/sci/ - Science & Math

Q: Will the nosecone be used for the hop test?
A: We decided to skip building a new nosecone for Hopper. Don’t need it. What you see being built is the orbital Starship vehicle.

>>10476977
>whatever became of that ESA thing that landed on the comet?
That mission ended. The comet was headed out again and there wasn't enough power for the Rosetta orbiter to maintain operations. They commanded it to land on the comet and turn off its communication hardware once down. Considering how large the solar arrays it has are, its entirely possible that when it touched down they were damaged/destroyed.

>>10476977
>How the HELL did this golfer get the Apollo 14 command?

He was the first american in space. He didn't do Gemini because he had health issues that were resolves later.

>what are the chinks doing

Currently developing long march 5 and 9, which will be a heavy lifter and a super heavy lifter.

>Quiz: this person was the most experienced Lunar Module operator

John Young.

>Quiz 4: can you tell me interesting things about SpaceX/NASA collaboration? I really don't know anything about it.

NASA gave SpaceX overall almost 8 billion.

>>10477038
>NASA gave SpaceX overall almost 8 billion.
"gave" implies that it was charity or corporate welfare rather than a transaction for services.

>>10476992
Is it really this easy to build a fully reusable heavy lift rocket?

>>10477038

Thanks for replies. Your reply of John Young is incorrect, however, or at the very least is not what I had in mind as I'd said (think about it). RL, actual flight experience.

If it took them 3-4 months to build the Hopper then how long will it take them to build the orbital version of the Starship?

>>10476992
geez, never thought we'd get this far. I was HOPEFUL, but skeptical

>>10477051
honestly it shouldn't be too much longer. hopper was also a test to see what techniques work best for this sort of manufacturing. i'd say it'll be done around the end of the summer

>>10477063
The real question is if this sort of technique will actually be able to construct a rocket that can go orbital.

I'm going to say no here. SpaceX tried "cheap manufacturing techniques" with Falcon 1 and all they achieved with that is 4 failed launches in a row.

>>10476992
STARSHIPS! ON AN OPEN FIELD, NED!

>>10477063
>>10477074
I'm pretty sure it's going to take longer than 3 months, SpaceX need to: install tanks, avionics, control surfaces, 7 engines, a hexagonal heat shield and smooth down all the welding.

>>10477063
The Hopper is only about 30% of the length of the full Starship.

>>10477074
Even if Musk is overstating it, the ability to build a vehicle like this without a specialized building is a very good thing if the vehicle ends up working just fine.

It will mean field maintenance on such a vehicle is possible not just on Earth, but on other bodies in the solar system. That's more than just a little important if you're carrying a lot of people (relatively speaking) all the time, in-situ maintenance and repairs only add to the potential safety of the vehicle. Even if we had spotted Columbia's damage, there was no hope of repair. NASA would have had to decide to either attempt reentry or a daring rushed rescue mission that may have killed 9 astronauts instead of 7, and destroyed two entire STS orbiters.
>https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/

Meanwhile, if Starship is rugged enough Cletus can just get a patch kit out from the maintenance payload, fix the damaged section, and the ship flies home with just a little more oscillation than is typical.

>>10477103
Also, the current cylinder is only 1/3rd the final size.

>>10477108
SpaceX needs to be putting up buildings asap. Hurricane season is coming and both Florida and Texas will get hit.

>When you get back from work to an assload of starship info dumps

Hnnnnnnng they are building the real fucking thing, testing the heatshield, oh god it's fucking HAPPENING.

>>10477094
>tfw literal rocket shipyards are about to become a reality

CO2 concentrations at 0.5% causes bone loss in animals. The ISS' routinely reports greater concentrations than this.
Have any microgravity bone loss studies controlled for this?

>>10477117
Being perfectly honest, no structure the size of these rockets not made of feet-thick reinforced concrete would protect them from hurricanes. The appropriate choice is either shipping them or flying them away from the storms.

>>10477134
There's also the fact that the site appears to be built at or very close to sea level on the coast. If it gets a direct hit by a hurricane its fucked by both wind and storm surge.

If one heads that way the only thing they can really do is pull the engines, strap down what they can, vent or burn all of the propellant, and then run like hell before it gets there.

>>10477128
If it's good enough for nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and the Goddamned USS Enterprise NCC-1701, it's good enough for anything.

As time goes on I'm taking this less as a joke and more of a take that as long as you clean the parts that need to be clean, you can build shit like this anywhere.
Why shouldn't you be able to build a rocket wherever, if it's not something that will fuck with the materials? Sure, you'll need to clean it, but is that more expensive than cleaning the entire building it would have been put together otherwise?

>>10477108
The only thing being built outside are the shells. Everything else was transported there and was built in actual factories. They could have also built the shells inside somewhere but they chose not to because they wanted the PR.

>>10477139
Or go hippity-hoppity to McGregor. I expect Musk will make requests for this. It's daring, and north of Austin, but if he's all-in on reliability it should be doable.

>>10477142
From what I've seen, the tank on this hopper was literally build in the field. If I'm wrong please shame me now, I would be most pleased to see the photographs of the tanks being brought in.

>>10477148
They brought big and small fuel tanks in constantly and there are plenty of photos of that.

>>10477148
It was assembled in a field, but the tanks were fabricated offsite in small pieces.

>>10477155

>>10477152
>>10477155
Were the small pieces put together _in the field_ for these vehicles? If so, my point is made.

>>10477158
At that, it shouldn't be a bad point to make. Imagine how much more we can accomplish if it takes less to build serious spacecraft?

>>10477156
That's not the fuel tank, that's the bulk head. The fuel tanks inside came as one piece that were put in.

>>10477063
the nose looks a lot better than the hopper. Still a few ripples and dents but looking much less half assed.

Question: does anyone here know the price/cost of a Merlin 1D engine?

>>10477163
Based on Musk's comments the next dev article (aka the item being built right now) will be full-scale, but will also only receive interim thermal protection. The reason being they want to see what kind of shit happens to a vehicle like this on reentry to refine thermal projection design.

Odds are good SpaceX applies for some really high-altitude licenses for that puppy, and doesn't only pop it up above 100km; they'll flip around and burn toward the ground to get the heat nice and peppy too.

>>10477048
Honestly, reusability and all that is nice. But the real kicker with this vehicle seems to have been the realisation that you can make rockets from steel and construction then becomes ridiculously easy to the point where you apparently don't even need a fucking roof over it anymore.

>>10477131
You'd usually assume that people publishing and reviewing bone loss studies would take all factors into account.
Seems unlikely that they've been doing completely bunk science for several decades.
Would explain why they never went ahead with those spinning space stations though.

>>10477196
Yeah, building spacecraft like fucking WWII-era liberty ships (with the exception being the engines and the clean-out demanded of the plumbing before firing) is an astounding shift with regard to industry norms. If it's serious and actually works though, expect Lockheed, Boeing, or even Blue Origin to be performing rocket manufacturing like this (with a rain cover at most) within a couple years of hot-suborbital tests (hot suborbital test = boost a full-scale starship to suborbital altitude, then turn nose first and burn toward the ground to ensure a hot reentry before a powered landing).

