/sci/ - Science & Math

op is a fag
>>11017299

starship needs like 480 mt of mined water right? How long's a Mars synod again?

mk2 completion when?

>>11021946
it's about where Mk1 was four weeks ago, in terms of the shit in and on it. At least from my perspective of progress

Was his appearance necessary?

Reminder that the technology for a serious Mars colony doesn't exist yet and nobody is seriously working on solutions to fuel production on Mars. We should stop acting like there are no barriers to space colonization beyond transportation concerns.

>>11021954
Yes because he's a big guy.

>>11021957
Alright, but even if Martian colonization is out of reach for another decade or more, Starship will still be pretty amazing because it'll open up access to space tremendously. The vast reduction in cost to send something to LEO or the moon will allow for much more interesting stuff to happen in spaceflight.

The new NASA lander procurement has a brief section about usage of SLS included:
> The commercial launch vehicle approach does not prevent or preclude offerors from negotiating with the Space Launch System (SLS) and Exploration Ground Systems prime contractors directly (Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, United Launch Alliance, and Jacobs) to provide an SLS-derived commercial cargo vehicle solution for the Artemis launch mission(s) in which NASA is not the integrator or provider. Any proposal to purchase such a launch solution must not interfere with current government plans for SLS development, production, and operations that are required for the successful execution of the 2024 and subsequent lunar lander missions.
>
> [...]
>
> The Offeror may propose use of a SLS-derived commercial cargo vehicle solution, in which NASA is not the integrator or provider, for transportation of HLS module(s), components, or integrated systems to trans-lunar injection (TLI). In addition to items (ii) and (iii) above, the Offeror proposing use of an SLS-derived commercial cargo vehicle solution shall provide:

> 1. Method of integrating Offeror’s proposal with the SLS contractors, including hardware, software, and flight operations

> 2. Method of acquiring an Engine(s), Upper Stage, Fairing, Payload Adapter and any other component for an SLS-derived commercial cargo configuration

> 3. A plan of how the Offeror’s proposal use of SLS cargo vehicle solution as transportation will not interfere with any current SLS contracts or NASA’s current government plans for SLS development, production, and operations that are required for the successful execution of the 2024 and subsequent lunar lander missions; as well as any priority NASA has laid out to meet the deep space exploration objectives

> 4. Total integrated launch vehicle price

I bet you Boeing goes this route; you can quote me on that. They have a lot of reasons to want to do so.

LM could go either way.

>>11021962
This, you need to start somewhere.

>>11021929
You have 18 months on the surface before the window opens. You need 585 tons of water. That's about 1000 kg of water per day, just over 1 cubic meter of ice. Definitely manageable, especially with an on-site operator to drive a robotic skid-steer drone.
You're probably gonna spend a month or two just setting stuff up (solar panels, equipment layout and assembly) before you actually start doing any ISRU beyond lysing CO2 for the oxygen to breathe. During that time people are gonna map out the nearest and best water ice sources, ideally a nice glacier.
Once the solar farm is making sufficient power and the hardware is ready to go, you're gonna be digging up chunks of ice and loading them into sublimation ovens to heat up and collect all the water in the dirty ice/icy dirt you loaded up. You're probably gonna build up a few thousand liters of liquid water in storage before you start running the electroylser to make hydrogen, and the Sabatier process directly behind that, to minimize hydrogen storage time requirements.
If you want to aim to be done refilling the Starship you landed in in four months, to keep margin for complications later, then you actually need to supply about 5000 kg of water per 24 hours. Still easily doable for any working machines, even tiny ones.

>>11021962
I agree with you. Starship is what is needed for spaceflight to progress. That said, it isn't really feasible right now to set up a colony on another planet that can grow and develop indefinitely. There are huge roadblocks (technological, medical, and social) that nobody is really addressing. I think that any colony is going to end up just being more of a down scaled research station for decades once they realize how hard it is really going to be.

>>11021957
Zubrin set up a combined electrolysis-Sabatier chemical reactor that was big enough to supply the entire Mars Direct mission on a shoestring budget with zero previous chemical engineering experience, don't tell me SpaceX can't make ten of the same thing or one version ten times as big. ISRU is not hard, it's literally everything we do on Earth. Spaceflight is the hard part, because we have minimal experience and capability with it.

>>11021976
Why would anyone address the issues unless there was actually a need to, eg 'we are currently trying to make a Moon/Mars colony'?

Mmm, three jigs down in the lower part. All close together to share a crane?

>>11021990
If it's long, it's wrong.

>>11021963
Wildcard: Boeing goes for an SLS derivative with BE-4s.

>>11022000
>Wildcard: Boeing goes for an SLS derivative with BE-4s.
The fun thing is that the wording of this implies you're not locked to NASA spec, so if the numbers were to check out, something like that could actually happen.

>>11022007
You could technically use a Shuttle! Something fucking wild like Dream Chaser based ascent module. None of these will happen. But NASA isn't preventing you from trying, and they want you to know that.

>>11022000
>Congress' post SLS plans go for Boeing SLS derivative with RD-180's

>>11021957
Go right ahead and bet against ol' musky. It's worked out so well for everyone else.

>>11021963
Commercialized SLS?
Is that supposed to be some sort of "told you so!" example on how commercial just doesn't work and we need dem big programs?

>we may have fusion-powered upper stages with ISP in the thousands within a few decades

Come on helion energy,pull it together,I want to go to pluto.

>>11022192
Do not respond to shills

>>11021957
Once you have transportation figured out and all the weight constraints are known numbers, the life support and ISRU systems development will inevitably follow.

If we didnt't go the step-by-step structured approach we'd never get anywhere.

>>11021318
Just carry the lander capsule in the cargo bay, what's so hard about that

>>11022268
MUH SPECIALIZED CUSTOM VEHICLES
MUH EXPENDABLE EFFICIENCY
MUH CONTRACTS

Elon posted a video from inside the Hand of Elon "cargo bay" (which is pretty much just empty space with forward header tanks)

>>11022301
Leon biggar Elon spacebig farm mas

>>11021908
Those dents don't look very aerodynamic.

>>11022344
Does work tho except math deniers

>>11021957
what a retard

>>11021976
if these problems were so "huge" then you'd have no trouble reeling them off

what absolute rubbish

>>11022344
everything is according to the schematics

>>11022344
it is within tolerances

>>11021954
So weird. He's fat as fuck but if you only saw his face and arms you wouldn't think he was that fat.

>>11022526
not science or math

>>11022529
His anomalous body is scientifically significant.

>>11021963
>the Fineness Launch System will actually see the light of day

>>11021954

>>11022541
Can it really work?

>>11022587
If it's a perfectly still day, it might.

>>11021908
What did the UFO say to the MK1?

>>11022649
Why are you so shiny ?

>>11022651
No, for that was obvious. The UFO said
>You look riveting my dear

>>11021957
>nobody is seriously working on solutions to fuel production on Mars

SpaceX is working on it, and the design is in advanced stages. as confirmed by Musk himself long ago, you retard.

https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5d92959e9a79476373e788f3
Russians halving the numbers ISS launches because of SpaceX and Boeing

>>11021957
I bet there were people in the 60s who said it was impossible to put man on the moon.

>>11021908
>>11022541
Question, why doesn't BFR use solid rocket boosters?

SRBs are cheap, and the ones on the space shuttle were reusable. Many modern rockets use SRBs, probably due to them being so cheap. Pic related, featuring SRBs.

>>11022812
"Cheap" is relative, tacking an SRB on an otherwise fully reusable vehicle is about the least cost effective thing you can do to it

They would also instantly become the greatest safety concern on the vehicle

>11022812

>>11022819
>tacking an SRB on an otherwise fully reusable vehicle is about the least cost effective thing you can do to it
Like I said, the Space Shuttle's SRBs were reusable, so clearly you can make reusable ones.

>They would also instantly become the greatest safety concern on the vehicle
Are they really much/any worse than liquid-powered rockets? SpaceX had that Israeli satellite launch failure due to the Falcon 9 blowing up on the launchpad. Surely any rocket has risks and needs to be designed/manufactured properly.

9:00 a.m. central (14:00 UTC). "A conversation with Elon Musk about Starship" goes live.

finally I was going low on onions

>>11022827
>Like I said, the Space Shuttle's SRBs were reusable, so clearly you can make reusable ones.
Dredging a tube out of the sea and making it meet flight standards again is so far from proper land and fly again reuse in monetary, time, and manpower cost that it doesn't deserve to be in the same conversation.

>Are they really much/any worse than liquid-powered rockets?
A rocket with the ability to throttle, engine-out capability, cut and re-light multiple times, etc. compared to a rocket made of "don't go" and "go", yes one is inherently riskier. Especially for putting people on top of.

ONONONONONONONONONONO

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vk96KBoJTYg&time_continue=56

>>11021973
>Definitely manageable
Only it isn't.

>ideally
lol Enjoy missing the window by months.

>>11021954
Why did you photoshop some stupid mask on his face? That's retarded, newfag.

>>11022851
it's windy

>>11022827
>>11022850
Another thing to consider is that most of the cost in an SRB is in their propellant. What's left is a shell with some avionics and simple hydraulics. So the benefit of reusing them diminishes. They can still work as a relatively cheap way to boost the capabilities of a reusable rocket, but that's more of a bandaid than a solution.

>>11022851
Why nature! WHY!!

>>11022851
No support cable on the bottom? Just picking up a literal steel feather by one end in any sort of wind? Stupid.

>>11022857
tolled

>>11022841
>get Elon alone for 15 minutes
>get him on about fuckin aerospikes
m8...

>>11022913
Is there actually anything of interest in the video, or did Tim just sperg out when he met his idol?

ROMBUS time?

>>11022919
Elon is at minimum autism and you get some nice mindset stuff but it's definitely fluff

>>11021973
but if starship is really taht cheap. wouldnt it make sense to just like send a couple of ships with extra fuel for the first mission? Im betting that if you used apollo levels of funding you could send 10 extra starships with each crew starship for redundancy purposes

>>11022919
I think Elon was sperging out more over Starship. Some interesting tidbits:
>Flaps currently powered by hydraulic, which uses Tesla motors and 4 battery packs.
>Elon think they probably will use the motors to directly move the flaps in Mk. 3
>Future header tanks will be directly integrated into the nose cone

>>11022966
>Future header tanks will be directly integrated into the nose cone
I guess he means the future prototypes. I dont see that happening with crewed and cargo versions.

