SpaceX (Vol. 2)
Discussion
Part 1 of Tim Dodd's latest Starbase tour with Elon has been cleared for release. It was filmed on June 4th, the day before flight test 4:
https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=RtI_Vk56ZWjbySIX
Lots of Starship related stuff in there and the factory is impressively large.
He also says they're building a Falcon 9 upper stage at the rate of one every couple of days. So nearly 200 this year and over 200 next year.
https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=RtI_Vk56ZWjbySIX
Lots of Starship related stuff in there and the factory is impressively large.
He also says they're building a Falcon 9 upper stage at the rate of one every couple of days. So nearly 200 this year and over 200 next year.
Beati Dogu said:
Part 1 of Tim Dodd's latest Starbase tour with Elon has been cleared for release. It was filmed on June 4th, the day before flight test 4:
https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=RtI_Vk56ZWjbySIX
Lots of Starship related stuff in there and the factory is impressively large.
He also says they're building a Falcon 9 upper stage at the rate of one every couple of days. So nearly 200 this year and over 200 next year.
PhysicsBus on Reddit wrote up notes:https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=RtI_Vk56ZWjbySIX
Lots of Starship related stuff in there and the factory is impressively large.
He also says they're building a Falcon 9 upper stage at the rate of one every couple of days. So nearly 200 this year and over 200 next year.
http://%22https//www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/...
PhysicsBus said:
Some notes I took while watching (not sure what's new):
• Expect to be making 1000 starships per year in the long-term. Factory currently under construction is capable of 100 per year, but interior still needs a lot of work.
• Very important in factory design is that you have adjacent stations where each rocket moves from station to station (one-way) and the amount of time spent at each station is roughly the same so that they all advance together.
• At this point Musk is confident the architecture will work with full and rapid reusability, and it's just a question of ironing out the bugs.
• This year SpaceX will make almost 200 upper stages of Falcon 9, and next year it will be over 200.
• Starship (1,2,3): (100,100+,200) tons of payload to orbit with full reusability.
• Starship 3: 9m diameter, 120-140m length
• SpaceX has been increasing the power of drone ships to reduce Falcon 9 turnaround time
• Starship booster will be refuel-able in 30 minutes, so potentially ready to a fly again an hour after launch. In theory could launch every couple hours.
• Falcon 9 reusability is intrinsically limited by architecture to every few days
• Because Starship takes about a day to come back to the launch site, you probably want 5 ships per booster.
• The "slightly stretched" version of Starship is "arguably" V2
• Starlink V3 satellites will be about 7m diameter.
• On launching Starlink soon: "We'll see how
[IFT-4] goes". This year is not about putting Starlink in orbit. It's all about ironing out the Starship design question marks.
• Musk: “The payload for all flights this year is data”
• Biggest questions [pre IFT-4] is "what does it take to get through the high heat of reentry?". "We've got a hot gas seal on the forward flap hinge and one question is: does that seal work? We think it'll work, but it may not work". "We're probably not resilient to the loss of a tile on...the tank portion [of the ship]". The old design is not thought to be resilient to a tile failure, but the new design [with the ablative underneath] is thought to be resilient. If you lose a tile, you need to replace the ablative.
• The tile heat shield was originally estimated to be half the weight of the transpirational cooling design. Given the growth in weight of the heat shield tiles, and the additional weight of the ablative layer, the overall mass of this system may not be much of a difference compared to the estimates for transpirational cooling. Addition advantage of ceramic heat shield is probably for the higher speeds of return from Mars. Overall Musk still thinks the ceramic heat shield will be better than transpiration.
• Continuing to iterate on the tile mounting point. 99% of the time it works well...
• The tile snaps on, and you pretty much have to break the tile to pull it off.
• After the heat shield, the next big step is getting the booster caught by the tower. Then the ship getting caught by the tower.
• Mechazilla is operated immediately after launch so they can tell if there's any damage.
• Musk gave 50-50 chance of ship's heat shield working on IFT-4.
• The oxygen autogeneous pressurization was indeed done by tapping off partially combusted oxygen from the preburner. (See quotes below.)
• Trying to eventually move down to three grid fins from four, but it's not a high priority.
• Several thousand hardware changes between flights.
• Dodd: "Is the V2 [Raptor] the same thing as the LEET (1337) engine?" Musk: "Nah..sorta. I think we will do that at some point, but that's really a total tear-up".
• There is a bit of cooling of the current version of raptor, but not enough to survive being in a hot-gas plasma. That's why it's heavily shielded.
• Musk: "The next-gen raptor engine needs no heat shield. Because it's exposed, it has to have cooling. There's integral cooling circuits throughout all the parts". Dodd: "All throughout the preburner and the gas manifold and everything?". Musk: "Yea." Dodd: "That's being worked on now?" Musk: "We have a design that works. The engine isn't complete."