>>10477201
I thought the reason why they never went ahead with a centrifuge section either by itself or attached to the ISS was because its so much harder to make a rotating pressure seal between the moving and stationary parts.
There's also the issue that if the rotating section abruptly stops for whatever reason, all of that momentum gets instantly dumped into the station. Any centrifuge that goes up will require some form of counter-torque system integrated into the unit

>>10477204
China will copy the idea first and start colonizing the moon and then mars on a large scale.

>>10477141
Musk probably saw this movie and figured what the hell, why not build his "starship" the same way.

>>10477162
I thought it was a monocoque design.

>>10477168
About a million dollars each.

>>10477205
>Any centrifuge that goes up will require some form of counter-torque system integrated into the unit

Have two going in different directions.

>>10477204
>Yeah, building spacecraft like fucking WWII-era liberty ships (with the exception being the engines and the clean-out demanded of the plumbing before firing) is an astounding shift with regard to industry norms
This was what always fascinated me about the nuclear pulse propulsion vehicles.
The designs for these were really just bullet-shaped ocean liners mounted on a pusher plate.
That always struck me as the way things should be moving. We won't get anywhere if we're forever limited to hyper-complicated tin can designs forever.
I'm happy with this direction. I hope things go smoothly.

>>10477213
Yep once they see the concept proved they will activate the usual sleeper agents to obtain the necessary blueprints and start expanding into space in a huge way. People have really forgotten the kind of industrial projects that can be done with political will behind them. Once they have a test prototype working, China could have a fleet of thousands in short order and will not have the miles of red tape and political horseshit that the US does because they will just snip it and stamp it.

>>10477227
Huh, thought they were cheaper.

>>10477240
Dude in the world of rocketry that might as well be free.

>>10477239
Chinese recon satellites are probably imaging every step of these ships being built already

>>10476977
Earth is flat

>>10477245
Pfft, with how much of this shit gets posted online they probably dont even have to do that. Just set a bot or two to datamine the relevant threads and they'd be good to go.

>>10477205
Really hard. Every concept I have thought of for simulating microgravity involves rotating the entire structure. Trying to keep mass down has lead to some interesting ideas.

>>10477131
Loss of bone density isn't the worst of it. There are issues with bodily fluids building up in various parts of the body among other things. If we were to send people to mars it is possible they would frequently pass out when moving around the surface.

That's really dangerous.

Plus if I was sent into space I would want to do toilet stuff normally.

>>10477247
There is a lot of internal work we can't see going on inside and a modern spy sat will image that shit down to the millimetre, maybe more. Chinese are desperate for lebensraum and resources, just look at belt and road initiative, this is a huge opportunity for them.

>>10477249
Mars isn't 0g, fluids will absolutely settle, don't peddle bullshit. We still don't have any fucking data on sub-1g because no cunts will even do rodents tests because everyone is obsessed with muh 0g even though surely it is obvious by now that it is hugely detrimental and more or less impossible to overcome.

>>10477231
Modern NERVA equivalents not producing fallout-laced exhaust brings this closer to reality.
We can encapsulate fuel such that we don't need to fuck around with direct contact for heat transfer.

>>10477254
Nuclear will never ever be approved for planetary liftoff, the most important part, no matter how safe. Yeah you could probably use it once you are in orbit but then why go through the fuel encapsulation trouble?

>>10477252
Whoa boy, steady... Steady...

So far all proposals for a mars trip involve a lengthy period of 0g. During this period the ability of the astronauts legs to return blood to the heart is weakened.

On arrival on mars and exposure to gravity, blood will pool in their legs and less will be available for their brains. It wont be as bad as on earth but it's a very serious safety risk.

Martianaunts shuffling away from dust storm, one passes out. Others stop to help... I'm sure you get the picture.

Don't worry. There's a lot to learn and even I make mistakes sometimes.

>>10477259
Literally the only realistic proposal so far without BFR implements a counterweight to spin the craft on its long axis to provide gravity en route, BFR will have a hardpoint capable of 1g at the top for craning purposes, multiple BFRs will be sent at once, there is literally no reason not to spin and every reason to spin them. It's not an issue.

>Muh dust storms

Lel, too many movies mate, back to r*ddit.

>>10477266
I'd like to see the plan you refer to.

>>10477269
>He doesn't know about Mars direct
>He doesn't know about literally the only plausible plan to get people to mars and back with existing shit rockets
>He thinks dust storms are le killer shrapnel grenades
>Acts like a smug cunt

Seriously, you need to go back.

>>10477273
You're actually shitting up a thread because somebody hurt your ego?

>>10477281
Back to r*ddit

>>10477273
>Mars Direct
>Build a giant rocket in space from bits and pieces you take up in a shuttle
>Fly to Mars, shedding pieces all the way
>Land in your tiny capsule
>"now what" "lmao I don't know, go home I guess"

WAR is coming

I hope SLS gets cancelled so that SpaceX can take the other pad 39. Take the VAB as garage and the remains of the SLS booster as big dildo for Nasa´s managers asses.

>>10477292
>When you literally make an entire post full of lies

I've figured it out. Elon Musk must have been a fan of the old Salvage 1 tv series from the 1970s and now he's trying to make it happen for real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mR-gz9EFO8

>>10477286
I checked the wikipedia page on Mars Direct. I don't really follow what other people are doing. I have my own idea of how I would do it.

Right away I sense bullshit though. Maybe the wiki page is wrong but...

He's fucking joking if he reckons the spent booster will be enough countermass for 1g. I honestly don't see what's proposed as the Habitation Module being anywhere near as light.

Especially if it has shielding. Lets assume it doesn't then. Now you are looking at an incredibly long tether to join them.

Now... How do they propose getting it to spin?

Were you claiming to have all the answers? I hope so.

Can Starship can do quick suborbital hops between cities carrying large numbers of passengers? Like LA to NYC in half an hour or something like that? Imagine the effect on the air travel industry if SpaceX could offer such a service.

>>10477201
My response was exactly the same but I can't find anything that actually does.

A rotating space station would actually also ameliorate the effects from CO2, as it would no longer "pool" around an astronauts head and would allow it be more effectively removed in general.

>>10477356
Theoretically possible but comes with a list of red tape and other similar problems as long as your arm that mean it is pretty unlikely to ever happen.

>>10477356
Did you miss the presentations on this? That's one of the first services they are going to offer with Starship. I believe they said it should be a regular service before 2030 with a ticket price of ~$3,000.

>>10477386
Dude it's not going to happen.

According to the webcam guy who sits on top of the nearby hotel the road is open atm. so no tests today i guess.

>>10477368
>>10477131
Are there any studies that track bone loss just due to CO2 in humans? Give us a number for comparison to see if it could be responsible for a significant portion of the loss in micro-g?
>>10477205
I mean we did have the CAM ready to go, it was just cancelled because of the cancellation of the expanded solar system and the cost overrun.
Also while icr specifically if CAM did it this way, for module sized centrifuges you can just rotate it inside the outside shell and not bother with an airtight rotating seal at all. It still provides capability we need (real low-g testing of animals - not clinostat bullshit) without the investment of a full scale system.