>>11022985
I guess it's a balance thing though. It seems possible instead of a chomper it'll end up looking like opening a jet fighter canopy.

>>11022994
Remember you need those header tanks inside the main tank so you get a nice vacuum insulation when in orbit and dont get much boil off.

>>11022825
>has no argument whatsoever
The brainlets are upon us!

>>11022850
>Dredging a tube out of the sea and making it meet flight standards again is so far from proper land and fly again reuse in monetary, time, and manpower cost
Fair enough, so do you reckon it's cheaper in the long run to have reusable liquid-powered rockets like the Falcon 9, even though (I'm assuming) they probably cost more initially than SRBs (due to more advanced design), but from what you're suggesting they might cost less when refurbishing them for another launch?

Obviously there must be a reason SpaceX aren't using SRBs, and maybe this is the reason. I'm just interested in what exactly the reason is. Since SRBs I would have thought are cheaper to make. But yes, maybe the refurbishment cost might be greater for SRBs when you consider that they are exposed to the nastiness of salt water.

>A rocket with the ability to throttle, engine-out capability, cut and re-light multiple times, etc. compared to a rocket made of "don't go" and "go", yes one is inherently riskier.
SRBs can be jettisoned though, or you can just use the launch abort system if an anomaly is detected.

>>11022827
>>11023045
> the Space Shuttle's SRBs were reusable
Not really. They refurbished them, and it took a huge amount of work to do it.
>Are they really much/any worse than liquid-powered rockets?
Liquid engines like raptors can light and re-light over and over and over without doing anything but filling up the tanks with liquid fuel.
SRB's are nothing like that.
The point of starship/superheavy is to be fully re-usable within hours, not months.

>>11023045
SRBs might have some relevance in the regime of partial reusables like F9/FH, but that's because partial reusability is only a stepping stone. With full reusability and an ideally large share of your launch cost being fuel alone, the last thing you need is a tube full of especially expensive, temperamental and inefficient fuel.

>SRBs: Done
>RS-25s: Done
>Core tank: Done
>ICPS: Done
>Orion: Done
Its time to deliver

https://youtu.be/cIQ36Kt7UVg

>>11023045
Absolutely refurbishment cost. With an SRB, the fuel is solid and casted in place. This is a complex industrial process. Reuse means recasting. Reusing a liquid booster, assuming it doesn't need major overhauls after every flight (Merlin and Raptor don't, RS-25 does) is as simply as refueling and maintaining an aircraft.

>>11023068
>>11023084
Falcon 9s still have to be refurbished on landing too though don't they? If this refurbishment is cheaper than the refurbishment of SRBs then sure, it would make sense then, because over several launches it could end up being cheaper.

>>11023085
SLS is not for launch, only build

>>11023090
Excellent.

>>11023102
Why are you so obsessed with SRBs? They can't be throttled, they can't be restarted, they can't be stopped except by throwing them overboard, and you can't test fire them. They are hot trash. And you don't reuse them, you just refill them, like an old soda bottle, a shell that is a completely passive part.
Literally the only good use for them is when something absolutely positively has to launch at a moment's notice after years of storage, like an ICBM. They should be a complete non-starter for any manned mission.

>>11023085
Correction:
>SRBs: Done
>RS-25s: Done, not installed
>Core tank: ALMOST Done, needs to undergo testing
>ICPS: Done
>Orion: Done, undergoing testing

>>11023132
does this still hold true?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/nasas-large-sls-rocket-unlikely-to-fly-before-at-least-late-2021/

>>11023102
Yes, their refurbishment can be finished up quite quickly so long as nothing untoward happens on the way down. Probably stuff like cleaning soot out of the rocket bell and off of the grid fins, re-application of reentry heat resistant paint, checking the integrity of engine components. One of the issues with SRBs is going to be soot and debris inside the tube and replacement of the nozzle since so much heat is generated and there is no cooling jacket for the nozzle, plus SRBs often splashdown in the ocean which can damage them severely enough that they can't be refurbished at all or corrode vital components requiring them to be completely replaced. Dry landings like those performed by Russian capsules, what's planned for Orion, and those performed by the Falcon boosters (and in good conditions the core as well) protect the rocket from sea water corrosion which could total an otherwise recoverable piece of equipment. It's not even that the seawater does so much rusting that there's structural damage, it's that rust is iron-oxide, which can ignite if it's inside a rocket bell causing combustion instability, or as it turned out with Dragon on contact with hypergolic fuels in a part of the vehicle that isn't meant to be on fire.

>>11023132
We'll just be in the installation and testing phase for another four years, max. Promise.

>>11023085
that's a yikes from me

>>11023085
You forgot the 100 redundant safety checks, scores of extraneous meetings paid for by taxpayers, shipping of components from disparate assembly locations to the final assembly area, 100 more safety checks, final assembly, 100 more safety checks, attachment of the upper stage, 100 more safety checks, waiting for the single launch window of the year, several scrubs due to mild winds and two droplets of rain, finally the launch and then RUD because one of the Shit Rocket Boosters didn't drop away properly and banged it's nose into the core stage tank instead.

>>11021973
Rodriguez Well appears to be a pretty good approach to ice mining, better than digging up ice chunks
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/mars_ice_drilling_assessment_v6_for_public_release.pdf
We still need to determine how deep the ice is, how to drill through the debris layer, how to power the damn thing, logistics of moving the damn water around and more. Rodwell needs something like 10s of KW for power
>>skid steer
pls no

>>11023085
>SRBs: 100% researched in 1980

>RS-25s: 100% researched and built in 1980

>Core tank with same technology that only needed minor adaptations: Done
>ICPS: Done
>Orion: Done

ETA on the launch of the final version: about 10 years

>>11023090
The first bit was good, but of course he had to pry for info for his aerospike hit piece

>>11023148
Why such pessimism anon? Surely there's no way it'll take more than 15 years!

>>11023148
They really have no vision for this thing. It's just an accessory to justify jobs for a few hundred people in certain congressional districts. Pretty much nobody actually believes in this thing or is pushing for it to be done on time.

For drilling on Mars we could borrow an idea from the Russians and build a nuclear mole drill, it could use power for both drilling and splitting, or a mobile processing plant could be set up outside of it's dig and it can regularly return to the surface to drop off what it's digging up at the processor. In fact the processor could carry the reactor as well and a few kilometers of power line could tether the drill to it's processor/powerplant. It wouldn't have to be enormous, call it's head say...2-2.5m in total diameter.

>>11023156
The oil and gas industry has more refined (heh) solutions, anon. I'd like to see the martian oil patch myself.

>>11023153
One wonders whether it would be better just to drop the charade, pay these hundreds of people to stay at home every day, and give the money saved on materials, facilities etc to SpaceX. Even that would probably be a more successful approach than STS and would keep depot man happy.

>>11023153
SLS I mean

>>11021908
looks taller than SLS

>>11021908
Earth is flat

>>11023148
Ten years? Eleven years is way too soon. How do you expect NASA to fit all of the safety and merit studies within twelve years? I dare you to make America's largest rocket within fourteen years and you'll see why it can't be done in eighteen. Someone stop this madman who's trying to force NASA to rush a rocket project down to twenty-six years!

>>11023091
>>11023136
Okay cool makes sense thanks.

>>11023091
On a tangent to that: what exactly made the RS-25s so refurbishment heavy? Was it just because it was made at a time when reusable engines weren't quite figured out yet, and then they weren't iterated on? Was it due to the reentry mode of the Shuttle? Was it simply a mandate by NASA and/or Congress? What?

>>11021990
Also, notice that the big LTM hasn't left the property. Why bother letting it go when you can just lease it for 6 months because you're going to need it to stack Mk3 and Mk5, anyways.

>>11023307
Probably that at the time the RS-25 was built iterative computer design wasn't a thing yet at least not in the way it can be done now. That means a lot more complexity and less tight tolerances which require a lot of man-hours to adjust for both most efficient and predictable firing of the engine. With modern computer design you can model complex things like chamber resonance, fuel flow, heating, etc and also design components which are simpler, thus fewer parts to adjust and tighter tolerances which produce more predictable results.

>>11023307
A hydrogen powered fuel rich turbopump directly driving the oxygen turbine means insane shaft seals at the limits of technology.

>>11022812
they are gay and unelegant

Why make the Superheavy out of stainless? I understand that on reentry, steel can take much more heat, but won't the thermal load be way less for the first stage? Wouldn't they be able to save a lot of mass if they made the first stage out of aluminum?

>>11023408
You are right from a payload perspective but not from a cost to build perspective.
Tight is right !

>>11023415
>>11023408
you have to understand the structure broadly. The aim here long term isn't for 1 vehicle. It's for an endless stream of starships, and booster but more starships then boosters and of those starships more are cargo then crews.

Musk wants to be able to pepper mars with payload, or the moon with payload, to basically gurantee seeding space with industry/technology.

Bezos makes the same but he doesn't care for mars just for habitation stations spinning at 1g. And he is also afraid of a space winter, doesn't want it to be seen as a horror show if people start getting killed etc.

>>11023330
>>11023349
>>11023374
You guys probably shouldn’t be dissing the RS-25s, yeah they had to be partially disassembled after every flight, but each one flew dozens of flights. We still don’t know how many flights each Merlin flies and if you’ve ever seen pictures of F9 boosters being refurbished, you’ll know that SpaceX likes to swap out Merlins. There’s also the incidents with Merlin’s turbo pumps cracking after multiple firings which NASA seems to dislike.

>>11023408
> I understand that on reentry, steel can take much more heat, but won't the thermal load be way less for the first stage?
Thermals are less severe for booster but not insignificant. Current goal is to forego entry burn which is only possible with steel.

>>11023434
Engine has been redesigned since then. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not aware of cracks with current version Merlins

>>11023085
>>11023132
>Grant Farming: In Progress

>>11023434
RS-25 was a brilliant piece of technology that would be hard to replicate today, much less in the 70s/80s. However, one RS-25 engine alone costs more than an entire Falcon 9. It's the most fuel efficient and least cost efficient engine ever built. Merlin is an incredibly simple and cheap engine using the simplest design they could use, with huge thrust/weight and thrust/cost ratios. Raptor should experience less wear than Merlin because the dual full flow preburners are lower temperature compared to a single low-flow preburner. Because each preburner has the entire oxygen or methane flow through it, it's ridiculously fuel-rich or oxidizer rich, so the temperature is lower.

