News Elon Musk finally got it up. Starship that is.

Doughie99 said:
yes i watched Scott Manleys video as well about yesterday lunchtime. Good vid, and he did a fast edit!
Yeah you can see at one point in the footage that the base of Starship was absolutely taking the brunt of the red plasma. And not designed for that. So they lost attitude control. I am pretty confident they knew by then WHY it lost attitude control -- the Reaction Control Thrusters weren't doing well enough to hold the ship in a heat-shield-to-windward attitude. So all was more or less doomed at that point.

you're right Starship needs to be refueled in Earth orbit before heading off to the moon. So several OTHER Starships ( "tankers") will need to be already in orbit and then they meet up and do a propellant transfer. Methane and Oxygen but mostly Oxygen, as i understand it. Not quite sure how they avoid massive amounts of lost liquid oxygen through boil-off. I guess by orienting the Starship tanker in orbit so it always has the TPS (tiles) facing the sun, and having massive insulation inside the tanker (bit like an RTIC drinking mug - a vacuum between 2 layers of Stainless steel maybe). It's a big issue -- if the LOX boils off..... no use to anyone. Liquid oxygen has to be kept super-cold to be usable as a liquid oxidizer. So many different engineering problems to solve. Solving all these problems will take YEARS to achieve. Artemis III could easily be 5 to 10years away, or even more.
The fuel transfer they were trying yesterday was to move propellant from one on-board tank to another on-board tank. I think they did this by deliberately rotating Starship end over end to settle the liquids towards the ENDS of the ship and then it could be pumped. Cannot pump liquids if they're freely floating around in their tanks, mixed with some gas bubbles (probably nitrogen). They SAID that worked, but they need to review the data.

it was good progress from SpaceX but this whole in-orbit refuelling has never been done between TWO separate craft, and it's very ambitious. But it needs to work as all their lunar and Mars trips need the Starship craft to get to Earth orbit and then be refuelled in orbit (most of the volume will be O2, not so much CH4).
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The stoichiometric ratio of CH4 to O2 is 1 to 2 as far as mole ratio goes. That translates into a 3.6 to one mass ratio. If they can keep it shaded the oxygen would be fairly cold. The shaded side of the space station is around -250 F which is close to the -300F needed for liquid oxygen. Having it under pressure could keep it liquid. The liquid oxygen vacuum insulated cylinders used for flame cutting steel hold up to 350 psi and they can keep oxygen liquid for a couple of weeks. Turning a Starship into a thermos bottle with an inner layer of a tank so they could have a vacuum between the outer hull and the inner tank would add a lot of weight.

Yes, they would have to have some type of inertia to be able to pump liquid in zero gravity. Technically there would still be gravity in orbit but the spacecraft is also falling toward the Earth, negating that. The could spin the ship to create artificial gravity but that would require a rotary connection unless they spin both vessels at the same rate. Would the liquid oxygen spin with the ship or would inertia leave the ship spinning around the liquid oxygen inside it?
 
So basically they "succeeded" in polluting low earth orbit with more trash that could potentially impact the ISS, collide with satellites or hit future space travel. Or fall to earth and hopefully burn up before impact.

By the time we figure out how to get to Mars we won't be able to because we will be parked in by our own orbiting garbage
 
Get To Da Choppa said:
Getting it up is not Elon's problem. Pulling out is

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I think only one of his kids was conceived naturally, they were all IVF or surrogates. He just wants to make sure he's getting more kids out there.
 
ralphc1 said:
The stoichiometric ratio of CH4 to O2 is 1 to 2 as far as mole ratio goes. That translates into a 3.6 to one mass ratio. If they can keep it shaded the oxygen would be fairly cold. The shaded side of the space station is around -250 F which is close to the -300F needed for liquid oxygen. Having it under pressure could keep it liquid. The liquid oxygen vacuum insulated cylinders used for flame cutting steel hold up to 350 psi and they can keep oxygen liquid for a couple of weeks. Turning a Starship into a thermos bottle with an inner layer of a tank so they could have a vacuum between the outer hull and the inner tank would add a lot of weight.

Yes, they would have to have some type of inertia to be able to pump liquid in zero gravity. Technically there would still be gravity in orbit but the spacecraft is also falling toward the Earth, negating that. The could spin the ship to create artificial gravity but that would require a rotary connection unless they spin both vessels at the same rate. Would the liquid oxygen spin with the ship or would inertia leave the ship spinning around the liquid oxygen inside it?
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I think they physically connect the two ships and then spin both of them *longitudinally* forcing the CH4 and O2 towards the ends of both ships.

On the oxygen refrigeration yeah I'd like to see what they do with that. Like you said the part of the ship that is in shadow is gonna be super cold so it's really just a matter of how they handle the part of the ship in sunlight etc. And yes turning it into a giant RTIC capsule would for sure require more weight, double-skin round the liquid payload.
BUT.... it wouldn't require entire ship to be doubleskinned just the liquid payload that they'd be transferring to another Starship.
 
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I see the FAA will join SpaceX to try to determine what went wrong with the booster and Starship. They don't like missions that don't go as planned. Having an objects weighing 100 tons in uncontrolled flight seems to cause some concern. It kind of reminds me of a game we played as children where we would shoot an arrow straight up and try to avoid it when it came down.
 
jeff7b9 said:
So basically they "succeeded" in polluting low earth orbit with more trash that could potentially impact the ISS, collide with satellites or hit future space travel. Or fall to earth and hopefully burn up before impact.

By the time we figure out how to get to Mars we won't be able to because we will be parked in by our own orbiting garbage
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Not to mention the poor inhabitants of Brownsville Texas who are basically subject to Elon’s whims and can’t leave their houses at times while he polluted the shit out of the place.
 
jeff7b9 said:
So basically they "succeeded" in polluting low earth orbit with more trash that could potentially impact the ISS, collide with satellites or hit future space travel. Or fall to earth and hopefully burn up before impact.

By the time we figure out how to get to Mars we won't be able to because we will be parked in by our own orbiting garbage
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I think most of the debris in this case came back to Earth either in the Gulf of Mexico or the Indian Ocean which might be of concern for people living or working in those areas.
 
ralphc1 said:
I think most of the debris in this case came back to Earth either in the Gulf of Mexico or the Indian Ocean which might be of concern for people living or working in those areas.
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A) How do they know that?
Tracking it I assume?

B) Have they learned to control that?
Maybe adjust release points to prevent orbit height/trajectory but ideally still high enough to burn up on reentry...

C) What about attempting to REUSE equipment?
Is that possible and or realistic?
 
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