>>10477386
You're right I should have googled first. They're talking New York to Shanghai in 40 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0
If they offer service to Tokyo I could go to Comiket and come back the same day. Forget all the moon and mars shit. If SpaceX can offer commercial passenger service it will become the most valuable company on Earth.

>>10477398
>If SpaceX can offer commercial passenger service it will become the most valuable company on Earth.
which is probably why governments and companies would do everything they could to stop this from happening

>>10477405
If the US doesn't develop and commercialize this technology then other countries like China and Russia (maybe) will. Once the technology genie is out of the bottle it can't be put back in. The US should be doing everything it can to help US companies like SpaceX succeed.

>>10477405
>>10477411
What's physically possible and what's legally possible are two different things.

Look at the idea of building a railroad from Los Angeles to San Francisco. It should be a relatively simple, modest project with great potential benefit yet somehow decades pass and billions of dollars get spent without a single track ever being laid.

>>10477398
ticket price will be 1 million dollar and you need to travel 10 hours to a launch pad first. then you will spend a couple of weeks there because launches tend to get delayed.

sounds like a solid business plan to me.

>>10477421
>$1 million will be like nothing due to asset inflation. in reality it won't be that much anyway.
>spacex will just build a short hyperloop to transport people to the launchpad quickly
>starship is supposed to operate like a passenger jet not a space shuttle so there won't be weeks of delays

>>10477434
Why the greentext? Are we putting deluded bullshit now in greentext?

>>10477416
>Look at the idea of building a railroad from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
wut? This was done more than a century ago when it made sense. The development of airplanes made LA to SF trains obsolete.

>>10477437
I like greentext for some reason

>>10477441
he's talking about the california high speed rail

People here laughed at me when I said the steel rocket will get redesigned again and again.

It will literally never happen. They are redesigning it over and over again because they don't have the money to execute any design.

>>10477266
I thought that a craft needed to be of a certain radius to avoid negative effects of spinning rapidly. Something about nausea caused by being so close to the axis of rotation.

>>10477386
>>10477356
>>10477375
Realistically, this is never going to happen. Atmospheric reentry is not something that can be made comfortable for the average person with no training, and these Earth to Earth flights would come on pretty hot. Not to mention the g forces on takeoff. On top of all that, rockets simply aren't safe enough or reusable enough to be treated like airplanes, and it's not a sure thing that they ever will be with current tech.

>>10477480
>the steel rocket will get redesigned again and again
Isn't this just rapid iteration towards a final design solution? New Space does things a lot differently than Old Space after all.

>>10477559
>>10477480 said the same stupid shit in the last thread and got called out, ignore him

>>10477642
Fact of the matter is it's being built now anyway lol people can cry all they want

>>10477642
Yes, there are only three people that are writing in these threads.

>>10477680
checking in :)

>>10477227
source? as far as I know, they are just a fraction of a million, 300k or so, according to Mueller

>>10477259
Mars flight takes 3-5 months one way. This is less than an average stay on the ISS. Nobody is going to faint or be debilitated by this.

Landing on Earth after the whole 2.5 years long mission is over is another matter, tough.

>>10477709
There is also the risk of solar storm or accident in the middle of that journey with very little in terms of options to deal with it. It's still a difficult thing to fully prepare for.

>>10477720
>solar storm

That is what solar storm shelter will be for. Solar storms are deadly in a thin walled spacecraft, but once you have several hundred kg per square meter of mass, they are almost completely blocked.

>>10477724
I hope so. A bad enough solar storm would still cause issues, but ones that big are so rare it isn't worth seriously planning for iirc from the Apollo protocols.

OneWeb was able to raise $1.25bn from investors
https://spacenews.com/oneweb-raises-1-25-billion-from-returning-investors/

>"There have been launches that have affected planes, which delays people and forces companies to spend more money on fuel"
>"I’m not going to inconvenience hundreds of thousands of people so some rich person who can pay $250,000 to be weightless for six minutes can have a fun day"
politicians coming out against commercial spaceflight

>>10477709
Mars journey takes 6-8 months.

>>10477775
easy solution, get rid of NOTAM areas
we fly planes over cities

>>10477755
>Japanese tech giant SoftBank — OneWeb’s largest investor — led the round, as did returning investors Grupo Salinas, Qualcomm Technologies, and the government of Rwanda.
>government of Rwanda.

kek

>>10477755
>20 Soyuz launches to orbit 300 OneWeb satellites by 2020 and 600 by 2021
Can the Soyuz factory even build that many rockets in such a short time?

>>10477775
they've been doing this for a while. At some point they will probably reduce the size and duration of NOTAM areas as spaceflight increases in volume. still, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody manages to pass a stupid law about this eventually

>>10477709
>>10477786
The time it takes to get to/from Mars depends on where it is relative to Earth. Generally, unless you have absurd amounts of fuel, it takes roughly 6 months one way then another 18 months the other way, or you can take 6 months to Mars, stay for a year, then 6 months to go back.

https://youtu.be/9zwKRZP0b1Q

>>10477796
Are you asking if they can do 10 launches per year?

>>10477808
That's in addition to other Soyuz missions like ISS crew transport, ISS resupply and other commercial/military payloads. Seems ambitious even if it is just 10 a year.

>>10477818
They can do that easily.

>>10477786
>Mars journey takes 6-8 months.

For unmanned craft with limited delta-v. Any realistic Mars journey will instead optimize for short travel time (to cut down on GCR radiation and zero-g exposure) and will be done propellant rich due to orbital refueling.

>>10477755
Maybe the prospect of OneWeb beating SpaceX to market is driving all this Starship activity? SpaceX needs to loft thousands of satellites for their competing Starlink constellation and Starship is probably the most economical way to do it.

>>10477805
>>10477809
both of those sections are for the starship or is one for starship and the other for the bfr?

>>10477832
shiny shorter one is starship I’d think
taller duller one is SH

>>10477820
Quality control could be a big problem if they have to rapidly expand their workforce to build a lot more rockets. We saw what happened last year with the Soyuz hole and the MS-10 flight abort due to a sensor that was put in backwards.

>>10477862
Soyuz rockets had close to 2000 flighty in the last 50 years, that's almost 40 per year on average. I doubt they will struggle.

>>10477818
Russians launch around 15 R7 type rockets every year.
But they easily can do more, like in 2011 there was 19 launches.

New Horizons livestream is on:

https://livestream.com/viewnow/lpsc2019

The rocket is russian but the launch company is Arianespace. Arianespace has a contract for up to 15 Soyuz launches per year with the russian space agency. Soyuz is also going to do some other missions, too, so they are basically at maximum capacity with what they can launch through Arianespace.

>>10477872
>Soyuz rockets had close to 2000 flighty in the last 50 years
Soviet Union != Russia. The current Russian space manufacturing base doesn't have the resources of a superpower behind it. Morale is low, pay is low, equipment is obsolete, etc, etc. Soyuz does have a good history but greatly increasing the production rate in a short time frame while serious QC issues are emerging would scare me off if I were buying launch services.

>>10477889
Well, the rockets still produced in Russia.

>>10477891
Russia still has the entire launch industry in tact as it was basically their only industry that was competetive globally.