>>11023444
Noup Merlin is starting to get one of the safest engine ever flown.

>>11023156
>>11023184
Seriously though, we have decades of tunnel digging technology that could easily be converted to lunar/martian/asteroid tunneling. I don't think that will be a problem other than friction heat buildup concerns.

>>11023434
It's not dissing on the RS-25 to point out that it was literally invented and built before certain better design and manufacturing techniques existed. Computer modeling is leaps and bounds better now than it was when the RS-25 was designed, additive manufacture can build complex structures without the need for toolheads and only minimal cleaning. There have been experimental rockets built who's main structure comprises 50 individual components or less while engines like the RS-25 and F1 are nearer to ten times as complicated. A new version of the RS-25 could be built today using new methods to achieve the same result but much less complicated, possibly less heavy, and for only a fraction of the cost in material, machining and man-hours.

>>11023457
>18 meter THIC cargo Starship would have a 59 foot fairing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF3A6lCXICQ

>>11023457
is there anything more metal than a nuclear powered driller to create a massive underground city.

>>11023460
>A new version of the RS-25 could be built today using new methods to achieve the same result but much less complicated, possibly less heavy, and for only a fraction of the cost in material, machining and man-hours.

Funny you’d say that...

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/07/rs-25-program-production-restart-test-series/

>>11022541
interesting idea

>>11023476
Performance increase is very impressive, 13% extra thrust is excellent and the new cooling jacket manufacturing technique sounds like what I'd guess SpaceX is using to manufacture the Raptor bells. 50% cost reduction is also pretty impressive for anything oldspace does, although that still doesn't put the RS-25 even in the same cost solar system as engines like the BE-4 or Raptor, even halved it's cost is still going to hover in the range of five raptors or 1 1/2 BE-4s.

>>11023476
>tfw we will never see a propulsive boostback by a 2nd gen RS-25

>>11022344

Hazily recalled might be accurate internet comment: Aerodynamics are less relevant for rockets. They slam through the atmosphere in whatever their head on profile is.

>>11022535

Go on a diet Foust we like you!

>>11023539
>Aerojet: We've gotten the cost of the RS-25 under $25M! It's a space age miracle!
>Musk: does anyone want to buy a thousand engines

>>11023460
>A new version of the RS-25 could be built today using new methods to achieve the same result but much less complicated, possibly less heavy, and for only a fraction of the cost in material, machining and man-hours.
It could, but think of all the jobs that would eliminate, of hard working AMERICAN engine refurbishers!

>>11023539
>Sub-$250k
Oh lawd, they're going to have to start stacking them up in piles in a warehouse. That's enough that if you're affluent you could buy one just to have around, like collecting sports cars.

>>11023466
>>11023474
>>11023457
Pure engineering sex.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLum1jxW1ls

>>11023551
SHELBY, YOU VILE CONGLOMERATION OF HUMAN-SHAPED ORANGE TANK FOAM!

>>11023539
Will SpaceX ever offer the Raptor for external sale, like ULA buying BE-4? Even ignoring the house-priced Raptor as Elon futurism, if the $1M/per claim is true, it's market beating already.
>tfw electrons with one raptor

>>11023559
live by the expendable, die by the expendable

everything is expendable to oldspace, even senators

>>11023561
Part of that is probably just down to how many he's planning to build. When you have to churn out dozens of rockets just to get each booster ready to fly the cost goes down due to economies of scale. At the rate they plan to build Raptors there will probably be more Raptors in the first few months of full production than all other commercial rocket engines combined in total.

>>11023564
maybe I should expend a bullet in his head

>>11023567
>"The American space program must be placed on hold for at least 20 years to mourn the loss of our beloved Senator Shelby (Peace be upon him)"

>>11023566
Sure, but if someone wants to buy and you're churning them out like cars, why not sell?

>>11023457
>>asteroid
how do you move the fractured rock around in microgravity? There are a number of issues you run into because water's not easy to obtain. TBMs also heavily use hydraulics and the fluid needs to be changed out regularly. Oh yeah and most TBMs weigh a ton and so do the replacement parts. There might be a much mass cheaper option for tunneling: blowing shit up. You can tunnel the old fashioned way by drilling holes, putting in dynamite, and scooping up the rock. Instead of dynamite we can use oxyliquit, which is LOX plus anything organic. We can also just fucking shoot stuff at the wall and scoop up rock. A company called hypersciences has a nice way of shooting stuff, a supersonic ramjet cannon. For this you chuck a weirdly shaped piece of concrete in a tube of natural gas, and the tube + projectile act like a scramjet accelerating it. Hypersciences claims this can be used to make a fast TBM, but more importantly I think if it works it'd be much lighter and would have much lower maintenance requirements. By fast we're talking digging a mile long tunnel in 7 days.

>>11023457
>>11023156
We do not use tunnel boring machines to create general underground spaces on Earth, and the same will be true for Mars. We will use a roadheader, pic related.

>>11023575
I actually concur with you, the only thing is that it's a Metha/LOX engine while most other rocket enterprises excluding Blue Origin use either Kero/LOX or Hydro/LOX rockets as their flagship vehicles, it would be pointless to buy a Raptor for those unless it could be easily modified to take a different propellant mix, which in spite of Raptor's innovative design is probably not possible because a rocket's entire structure revolves around it's propellant types and mix, everything from turbomachinery to combustion chamber and bell dimensions to injector head shape and size is determined by what types of propellants have to move through them to get work done. If you changed a Raptor enough to make it worth another company's time to buy then you'd essentially have an entirely new engine by the end. The same goes the other way around too, if they just wanted stock raptors they'd have to build an entire new rocket to fly with them, bigger with more insulation if you're switching over from Kero/LOX and smaller with less insulation and common tank bulkheads if you're switching over from Hydro/LOX.

>>11023576
I'm pretty sure they are talking about hollowing an asteroid out then spinning it up until it has 1g artificial gravity in whatever sections they want. That spin can conceivably overcome the real gravity holding the asteroid together.

>>11023539
Why would you need to mass produce so many engines if your vehicle is supposed to be as reusable as you say it is? The CEO of Ariane brought this up and it’s a legitimate point. At a certain point your either lying about the durability of your engines or just creating welfare for engineers. When your only making expendable engines, everything is on demand so you don’t have to worry about a buildup of unused engines. Somebody tried to refute this by saying Elon will send a fleet of 100s of Starships to Mars, but that’s bullshit.

>>11023581
Anon, we are having a cool nerd moment here and you come along and ruin it with your little yellow drill dick.

>>11023576
>how do you move the fractured rock around in microgravity?
the same way you capture fish in the sea: with a net

>>11023576
You could also use lasers to perform ablative drilling, any ship will already have robust heat management equipment so that wouldn't be an issue, same for power supplies since anything mining asteroids must have a nuclear reactor for it's power supply, since it will be so far out from the sun and RTGs provide insufficient energy for heavy work. It might not seem efficient at first since ablative drilling usually applies only to small holes but you could combine it with some kind of electrical or pressurized gas powered jackhammer to first cut a circle of rock very neatly and then fracture that plug into chunks with the hammer, the material could be gathered in a tough cloth bag or hopper which can cover the borehole opening while the drilling takes place.

11023601
and why precisely is that bullshit, FUD nigger?
the rockets are planned to be dirt cheap spam, if the engines are too, why are they magically unable to be put together

>>11023591
lol meant for >>11021105

>tfw too many space threads up and open at the same time

>>11023601
Because even a single full stack Starship will require a lot of engines and they're gonna build a bunch of them.

>>11023601
Ever thought they might want to fly more than one booster? Each one is going to require 42 engines, even if you wanted to fly say only 10 boosters at any time that's already 420 engines plus spares, replacement parts. Add on all of the second stage cargo and crew Starships which SpaceX currently says will be more numerous than boosters, if you just have one cargo and one crew Starship per booster that's another 120 Raptors, 60 sea levels and 60 vacuum optimized. That means at least 540 Raptors must be built per every 10 boosters and 20 second stages, plus probably as many spares, and more than that in spare components like bells, injectors, combustion chambers, plumbing, etc. I could easily see there being a need for at least 1000 Raptor engines.

>>11023601
>Why would you need to mass produce so many engines
More product = cheaper production = lower price = increased customer base

That is pretty standard fare for making new products. R&D and small runs are expensive as fuck. final products and mass production is cheap as shit. SpaceX will just flood the market with cheap rocket engines, fucking everyone over including themselves on sales of rocket engines because of how cheap they are and their reusability. But, their long term goal isn't selling rocket engines.

>>11021105
see >>11023591

what are secondary structures, like launch tower, fuel management? FFA approve?

>>11023616
>>11023620
>>11023625
why do you newfags keep fucking giving it (You)s
for fucks sake

Elon can be heard whistling the Godfather theme before the start https://youtu.be/cIQ36Kt7UVg

>>11023636
>interrupting the discussion to state that chan currency is based on (You)s
This is an 18yo only website and why the fuck don't you have (You) turned off?

>calls others newfags
Deepest irony.

>>11023553
>s and bounds better now than it was when the RS-25 was designed, additive manufacture can build complex structures without the need for toolheads and only minimal cleaning. There have been experimental rockets built who's main structure comprises 50 individual components or less while engines like the RS-25 and F1 are nearer to ten times as complicated. A new versi
get ready nig, people are gonna start owning STARSHIPS privately

>>11023612
Who are you talking to, kid? Learn how to quote properly.

>>11023647
he is offering mankind an opportunity... they can't refuse.

>>11023601
>Why would you need to mass produce so many engines if your vehicle is supposed to be as reusable as you say it is?
I think the break-down comes to this...

>Economies of scale
SpaceX wants to reduce the cost of each critical part as much as possible. For complex and natural expensive parts like the engines, this requires said parts to be made in large batches. This can be met by some other points.

>SpaceX needs lots of engines per rocket
Each BFR stack requires far more engines than even an entire year's worth of expendable rockets. An Ariane V needs about 4 engines (I'm counting the SRBs) per rocket, and if there's 10 guaranteed launches per year then Ariane needs 40 engines per year. A single BFR (at least in it's current iteration) needs 43 engines total. And that's ignoring larger version of BFR.

>Spare parts
Things will get broken and worn, and thus need to be replaced. Replacing a part of the pump assembly on a couple of engines is still cheaper than replacing the whole rocket. Plus, SpaceX isn't going to get reusability done perfectly on the first couple of BFRs, things are going to break as they figure out the finer points.

