Starship Test Launch Thursday

[John Hjorth]

On 3/20/2024 at 2:46 AM, Gregmal said:

I’m just generally over it and have given up. The last 4 years(starting with COVID, not Biden) I’ve just come to terms with the fact that the system is unbeatable. It’s not changing. You can only change what you have control over yourself. 
 

Even my great little Northern NJ town that I moved to over a decade ago now…started as probably 60/40 conservative, but the thing is, no one talked about politics. No one really cared or lived with it influencing anything they did. Then we get COVID, and all these shoebox dwelling assholes I guess apparently realized they value some space and not having the government tell them where they’re allowed to go for a walk or shop, and then come out here thinking they’re hardasses with their dumb hate has no home here bumper stickers on their $90k Suburbans and guess what? Now all the red hats come out, we have antivax rallies outside the town square, every board of Ed election is now about tampon dispensers in the boys rooms and what’s available in the libraries….and it’s the same shitshow it is everywhere else I detest. Fuck all these people. 
 

So like a grumpy old man I’m packing my shit and moving to where the only topics are what’s your t-time and how’s the investments looking? Just done with it all.

 

Great read  of a decompression for me early on a cloudy summer Saturday! 

[ValueArb]

Video of SuperHeavy landing in gulf.

 

 

[John Hjorth]

On 3/16/2024 at 8:47 PM, Dalal.Holdings said:

The launch was great. The media spun and even FAA trying to spin it as some sort of failure. Bias against Elon and inability to understand iterative process that SpaceX takes is the culprit.

 

Meanwhile, SpaceX's competitors (Boeing/Lockheed/ULA) are nowhere to be seen in this race...(though the size of their government contracts are orders of magnitude greater)

 

On 3/17/2024 at 10:07 PM, ValueArb said:

The only thing I can say about Elon and Twitter is that he's tweeted a lot of dumb things at times, and I like the community notes feature he added which I think offers the appropriate balance between allowing mostly unrestricted speech on his private property while providing reasoned pushback to misinformation. 

 

That said SpaceX made a pretty big step forward this week with Starship. The major accomplishments that I can see are

 

1) They solved propellent clog problem on SuperHeavy well enough that it was able to do the flip maneuver and hypersonically fly back to his preplanned landing spot.

 

2) They solved the fuel leak that led to the fire on Starship when it dumped fuel in the previous test, and Starship was able to achieve its entire planned sub-orbital trajectory until re-entry.

 

3) They tested the "pez dispensor" door they'll need to use Starship to launch Starlink satellites. 

 

4) Essentially this Starship/SuperHeavy test prototype accomplished everything any other finished commercial launch system does. By putting its last stage into orbit, its basically ready to be used as a fully expendable launch system.

 

5) Tested fuel transfer between tanks (an important requirement for in orbit refueling key to the HLS and other deep space missions), but as yet I haven't seen any confirmation it was successful yet. 

On a more minor accomplishment: the added Starlink terminals sent a lot of incredible footage back of the beginning of re-entry, something we've never been able to see before given how the plasma blanket cuts off radio communications during hypersonic re-entry.

 

Where it fell short of a "perfect" mission

1) Couldn't relight enough engines to soft-land SuperHeavy in the ocean. Likely means that an actual landing attempt is at least two more tests away.

 

2) Had issues controlling attitude in orbit leading to an uncontrolled roll. This is probably why it broke up in re-entry because it wasn't able to keep the heat-shield side facing into the hypersonic torch stream. I'm still a bit surprised by the break up since the stainless steel still should have been fairly robust at handling the heat of re-entry. Makes me wonder if the break-up was caused by the flight termination system triggering because it regarded the roll as out of flight path requirements. I'm also wondering if the roll was caused by the fuel transfer test changing the center of gravity, and if so why the thrusters weren't able to control it, so they might need upgrading.

 

3) Pez dispenser didn't seem to work correctly. Scott Manley noted that the Starship seemed to be air-tight and holding significant atmosphere, which was unplanned and opening the Pez door seemed to release a bunch of gas. If so it might be as simple as drilling some holes in the upper part of Starship's skin.

 

4) Again we don't know if the fuel transfer test worked yet, if it didn't that needs to be addressed.

 

 So most of the things that still aren't working perfectly are only necessary for re-use. Based on payload.coms construction cost estimates, a fully expended Starship/SuperHeavy stack has a construction cost of about $100M including engines so a launch with fuel/pad/launch management barely costs more than that, say $110M, but should be able to put 200 tons into low earth orbit. That's more than double the payload of the SLS at a per launch cost of 1/20th to 1/40th as much. I expect to see SpaceX to launch Starlink satellites on Starship this year as a more detailed test of its capabilities.