>>10477899
That's the issue. I'm sure NASA has strict QC requirements on the Soyuz rockets that go to the ISS but that didn't stop a rocket from failing in flight. Luckily Korolev designed a good escape system which saved the astronaut/cosmonaut.

>>10477803
How tall is the hopper? 20 m?

I counted 23 Soyuz launches scheduled on 2019 including 3 already launched.
It surely more than average for modern Russia.

>>10477919
15 metres.

>>10477921
How many did they launch in 2018?

Does Gateway guy have a chance? Will they build something?

Cosmodrome Vostochny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AIAdk_-h0A

>>10477109
1/3 current height, full diameter
>>10477148
>>10477142
>>10477155
>>10477162
there are storage tanks that were shipped in from offsite and you can see those behind the hopper
the hopper itself is a single piece thing, welded together from big plates and a few domes
much more in common with a water tower, it's just a big pressure vessel which are welded in a field all the time, especially when weight isn't an issue like with a hopper (the weight helps with mass simulation)
>>10477226
it is

>>10477254
even as far back as SLAM (Project Pluto) (a NTE ramjet instead a rocket) the fallout laced exhaust was a thing that was induced later on as part of the testing, it didn't happen with the original design or in the original tests

>>10477962
When they do hops they are going to need two different fuel tanks inside.

Ay we gettin lit

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/b2j0bs/possible_ignition_of_starhoppers_raptor/

>>10476977
>What are the israelis doing
Squandering their gimmedats from the US

>>10477162
That tank is sitting beside the hopper, it's part of the ground service equipment. Or did you think they were going to bring in trucks of methane and O2 and put them directly into the hopper?

>>10477924
According to Wikipedia, 16.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_in_spaceflight
That includes all R7 family, including version for Kourou.

>>10477227
>>10477240
No, they're sub $1 million, more like $600,000. That's still insanely cheap compared to other engines.

>>10477259
>Martianaunts shuffling away from dust storm
Lol oh no it's effectively a foggy morning outside guys evacuate the base we gotta get to the emergency escape vehicle lol

>>10477445
it's an aesthetic color
>>10477973
we did not see them install header tanks in the hopper
it's probable that aerodynamic forces will be enough to settle the propellants before relight, or maybe they'll never kill the engines
>>10477976
fuck off reddit niggerfaggot

>>10477989
the fact that they're still fucking launching R7 when it's literally the first rocket to ever put something around is mind-boggling

>>10477292
>Mars direct
>launch an Earth return vehicle to Mars with a power plant and chemical reactor to make methane and oxygen propellants over the next two years
>next sinode send a crew in a habitat module that tethers off of the upper stage that pushed them onto their Mars encounter and uses it as a counterweight to spin and generate artificial effective gravity for the duration of the cruise
>disconnect from counterweight a day before arrival at Mars and perform entry descent and landing near the already-fueled earth return vehicle
>live in habitat module on Mars for 1.5 years using a small methalox powered truck to drive around and explore the surrounding area to a maximum radius of ~500 km
>once the launch window reopens get into the earth return vehicle and blast off towards Earth

At worst you're looking at ~5 months of zero G cruise on the return to Earth flight only, at every other time during the mission they're either under Mars gravity or Earth gravity (if the initial flight out spins fast enough to generate 1 G, but it could be done at Mars gravity instead).

Stop being ignorant

>>10477999
It is quite amazing. Surely there were lots of upgrades and mods but the basic design looks the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLBy-8vdeww

>>10477322
For a ~5 ton dry mass empty stage they need a ~250 meter tether and a spin rate of a couple RPM. This would not be difficult.

>>10477322
To get it to spin you play out the tether a few meters then fire some thrusters sideways to initiate a spin, then continue playing out the tether and firing the thrusters until the desired artificial G has been achieved. So simple yet you didn't figure it out yourself.

>>10478012
they used it to put fucking Sputnik 2 around
Gagarin's flight is impressive (and his return is hilarious)
I mean who the fuck thought, "hey we haven't figured out this whole landing thing, so just pop the hatch and jump. Here's you're parachute." was a good idea?

>>10478014
the important takeaway from this post can be summed up by one word: "tether"

>>10477489
Yeah you need a 200 meter cable or so, not a big deal.

>>10476977
Earth is flat

>>10478018

>>10477927
No, and no. Big space station in Earth orbit a meme.

>>10478018
you know what's flat? Ultime Thule

>>10477973
They installed three bulkheads, to to cap off the ends and one in the middle to divide it into two tanks, there's your separate oxygen and methane tanks

>>10478022
where will we build big stations then?

>>10478023
Can we collectively forget about that boring piece of space shit now? I'm tired of constantly hearing about a glorified proto comet.

>>10478015
Also, Vostok didn't have any kind of launch escape system. So if something goes wrong on launchpad kosmonauts was doomed.

>>10477489
>I thought that a craft needed to be of a certain radius to avoid negative effects of spinning rapidly.

It takes around 400m diameter supposedly. Maybe trained astronauts may gt away with less.

https://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/

>>10478025
I think he's talking about header tanks, which I don't think they'll need
not enough time for things to get really screwed in the main tanks so you need them
>>10478026
on the surface of shit
in the oceans of Earth
>>10478028
no u nigger

>>10478026
Where there are resources to build them with that aren't locked behind a 9 km/s delta V paywall.

One option would be around the Moon, since it has much lower gravity and no atmosphere, making electromagnetic gun launch a feasible alternative to chemical rockets at least for 90% of the required delta V. Another option would be around Mars using its tiny moons as the source for materials, and then of course the asteroid belt proper.

>>10478042
Why can't we just use material from the moon to build in LEO? You can still use the gun launcher.

>>10478047
I believe that launching rocks at earth from the moon and then aerocapturing it into earth orbit to build an orbital ring or whatever meme superstructure you want to build will be feasible but politically unfavorable
if they have any balls they'll do it anyway

>>10476992
>Building an interplanetary spacecraft out in a field in Texas
nigggggaaaaaaaaaaa

>>10478032
I thought Vostok had an ejection seat? At least the one in the movie did.

NSF article about Starhopper:

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/03/starhopper-first-flight-starship-superheavy-updates/

NO THAT'S NOT HOW COMMAS WORK YOU BAKA

>>10478094
Can someone post the space writer tier-list? I think Chris deserves a demotion for this...

From a NASA source:

"DM-1 post flight IFA review clean on first and second reviews (departmental). Some minor Chits, but this is all very positive so far ahead of the full program level review that heads to Gerst's desk."

>>10478098
I was going to expand/change it anyways

>>10478106
Can you demote Parabolicarc as well? I follow him on twitter and he's a glorified news bot, who seems permanently depressed and salty at everything. He reminds me of a TESLAQ person, in regards to how he creates elaborate conspiracies to justify shitting on something he doesn't like.

they were debating the split between protoplanets and planitesimals, and it's quite simple: does it collapse into a sphere under its own gravity?

