifts the center of pressure that doesn't need a load of actuators to keep the booster oriented correctly for landing on the way down. If your visual system is keyed to dicks, you'll wind up seeing them everywhere. If you never get past your pre-teens...... like some people.
"SpaceX had their own capsule program with same performance requirements as starliner. Didn't seem to have as many issues ?"
It did and the first crewed return on Crew Dragon was a hair from failing due to a heat shield defect. The propulsive lander prototype exploded. Crew Dragon was 5 (?) years late.
I think SpaceX screwed up by not having a Dragon on hand or one that could be prioritized into service when Starliner was launched.
"And the plan is now, apparently, to use a spacecraft which has failed in every single launch attempt over two years to land humans on the moon in eighteen months, without even considering minor details like "refuelling in orbit" and so on. Yeah, right."
There's a long list of milestones to achieve yet and they aren't even into the v3 model that is supposed to be the release candidate now. What they've been blowing up are test article shells. Not completely kitted out vehicles.
Now that Flt 10 is done, the useless Pez dispenser test seems to have damaged Starship going by the sheet metal carnage. Funny they didn't show video of the satellite simulators leaving the rocket from the outside. They also changed angles after the first one to get a bad push banged into the slot/door. I understand that SpaceX would save a bunch of money spamming Starlink satellites 100 at a time, but the capability has no application to the overdue moon lander contract. Two vehicle sections, two more booms as hot rocket meets cold seawater. How can they do any post flight analysis on the Starship? I imagine they have loads of cameras they won't show to the masses so nobody will see how bad it looks on the inside, but they still need a carcass to dissect that isn't in little bits.
There is nothing "Funny" at all. It was dark outside there was nothing to see. We know this because we saw the cameras enter darkness on the way up before the test and leave darkness on the way down after the test. We also did get an external view of the cargo bay door closing from the outside and it was barely discernible in the dark as it was only lit by the interior lights.
Although it may be spun as a 'Yes' because bits of it worked and it made it back to the Indian Ocean. The simulated Starlink dispensing worked. It made it to the de-orbit burn +/- definition of orbit because it was a suborbital flight. But then on entry, it started to form Starship-rich plasma, something exploded in the engine bay and things got a little crispy. Some of this flight's tests were apparently to see what happens when it lost its thermal protection so will have to see if that was lost where expected.
"And with all of that it still managed a soft touchdown! "
And then blew up. The ship looked really toasty from the brief glimpse in a small frame of the feed I was watching. Still nowhere near any sort of reuseability. To have a Starship that goes anywhere beyond LEO is going to take a fleet of tankers that SpaceX can recover and reuse rather quickly. If they could have caught Flt 10, it would be up on blocks for a month if it was worth rebuilding at all.
And then blew up. The ship looked really toasty from the brief glimpse in a small frame of the feed I was watching. Still nowhere near any sort of reuseability.
Yep. It was funny listening to the NSF feed pre-landing and them saying it was 'orbit ready'. It simulated the landing burn and splashed down in the right place, but like you say, looked rather crispy. There were lots of sparks coming from the nose section but no cameras really showing that. I also thought I saw a crack and something possibly burning through from the inside around the payload bay. But it didn't seem in any state for rapid reuseability. It'll be interesting to watch Scott Manley's review and how much damage was intentional per the test plan.
But it certainly doesn't seem 'orbit ready', or capable of doing anything revenue generating. The economics of that don't look great at the moment, especially as they're only demonstrating Starlink V2 delivery capability. The claim is it can launch <100t payloads, but still needs to demonstrate it can deploy a large satellite, let alone a full load of Starlink V2s. And then get human rated, or demonstrate in-flight refuelling as a tanker version.
"Orbit ready" just needs the reentry burn to work. The only question for orbit is "if we shoot it up, will it come down where we want?" And it nailed that. Sure, singed and partially converted into liquid metal, but it came down on the dot. The FAA don't care how toasted it is so long as it stays in its corridor.
