Thread: SpaceX - On to Mars

It's great, but also a bit sad that around the end of my lifetime there will be no real new places for humans to go to for hundreds if not thousands of years, until there are massive advances in science and some sort of teleportation or wormhole-esque command of space and time is mastered. Or very, very fast spaceships that have very, very big ceramic brakes. Mars, perhaps Ceres. Then that's about it for a few centuries until we master the art of beaming people to places or deepfreeze and thawing them.

One of my daughters works for Space X and is in Hawthorne for the launches. She said today the company is very happy with the 3rd launch and had gained valuable telemetry from the loss.

Betty she sent me these figures to show why Space X prefers to lose spacecraft. Simply because its a cheap way to learn.

" NASA's new rocket, the SLS or Artemis, is over $4B per launch, so it isn't even close. SpaceX's new rocket Starship will be the cheapest yet at about $30M for a huge payload capacity. It is completely reusable, which brings cost way down."

Originally Posted by Bettyboo

^ we will see... "Livable permanent spaces/environments" on the moon or mars seem very far off to me. &, I don't trust Musk with anything.


Edit to add: just watched that video, and errm, well, nobody will be riding that design anytime soon.

The final part, re-entry, the ship successfully lost 2% of the required speed loss and at no point was under control. There may well be many positives, but there's a long way a lot of $$$ to be spent before it works fully as designed, imho.

Well I hope to live for another 30 years, so will presumably see people walk on Mars. Possibly have some sort of moon base, and that will be about it. Humans will probably have some sort of Mars base in the next 100 years or less. After that, there's Ceres, and not really another place to land on for the first time for a long, long time after that. Barring landing on asteroids that come nearby.

Originally Posted by aging one

One of my daughters works for Space X and is in Hawthorne for the launches. She said today the company is very happy with the 3rd launch and had gained valuable telemetry from the loss.

Betty she sent me these figures to show why Space X prefers to lose spacecraft. Simply because its a cheap way to learn.

" NASA's new rocket, the SLS or Artemis, is over $4B per launch, so it isn't even close. SpaceX's new rocket Starship will be the cheapest yet at about $30M for a huge payload capacity. It is completely reusable, which brings cost way down."

You may well be right, I simply don't know. I would suggest that they'll be a fair few tests before they get to those "completely reusable" rockets, and I'd also suggest the actual cost will never be close to US$30 million per rocket...

I do know that I don't trust Musk and his discourse.

But, on the positive side, for folks interested in space travel and the such it's interesting times.

What surprised me about the reentry was the sheer number of heat times flying off.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

NASA schedule presently has astronauts flying on Starship to Moon landing in 2026.

A wild guess would be that the testing should be done by then....then.

2 years + !

Hmm

Anyway, Good Luck

Originally Posted by Bettyboo

Edit to add: just watched that video, and errm, well, nobody will be riding that design anytime soon.

I have just finished reading Isaacson's biography of Musk. It is a good read.

Musk has something called The Algorithm that he applies to his projects

Which includes things like 'question every requirement', 'Delete as much as you can', 'If you don't end up re-adding at least 10% of what you deleted then you did not delete enough.' -to make sure money is not wasted on non-essentials

One of the principles he uses in SpaceX is to not be afraid to fail and crash. He says you learn more from crashing and trying again than from playing safe and being cautious in design. And you also end up with the minimal and optimal solution design.

It seems like he has made the biggest leaps in the Billionaires rocket club so his design philosophy seems to work.

Originally Posted by Looper

It seems like he has made the biggest leaps in the Billionaires rocket club so his design philosophy seems to work.

And then comes the human factor, real Astronauts, and his philosophy will meet some opposition

Originally Posted by Looper

I have just finished reading Isaacson's biography of Musk. It is a good read.

Musk has something called The Algorithm that he applies to his projects

Which includes things like 'question every requirement', 'Delete as much as you can', 'If you don't end up re-adding at least 10% of what you deleted then you did not delete enough.' -to make sure money is not wasted on non-essentials

One of the principles he uses in SpaceX is to not be afraid to fail and crash. He says you learn more from crashing and trying again than from playing safe and being cautious in design. And you also end up with the minimal and optimal solution design.

It seems like he has made the biggest leaps in the Billionaires rocket club so his design philosophy seems to work.

A great philosophy for making profit in manufacturing. Not so sure that it works where other issues (i.e. saving lives) are very important. Time will tell...

The worry I'd have is that some of these cost cutting measures will be vital down the line, put in place by knowledgeable designers. But, you'd hope he doesn't have ultimate control over all of these decisions; some engineers and long-term strategists have a voice (that's listened to).

Originally Posted by helge

And then comes the human factor, real Astronauts, and his philosophy will meet some opposition

For the end product he is extremely cautious, especially with humans involved. There was an explosion of the Dragon capsule on a ground test that found a previously unknown hazard. That test was not required or paid for by NASA. NASA had okayed that design already, when SpaceX found the flaw. The tested situation would very likely never have occured in real flights so would never have been detected, never have caused casualties. They did the test anyway out of an abundance of caution.

