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News SpaceX heavy-lift vehicles: Launch Thread

I don't see what the point would be. They wont ultimately land with tip jets or anything like that, so it wouldn't really prove anything, if they ever tried it. It would just be a diversionary "look what I did" thing.

Reminds me of Roton ATV, except in that case the Rotary Rocket people were looking for investment money and basically made the giant flying traffic cone to have SOMETHING to show investors. I have to admit, they went big, even though it didn't work out, ultimately.
 
At least they went big. It was called the Batcave—the cockpit. Roton was a 10 on the Cooper-Harper scale...almost unflyable.

DLR’s Liquid Fly-back booster (on the wiki ) looked a bit like Starship in the nose. It grew in size and that scared Europe off. This had jets in its nose and was Airbus sized. I think Musk could have knocked one out as a side-project, had he left Bitcoin alone. That or spent the money on propping up Squadron models, Fry’s Electronics and Toys R Us. The world was a more interesting place with them in it.

Still, SpaceX built an elevator in a short amount of time like what Moonship will need.
 
SpaceX Starship SN10 had a successful test flight today and landed in one piece for the first time.
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And, sadly, blew up after landing...

Saw a fire developing along the side of the fuselage during the landing. Possibly a fuel leak?
 
Poor thing...just got excited....like Bill Gramatica

I hope to live to see this
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SN-20?
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Dumb question..
Starship is field by Lox and liquid methane right?

Upon landing, if there is fuel left, can't you just pop a valve and depreasurize the tank? Evaporating the fuel?
Or maybe use nitrogen so it doesn't go boom..
 
That's right about what happened. The methane found itself a vent, and was evacuated quickly from the tank while at some point it started burning which helped the rapid de-pressurization of the LOX tank as well.
 
YellowSubmarine said:
That's right about what happened. The methane found itself a vent, and was evacuated quickly from the tank while at some point it started burning which helped the rapid de-pressurization of the LOX tank as well.
Click to expand...
There's a book called Ignition! by John Clark, one of the very early names in liquid rockets, and he described the exact thing that happened. It's an amazing book, albeit hard to find. Of course they are working with methane and there hasn't been a huge amount of methane rockets until now, either. Every fuel behaves differently.

Methane would almost appeare to be the perfect rocket fuel in some respects. It's not difficult to make, you can make it on other planets. It is more dense than hydrogen but has a respectable Isp. I think the Raptor runs as extremely high pressurization, and that's leading to some problems. It took SpaceX awhile to get the pressurization problems fixed on the Falcon as well. They'll get there.
 
valkyrie013 said:
Dumb question..
Starship is field by Lox and liquid methane right?

Upon landing, if there is fuel left, can't you just pop a valve and depreasurize the tank? Evaporating the fuel?
Or maybe use nitrogen so it doesn't go boom..
Click to expand...
Releasing fuel and oxidant is problematic is any spark would ignite them. Residual propellants are already an issue. The stuff they're using is very toxic as well. That was an issue after the first crewed Dragon flight as there were higher levels of "hypergolic fumes" than acceptable. Those fumes could explode if they contacted other fumes. The space shuttle "recovery convoy" had a vapor dispersal unit that had a 14-ft agricultural wind machine that could move 200,000 cubic feet of air a minute to avoid similar problems.

Nitrogen doesn't react, so it is unusable for this purpose.
 
So, then so what does starship use to pressurized there tanks? I'm guessing gas versions of methane and o2 in the tanks?
I remember #9 pancakes because of preasurization problems right?

Then would kerosene (rp1)be a safer fuel than methane?
 
Their fuel burn is very high, so the pressurization is needed for the volume (300 lbs of propellant a second).
 
valkyrie013 said:
So, then so what does starship use to pressurized there tanks? I'm guessing gas versions of methane and o2 in the tanks?
I remember #9 pancakes because of preasurization problems right?

Then would kerosene (rp1)be a safer fuel than methane?
Click to expand...
tanks will be pressurized by helium
 
They were supposed to be self pressurizing, initially...like Sea Dragon. Super Heavy is close to that, but uses lots of turbopumps. The Boeing Space Freighter was a giant, winged version of this concept.

Now, there are supposed to be three more engines in the bottom, with nozzle extensions taking up a lot of dead space...so maybe less room for a fire to cause a BLEVE?

I wonder if Super Heavy could have rods inserted into Starship, with the lower skirt corrugated with an annular bumper, perhaps?
 
The price on turbopumps has dropped lately, especially with SpaceX being able to make them in-house. That was one of the long lead items on motors, before, but they are cranking them out like Model T's, it seems like.
 
compared to the price of a NASA test program, peanuts. And what they'll get in return, if it succeeds, unbelievable. They're playing for all the marbles now.
 
I hope so. But Starship and Super-Heavy together may cost as much as an SLS stack. When that is expended you have a payload. But we are also got to expend a lot of Starships and SHs both to get it dialed in.

And now LM-9.

For decades, most payloads were below 20 tons. Good to see things moving in the right direction.

Now, If I were king of the world, I would have funded Super-Heavy first, but would want it capable of having SRBs in case Starship puts on weight. I have this nightmare image of the LV stack buckling a third of the way along its length.

Maybe Neutron can be clustered like Saturn I. That build might take legs better...

Starship model
https://twitter.com/dstarship3/status/1370364085406203904
https://twitter.com/c_bass3d/status/1370751513350434819
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Mega mover
https://twitter.com/SpacexVision/status/1372939067130793986/photo/1
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