 

Once they can land SuperHeavy and Starship, the hardware cost per launch drops from $100M to something like $1M to $5M depending upon how many flights each can be amortized over. Combined with refurbishment/maintenance costs between flights it would probably end up near $10M/flight, which is like a science fiction cost for a 150 ton payload to orbit. And we might get there as soon as the end of the year based on their goal to test prototypes every 2 months this year.

 

Great analysis, - thank you! To me, it's simply mind boggling what SpaceX has been pulling off here!

 

By now - only four test flights with this sucker, and we have more than just the contours of that the concept might end up being both feasible and operational.

[ValueArb]

Theoretically space launch could get as cheap as commercial air travel IF

 

1) 100% reusability was a thing

2) Cadence allowed flight hardware to fly nearly every day.

3) refurbishment was only necessary every few months.

 

If that happened then it’s possible that prices would reach as low as 5x fuel costs, like commercial airlines. So Starship, which is bigger than a A380, could be priced at $5M per flight.
 

Now it’s unlikely we can pack 800 people into a Starship launch. Even if passengers won’t require pressure suits they need more space and heavier seats to deal with both high acceleration and zero gee, but maybe we could fit 250-300 passengers, making ticket costs for orbital flights around $20,000, which would also make large space stations hugely useful. $20k to spend a week or two in orbit seeing incredible sights and experiencing zero gee would be a hugely popular adventure.

 

But to get anywhere near there is going to take decades.

 

1) Starship needs hundreds if not thousands of flights demonstrating it can consistently land safely using retropropulsión before it’s going to be certified for passenger flights. 
 

2) Starship isn’t remotely near its payload target yet, it’s overweight and will need to be lightened (and maybe stretched) over the next few years of development.

 

3) The fastest SpaceX has turned around a Falcon 9 booster is 12 days IIRC. Starship & Raptors have been designed for rapid reuse and minimal refurbishment from the beginning, unlike F9 & Merlin’s, but we still need to see it demonstrated.

 

4) The re-entry tiles still fall off, and flaps nearly burn off.  Less of a problem than it was for Shuttle given Starships steel skin but they need to demonstrate that it’s re-entry shielding has a substantial margin of safety before even astronauts would get on it.

 

Right now starship prototypes are like the DC-1 test articles, they are showing what is possible and working out the kinks. In a couple years the production versions will be like the DC-2, good enough for mass production for a few years, but I’ll be surprised if they get launch costs lower than $20M, let alone launch prices. 
 

But I would not be surprised to see it provide commercial passenger service to orbit in the 2030s, probably at a price of around $200k/seat.

Ultimately it’s likely to be a step on the way to the first “space DC-3”. A version that incorporates everything learned from first decade of Starship launches to improve turnaround, reduce refurbishment and extend service life to get launch costs close to $5M/launch.

 

I expect SpaceX to start retiring now obsolete Falcon 9s next year. SpaceX contracts allow them to shift payloads to Starship, so as soon as it’s consistently landing back at its pad they’ll start using it for payloads. Probably 20-30 launches next year, close to 100 in 2026, and increasing till they are launching daily before end of decade. That will provide a huge number of launches to iteratively improve its safety and performance within a relatively short period.

Edited June 8 by ValueArb

[Dalal.Holdings]

5 hours ago, ValueArb said:

Theoretically space launch could get as cheap as commercial air travel IF

 

1) 100% reusability was a thing

2) Cadence allowed flight hardware to fly nearly every day.

3) refurbishment was only necessary every few months.

 

 

Here's the thing: right now there is only one entity working on these objectives. And BTW, Falcon has launched 58 times so far just this year (or more than 1 launch every 3 days) and it has achieved these 3 in some form already--and it can take people into orbit and to ISS. Starship is the new platform to go further (moon, mars).

 

Lockheed, Boeing have no ambition to develop reusability. Their existence depends on perpetual large government contracts, not cheapness, not reusability. In fact, they don't even need to deliver on time. They can go over budget and way beyond schedule and they will still get paid (in fact, delays get them more revenue). Why they deserve any contracts for space launches is beyond me.

 

Edited June 9 by Dalal.Holdings

[Dalal.Holdings]

 

If these nutjob liberals get their way, the U.S. will get EU style regulation of the space industry

 

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://hoodline.com/2024/09/faa-delays-spacex-starship-launches-from-south-texas-citing-environmental-and-safety-reviews/

 

Quote

These are not only the largest rockets known to mankind but they tend to explode,” said Jared Margolis, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, has raised concerns given its proximity to the environmentally sensitive area of Boca Chica.

 

We have to save the turtles in this corner of Texas...

 

Has anyone "investigated" the environmental impact of all the rocket companies that throw away their rockets after a single use?

 

Someone tell me why the Federal "Aviation" Administration has any say in "environmental" concerns like this one

 

Edited 10 hours ago by Dalal.Holdings