About Starship HLS, the vehicle that will land on the Moon. NASA contracted a demo mission without crew ahead of the first crew landing. For whatever reason NASA did not contract for that test vehicle to relaunch after landing on the Moon. SpaceX added that requirement on their own expense because they think without relaunch the test is not sufficient.

Edit: SpaceX has a record of over 200 Falcon 9 launches and booster landings without a mission loss for a reason.

The Luddite haters and their inferior dna will be left on planet Earth to rot and disappear.
Carrion.

Originally Posted by Texpat

The Luddite haters and their inferior dna will be left on planet Earth to rot and disappear.

Or use more mellow wording.

"The meek will inherit the Earth"

Yesterday was a static fire of the next Starship. Launch hopefully soon. SpaceX is pressing hard for an increased launch cadence. But they need to fix the problems with flight 3. SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell said they want to land both the Booster and the orbital Starship this year. Very agressive goal, I have some doubt. Think, at least Starship successful landing will slip into 2025.

YouTube video with many repeats of the six engine static fire. First the 3 sea level engines fire, then the vac engines join in. The vac engines do have some preparation done to be able to fire at sea level. Only possible with full throttle, lower thrust setting would destroy them in the dense atmosphere.

After the very successful launch of IFT-4 Elon Musk announced they will attempt to catch the booster on the next, upcoming flight.

An animation on how Starship Booster is intended to land. An animation not done by SpaceX. But Elon Musk answered to the post by confirming that they plan to do this next flight.


https://twitter.com/DimaZeniuk/statu...47261804744913

There are 2 new YouTube videos by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. He tours Boca Chica with Elon Musk. The first video is about the new Starship factory. It is very impressive. Huge, built for mass production of Starships. As it is, or is soon going to be, it can procuce 100 Starships a year. Of the most massive Super Heavy Lift rocket existing. It includes info about the Raptor engine, the worlds most advanced rocket engine by far. Version 3 of the engine is in the works, will begin testing maybe next week.




The second part is about the launch site. Lots of upgrades and they are building a second, improved launch pad. Release of this video is expected tomorrow. I will post the link then.

The second part of this interview is now public. Some nice info on the launch site and on the last, very successful Starship flight.

Also a few infos on how SpaceX decision making works. The engineering team was of the opinion, that the launch mount, the ring that holds the Starship stack before launch needs a complete redesign. Elon Musk was not sure about it but decided if this is what they think, it will be a complete redesign. Another item Elon Musk pushed, is relocate the forward flaps on Starship, so it is safer from burning through during reentry. If you have seen the video of IFT-4, that's the flap that became red hot and disintegrated. The engineering team thought, this is not a present priority, but Elon made the decision, it is a priority and needs to be done ASAP.

I see now, that development will take a few years longer than I hoped for but things are moving forward quite well.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

I see now, that development will take a few years longer than I hoped for but things are moving forward quite well.

Originally Posted by helge

Originally Posted by Takeovers
NASA schedule presently has astronauts flying on Starship to Moon landing in 2026.

A wild guess would be that the testing should be done by then....then.

2 years + !

Hmm

Anyway, Good Luck

Nothing wrong with a bit of optimism


(if I can ask? ; why is this thread so heavily modded ? )

I was thinking more of Mars. Moon landing in 2026 may still be possible. I think, at least the demo mission with no crew will happen then. If NASA is ready by then, is another question. Many of those who are believed to be experts, guess the crew landing will not be earlier than 2028. I am sure, SpaceX will be ready then.

Elon Musk has now announced Raptor 3. A much upgraded version of Raptor. Just see this picture showing the 3 versions.



All of that piping was put internal during manufacturing or eliminated. There was never such a clean rocket engine. Except possibly some very small simple engines. This is the most advanced engine ever developed.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1819597689283121225

The amount of work required to simplify the Raptor engine, internalize secondary flow paths and add regenerative cooling for exposed components was staggering.


As a result Raptor 3 doesn’t require any heat shield, eliminating heat shield mass & complexity, as well as the fire suppression system.


It is also lighter, has more thrust and has higher efficiency than Raptor 2.


Truly, a work of art.

They used continuous engine numbering for version 1 and 2. They restart counting with 1 for the new version. This is the version that will be mass manufactured and used in the future. Though of course there will be ongoing improvements.

TO, do you know when they're going to fly the Raptor 3?

Not exactly. Starship builds are shifting from version 1 to version 2. Prototypes of parts version 2 are at the new factory, getting ready for tests. Tank tests, pressure tests. Engine tests after that. At a guess, version 2 will use Raptor 3. The booster will remain version 1 a little longer, with Raptor 2.

It is all in flow, constantly changing. There is no clear info on all of the details. Quite possible, even nobody at SpaceX knows exactly as well.