Some nigger movie critic has fucked over Apollo 11’s 100% on rotten tomatoes
He didn’t like how you don’t know what was going on and the soundtrack was too overpowering
And too many shots of people sitting at consoles

what a goof

>>10478122
wow what a queer

>>10478122
who cares, rating movies is gay

>>10478122
fuck im mad for real

it has been brought to my attention that the heatshield posted above of hexagonal tiles could be just straight up stainless steel (1650 K is only 1376 C)
here's the information I was able to find on this, and a short blurb where we can make fun of bssa.org.uk for saying that the high temperature properties of steel won't be of significance to the end users

NASA Administrator Bridenstine Chats with Elon Musk of SpaceX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2t4l_yMStE&feature=youtu.be

>>10478157
>No units for temperature
Fucking trash

>>10478163
sorry, my bad
what terrible formatting

>>10477499
the simulation they posted on dearmoon showed it pulling 4gs max, i got to pull that in an airplane once with no training and i didn't feel much at all

>>10477293
could we mount missiles on top of them. You know just in case. Big ol anti asteroid missiles.

>>10478171
>using a third stage when you can just use in-flight refueling
wow you have not got this new paradigm down yet, have you?

whoops didn't realized this hadn't been posted this thread, since I'm talking about it I'll post it

>>10478160

>>10478155
i really should have seen it twice

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/releases/1999/Feb99/99-008.html
Totally possible the tiles for starship will be metallic, NASA says theirs could go to 1800F

http://starship.com
hmmm

>>10478316
wut

>>10478295
1800 F is fucking pathetic smalltime, only 1250 K or 980 C

>>10478316
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-1qju6V1jLM

>>10478196

Did they just destroy the fucking James Webb?? WHY???

Impeach Elon.

>>10478338
those tiles are much smaller than the JWST mirrors

>>10478085
Was not the ejection seat the last phase of the landing?

>>10478347
nah that man jumped

>>10478316
>http://starship.com

Told you niggers yesterday Elon is going to crowdfund that bitch.

>>10478350
based soviets

>>10478352
I just looked it up and the word everybody seems to be using is "ejected", so I lied for the sake of humor earlier.

>>10477828
Doesn't Starlink have the support of the Air Force? Or at least their interest?

>>10478388
Yes, the Air Force and CIA want Starlink for various purposes, including semi-secure datalinks with fighter jets and distributed spy networks or something

>>10477828
OneWeb and SpaceX are actually not competing at all. OneWeb is aiming for global markets. SpaceX is aiming at the american market (and they only have a license for that). They also have quite different business models. OneWeb is going to sell their bandwidth to providers, who use the satellites complimentary to their own infrastructure. SpaceX wants to directly sell to customers (at least that's how I understood them).

>>10478196
what exactly am i looking at here?

on one hand, i really want to watch the hopper hop around and do cool stuff and all
but on the other hand, i reaaally like explosions...

>>10478160
It's painfully clear that Jim is a politician, he has an annoying way of talking

>>10478316
IT IS HAPPENNING!!1!!!

>>10478406
Hot hexagons of unknown composition

>>10478406
so those torches with the flames coming out are called "rosebuds" and they're probably burning fuel-oxy (the fuel is probably propane? maybe acetalyne)
they're fairly small, at most about an inch in diameter
some NSF dude has a good size comparison (pic related)
the flame coming out of those is anywhere from 1000 K to nearly 4000 K
the based space meme man himself claims that the white hot parts (which look kind of orange because FUCKING CAMERAS) are 1600 K, which would align with those hot hexagons (hoaxagons) being made out of stainless steel. You can see what appears to be an area of phase-change in the bottom right tile (shit's melting, RIP)
I don't know what this all means.

>>10478410
Explosions are awesome, especially for a overrated huge piece of junk with shinny new engines....

>>10478351
>http://starship.com

doubt.tiff

>>10478441
Maybe they bought it.

Nothingburger

Brap

>>10478510
They added a lot of stuff on the top, so this was part of Elon's plan?

At the end, the nose cone that fell off was just a cosmetic device and hadnt any real purpose?

>>10478512
The damn thing is already falling apart.

>>10478521
Correct

>>10478524
Under that is thick dull steel sections

>>10478524
Notice how that cladding is just tack welded on? It was just for show, but since the nose cone fell off they lost the aesthetics they were going for. They didn't need to put any stainless on this vehicle to begin with but Elon loves putting on a show, we love watching though so it works out.

>>10478526
You should have said "Of coursshh"

>>10478521
OF COURSH, he wanted the promo moneyshot of the hopper with the nosecone and the engines that they took early on and that was the only real purpose
it also adds some aerodynamic properties to make the higher/faster hop tests more accurate to the final article but that's not the main purpose of the Hopper (it's crashing, with no survivors)

>>10477992
Thats what I thought they were. For a rocket engine that's really fucking cheap.

>>10478524
Friggin panel gaps...

>>10478122
Probably so "Us" would remain the only 100%, very scummy, what review did he give "Us"?

>>10478864
hasn't reviewed that, but did call suspiria "Holocaust kitsch" lmao

>>10478864
Abit off topic, but why is it important that "Us" keeps a 100%?

>>10478882
Muh next Spielberg

>>10478885
I live under a rock and I have no idea what that means. Is the director special?

>>10477499
explain precisely WHY it is something that simply never ever cannot be made bearable
WHY are rockets simply cannot never ever be made safe like airplanes

>>10478900
No, just black

>>10478011
Thanks.

I'm not convinced 5 ton will be enough for the hab module to rotate around it at 250m. I'm not even sure it will have enough mass to counterbalance the hab module and have them both orbit a common point. This would push the tether length out to 500m btw.

Off the bat I can see they are going to need more mass if they take this path.

>>10478014
I'd want to see this demonstrated ASAP. Reads to me as actually being a very complicated maneuver.

It's a very poorly thought out plan at this stage and imo he is heading down the wrong track. Not impossible but not at all how I would do it.

However there is zero info I can find on the hab module. Particularly regarding radiation shielding.

>>10479091
it was done in the fucking 60's during Gemini
apparently it was incredibly easy

>>10478928
There is literally no reason, provided the materials can remain within the fatigue limit during the operation. If the thing is designed to withstand a gorillion mile an hour re entry to Mars orbit there will be so much margin for Earth re entry it's ridiculous. It's just concern trolling.

G-force may be a valid concern, that being said, like another poster further up the thread I did a stunt plane flight a while back, had a solid several minutes pulling 4-5gs in both directions. It was pretty tough but its not going to fucking kill you or anything provided you are in reasonable shape, especially in properly restrained couches and shit.

>>10479091
>Particularly regarding radiation shielding.
You pack the supplies for the mission around a central radiation shelter the size of a broom closet that the fours astronauts climb into if there's a big solar flare. Otherwise you simply accept the cosmic ray dosage during flight.

>I'd want to see this demonstrated ASAP
We did it during the Gemini program, as other anon said it was easy.

>>10479100
they may require people to get their heart checked before launching or sign a waiver, because medium g loads can kill people with heart problems. Good way to find out if you're about to have a heart attack tho

>>10479091
Good thing that two BFRs are going to have the approximate same mass then huh :^)

As other posters pointed out, this has already been done. There is nothing complicated about spinning two freefloating objects on a tether.