• Many times they have discussed doing something analogous to cooling aircraft turbine blades.
• The next-gen raptor engine will be a little difficult to service because there are parts that don't have a flange any more and are just welded shut.
• Want to get the thrust of Raptor up to 330-335 metric tons. 10,000 tons thrust at liftoff. Roughly three times the Saturn V. Long term could put 400 tons to orbit non-reusable.
• Tesla motors still used to actuate flaps and grid fins. The engines also gimble electronically. Little to no hydraulics in the vehicle.
• Orbital re-fueling will be easy. It's a lot harder to dock with the space station than with another starship.
• If you're going to the moon, you don't need an orbital depot.
• To land on the moon you need pretty big landing legs to handle uneven ground, unlike Earth where you can land on a pad.
• The next step after landing on the moon is a permanently occupied base on the moon.
• Musk: "[The hot-gas roll thrusters] got clogged with ice. We're not sure how....The location that we're tapping off the engine [to pressurize the LOX tank] is not pure O2. It's got a little bit of water ice... It's Ox-rich gas". Tim Dodd:" So it's incoming off the turbine side?" Musk "Yea. It's got burnt fuel". Dodd: "Wouldn't it have a little bit of C02 in it too then?" Musk: "Yea....We've improved the ice strainers [ice catchers]. We've improved the valves. Something I think we'll do in the future is move to --for critical valves -- series parallel valves. So any one valve failure ... does not take out the ship's ability to orient itself correctly." Dodd: "Are you avoiding doing a more traditional heat exchanger?... I've never heard of an engine using already combusted ...gas... off the pre-burner." Musk: "Yea...We're pressuring the fuel side with gaseous fuel, and the ox side with mostly gaseous oxygen...It affects our max power, especially on the fuel side.... If we turned off autogenous pressurization on the fuel side, we'd actually be able to get more power out of the fuel pump." Dodd: "[Is ice build up what caused the booster shutdown on IFT-3?]" Musk: "Yea, well, we didn't have enough pressure to start the engines...The full answer is quite complicated."
• Expect to be making 1000 starships per year in the long-term. Factory currently under construction is capable of 100 per year, but interior still needs a lot of work.
• Very important in factory design is that you have adjacent stations where each rocket moves from station to station (one-way) and the amount of time spent at each station is roughly the same so that they all advance together.
• At this point Musk is confident the architecture will work with full and rapid reusability, and it's just a question of ironing out the bugs.
• This year SpaceX will make almost 200 upper stages of Falcon 9, and next year it will be over 200.
• Starship (1,2,3): (100,100+,200) tons of payload to orbit with full reusability.
• Starship 3: 9m diameter, 120-140m length
• SpaceX has been increasing the power of drone ships to reduce Falcon 9 turnaround time
• Starship booster will be refuel-able in 30 minutes, so potentially ready to a fly again an hour after launch. In theory could launch every couple hours.
• Falcon 9 reusability is intrinsically limited by architecture to every few days
• Because Starship takes about a day to come back to the launch site, you probably want 5 ships per booster.
• The "slightly stretched" version of Starship is "arguably" V2
• Starlink V3 satellites will be about 7m diameter.
• On launching Starlink soon: "We'll see how
[IFT-4] goes". This year is not about putting Starlink in orbit. It's all about ironing out the Starship design question marks.
• Musk: “The payload for all flights this year is data”
• Biggest questions [pre IFT-4] is "what does it take to get through the high heat of reentry?". "We've got a hot gas seal on the forward flap hinge and one question is: does that seal work? We think it'll work, but it may not work". "We're probably not resilient to the loss of a tile on...the tank portion [of the ship]". The old design is not thought to be resilient to a tile failure, but the new design [with the ablative underneath] is thought to be resilient. If you lose a tile, you need to replace the ablative.
• The tile heat shield was originally estimated to be half the weight of the transpirational cooling design. Given the growth in weight of the heat shield tiles, and the additional weight of the ablative layer, the overall mass of this system may not be much of a difference compared to the estimates for transpirational cooling. Addition advantage of ceramic heat shield is probably for the higher speeds of return from Mars. Overall Musk still thinks the ceramic heat shield will be better than transpiration.
• Continuing to iterate on the tile mounting point. 99% of the time it works well...
• The tile snaps on, and you pretty much have to break the tile to pull it off.
• After the heat shield, the next big step is getting the booster caught by the tower. Then the ship getting caught by the tower.
• Mechazilla is operated immediately after launch so they can tell if there's any damage.
• Musk gave 50-50 chance of ship's heat shield working on IFT-4.
• The oxygen autogeneous pressurization was indeed done by tapping off partially combusted oxygen from the preburner. (See quotes below.)
• Trying to eventually move down to three grid fins from four, but it's not a high priority.
• Several thousand hardware changes between flights.