>More BFRs
SpaceX isn't going to settle on just having one BFR. Their goal is to have a fleet of them. The idea being that having lots of reusable rockets would allow for more frequent launches which not only means more profits for the company, but also less cost per launch which means that even more potential customers can afford a ride on BFR and you don't need a degree in economics to know that's a good thing.

Also, nice uncalled accusation of SpaceX lying. If you're going to make claims like that, then back them up with facts.

>>11023601
One super heavy booster, one crew starship and one refueling starship is about 50 engines...

Take into account that the first few may iterate, there yuo have a couple of starships 100 - 200 boosters

as soon as they demonstrate they can make that beast fly for 7 million flight each time, meaning a cost per kg to orbit cheaper than some mail services then nasa want to have AT LEAST ONE and the airforce AT LEAST ONE

then every college and science department in the us and nato countries that are authorized would want to buy at least one.

imagine you could get your own personal spaceship for the amount of money cern spends on cleaning supplies, who would pass on that chance.

Its not unreasonable to think of a demand of about 500 engines in the first few years and if you deliver the emergent properties of a new space market in which launch costs are really low are totally unpredictable

I'm gonna predict the future here.
5 years from now.
Strarship has landed on Mars.
Multiple times.
Yet nobody's bold enough to fund a crewed mission using it.
It's a serious problem with Spacex's approach, that they don't have a mission.

>>11022851
Lol, if this happened at Boeing they'd shut the entire site down for at least 6 months and do a million failure analyses and write a billion reports on how to proceed. Meanwhile at SpaceX this literally won't amount to anything more than a safety meeting about the importance of tying a guide line to lifts and minding the wind.

>>11023678
I mean Elon's general mission is to establish a Mars colony but a vehicle which can deliver 100 ton payloads to the inner planets is already sufficiently ambitious to keep them occupied and in business. The successful operation of the first real widespread rocket-based transportation system is already a completely novel thing, right now nobody really transfers payloads or people to and from anything but the ISS regularly, using Starships to establish expando-hab stations could change that in only a few short years since those stations could get much, much larger than the ISS and consequently demand much more regular resupply and crew cycling.

>>11023678
>Yet nobody's bold enough to fund a crewed mission using it.
You're putting too much emphasis on crewed missions. Robotic missions can still take great advantage of BFR. 100t to the moon or Mars isn't insignificant. A 25t or even 50t probe can be leagues ahead even Curiosity or Cassini. Not only that, but the massive mass budget can allow for probes to be made with cheaper less-mass-efficient materials which will drive their cost down. They can be made with higher margins of safety, this allows them to be flown with less testing required and thus increase the frequency of probes being made.

Those missions alone can give BFR the number of flights needed to boost confidence of putting crew on it.

>>11023684
I guess he doesn't care as long as it's done.
I personally question his unwillingness to look into rotational artificial gravity, and the lack of any serious plan to colonize.
He's just an enabler, and maybe it will enable nothing.

>>11022855
>nuh uh, the post
fuck you

>>11022958
You have to set up ISRU anyway before you can start doing two-way transport. Getting one ticket back at the cost of a handful of Tankers carrying nothing but excess methane would only be worth it if they were REALLY concerned about the feasibility of ISRU. They're probably gonna need five or six fully loaded Cargo Starships to get enough equipment down to build their power plant and get their water production system up and running, and methane and oxygen in production. You'd be doing something like doubling that number of vehicles, with a single manned Starship added on at the end as well.
Is sending ten vehicles to Mars on a one-way trip in order to get 1 manned vehicle back, as well as deliver enough payload to Mars that they don't have to expend any Starships permanently afterward, a feasible option? Yeah, but it's probably gonna end up with a price tag of a billion dollars attached, not something SpaceX would like to part with easily.

>>11023689
Robotic missions are fucking trash.
What we learned from Mars in the last 20 years could be summed up by a single geologist out there fora single day.

>>11022985
Yeah, he had specifically said during the presentation that the header tanks will be inside the (vented) main tanks during the Mars transfer to keep them cool enough to eliminate boil-off.

>>11023695
>I personally question his unwillingness to look into rotational artificial gravity, and the lack of any serious plan to colonize.
It's sort of pointless to investigate that if there's no way of actually going into space and using it.

>>11023424
>Bezos makes the same but he doesn't care for mars just for habitation stations spinning at 1g. And he is also afraid of a space winter, doesn't want it to be seen as a horror show if people start getting killed etc.

This is seriously what we are headed toward. The first poorly built spaceship that blows up killing 20 colonists is going to be used by congress as a call to ban private space development.

>>11023705
Well, it's what all the naysayers are pointing to, when we have ways to mitigate it.

>>11023695
I think at least for now it's fair to just leave SpaceX to rockets, they're probably not big enough yet to be a "space everything" company, they'd need to pull in new teams of experts and establish new specialized facilities if they want to do stuff like habitat manufacture, long term power generation, etc, etc.

The MK1 will be taken apart and entirely re-built. No plumbing, structural supports or electronics are included as is. This was simply a mock-up

$30 says this WILL NOT FLY in 2019.

>>11023697
>fuck you
You may as well power your rocket with unicorn farts if you think you can realistically produce enough fuel before your window time runs out. The infrastructure needed for such an endeavor is quite fucking massive. You'd better land a shit ton of robots that perform those functions for you well in advance so you have what you need when you land. Murphy's law simply won't have it any other way.

>>11023706
If I were a private company I'd restrict my recruiting to volunteers who are not employed by a government. People who are enthusiastic risk takers who are both competent and understand that new untested technology is potentially hazardous and who are willing to publicly and legally accept such a risk. At that point the government could only restrict such a venture if it could prove that an accident would harm more than just the volunteers, which will be pretty hard if you're running your rocket company correctly since you already have to do a bunch of legal dancing just to be allowed to blow up enough material to throw a rocket into space in the first place. At least in the US you could also easily make yourself out to be a sort of classically Americana libertarian venture and play the population in general off against the government to make it harder for them to fuck you over. I'd do it sincerely because governments are cocksuckers, but it could also be a useful PR maneuver to shield yourself from maliciously intended legislation.

>>11023712
And what's wrong here?

>>11023709
Ideally, we would see an explosion of private industry focused around this exact problem. A company could make tons of money by being the first to do extensive ice drilling / resource exploration on Mars to provide on-world materials for the first settlements. Hopefully having an extensive low cost transport system will catapult private industry into space.

Now remember.
When we get to Mars, there will be this experiment we must do.
And that is getting a woman pregnant and see how it goes.
This will frame how much we can into space, really.

>>11023712
Even if that's true they will learn a shitload from doing it.

>>11023712
Jesus christ there is no way that thing can do atmospheric reentry

>>11023706
basically they can kill it, we need terminal velocity before that happens. Where government regulation doesn't choke things out, but instead makes things safer at a cost

then again private companies have killed plenty of people, and I feel that a starship is harder to take a fall compared to a 747 as it's all autonomous, even aborts may clear the breaking booster but in the case of wings loss I don't know how bad it could be.

>>11023721
"It will do a 20km test in 2 months".

Look at that fin, where are the servo-motors to control it? its just hinged. A fucking joke to convince Dodd to keep hyping the project.

>>11023722
It gives it a much better chance, instead of having to invest billions you could invest mere millions, a much easier decision for most large companies to make. Some companies could start space endeavors as nothing more than a side-project to supplement their already existing business without having to worry about being bankrupted by an all-in investment that might not pay out. The most expensive thing involved in space travel right now is transportation and it's the major limiting factor on investment, especially if companies like SpaceX and Bigelow (and some other up and coming hab manufacturers) do successfully prove that building shit to work in space isn't as hard as NASA and ULA make it look.

>>11023145
>>>skid steer
>pls no
skidsteer yes, if you can't/won't wait for a complex solution just get a guy to pilot a little digger and scrape the ground up to get ice.

>>11023712
You didn't look at the video.
They moved it because they needed the base.
It already has a ring for mk3, I guess.

>>11023708
We can mitigate lunar/mars transit through exercise routines, heart burden and near sightedness on the other hand is a hard problem. But relatively not bad

>>11023726
It's only meant for 20 km isn't it?

>>11023647
I wondered what that was!

>>11023702
Obviously, manned missions are the way of the future for science in space, but for the last 30-some-odd years manned spaceflight has been piddling around in LEO in conservative rockets (Shuttle exempted). BFR is functionally a very different launch system than what every space agency has dealt with, and has features that will make safety minded people (especially those at NASA) feel uncomfortable to put their people on. It will take time for those people to warm up to BFR (and hopefully other BFR-like systems). In the meantime, probes can easily fill the gap in large missions. They're generally cheaper per-mission than manned ones, and if BFR suffers an RUD during launch (or rather, when, given how often they're supposed to fly) a lost probe isn't nearly as bad as lost lives.

And besides, with the size of probes that BFR can send around, they can do much more than the kind of probes that have been sent years ago even if they're still less capable than a manned mission.

>>11023706
private companies have killed quite a few people in general

>>11023734
It's ok enough for a thing that wont experience re-entry heat.
Honestly, no need to overbuild it.

>>11023131
they also might be good on the moon

>>11023408
Using steel lets them ignore reentry burn, which saves performance, and they don't need any TPS on it at all, which also saves performance. Plus, the biggest factor of all, stainless is CHEAP and CHEAP to build with.

>>11023734
Thing at the top is offset from the rotational axis and probably connects to a hydraulic actuator.

>>11023745
Yeah, no, the actual sending people there investment vs science return was always in favor of humans, by a long shot.

>>11023447
>It's the most fuel efficient
When will this meme die? The RS-25 is not the most efficient rocket engine ever built, hell it's not even the most efficient engine ever built by the US, and it never was, since the RL-10 which predated it also had and continues to have a higher Isp. That's not to say it isn't efficient, because it certainly is, it's just not and never has been the MOST efficient.

>>11023539
If Raptor cost is <$250k does that make SS/SH undercut everyone else even in expendable mode? That would further add to the mirth

Imagine a world without SpaceX.
Mars 2020.
If it fucking lands we're gonna get data about SRU.
Which are pretty obvious anyways.
What a fucking waste of time.

>>11023777
Wut?

>>11023774
Nah, last figure I got was a million an engine.
But, it's fucking reusable.