>>10479120
Yes. If you extend the tether to 500m. That's half a kilometer. 1/3 of a mile. However this is not the plan which is on wikipedia.

I'm not claiming that it's impossible I just want to know more. It doesn't look like the plan has actually been seriously considered yet at this point in time.

>>10478431
>(hoaxagons)
Lol, I can't wait until the shill adopts that one.

>>10479100
>>10479116
So fatties will have a very bad day, while healthy people will be perfectly fine
just like normal planes

I figure businessmen will be perfectly okay with the stresses if the rocket let them get from NY to Tokyo in an hour, since that's a lot of fucking extra time to do business deals compared to what a plane takes them

>>10478510
>homestar runner 'avin a vape

>>10479131
actually it's more like old people can't fly
no people over the age of 90 and people with heart conditions
fat people might be fine (but they won't be permitted anyway due to weight restricitons)
smart and skinny people only in space, the world's greatest eugenics experiment

>>10479134
no you idiot, that's homsar
and he's cooking rice
also his hat tweened away

>>10479129
You just strawmanned my entire post which had literally nothing to do with Mars Direct.

>>10477044
Then they definitely gave it.

>>10479159
Mars Direct is shit and the whole conversation chain was about it
luckily, double starships all the way across the solar system isn't a shit idea because they are already designed to support 1g or more pull on the nose, they mass the same, and spinning them up for six months on a big tether is a great idea

>>10479167
>Then they definitely gave it.
Except that's wrong. They paid for the creation of a rocket and launch services with it, in accordance to the contract they were given.

>>10479129
>>10479091
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k99a00_w7A
here's that dank shit you were looking for

>>10479100
Is truly impossible to make a low speed atmospheric reentry vehicle, with the right aerodynamics and planned trajectory?

>>10479224
well anon
you see, to be in orbit you need to be going fast, so all orbital reentries are at a minimum about mach 25

>>10479229
this

>>10478401
OneWeb and SpaceX are both trying to deliver satellite broadband internet to consumers. Actually the SpaceX satellites have laser crosslinks which could be useful for data backhaul to service providers. OneWeb decided not to put crosslinks on their satellites for some reason.

>>10479224
Not unless you have some sci fi tier fusion drive where you can burn all the way down. Even so, there is no reason a craft cannot be made to withstand re entry at that speed, it's 90% a matter of dissipating the heat and much, much to do with structural strength.

>>10479229
>>10479232
Yes i understand that, but is that hard to deplete most of your velocity in the upper stages while keeping your heigh with some aerodynamic solution?

>>10479241
>OneWeb decided not to put crosslinks on their satellites for some reason

This is reportedly the main issue that Starlink is having with building their sats, that being said it hardly seem to be insurmountable and will certainly cost OneWeb their busines if Starlink makes it work.

>>10479247
Yes. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Shuttle, Soyuz, Dragon (probably), and more all used that solution to reduce g-loading on the capsules.

>>10479247
The thing is as you aerobrake and lose velocity you rapidly begin to fall into the thicker atmosphere without the horizontal momentum to keep in a higher orbit. Most aerobrakes are optimised already for what are talking about.

>>10479247
I have a few youtube links for you here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hb9be6Sg0U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgTNzDCc0gk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fp152oB71Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAQ7LRDtnTI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZBKZentj0E

>>10479274
Thanks

>A 3.5+ GB video is in L2, but put the other three in here via a youtube uploads.
INFORMATION SHOULD BE FREE RREEEEEEEEE

anyways tanking vids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujVB5363eHc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i40vvgaEwgY

>>10479352
>We get it, you vape

Kek, I wonder if this was the tank purge they do with another gas to clean the tanks out or if this was a test tank with Methalox? As always, thanks for cucking L2 out of their speshul status, based.

>>10479451
no these are non L2 vids

>>10479451
>As always, thanks for cucking L2 out of their speshul status, based.

Those videos weren't posted to L2. They're in the public updates thread. There's also one more video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ubu8cggf3c

>>10479456
>>10479461
Oh fug where is L2 anon, we need those juicy clips.

I have a week off of classes
Boca Chica is 1200 miles away
Should I drive down for fun

>>10479485
bring soap you sweaty bastard

>>10479485
If you want senpai, I would do it if I lived in the USA just to say I was there when the space age began desu.

>>10479497
>>10479492
pretty sure it will kill my 90s Taurus

If they can build the Starship out in an open field without much special equipment that means they can repair/rebuild it easily on Mars if something goes wrong. This is all starting to make sense.

>>10479466
Hi, I've watched the L2 clip and it's not in a downloadable format, it's also not very interesting. It's just a 20 minute video of the hopper belching out steam.

>>10478157
Big doubt.

Steel becomes weak as fuck the closer you get to its melting point.

>>10479651
Yeah, I'm wondering since they announce that why they don't seem to care about that fact. The structures will just deintegrate if you let them become that hot.

>>10479662

It's all very interesting. You have Elon shit-talking Carbon because of difficulty to repair should a SHTF scenario (good point), but then don't forget that NASA just said fuck it when they had a panel strike and killed a crew. So I am not entirely sure what's the deal.

>>10478485
what site is that?

fucking politicians ruining the space force already by sticking as much pork into it as they can. this is going to end up like SLS if they dont stop.

>>10479199
Thanks. Pretty interesting, I might look through more of these.

Okay, I see they have spun a very light object around a light object. It's a bit different to two starships rotating around a common point. They are going to have a lot more mass than the two craft in the video.

It's going to need to be a pretty spectacular rope.

>>10479690
That's normal
it's peacetime, so the corrupt parasites get to embezzle as they please
once it's time for war, then they'll be burned out and the military will become hyper efficient until the war ends, which then the rats will come back

>>10479690
Good, fuck your space force. Sick of US imperialism dropping bombs on half the planets in never ending wars for Israel. I hope the Space Force sucks every fucking penny out of your pocket.

>>10479723
thank you for your input
now scurry off back to whichever subhuman shithole you came from

>>10479728
Canada, aka the better America.

>>10479728
>Murika stronk
>Spend trillions of dollars
>Cant even beat a bunch of desert hajis with 1980s guns

It costs over a trillion dollars for your shitcunt contractors to figure out how to make a new plane, let alone anything space related. Enjoy your overwhelming debt and bankruptcy as the world laughs at you.

>>10479730
You must be from Hongcouver or Toronto instead of the real parts of Canada
Only those places match the level of estrogen you have

>>10479669
To be fair, the fact that they would have to say "Fuck it!" if they ever had panel damage was known before the first shuttle took off.
http://www.iasa-intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.html

>>10476977

>he calls the chinese chinks
>he doesn't call the israelis circles in yiddish

baste boomerposter

>>10478510
dios mio... el brillante...

>>10477755
Why don't OneWeb launch their 600+ satellites on Falcon 9? Soyuz is too expensive.

>>10479842
Their CEO and Musk hate each other.

>>10479858
Why would that matter? Business is business. Russia and USA hate each other but ULA still buys rocket engines from Roscosmos. Would Elon Musk really turn down somebody wanting to buy 20 Falcon 9 launches?