"Yep. It was funny listening to the NSF feed pre-landing and them saying it was 'orbit ready'. "
An orbital speed is ~2,000km/h faster so there needs to be fuel to accelerate to that speed with a full cargo, fuel to deorbit and a heat shield that can work perfectly to take the much greater heat load. Everything reusable in very short order as well. Surviving well enough to hit a target on the other side of the planet is a pretty low bar given how much further there is to go for a system as described.
"The claim is it can launch <100t payloads, but still needs to demonstrate it can deploy a large satellite, let alone a full load of Starlink V2s. And then get human rated, or demonstrate in-flight refuelling as a tanker version."
With every other rocket, the nose fairing is jettisoned so it's out of the way for a satellite to be deployed. Starship needs to keep theirs which means closing it up securely and in a way that maintains integrity of the heat shield. If the bits don't align and relock, the flaming wreckage will be a joy to everybody with a camera on the night portion of the re-entry. There also needs to be a market for <100t launch services that aren't one-off or once every decade sorts of needs. The last Falcon 9 Heavy launch was in Oct of 2024 and that rocket can lift close to 64t for $150mn fully expendable and ~50t for $97mn fully re-landed. That makes the advantage for Starship one of volume or max payload dimensions. For a satellite builder, designing a buss that can only launch on one vehicle is dangerous. The US government might do it for a spy satellite that they would never entrust a foreign launch company to put into orbit. That would still require that Starship gets certified for national security payloads which may not be worth the money if SpaceX has to pay for it along with redesigning the rocket so it could take a more standard payload.
"The simulated Starlink dispensing worked."
Except it didn't. The pusher wasn't getting the sats out cleanly and there were several that could be seen banging into the ship on the way out. The damage on the aft end of the rocket may have been from one of them scraping along the side. (or was that the explosion what did the damage? I'll have to watch the replay). It still has nothing to do with taking astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon.
Disagree. It clearly worked. It's still a prototype, a few rough edges, but it worked. Starlink launches are going to be the bread and butter for starship. Ignore the moon shots, the real money is Starlink launches - get that working and by default you get a long way to the moon/Mars flights anyway.
"Starlink launches are going to be the bread and butter for starship. Ignore the moon shots, the real money is Starlink launches "
Um, NASA has paid SpaceX nearly $3bn with more contracts awarded to deliver a test ship to the lunar surface. If they "ignore" the moon contract, the government will show up and insist on some serious talks with Elon and Gwynne about where they are with those contracts and why they haven't delivered. Shades of Yoyodyne.
Starlink isn't making loads of money and they still have a long way to go for a full 42,000 bird build out. Elon has stated that each Starship stack is costing $100mn so a nice round $1bn in hardware is mostly sleeping with the fishes. Not counting GSE and other costs. Elon also stated that their dev costs are in the region of $1bn/year but didn't break that down at all. If Starlink makes $25mn-$30mn/yr, how is that going to equal profit?
Except it didn't. The pusher wasn't getting the sats out cleanly and there were several that could be seen banging into the ship on the way out. The damage on the aft end of the rocket may have been from one of them scraping along the side. (or was that the explosion what did the damage? I'll have to watch the replay).
Yep. It was late starting the dispenser and that process seemed rather slow and clunky. That might not be a problem, ie if it can eject Starlink V2s every 30s the satellites might still be able to manouver themselves into the right slots. The current Falcon 'pez dispenser' manages it and just blurts satellites out in a clump, and they don't seem to damage themselves, or the Falcon. But the door closed, and I think the view aft showed the door being undamaged during the descent. It would have been nice to see an exterior view & if any of the simulated Starlinks hit the ship. If they did, that should be fixable by giving the pusher a bit more welly.
I was also thinking that process was a bit strange compared to Falcon, so launching the satellites one at a time rather than in pairs as they're arranged in the dispenser. Presumably if it can dispense more precisely, it'll save fuel in the V2s. But the pull-back to launch the second in the pair made me think it was winding up the bungee cords ready to yeet out the second satellite.