>>11023778
Mars 2020 mission is a copy paste Curiosity mission. Only took them a decade to poll something else.
But seriously, just get a fucking geologist out there instead of those useless drones.

>>11023499
>13% extra thrust
Note that the 100% throttle setting is inherited from Shuttle design specs, they did not actually increase the maximum throttle by 13% during the course of SLS development, they've increased the thrust by 13% over the entire Shuttle and SLS program combined. In the mean time Merlin 1D more than doubled in thrust.

>>11023780
That tweet said <$250k for v2

>>11023791
Yeah, but as of now, they're at an engine a week at best.

>>11023590
No insulation needed whatsoever for methalox, dude.

>>11023401
It's not about elegance, it's about cost. But like people in this thread have said, self-landing rockets might be cheaper to refit for a new flight than SRBs, so maybe that's why SpaceX is taking that approach

>>11023783
You have to remember that for a very long time it was extremely expensive to send something into space. Probes are very mass efficient, people aren't. So probes have (and still are) dominated space exploration. And it's still every expensive to send something to space even with the price drops of the Falcon 9, and the BFR has yet to prove itself.

>>11023814
Mass won't be a problem with SS.

>>11023774
A million per engine, plus CONSERVATIVELY 50 million for the upper stage of the vehicle, which in expendable-Starship mode doesn't even need fins or heat shield, means expendable mode Starship probably comes in around ~$100 million, and since the upper stage is expendable you're also looking at something like a 50 ton increase in payload. Call it $100 million for 200 tons to LEO with Booster reuse? AKA roughly the same price as expendable Falcon Heavy for roughly 3x the payload. I'm taking the steel pill, guys. Hell the expendable version of Starship probably wouldn't even cot $10 million, it's a big set of steel tanks with 6 engines strapped to the bottom and a big clam-shell door on top. Partially reusable Starship could cost as much to launch as current partially reusable Falcon 9, which would be the same-ish price for ~14 times the payload in the same mode.

>>11023762
It's the most fuel efficient engine in its thrust class. Wish I had the pic, but there was a great graph of ISP vs. thrust. Everyone was clustered around this line, then you had the RS-25 waaaaay off in the distance.

>>11023734
>Look at that fin, where are the servo-motors to control it?
dumb retard you're looking at it.
the connection at the top of that pic is the control horn connected to a hydraulic ram.
it's not a hinge.

>>11023734
bro you just posted hinge

>>11023735
I'm still convinced that manned spaceflight has a lot of obstacles before colonization will truly be viable on a large scale. We're going to need advances in robotics and remote technology in order to extract resources and build things on the moon and Mars. A major obstacle will be the telecommunications necessary to make complicated remote operations work. We're going to need networks of satellites as well as way more ground communications equipment at some point.

>>11023777
Knowing that ISRU works is a hell of a lot better than not knowing it works
>>11023783
it's still going to be a while before we get a geologist there. It also demonstrates a precision landing technique that will be very relevant to landing a bunch of crap on Mars. It also has a ground penetrating to see if there's ice or liquid water underground. Finding either at low latitudes sites like the one they're aiming for would be useful for ISRU. Especially because you get a bit more sunlight at lower latitudes.
>>11023818
until reactionless drives get invented, mass is always a problem.

>>11023859
Could we get more payload to Mars via a moon-resident mass driver, rather than SS/SH?

>>11023854
>Starting up a human colony only to pamper the little babies and make sure all of the hard stuff is done remotely/by robots
This feels like the NASA approach to me.

>>11023863
The NASA approach is taking 16 years to produce 3 prototype mining machines to send to the moon to work on basic concepts that will be used for the first moon base sometime in the next 15 years, assuming there are no delays.

Advances in robotics are happening, and we are just now at a point where it is feasible to have a large amount of work done remotely. Leave the finer details that machines can't do to the humans.

>>11023854
more telecomms would help, but autonomy helps more. Luckily robots are getting better at doing things on their own. Although it would really help to get optical comms working because then you can transmit more data without fucking huge dishes.

>>11023862
Legitimately, if you're building shit on the moon, why would you start with a mass driver? Just make a hydrogen rocket and split some ice. It costs you almost nothing to reach orbit/escape anyway

>>11023539
>Starship prototype assembly cost including 3 engines may be as low as 5 million dollars

>>11023740
Yep. Mk1 and Mk2 will only do 20 and maybe 100km.

>>11023876
True autonomy is a long way off. It's simply cheaper and easier to have people sitting on their asses here on Earth telling them what to do and overseeing their tasks. This is not mutually exclusive with manned exploration, either. In fact, you probably can't use extensive robotic development effectively without human presence. Even in space, machines still require maintenance that probably can't be done by other machines.

>>11023872
>NASA
>no delays
lol If NASA were running the entire colonization program, then our grandchildren will be lucky to see the first manned Mars landing much less a colony.

>>11023795
They want to scale 2-3/week later this year. Probably after Crew Dragon has gone successfully.

>>11023862
a study a while back determined that for just shooting aluminum plates with a mass driver that the mass payback period was too long. That is it takes a while for the mass driver to shoot it's enough material to equal the amount of mass we landed
>>11023877
ice on the Moon is in permanently shadowed craters. We don't know what form it's in or whether it is practical to mine it.

>>11023872
>The NASA approach is taking 16 years to produce 3 prototype mining machines to send to the moon to work on basic concepts that will be used for the first moon base sometime in the next 15 years, assuming there are no delays.
Okay, fair. Just in the spirit of taking the most circuitous and expensive, least efficient route possible.

On a colony, at least in the early stages, let machines do the things that it's easy to make machines do: predictable repetitive tasks which require more power than a human can output. Let humans do the thinking, piloting, and directing.

>>11023712
SpaceX engineers on L2 actually agree with you. I believe “there’s lots of work still to be done and it’ll be a miracle if it flies before the end of the year” were the exact words.

>>11023786
that's because the OG Merlins sucked shit

ASHES TO ASHES, FUNK TO FUNKY, WE KNOW MAJOR TOM’S
A JUNKIE STRUNG OUT IN HEAVEN’S HIGH HITTING AN ALL TIME LOW

ONONONONONONONONONONO...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>11023911
Good grief the anti-Musk brigade is an endless fountain of industrial ignorance.

>>11023899
Given that SpaceX has done many impossibles that even God could not have done, miracle seems like easily doable for him. Maybe I'm wrong, but correct me if I'm wrong. Weren't we sold the meme that a private space company was impossible? Or that reusable landing was impossible? Or Starship was a paper rocket just few months ago?

Where is the "skeptic" rational coming from?

>>11023863
Humans may be more expensive. Replacing them if they fail costs more. It takes longer to send humans outside and we have to limit their time on the surface. Humans place a bigger burden on the colony from cycling airlocks and wearing down expensive space suits. They also require more energy than robots to perform similar tasks due to inefficiencies associated with growing food and converting that food to work. With robots we can more or less use electricity directly.
>>11023884
More autonomy lets those supervised robots do more complicated things or do less complicated things faster in spite of lag.
>>can't be done by other machines
yet

>>11021957
>Fuel production

It's literally a fucking insulated box with some catalyst rods inside it, I could put this shit together in my garage.

>>11023915
No I worship Musk and his genius ideas. For example: ‘REUSABLE’ TILES THAT ABLATE!

>>11023915
Where do they even come from? Or is it just one guy?

>>11023911
https://youtu.be/rBoYA1gn-hw
get with the times dad

>>11023922
The scepticism is coming from SpaceX engineers, as the post states...

>>11023936
Aka, out of your ass.

>>11023899
Is L2 worth it, bros?

And yeah, just think of how many months it took for Starhopper to be ready for its hop. My money is on Mk1 flying in February, though I'll bet that Mk2 will be flying very close behind it. Mk3 or Mk4 flies a >100mile sub-orbital hop around May or June at the earliest, and orbit with Mk5 or Mk6 doesn't happen until a year from now, after Mk1/Mk2 have been retired/RUD'd and Mk3+Mk4 have flown extensive sub-orbital test regimens to increasingly high altitudes.

>>11023932
reddit. They have a fairly large base dedicated to shit on everything elon does.

>>11023936
why don't you post a screenshot?

>>11023939
Definitely, Chris B and others have inside lines with SpaceX like Berger does with NASA. For example, unless your on L2 you don’t know about the partially broken tank at LC-39 that NASA isn’t very happy about and are preventing SpaceX from launching there until it’s fixed to their standards.

>>11023922
When even Elon himself says that his stated goals are under ideal conditions, you should take them with a grain of salt.

The problem comes in when people act like they have a reason to be angry when the impossible happens in 6 months instead of 2, when the rest of the world is still catching up to where SpaceX was 6 years ago.

>>11023946
*Lox tank

>>11023738
This. Also, remember that Musk more or less said straight up that the new rings at Cocoa are for Mk4, not Superheavy. I'll bet that Superheavy doesn't even begin construction until Mk3/Mk4 have flown.

>>11023946
Could shitposting with spaceX engineers get my humanities degree holding but >140IQ ass some sort of interesting non-engineering job there?

>>11023944
Ask and you’ll receive my friend.

>>11023956
Serious question, how do we know these sources are anywhere close to legit? This smells like bullshit larping

>>11023956
So its not a SpaceX engineer but a post who says he has a "source."

The only relevant part is FAA, which we all know is coming due to the 150M's $100 Million insurance cost.

>>11021957
NASA seems pretty fucking serious about it:
www.nasa.gov/isru

>>11023931
it ablates instead of melting the backing and destroying the vehicle (looking at you, shuttle)
it lets you lower your margins

>>11023931
retard he's saying if there are tiles that ablate, then it got too hot, so there is no need for sensors in every tile.

>>11023956
I remember this or something very close being posted already - my response is the same; you don't need to be an insider to know this. People have been predicting stack separation, FAA concerns, and engine replacements (not hooked up; hand-me-down engines from the hopper phase) since before the press.

Everyone should know by now that Elon gives aspirational timelines, not realistic ones

>>11023959
some names are just pretty consistently right
some names are just pretty consistently full of hot shit

>>11021957
>Rocket
SpaceX Starship/SuperHeavy
>Energy
Tesla/SpaceX partnership for solar panel/battery
>Lifesupport
Based upon CrewDragon's work
>Construction
Boring Co. Tunnel
>Fuel production
Sabatier reaction is a 100+ year old known component.
>Food production
Single Starship could easily ship 5 years worth of space food for crew of a dozen. Giving them enough time to perfect martian agriculture.