>>10479842
Soyuz rockets are cheaper than Falcon 9s.

>>10479873
not per kilogram to orbit, so ultimately it depends on whether a single OneWeb launch can saturate a Falcon 9 or not

>>10479875
Falcon 9s effectively can't put more than 10 tons to orbit and has a limited fairing size, so really they are the same. They are putting 30-40 OneWeb satellites into orbit with every Soyuz and it would be the same number for Falcon 9.

>>10479651
>>10479662
>>10479669
You guys are forgetting that the structure of Starship won't ever get hot enough to lose any significant amount of strength.

The 'back' or spine or leeward side of the spacecraft will be bare structure polished to a shine to reflect the vast majority of the radiative heat of the plasma flowing by, and thus won't get over a few hundred degrees C. Well within temperature limits.

The belly however will have a secondary outer layer of stainless steel skin that will either have TPS panels installed on top or microperforations for transpiration cooling. Either way, the actual structure of the vehicle won't be getting superheated, the outer heat shield layers will. As for thermal soaking after reentry, the only spots that would be of concern would be the passive tiles we just learned about, and that potential issue would be solved just by venting a little methane vapor through the tiles (if that's a feature they want to include).

Shuttle had a bitch of a time with thermal soaking because its thermal tiles had to be able to soak up to over 1000 C yet the aluminum structure behind them could only handle ~150 C before weakening, and worse than that the glue between the tiles and the skin loosened at like 100 C. That meant that the tiles had to be much thicker than otherwise would be necessary, to give enough time for ground service equipment to be put in place to help cool the heat shield before the heat pulse from reentry literally cooked the entire belly of the spacecraft. In that regard the metallic thermal tiles developed for the X-33 were far superior because despite handling a lower peak temperature they were just bolted into place rather than glued, which gave them more thermal wiggle room and allowed them to use thinner tiles (less like blocks and more like plates).

>>10479735
Tbh the reason every middle east war turns into a quagmire is simply because the idiots in charge are trying to treat it like a surgical procedure to remove every individual 'bad guy' and leave the 'good guys' alone. That's impossible, people change alignments all the time and just by being there with essentially future alien technology you're going to make a lot of these uneducated people turn against you any time any accident happens, and being the military accidents happen more often than not.

Literally the only way wars should be fought is total scorched Earth wave of death rolling over the countryside completely erasing everything until the war is over, either by a surrender on either side or by the total annihilation of either side. Can't have insurgents in a country you're occupying if the country and its people don't exist anymore and you aren't really occupying the land, you just own it now and can keep it or sell it off.

Sure it may seem like a humanitarian apocalypse but in reality far more suffering has resulted from the endless meddling and shitpoking that's been going on, since that led to the production of huge numbers of disgruntled extremists that have implicitly invaded every advanced society and tried to get their own revenge.

>>10479876
>Falcon 9s effectively can't put more than 10 tons to orbit and has a limited fairing size
Both of these things are currently true but are not fundamental to Falcon 9, they could design and build a larger fairing and a stronger payload adapter class if they wanted to. The problem is that for them to want to someone has to be launching payloads that big and or heavy, and so far only a tiny fraction of payloads exceed what can fit into their current fairing/onto their current adapter, so they haven't bothered since to develop either new thing would be more money spent for little gain. If someone really wanted to use Falcon rockets to launch their 20 ton modules to LEO, had a lot of payloads lined up and was willing to pay for the upgrades necessary then it would happen.

>>10479888
>The belly however will have a secondary outer layer of stainless steel skin that will either have TPS panels installed on top or microperforations for transpiration cooling.

So what's the point of building the whole ship out of steel? Just use a carbon fibre structure and put that secondary outer layer on top like they want to do anyways. The weight penalty in producing the whole thing out of steel is significant. A few million more in material cost shouldn't matter much for a ship that is supposed to be reusably many times.

>>10479902
you know better

>>10479902
As I just said, steel has a much higher maximum temperature it can soak to before it starts to weaken, which means you can use much thinner TPS or none at all in areas where aluminum or CFC would require inches of TPS material.

The belly of Starship will have passive thermal tiles (we don't know what they'll be made of) everywhere that the temperatures don't get hot enough to erode the tiles. In the hotspots they will have transpiration cooling holes, more complex but can handle way higher thermal loads. Both of these systems will be mounted on a secondary layer of stainless steel skin though, separated from the main structure with an air gap of probably a couple inches and bonded to it by stringers welded to either wall. This will allow the TPS and the skin it is bonded to to heat up well beyond the maximum structural temperature of stainless steel, since the stringers will allow the main steel tank structure behind the skin to bear the loads.

They won't make this one half of the Starship tanks underneath the outer steel skin plus TPs layer out of CFC because it would make it much harder to manufacture, would make it require a much thicker TPS layer (since red hot steel outer skin radiating onto bare CFC would cook it quickly, therefore the skin would need enough TPS to never get over ~200 C max), and wouldn't even save any significant amount of weight anyway, because despite being much more dense, stainless steel also has a much higher strength than CFC obviously, to the point that they have pretty similar strength to weight ratios. Basically if you have a bar of CFC than can handle one ton of tension before failure and a bar of stainless that can handle the same, both bars will weigh almost the same amount, but the stainless bar will be much thinner.

The idea that Starship going from CFC to Stainless made it a lot heavier is just a meme, in fact Elon specifically said that they're going to get a serious payload increase by switching to stainless.

>>10479888
>Shuttle had a bitch of a time with thermal soaking because its thermal tiles had to be able to soak up to over 1000 C yet the aluminum structure behind them could only handle ~150 C before weakening, and worse than that the glue between the tiles and the skin loosened at like 100 C. That meant that the tiles had to be much thicker than otherwise would be necessary, to give enough time for ground service equipment to be put in place to help cool the heat shield before the heat pulse from reentry literally cooked the entire belly of the spacecraft. In that regard the metallic thermal tiles developed for the X-33 were far superior because despite handling a lower peak temperature they were just bolted into place rather than glued, which gave them more thermal wiggle room and allowed them to use thinner tiles (less like blocks and more like plates).

The heat tiles didn't soak heat, they were heat deflectors but with a very limited peak heat the can deflect. When the heat tiles landed they were already cool enough to touch them with your bare hands. They were also very light-weight so really they were an ideal heat shield. The only issue with them was that the peak heat was rather low, and the Orbiters were maximized in desgin in the sense that the shields were barely enough to shield them, because the peak heats they were dealing with were at the absolute maximum of their capability. Because of this they had to invest a lot into refurbishing the heat shield, because it essentially had no safety margin. They could have avoided that problem by simply introducing two different Orbiters (one cargo, one crew) and thus drastically reducing its weight which would have helped a lot with the refurbishment issues.

>>10479915
Carbon fibres actually deal better with heat in the 300-500 degrees C range than steel does. They melt earlier but it really doesn't matter, but the melting point really doesn't matter because by the time your material has reached its melting point it already lost so much structural strength that your rocket has fallen apart and exploded a long time ago.