• Dodd: "Is the V2 [Raptor] the same thing as the LEET (1337) engine?" Musk: "Nah..sorta. I think we will do that at some point, but that's really a total tear-up".
• There is a bit of cooling of the current version of raptor, but not enough to survive being in a hot-gas plasma. That's why it's heavily shielded.
• Musk: "The next-gen raptor engine needs no heat shield. Because it's exposed, it has to have cooling. There's integral cooling circuits throughout all the parts". Dodd: "All throughout the preburner and the gas manifold and everything?". Musk: "Yea." Dodd: "That's being worked on now?" Musk: "We have a design that works. The engine isn't complete."
• Many times they have discussed doing something analogous to cooling aircraft turbine blades.
• The next-gen raptor engine will be a little difficult to service because there are parts that don't have a flange any more and are just welded shut.
• Want to get the thrust of Raptor up to 330-335 metric tons. 10,000 tons thrust at liftoff. Roughly three times the Saturn V. Long term could put 400 tons to orbit non-reusable.
• Tesla motors still used to actuate flaps and grid fins. The engines also gimble electronically. Little to no hydraulics in the vehicle.
• Orbital re-fueling will be easy. It's a lot harder to dock with the space station than with another starship.
• If you're going to the moon, you don't need an orbital depot.
• To land on the moon you need pretty big landing legs to handle uneven ground, unlike Earth where you can land on a pad.
• The next step after landing on the moon is a permanently occupied base on the moon.
• Musk: "[The hot-gas roll thrusters] got clogged with ice. We're not sure how....The location that we're tapping off the engine [to pressurize the LOX tank] is not pure O2. It's got a little bit of water ice... It's Ox-rich gas". Tim Dodd:" So it's incoming off the turbine side?" Musk "Yea. It's got burnt fuel". Dodd: "Wouldn't it have a little bit of C02 in it too then?" Musk: "Yea....We've improved the ice strainers [ice catchers]. We've improved the valves. Something I think we'll do in the future is move to --for critical valves -- series parallel valves. So any one valve failure ... does not take out the ship's ability to orient itself correctly." Dodd: "Are you avoiding doing a more traditional heat exchanger?... I've never heard of an engine using already combusted ...gas... off the pre-burner." Musk: "Yea...We're pressuring the fuel side with gaseous fuel, and the ox side with mostly gaseous oxygen...It affects our max power, especially on the fuel side.... If we turned off autogenous pressurization on the fuel side, we'd actually be able to get more power out of the fuel pump." Dodd: "[Is ice build up what caused the booster shutdown on IFT-3?]" Musk: "Yea, well, we didn't have enough pressure to start the engines...The full answer is quite complicated."
They got the delayed Starlink 10-2 flight away earlier. This is the one that aborted seconds before launch recently. They swapped out the booster to ensure the show goes on. Interestingly they said that one of fairing halves was on its 20th flight. A new record. The booster was “only” on its 11th flight and landed on the drone ship ok.
Falcon Heavy due off 21:16 UTC today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSTtQpYmDtc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSTtQpYmDtc
Edited by MartG on Tuesday 25th June 13:29
98elise said:
I'm planning a trip to florida (hopefully early next year). Where is the best place to view with ample parking? Given the frequency they now fly does it still draw large crowds or is it less busy?
Cocoa Beach is superb, looking across the water with refreshing beverage in hand.There's a bridge - can't remember the name (but if you go back a year or so on this thread I posted it up) that's very cool too, just park up at the foot of the bridge (big car park) cross the road and watch from closer. Saw a night launch there and it was incredible. Cocoa for a daytime launch.
Decent sized crowds whenever I've seen a launch, but not crazy.
Tbh, was even cooler just being at work and going out on the ramp and watching - something about the familiar environment with a rocket plume going up from 40ish miles away was very cool.
Sway said:
98elise said:
I'm planning a trip to florida (hopefully early next year). Where is the best place to view with ample parking? Given the frequency they now fly does it still draw large crowds or is it less busy?
Cocoa Beach is superb, looking across the water with refreshing beverage in hand.There's a bridge - can't remember the name (but if you go back a year or so on this thread I posted it up) that's very cool too, just park up at the foot of the bridge (big car park) cross the road and watch from closer. Saw a night launch there and it was incredible. Cocoa for a daytime launch.
Decent sized crowds whenever I've seen a launch, but not crazy.
Tbh, was even cooler just being at work and going out on the ramp and watching - something about the familiar environment with a rocket plume going up from 40ish miles away was very cool.
Beati Dogu said:
Part 1 of Tim Dodd's latest Starbase tour with Elon has been cleared for release. It was filmed on June 4th, the day before flight test 4:
https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=RtI_Vk56ZWjbySIX
Lots of Starship related stuff in there and the factory is impressively large.
He also says they're building a Falcon 9 upper stage at the rate of one every couple of days. So nearly 200 this year and over 200 next year.