Maybe I'm wrong, but at this rate SpaceX may do it alone for most of the part.

>>11023959
>>11023960
This guy is a long-time member and nobody tried to call him out so I assume he’s trusted. I’ve never seen anybody try and LARP on L2, you can’t just say random shit. Aerospace staff don’t usually post on L2 (SpaceX does have several official accounts tho) but industry insiders like this poster or journalists like Chris and Eric Ralph who have inside sources do.

>>11023982
the actual aerospace staff tend to be under NDA

>>11023978
>Single Starship could easily ship 5 years worth of space food for crew of a dozen.
doubt

>>11023994
ISS astronauts eat ~1.83 lb of food per day.

1.83 lb x 365 days x 5 years x 12 person = 20 ton or 40K lb.

>>11023996
if you pack them properly do they even need to be in a pressurized hold?

>>11023996
you didn't account that food is not dense and that the volume it occupies is bigger than 1 cm3/g. People also need water

>>11023956
tbf the end of the year is now two months away so it's just normal elon time, not some catastrophic schedule change

>>11023911
>SpaceX says that Mk1 isn't complete
>Also said that it was only visually complete for presentation
>Takes Mk1 down after presentation to complete it
>Somehow this is a bad thing

>>11023965
wow amazing they have some cgi renders

for the bush-era moon missions they had rovers, space suits, landers, base designs, hundreds of sub-technologies developed and in prototype and then didn't launch a single gram of it

>>11023993
Yeah nobody is leaking pictures of hardware, but BocaChicaGal posts really detailed pictures of Raptors at Boca, I’m sure the recent rise in L2 membership is all the Chinese spies screenshotting her pictures. L2 is mostly useful for staying up to date with schedules, for example, people on L2 have known for weeks that neither DM-2 or CFT will happen this year, due to charitable NASA employees.

>>11024004
If you can't harvest water on Mars you can't create propellant and you aren't sending humans anyways

>>11024009
why is NASA stopping commercial crew?

>>11024002
>>11024004
It won't matter. They have so much margin for Starship, which can do 150 ton, when fully realized, to mars.

>People need water
Hello? Mars, water?

>>11024016
cleaning that water isn't an easy thing, you're going to want to bring your own for the first synod at least until ground truth is established

>>11024008
>for the bush-era moon missions they had rovers, space suits, landers, base designs, hundreds of sub-technologies developed and in prototype and then didn't launch a single gram of it
That's kinda the natural cycle for NASA.

>President proposes ambitious program to NASA to rally Americans
>Some studies and technology demonstrators happen
>New President replaces previous one
>New President cancels NASA's current plans because they're associated with a 'rival' President
>New President proposes ambitious program to NASA to rally Americans
>And the cycle continues with America not really caring that NASA ends up doing nothing because most people don't care about spaceflight

>>11024019
Vapor distill that shit. Energetically expensive, but so is ISRU.

>>11024013
Explosions are spooky and Boeing is slow

>>11024029
bunch of fucking casuals

>>11023085
are they just gonna dump the RS-25's into the ocean this time?
lmao

>>11024013
Don’t know about Boeing, but SpaceX is being slowed down because the redesigned abort system hasn’t been static fired yet, also they’ve had a lot of minor parachute anomalies for a while which culminated in a full on failure that caused the mass simulator to go splat. I’ll let Vladimir Komarov explain to you why that’s bad. The reason why some think SpaceX and Boeing are neck and neck is because the Boeing OFT capsule is a lot closer to the CFT one, than SpaceX’s DM-1 was to the DM-2 capsule, even without the abort system being redesigned they still had plenty of modifications to make.

>>11024033
>legacy hardware
>expendable
>our legacy is expendable
>we are literally throwing our legacy into the ocean
it's good symbolism desu

>>11024008
>wow amazing they have some cgi render

Blue Moon’s engine exists, Lockheed’s capsule uses Orion parts and RL10s and SpaceX’s is based on Crew Dragon.

>>11024034
Pretty misleading to keep citing parachutes in this comparison when SpaceX has already blown away NASA's expectations for parachute performance and both companies had issues with them initially.

>>11024008
that's just an overview of all the shit they're working on, if you want the exact things they've been working on just search NTRS for ISRU. They also state that we need to learn more about the location, form, concentration, and distribution of resources because that has implications for where you land and what you use for mining.
>>bush-era moon missions
aka, SLS before it was called SLS. Although LRO and LCROSS did get launched. The real point is that there's actually work being done on ISRU at places like NASA.

>>11024033
Considering how expensive it is to refurbish them, it's probably not that much of a loss to dispose of them.

What I find sad but funny is that NASA realized that the RS-25s were way too expensive for a Shuttle derived heavy lifter so they set out to make a replacement, the RS-68. However, they've learned that it's ablative nozzle (which was chosen to make it cheaper) doesn't like to be near SRBs. Which is a reasonable problem. What wasn't reasonable was that NASA switched back to the RS-25 for the SLS rather than just simply remake the RS-68 to be completely regeneratively cooled. Meanwhile SpaceX took the Merlin 1A which was a completely ablatively cooled engine (not just the nozzle) and turned it into the completely regen cooled Merlin 1C.

NASA could've kept working on a cheap hydrolox booster engine and ended up with something that would be pretty decent and well suited for their need of a expendable heavy lifter, but instead they went for perhaps the most expensive engine ever flown.

>>11024041
>Blue Moon’s engine exists, Lockheed’s capsule uses Orion parts and RL10s and SpaceX’s is based on Crew Dragon.

they were flying around landers, and driving rovers around and building prototypes of moonbases 10 years ago


all this shit is going byebye next recession cycle and next administration
deal with it

>>11023955
Do they need a resident poet?

>>11024061
Oh yeah if Trump loses in 2020 Artemis is fucking dead there's no dispute there. But Starship is privately developed, and that's the real excitement. Artemis is a teaser trailer and the last hurrah of massive oldschool NASA programs.

>>11024063
>first man lands on mars
>steps off starship
>>they...should have sent a poet
>>nvm I am one *space dabs*
poet-shitposters are mission critical equipment

>>11024065
>inb4 the new pres tries to slap SpaceX down because of it's association with the orange man

>>11024029
Can't let Boing look bad when SpaceX beats them to ISS, even after schedule delays from well-reported incidents, hard to hide that big orange cloud at KSC. (as opposed to Boing's schedule delays from well-buried incidents like hypergolics getting into the cabin from an abort test)

>>11024063
Nah, I was art history. Meh, I know the closest I'll ever come to space is analyzing imagery for the NRO or the NGA.

>>11024088
How old are you?

>>11024080
The Boeing anomaly was actually a lot tamer than most people think. Because Starliner’s abort system is separate from the capsule and housed in the service module, it can be tested without the capsule attached. A single CSM was written off and the infrastructure damage was minimal according to a Whitesands employee.

>>11024090
33. Former medfag wannabe transitioning from healthcare to getting my commercial pilot's license and ATP and hopefully flying for the airlines eventually.

I'm a bit of a polymath though and space is something I've always been really into. I've built some damned impressive things in KSP and Simpleplanes, that's for sure.

>>11024103
you're still a 30 yo boomer so you have a long life yet to live. You'll probably live long enough to go to space

>>11024115
My biggest bummer is that Starship probably won't have pilots.

>>11024103
If you're as much of a big brain boy as you claim you probably still have enough time to get gud at something really useful and space relevant. I guess every company also needs people working PR, if AH has anything relevant to marketing, advertising, or otherwise interacting with the public in a beneficial manner that might do you some good.

>>11023814
>Probes are very mass efficient, people aren't.
For ground based activities not really, It's just that the mass floor for sending people is high. If you have the lift capability for people sending people gives more bang for buck science wise.

>>11024119
SAT in the 1500s and an MCAT in the 30s, if that helps.

>>11024119
But yeah, PR or graphic design would probably be my most realistic "in".

>>11023905
so does OG RS-25 kek

RIP CCREW IN 2019
LONG LIVE SOYUZ
>Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, said in an interview on Monday that he is not confident in [SpaceX's] timeline. The space agency will likely have to purchase more seats aboard Russian-made spacecraft in 2020, he said, to ensure US astronauts have continued access to the space station because of ongoing dealys with its Commercial Crew program, he said. That program includes Crew Dragon and a Boeing-built capsule, Starliner, which is also years behind schedule.

>Bridenstine referred to Crew Dragon's explosion as a "catastrophic failure," and said one of the reasons he's skeptical of the idea that Crew Dragon will be ready in the near future is because the updated emergency abort system "has not been qualified" and has not been tested.

>>11024137
Forgot link
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/30/tech/elon-musk-spacex-crew-dragon-nasa-timeline/index.html

>>11024136
yeah but that's due to the hydrogen meme and being designed as a booster/sustainer core engine instead of a heavy lift booster engine or second stage vacuum engine

>>11023931
>where it is too hot
Ablation is better than straight-up failure. Also he's saying that they'll just look at where the hot-spots are by looking for erosion, and then they'll adjust the entry profile to keep heating lower in those areas.

>>11024142
There will be 50% less Soyuz launches to ISS. Russkies are finished.

>>11023953
Why would it? SH is a straight tube with engines on the bottom and a few bulkheads and legs, should be easy to slap together especially with the techniques they'd have streamlined by the time they get to that point.

>>11024142
>>11024137
why link CNN's blatantly stolen content that doesn't even cite the original source instead of the original source
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/elon-musk-jim-bridenstine-starship-commercial-crew/599218/
fuck CNN and fuck content thiefs

>>11024164
I'm pretty sure it's actually a different interview. The Atlantic article doesn't include the statement that NASA is looking at buying more Soyuz launches.

>>11024027
It's not that energectically expensive if you just let some waste heat trickle into a vessel full of ice at ambient pressure, to sublimate off the water vapor. Pump that water vapor into a vessel and compress it until it liquefies, hey you've got pure water.

>>11024153
Yeah, that's what I meant. SH is dirt simple compared with Starship, and they won't even know the aerodynamics for it until they've gotten closer to a truly final Starship design based off of what they learn from Mk1 through Mk4.

>>11024180
See, this is one of the things that a portable nuclear reactor would excel in. You can have the 30% or so of its output that goes towards electricity generation, and use the remaining waste heat to do things like melt ice and purify water, as those are very heat-intensive processes in the first place.