>>10479915
>The idea that Starship going from CFC to Stainless made it a lot heavier is just a meme, in fact Elon specifically said that they're going to get a serious payload increase by switching to stainless.
(cont.)
The reason for this weight loss is due to the thermal properties of CFC vs stainless and the fact that this vehicle is meant to be reusable. If you are building an expendable rocket, then you don't care about reentry heat or thermal soaking time or whatever, you only care about dry mass, and for that purpose you just can't beat bare CFC. However, if you DO want a reusable vehicle, now you need to consider the mass of your TPS as well as your structure, and that changes the game. Both CFC and aluminum-lithium alloy need significant heat shielding even for returning from suborbital speeds (hence the TPS on the Falcon 9 booster). If you only consider these options then CFC is still superior. If you take a look at stainless however, it can be allowed to heat up to temperatures roughly 4x higher than AL-Li or CFC, which means your heat shield only needs to be a small percentage the thickness and isn't required at all in some areas (this is why the stainless steel booster for Starship won't have any need for any TPS at all, not even paint). Once you consider combined structure and TPS mass, then the fact that stainless needs far less TPS means that overall it is much lighter despite having a slightly heavier structure.

Going further, the ability to use active cooling in the TPS via transpiration effectively means that a stainless steel vehicle could perform extremely fast reentries in a variety of atmospheres and handle them just fine, limited only by how much coolant is available. A zero-erosion passive heat shield is barely possible in our atmosphere when returning from low Earth orbit, and is not possible fro returning to Earth from interplanetary speeds. Transpiration cooling however will allow Starship to perform super high speed reentry anywhere.

>>10479917
>The heat tiles didn't soak heat
Yes they did. The tiles were highly insulating but that was to slow down the rate of heat transfer from the outer skin to the inner structure of the vehicle. The outside of the tiles were heated to over a thousand degrees C for around 15 minutes, and that heat slowly conducted through to the inside of the tile. As soon as reentry was over the outside of the tiles emitted most of their heat back to the outside atmosphere as they were designed, but that still left a pulse of several hundred degrees deep inside the tiles that could only come out as quickly as it was absorbed, meaning the high emissivity of the tile couldn't prevent that already absorbed heat from getting to the internal structure. The only way to remove that heat was through active cooling.

Please do more research on how TPS materials and heat work.

>>10479928
The resins in CFC do not do better than steel does, and like you said melting point isn't the issue. Steel retains over 90% of its strength when elevated to 500 C, the resins in CFC drop to 90% of their strength at around 100 C. Worse still the resins can start to react at elevated temperatures and permanently lose strength even once cooled back to normal temperatures, unlike steel with goes back to 100% after thermal cycling. Also, steel performs slightly better than CFCs in strength to weight ratio overall when cooled to cryogenic temperatures, too.

>>10479977
You are obviously mixing up peak heat and soaking heat. The tiles could only deflect peak heats of around 1000 degree C so everywhere beyond that they used ablative carbon shields. The tiles barely soaked in any heat.

>>10479983
Not true. Stainless steel drops to 60% at 250 degrees C while Carbon drops to 80% at that temperature.

>>10480002
Fucked up the pic there.

>>10480002
try posting an image that isnt for ants.

>>10480009
Doesn't even show CFCs dude

>>10480030
80-90% strength at 250 degrees C

>>10479651
heat shields aren't structural
it might be structural when unpressurized and cold, but not during reentry

Methane tank has arrived at the launch site

ahem:

>March 20th from 10:00AM to 4:00 PM.
we've got ourselves a launch window!

>>10480464
I am excite

>>10480464

>>10480464
"launch window". its going to light the engines for two seconds and be lifted so little you wont even see it.

>>10480501
gotta start somewhere

>>10480464
They are moving FAST

>>10480501
Yeah but two hours later when they fire the engine again they'll jump ten feet in the air and come back down at ten cm per second both ways

>>10480501
S A L T

>>10480592
It's not salt it's setting realistic expectations.

>>10480464
This is the start of the New-New Space era!

SS render

You know, building starship while this is happening is actually smart.
If hopper blows up, they can retrofit it into hopper 2.0 very fast.

>>10480787
>if

>>10480797
Sorry, I meant >when

How the fuck is spaceX gonna deal with re-entry heat on the aft 'wings', when they're supposed to be actuated in at least 2 degrees of freedom to control attitude?
I have no clue what I'm talking about, but this looks like a weak point.

>https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/19154107/bennuasteroid.jpg

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2197008-asteroid-bennu-is-spewing-out-dust-and-rocks-to-create-its-own-moons/

>>10480829

>>10480829
>>10480830

>>10480815
>they're supposed to be actuated in at least 2 degrees of freedom
Only one, a big hinge. They're essentially just big flaps, they don't pitch up or down like canards.

>>10480830
higher res version

>>10480850
and a detail of the surface

>>10480849
Ok, But then again, they're supposed to be mostly up during re-entry to get the tail-end down.
If it's not a smooth transition, it's just gonna rekt th e mechanical parts.

cool trump wants to build a spaceport in brazil

>>10480865
>If it's not a smooth transition, it's just gonna rekt th e mechanical parts.
I don't know what you mean, regardless the flaps and the hinge they're mounted on will have full TPS shielding, same goes for the nose flaps.

>>10480914
I mean steel isn't exactly flexible, is it?

>>10480903
30% fuel savings would be nice...

A tapered section is being lifted onto the Starship stack, marking the beginning of the ship's nose.

>>10480903
reminds me of Harsh Mistress when they're shopping around for a launching site

>>10480940

>>10480940
You sure?
I'd expect the straight section to be quite a bit higher.

>>10480868
they'd better have Red Adair standing by

>>10480946
SS being built before SH I guess

>>10480924
It doesn't need to be

>>10480936
Launching from the equator gets you nowhere near 30% more performance.

>>10480903
>exporting US jobs to Brazil
wtf?

>>10481010
the based space meme man did claim Starship before Super Heavy, yes

>>10480464
Time For Another Distraction

>>10481099
It does get you very significant performance gains if you are launching into equatorial orbit. This is also the only orbit where radiation levels approach Earthlike levels, including GCR radiation.

>>10481266
'Very significant' being like 5%, and mostly because of the fact that you don't need to do a plane change maneuver to get into your equatorial orbit. HOWEVER if you are only concerned with getting into some kind of low Earth parking orbit to hang around for a week while your refueling tankers launch up one by one until you can depart for an actual destination, then there's pretty much no significant advantage to launching form the equator.

It's gonna esplode all over the 'launch pad'.
Good thing they're building another one.
This whole building process is making me very worried they'll ever get volunteers to ride it.
Maybe after it's flown a few dozen times.

>>10481486
>to ride it
They can't let people ride it, they'll be too busy putting starlinks up.

WTF is going on here? Bennu has debris plumes?
https://www.asteroidmission.org/?latest-news=nasa-mission-reveals-asteroid-big-surprises

>>10481737
Oh wow, a loosely held together rubble pile with an escape velocity of none meters per second is shedding tiny bits of rock into space, incredible

someone make bake a new bread im getting anxious

>>10481859
be the change you want to see in the world

where the fuck is the new thred

>>10482057
>>10482057
>>10482057
>>10482057
>>10482057

>>10481859
>>10482051
faggots