It still has nothing to do with taking astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon.
Yep, there's a looong way to go before that can happen, or even deploy a full set of Starlinks. Musk had previously stated that SpacX's future depends on being able to do that economically, and thus far hasn't demonstrated that capability. Plus 10 launches at $X is a lot of cost and thus far, no revenue.
" The current Falcon 'pez dispenser' manages it and just blurts satellites out in a clump, and they don't seem to damage themselves, or the Falcon."
The F9 Starlink deployment can't be called a "Pez" dispenser since it just ejects the stack in one go rather than one at a time. Maybe next time they'll put a light on the side of the rocket so we can see the satellites leave if they do that again. It's odd that they didn't on Flt 10. I also wonder about the effect on the ship's attitude as they toss them out. I'll have to go back and watch again to see if the rocket moves. That might explain how one could have hit the aft end of the ship.
simple physics in the zero G environment outside of Earths atmosphere ought to inform whether its possible for something to depart at an angle near the top and somehow connect with something at the bottom, the nice Apollo astronauts did experiments on the moon about that, Im sure you can search youtube for them
as for HLS it might seem a far way off, but Im fairly certain we'll see SpaceX build it, test it, launch it, even land it, possibly even with people on board, before a single train on HS2 has gone into service.
"simple physics in the zero G environment outside of Earths atmosphere ought to inform whether its possible for something to depart at an angle near the top and somehow connect with something at the bottom"
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. A mass gets ejected from the top "pushing" back on the top of the ship causing it to rotate. Unless there's some way to counter that, the bottom end will be coming 'round when she comes.
My understanding from past comments is that this version is a scaled down one, and that the final one will be bigger with even more rocket engines
I could be wrong so feel free to put me right but I do keep thinking of the N1 rocket and it's problems with too many rocket engines....
My understanding from past comments is that this version is a scaled down one, and that the final one will be bigger with even more rocket engines
I don't think so? But this was the last of the Starship Mk2 versions and there's a new model coming. Part of this launch was to test the new engines and see if they could relight in vacuum, which one did. But one part I'm curious about is what the effect of the redesigns will be on final payload capacity, and if Starship can launch 100t into higher orbits. It hasn't completed a full orbital test and Thunderf00t and some other commentators have been pondering the mass/fuel budgets based on previous flights.
"But one part I'm curious about is what the effect of the redesigns will be on final payload capacity, and if Starship can launch 100t into higher orbits. It hasn't completed a full orbital test and Thunderf00t and some other commentators have been pondering the mass/fuel budgets based on previous flights."
I didn't hear Thunderf00t or CSS comment about the fuel bars being deleted in the video feed. Previously, there didn't seem to be much left in the tanks at the end of the burn and, no, they aren't short-tanking. To carry real payload is going to take more internal fitting out along with whatever the payload will mass. The Flt 10 liftoff appeared slightly slower than previous flights. The milk stool takes a huge beating from those 33 engines so the rocket loitering an extra second could be exceptionally bad. I'm not finding any overflights yet with images of how it held up.
"My understanding from past comments is that this version is a scaled down one, and that the final one will be bigger with even more rocket engines"
Not scaled down, but scaled up when the previous iteration doesn't have a big enough set of propellant tanks. Until they get to a final one, who knows if the next will be that one.
v3 will have larger tanks, but I don't see how to square that with Elon's statements about running the Raptor engines on the edge of what the materials can take. Flt 10 lost a booster engine on ascent when the sort of maximum failure rate you want to see is less than one going out every 20 flights since the system needs to be immediately reusable for their mission architectures to work without needing a whole barn full of spares on hot standby.
If not you could still be looking at basically a ballistic flight
TBH for a fully reusable TSTO we are nowhere near the real game changing bit yet.
Every successful TSTO has managed to get stg2 into an orbit and SX has gotten stg1s back 100s of time, some more than 10x over.
Still waiting for that first stg2 re-launch after refurb.