>>11024137
>>11024142
>>11024147
>>11024164
>>11024170
I’ve found the interview

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/elon-musk-jim-bridenstine-starship-commercial-crew/599218/

I’m confused. If the mk2 hop works, straight to orbit? But only mk4 can get to orbit

>>11024137
Someone tell me why NOT being able to cram four astronauts into the ISS for a few months between the last Soyuz seats and the first CC missions is the end of the world, please? It's not like we're really doing anything earth-shattering on the ISS anymore anyway.

>>11024203
Anon, we never did anything earth-shattering with the ISS

This fucking soiboi redditor got have an indepth and personal conversation with Elon Musk while you fat nerds sit on your asses,

How does that shit feel /sfg/?

>>11023955
anything is good humanities if you make someone with power sexually atracted with you. Its just that simple.

All of humanities, from plato to foucault, from seneca to ayn rand is just random babbling that changes nothing but is supported by this or that team.

>>11024019
Cleaning water is an extremely well understood science, unless it's black water it can easily be recycled to be drinkable. Unless Mars ice contains some unknown difficult to extract chemical contaminants all you'll need is a water treatment system that can operate in .4 gravity, a more complicated system will be needed anyways just to manage gray water on the trip out, just build the ship system robust and take a spare to Mars.
>>11024203
Honestly I haven't kept up with day-to-day life on the ISS for a long time, propulsion and power has always been my primary interest and focus of study, however there might be regular in-situ maintenance that demands human attention which will languish and possibly grow worse over time without a crew to take care of it. You're right though, the ISS is an enormously expensive project which is not currently producing much in the way of return on investment.

>>11024195
Anon. That's the same link.

>>11024195
mate I just posted that and you fucking quoted my post

>>11024192
it's a lot of energy but doesn't require very high quality energy

>>11024198
>yfw mk3 is literally just an insurance policy in case mk1 or mk2 crash
>yfw steel allows for this to not be a big deal because it makes everything so cheap

>>11024203
Because the ISS isn't designed to run without a human staff, and it's politically embarrassing for the US to have to rely on Russia to keep it staffed.

>>11024210
Neat, I'll give it a listen fag.

>>11024137
Why didn't the US keep the space shuttle programme going until they had another human-rated spacecraft / launch system to replace it?

I assume the answer is "expense" but I bet Russia charge a lot for Soyuz flights since the only other option for human spaceflight is China and NASA apparently won't do business with China (yet they'll do business with Russia, weird).

>>11024210
If I tried to talk to Elon I'd probably just spill spaghetti everywhere

>>11024210
feels good man

>>11024229
expense.

the gap would've been smaller if Constellation hadn't screwed everything else - but there was always a gap after the 2010 deadline imposed post-Columbia.

>>11024198
mk1 (Boca Chica Starship at the presentation) is not ready for high energy or orbital testing because it doesn't have a heat shield and the wings are made of aluminum
swapping out wings and welding the heat shield/stud assembly on isn't a big issue, so mk1 and mk2 could totally go to orbit

>>11024210
I'm starting on cultivating an actual credential in the field, it's very early days but I have no money troubles, transportation troubles or living troubles, I've got some steady employment and recently got referred to something else that pays better by a buddy. All things considered I'd rather spend my time learning how to (and hopefully eventually) designing and testing rocket engines rather than interviewing celebrities for YouTube.

>>11024227
The US has been relying on Russia since 2011, though. Why does one more year matter. Also fuck 'embarrassment', they should be outright pulling out of ISS entirely and going all-in on Starship because it's clearly the future and it's gonna steamroll everything including ISS in five years or less anyway.

>>11024229
1. Commercial crew was supposed to be flying last year.
2. No matter how much the Russians charge for Soyuz, it would be cheaper than Shuttle. Shuttle was just partially reusable SLS, and the reuse was horrifically expensive.

>>11024239
>neglecting the role the ISS has played in cultivating a market for commercial spaceflight

>>11024229
>>11024234
Specifically expense of lives, since Bush mandated Shuttle be cancelled earlier than its initial retirement date due to the inherent danger of the vehicle.

>>11024212
My wife is in hospital upper management, if that helps.

>>11024237
>the wings are made of aluminum
What makes you think that, anon?

>>11024241
That's the most important thing it has ever done, and it's completed that task at this point. Even if NASA pulled all launch contracts right now, CC and otherwise, SpaceX would still have the resources to get the full Starship stack up and operating and making more money per launch than Falcon does.

>>11024237
Mk1 is a fat fuck though. It COULD make orbit, but with significantly reduced performance for being a fat fuck. It also could make orbit in it's current configuration, it would simply be expendable. But when the competition is SLS, is that such a big deal?

>>11024223
My point is that you can generate electrical power from the nuclear reactor for nighttime, energy intensive, or ops occuring during a severe dust storm that blocks the bulk of solar generation while at the same time using the waste heat from the reactor for a useful function (melting ice and purifying water) instead of wastefully rejecting it into the atmosphere.
It also adds redundancy to the colony power generation. If you have solar alone, dust storms can ruin your month and all of the panels have to be actuated to tilt and follow the sun throughout the year. If those fail, the reactor can provide baseline power while waiting on the shipment of replacement hardware from Earth

If you have nuclear alone, any major reactor fault that requires shutdown (or god forbid you have a meltdown because someone REALLY screwed the pooch), you're fucked because you have no power generation. If you have solar to back it up, the reactor can be shut down and the colony would have power available for continued use.

I'm not saying a reactor is the magic bullet, not saying solar is either, but having both over one or the other allows for additional failure modes and/or additional things to be done.

Hell you could use the waste heat from the reactor to heat the colony.

>>11024224
The raptors are the only thing they're probably worried about losing, lol.

And yeah, the RUDs will be fucking spectacular. I'm hoping for something Challenger-tier, or at the very least something on par with the Antares RUD at Wallops.

If Raptor really only costs $1M per engine you can get some supremely cheap expendable launches with Nova or Sea Dragon tier payloads. Just leave off the wings, heatshield, and the three sea level Raptors. Of course, if you retain the orbital refueling capabilities, you get Supreme Yeet.

>>11024229
The Shuttle was an inherently unsafe design. Soyuz is much safer.

>>11024251
Either Mk1 or Mk2, (whichever one doesn't RUD during testing) will be slightly upgraded and shot into orbit as a publicity stunt. I'm hoping it's Mk1.

>>11024246
I'm trying to find the picture that shows it, when they were being shipped in it could clearly be seen that the wings had aluminum internals

>>11024251
>but with significantly reduced performance for being a fat fuck
the big payload hit would probably be from not having high efficiency vacuum raptors
I've seen some claims that it would deliver ~20 tons to LEO, which is basically shuttle tier (not bad)

>>11024256
I don't think Challenger is on the menu, if they're going to lose one it's going to be Columbia style

>>11024270
I guessed 40 based on the dry mass but I didn't account for the underexpanded Raptors.

>>11024277
it's like 30 seconds of ISP

>>11021957
>Fuel production

It's literally a fucking insulated box with some catalyst rods inside it, I could put this shit together in my garage.

>starship is successful
What happens to the Earth orbit industry now?

>>11024323
WeWork provides dynamic, collaborative, and solution-focused office space in space. Because there's no property tax or labor laws in LEO.

>>11024323
Mass efficiency becomes a couple of orders of magnitude less important. Orbital infrastructure comes from places you wouldn't expect, built cheaply and looking more like overbuilt industrial equipment than a modernday satellite.

>>11024321
how do you get the hydrogen? How do you get the CO2? How do you liquefy LOX and methane? It's more than just an insulated box. It's being worked on though.

>>11024338
Good. More stuff can be done.

t. Former micro satellite design team member

Starship has to refuel in orbit but would it be better for SpaceX to put giant depots in orbit where Starships can dock? That way they don't have to wait for a bunch of launches to get off the ground.

Is this steel casing a meme? It looks like complete ass up close. Honestly think this thing will just fall apart on the first test

>>11024348
No, or else that would upset Shelby to the point where he gets SpaceX nationalized to stop their d-word work.

>>11024350
Because it's been built cheaply in a field, something you can't do with other options.
Unironically steel is about to teach us that we've been buying into the aluminum and composite meme far too long.

>>11024348
Just keep sticking more rockets on to heft up a bigass depot.

>SpaceX finally delivers CC, but only for Roscosmos

>>11024343
Cracking water, the entire atmosphere of Mars, the same way you do on Earth. It's gonna need to be a really big insulated box.

>>11024348
Depots would cost even more launches than if you just launch and refuel, the only argument in their favor is if they're somehow safer than ship-to-ship refueling.

>>11024389
You're right. Maybe if they attached a space station to the depots? We'll need a replacement for the ISS eventually.

>>11024348
Depots make sense if you have a cheaper source of fuel than Earth - maybe an moon-sourced oxidizer tanker, not cutting refueling completely but dropping it to just methane requirements.

Realistically I think SS would be retired or irrelevant by the time something like that could be set up, though.

Looks like the EU is already planning to take protectionist measures against the US's powerful space industry:
>the European Commission plans a confirmation hearing tomorrow for Sylvia Goulard, nominated by France to oversee an ambitious new plan to expand economic and political support for pumping up Europe’s defense and space industry. The plan, which involves creation of a new directorate for space and defense, plus an influx of EU investment, is increasingly drawing Trump Administration fire for what it sees as restrictions on future American company market access.
https://breakingdefense.com/2019/10/eu-plan-to-boost-space-industry-draws-white-house-ire/

>>11024424
Protectionism is the EU's first response to everything.
Let them try, lol. Just like everyone else they're still scrambling to draw up F9 competitors in a very nearly post-Falcon world. They'll beg to play ball again.

>>11023604
At least go with a continuous miner, not that gay dilly.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jPycLDKlGVw

>one day we'll see rockets this big again

>>11024434
>Protectionism is the EU's first response to everything.

And sanctions on trade between sovereign states is America's first response to everything.

>>11024462
If your power only extends as far as your own borders, exert power by restricting what gets in (ironic when applied to the EU, I know). When your power is international, exert power through international pressure.

>>11024424
Would the Russian response to BFR be them ignoring it the whole time while developing their own rocket in secret, have it fail every launch, give up, cover up everything while pretending that they've never cared about BFR, and only a couple of decades later have the world find out about some super BFR engines that makes the Raptor look like an old steam engine?