Part 2 active:https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=RtI_Vk56ZWjbySIX
Lots of Starship related stuff in there and the factory is impressively large.
He also says they're building a Falcon 9 upper stage at the rate of one every couple of days. So nearly 200 this year and over 200 next year.
https://youtu.be/InJOlT6WdHc?si=d6CfNRrNXCRHhRjl
98elise said:
I'm planning a trip to florida (hopefully early next year). Where is the best place to view with ample parking? Given the frequency they now fly does it still draw large crowds or is it less busy?
Playalinda beach earlier this year.
Cape Canaveral a couple of years ago,
Forgive the crappy pics, taken from larger videos, and screenshots done on my phone.
Hopefully though gives an idea.
Aborted launch from NASA... 45 seconds , and scrubbed... not happy as no refunds.. hence we go to Playalinda now.
Grey_Area said:
98elise said:
I'm planning a trip to florida (hopefully early next year). Where is the best place to view with ample parking? Given the frequency they now fly does it still draw large crowds or is it less busy?
Playalinda beach earlier this year.
Cape Canaveral a couple of years ago,
Forgive the crappy pics, taken from larger videos, and screenshots done on my phone.
Hopefully though gives an idea.
Aborted launch from NASA... 45 seconds , and scrubbed... not happy as no refunds.. hence we go to Playalinda now.
What are the surrounding roads like pre launch, ie how much extra time would I need to factor in for travel from Orlando
Playalinda roads get closed off around a couple of hours pre-flight.
Otherwise easy to get to.
On the day we were there about 4-500 people all told in differing spots up and down the parking lots and beaches.
We got there real early, and walked to within about 3 miles of the launch site (might have been less) but were then persuaded to move back by the team that manages the beaches etc, it's all parkland owned by NASA iirc, they weren't amused by an Englishman telling them he could get closer as he'd be able to outrun their buggy..
But they were an interesting bunch to talk to about the site etc.
Otherwise easy to get to.
On the day we were there about 4-500 people all told in differing spots up and down the parking lots and beaches.
We got there real early, and walked to within about 3 miles of the launch site (might have been less) but were then persuaded to move back by the team that manages the beaches etc, it's all parkland owned by NASA iirc, they weren't amused by an Englishman telling them he could get closer as he'd be able to outrun their buggy..
But they were an interesting bunch to talk to about the site etc.
hidetheelephants said:
How close can you get on a boat? Do people gather, moor up and break out the tinnies to watch the fireworks?
Exclusion zone. Don't think you'll get any closer in reality, and likely a lot of attention. I've never seen it.I've been lucky enough to be airborne in a piper seminole during a launch. It was made very clear to me that there's 'exclusion zones' where you'll get a slap on the wrist. Some where you'll lose your license.
Then there's the Cape around a launch, where within 30s a F16 will be shooting you out of the sky!
Beati Dogu said:
They swapped out the booster to ensure the show goes on.
This by itself shows the flexibility that landing the boosters gives. Not 100% on the booster? Just switch it to a different one!Watching a bit of a stream ahead of the falcon heavy launch.
While heavy is still a hefty piece of engineering, the starship tower at canaveral just dwarfs the falcon one! Starship must be absolutely ridiculous to see in person!
Starship is unique in how close you can see it when its down at the pad With the state highway running right past it you can get about 500ft from the launch platform. Walk up a nearby sand dune and you can get a better view though:
That's Booster 9 and Ship 25, which launched in November last year for Starship's second integrated flight.
That's Booster 9 and Ship 25, which launched in November last year for Starship's second integrated flight.
Edited by Beati Dogu on Tuesday 25th June 22:27
Well that was fun and double landings will always be cool.
Unrelated, but interesting nonetheless: NASA have awarded SpaceX a ~$850 million contract to deorbit the ISS after it is retired in 2030.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-int...
Unrelated, but interesting nonetheless: NASA have awarded SpaceX a ~$850 million contract to deorbit the ISS after it is retired in 2030.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-int...
Beati Dogu said:
Well that was fun and double landings will always be cool.
Unrelated, but interesting nonetheless: NASA have awarded SpaceX a ~$850 million contract to deorbit the ISS after it is retired in 2030.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-int...
Interesting I wonder what hardware they will develop for that and how it will be done I.e. in sections or as a whole? Unrelated, but interesting nonetheless: NASA have awarded SpaceX a ~$850 million contract to deorbit the ISS after it is retired in 2030.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-int...
Dog Star said:
The second part of Tim Dodd’s YouTube interview with Elon is fascinating - not so much for what he says but for the visuals. It really brings home the vast scale of the thing, even the swathes of concrete and enormous blast walls. It’s deeply impressive.
That's what I took from it, just how tidy the whole area looks now. Gone of the days of early testing in a dusty field by the sea 
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