>>11024471
My guess would be hydralox or methalox LANTR engines. The Russians would be crazy enough to try it.

>>11024471
Chinese response will Starship, down to the rivet, but with the tankage swapped around for UDMH/NTO.

>>11024495
oh god no. Imagine the RUDs.

>>11024460
BFR may be big, but a methalox tin can powered by dozens of glorified bunsen burners will never have the same je ne sais quoi as a rocket the size of a skyscraper with a fire-belching Kerolox first stage powered by five massive gas generator cycle engines with sea level bells the size of Uhaul trucks.

>when the hydrazine kicks in

>>11024508
The tin can is the size of a skyscraper though. And as regards engines, as a wise man once said, quantity has a quality all of it's own.

>>11024495
>>11024498

Don't forget the one that goes sideways within seconds of launch and, due to a complete lack of a flight termination system, turns a small town of 10,000 people into a hypergolic-contaminated mass grave while the government pretends that nothing happened whatsoever.

>>11024510
>You smell that? Do you smell that?... Hydrazine, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of hydrazine in the morning. You know, one time we had an engine burn, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that ammonia smell, the whole rocket. Smelled like... victory. Someday this space war's gonna end...

>>11024515
I predict Starship/SH will be sexy to watch launch in the same way that the Space Shuttle was, in that it's a big, loud marvel of modern technology.

I don't believe for a second that it will result in anything even 1/10th as kino as the Saturn V's "explosion on startup that gets sucked back into the pad by the Venturi force of the engines, their exhaust plumes ringed by black exhaust from the reinjected gas generator exhaust" show. Nobody else designed them like Von Braun did.

>>11024338
>Mass efficiency becomes a couple of orders of magnitude less important
bullshit. Look at SpaceX starlink satellites they seem like they're made as light weight as possible. 100 tons still isn't as much as you'd think. I mean look at the sorts of stuff we move on big cargo airplanes. Typically it's stuff like more goddamn airplane parts. And airplanes are still built to be as light as fucking possible. Second, the rocket equation still applies. Meaning, mass ratio still increases EXPONENTIALLY with delta V.

>>11024069
>inb4 the new pres tries to slap SpaceX down because of it's association with the orange man

What association though? Musk has been largely apolitical other than his support for a space force etc

>>11024033
>>11024035

>>11024575
I've seen them in-person and they do need to be in museums. They're pretty remarkable pieces of engineering.

>>11023581
>>11023604
>>11024453
How about a supersonic ramjet accelerator cannon based digging machine?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vozxDpVmI-s
https://www.hypersciences.com/hyperbreaker/

>>11024488
>hydralox
Dude, do you say hydragen? It's hydrolox. Also, methalox because methane-Lox, and kerolox because kerosene-Lox.

>>11024508
>not imagining a rocket larger than the Saturn V belching a kilometer long purple-blue plume of hypersonic exhaust and leaping off the pad at around 1.4 G to be sexier

>>11024616
I have a bad tenancy to spell things the way I pronounce it rather than how it's actually spelt because English is more messed up than the Shuttle.

>>11024529
VB didn't design the F-1, he just looked at the big engine they were developing for missiles and put 2 and 2 together, "hey I'd only need like five or eight of these things to make a big ass first stage booster that could probably enable a Moon landing".

>>11024565
>Look at SpaceX starlink satellites they seem like they're made as light weight as possible.
Starlink's primary strategic goal is to fund the Starship program. So, of course they are designed around a pre-SS paradigm.

>100 tons still isn't as much as you'd think.
If you think total tonnage is more important to SS's economic impact than full reusability, I got nothin for you. It's nice, and obviously necessary to fulfill the design role as a Mars transport, but $/kg is king and that is entirely facilitated by full reusability.

As for air cargo... srsly m8. You think no one ever ships heavy shit in a plane?

>>11024565
Dude, you're comparing something that costs $2000 a kilogram to something that costs $50 a kilogram, it doesn't matter if the payload mass fraction is half of what you'd expect a normal rocket to have, that still only brings the price up to $100 a kg. As long as the Starship with full tanks on Mars can do single-stage to Earth intercept, then we're golden. Also, for the early prototypes the mass fraction really doesn't matter at all, as long as it can still reach orbit with enough propellant for landing.

>>11024632
>Dude, you're comparing something that costs $2000 a kilogram to something that costs $50 a kilogram
Wait. Is the $2000 figure referring to the plane or BFR?

>>11024386
how do you get the water? How do you get CO2 from an atmosphere that's really fucking thin?

>>11024644
Shovels, ice, and a power source. A really fucking big compressor. We know the ground in some areas of Mars is up to 10% permafrost, and that's not counting any glacier they might land near.

>>11024565
m8

>>11024650
>Starship can send almost 3 Abrams into LEO

>>11024652
>doing orbital manueavers with a 120mm

>>11024620
A LaFerrari will never be 1/10th as sexy as an F40, despite being a better car by every single objective metric.

>>11024644
>How do you get water

A guy with a pickaxe, a backhoe, free ice tailings from your tunneling machine, whatever take your pick it's not fucking hard.

>CO2

Literally just compress the atmosphere, not fucking rocket science.

>>11024652
No, no, you're thinking too small.

Starship can carry over 100 SM-3 missiles, and the radar to control them.

>starship tiles will partially ablate

Not liking this, seems to be pretty contrary to the whole rapid reusability. Go back to liquid cooling

>>11024662
>>11024652
>2024, twitter
>5mm whipple shield holding up well in Space Force testing. Might move from steel to thicker sheets of ultrahigh density polyurethane, plastic armor is delightfully counterintuitive
>Yes, we've worked with the Space Force to fit the Battlestars for standard missiles. They'll be loaded in orbit, it can carry more missiles that way.
>88mm railgun prototype and tesla semi unveiling soon

>>11024655
>obliterating an enemy spy-sat with a depleted uranium sabot that's traveling faster than 5000 ft/s
>dropping 165 short tons of hamburgers on the Chinese moon base to confuse the hell out of them
>assembling a second Statue of Liberty in LEO
The future is looking bright.

>>11024670
meant to write pickup mb

>>11024671
>assembling
the statue of liberty is within the payload of an expendable starship launch

You could get a tiny bit more payload out of a fully reusable Starship by burning to depletion on ascent, and then refueling for descent.

>>11024672
>>11024671
So something like this?

>>11024675
Hey, can we uh, borrow your ship? Need it to ram Eros. Thanks.

>>11024668
Pretty sure the intention is to use that aspect to track where the intended thermal regime is being violated so that the entry process (or design) can be iterated to prevent it in the future.
With liquid cooling, the same thing would happen but would require dedicated sensors to track because it wouldn't leave an obvious trace.

>>11024668
Starship tiles shouldn't ablate during routine LEO flights, but you don't need sensors because if they're getting too hot they'll just visibly ablate. The goal is no ablation in LEO reentry. From the Moon or Mars, they will ablate, no real avoiding it.

>>11024678
>not throwing a thousand tons of hamburgers at Eros too
non-American detected

>>11021973
Is 585T to fill the tanks, or just to reach minimum dV for the optimum low-energy trajectory?

A note about Chinese plans in case their space forces are defeated by the US: spam hypersonic drones to replace the functionality from the lost spacecraft. Pic related. Kind of disappointing that they don't have any known plans for replacing lost space assets but at least we know they don't seem to plan on filling orbit with junk as a final "fuck you" if they lose the space war.

>>11024708
>but at least we know they don't seem to plan on filling orbit with junk as a final "fuck you" if they lose the space war
How can you be so sure?

>>11024636
Current cheapest launch vehicles. Imagine if SpaceX was making a plane right now instead of rocket, and it was big chungus and heavy, and got a lower payload mass fraction than other planes, but nonetheless could still deliver more cargo mass in one shot than anything else AND could do it for 1/20th the cost

>>11022268
Zubrin is, as usual, focused on optimizing mass and energy budgets, which was extremely important, right up until Elon introduced cheap reusable rockets with minimal marginal flight costs.

If you have 50-150T of useful payload, you can afford to waste a lot of weight carrying around fins, sea-level engines, heat shields, and structure rated for Max-Q on Earth, because those things suddenly don't add absurd amounts of $$$ to the mission like they used to.

Long-term, yeah, dedicated spacecraft optimized to take off and land on a specific world, coupled with dedicated interplanetary transports to carry people and cargo from one world's orbit to the next, will probably pay for their R&D costs and be the best decision going ahead. But, just like Zubrin cobbled together a paper design back in the '90s using existing Shuttle hardware to save money, so too does SpaceX's early expansion to nearby worlds using a single design make perfect sense for now.

>>11024711
I can't, but it doesn't seem like it's on the agenda right now. During the parade they showed off their latest weapon systems and I didn't hear anything about offensive space systems being displayed.

>>11024656
I don't know or care about either of those, because they are kid toys compared to even a mediocre rocket.

>>11024698
Fill the tanks. Also, Starship is likely to need full or nearly full tanks to get back to Earth under optimal conditions, so don't think you can cheap out by skimping on propellant load.

>>11024715
SpaceX can't do with aircraft what it did with rocketry. Carbon fiber composites and aluminum are both essentially ideal materials for their industries, and the predominant operating cost in planes is already fuel cost.

>>11024692
Did you just woosh an expanse reference on /sfg/

>Estronaut gets a solid fifteen minutes with Musk about starship
>Asks him literally no questions about shit out we don't know
>Gets him talking for half the interview about fucking aerospikes

God Is hate this estrogens laden soi faggot so much. Ask him about ablation on the tiles, ask him about hardware for methane production on Mars, ask him about expected life cycles of raptor, ask him about internal layouts for crew, literally fucking anything you useless cunt holy shit.

>>11022919
A lot of interesting stuff, but almost all of it was non-technical; a lot of observations on development-centric organizations and how to make them work. At a minimum, I know several IT departments that should begin applying his insights immediately, but won't.

>>11024729
Did you just woosh an innate American drive on a Mongolian underwater basket weaving forum?

>>11024731
I mean, aerospikes are pretty cool, but I haven't seen the interview so idk how bad it was. Normally I can't stand his presentation style.

>>11024731
have any other post-Q&A interviews been showed yet besides the CNN and errday astronaut?

>>11024738
It's pretty bad, mostly just asks him some general questions and lets him ramble for ages because he can't stand to interrupt his idol.

>>11024675
>non painted copper exterior
did you know the statue of liberty isn't painted?