SpaceX (general discussion)

NASASpaceflight has put out a video about the FAA's recently concluded investigation into the IFT-2 flight mishaps:


In this comprehensive video, NSF's Adrian Beil dissects the latest updates from SpaceX and the FAA regarding the Starship's second test flight. We delve into the reasons behind the explosive mishap, the 17 corrective actions proposed by SpaceX, and what this means for the future of space travel. Join us as we break down the FAA's statement, explore the technical mishaps with the Super Heavy Booster and Starship, and analyze the road ahead for SpaceX's ambitious project.
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Ways to reduce slosh
phys.org

Mathematicians discover how to stop sloshing using porous baffles

Studies by applied mathematicians at the University of Surrey are helping to identify ways of reducing how much liquids slosh around inside tanks.
phys.org phys.org

Dr. Matthew Turner, a mathematician at the University of Surrey and expert in fluid dynamics who conducted the research using mathematical modeling, said, "Sloshing liquids can impact safety and efficiency. For example, if a tanker transporting liquids via road stopped suddenly, extreme movement of liquid inside the tanker could move the vehicle forwards, and unstable fuel loads in a space rocket could be catastrophic. Porous baffles inserted within a tank can help stabilize loads and reduce sloshing. Our research helps clarify how many it's worth using."


On hydrogen embrittlement--in case Musk wants high-energy upper stages:
phys.org

Researchers closer to understanding hydrogen's greatest challenge: Embrittlement

Embrittlement is one of the biggest obstacles facing the transition to a global hydrogen economy. A new process uncovered by researchers at the University of Sydney is helping shed light on how to better prevent it.
phys.org phys.org
The researchers found adding the chemical element molybdenum to steel reinforced with metal carbides markedly enhances its ability to trap hydrogen.

This and the new super-titanium is something SpaceX needs to look at.
 
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Did some maths.
Musk wants 1 million tons in LEO per year to sustain a Mars city.
BFR-Starship will fly a maximum of 3 times a day from one OLM orbital launch mount.
That's 1100 flights a year.
At 180 mt per flight, total: 200 000 mt so one-fifth of the objective.
So 5 OLMs could do it.
Except the 1 million tons in their Starships are stranded in LEO.
They each need a 1200 mt propellant refueling.
But Starship tanker is 200 mt.
So 6 refuelings per Starship.
And thus six times more OLMs to do that
So total 30 OLMs.
Can such launch area be built ?
Closest thing is CCAFS & Merritt Island. Which has a comparable number of launch pads.
 
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In 1977 Boeing designed the Space Freighter as a lifter for NASA Space Based Solar Power studies.
Space Freighter was remarquably similar to BFR-Starship, including methalox engines on the first stage.
I dug out SBSP numbers: to compare them to SpaceX Mars effort.

-Initial estimates of the Solar Power Satellite (SPS) system indicate that an operational power generating satellite will weigh about 100 million kilograms.

-The NASA/JSC Scenario ‘B’ identifies a 112 operational satellite total program with an annual installation rate varying between one and seven satellites per year. This demanding scenario will require hundreds of launches of a 400 metric ton payload capability launch vehicle for each satellite installation.

-The NASA Satellite Power System Scenario B – no lunar base nor mining - identified a 112 satellite installations in geosynchronous orbit with an annual installation rate of between 1 and 7 satellites per year.

-An equivalent program of 4 satellites a year over 28 years was selected for transportation system analysis. Recognizing that for a given vehicle system, which can be identified at this time, a 28 year period of operation that neglects technology advancements and potential improved versions would not appear logical. For purposes of amortizing fleet costs, a 14 year operational period was assumed and all costs reflect the program elements through the midpoint of the SPS implementation program.

-A Kennedy Space Center launch site was assumed and a 477 km circular delivery orbit inclined at 31° inclination was selected. Since four satellites are being constructed simultaneously in the equivalent scenano, four’ orbits, all iuclined at 31°, but spaced 90° apart, were selected as the delivery points. Two daily launch opportunities to eack delivery orbit are available with the southerly opportunity about 3 1/3 hours after the northerly launch.

-A vehicle net payload in the neighborhood of 400 metric tons was selected and based on a nominal satellite mass of 100,000 metric tons, an annual launch rate of 3125 and 1875 for GEO and LEO construction, respectively, for mass limited flights results. GEO constriction location requires 12 launches a day based on using a 52 week per year, 5 day a week launch operations schedule. The corresponding rate to support LEO construction is a maximum of 8 launches daily.
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Conclusion: Space Freighter for SBSP was one order of magnitude larger than SpaceX Mars effort.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVYbbWAd2WA&t=39s
 
Such massive launch exercise to sustain Mars colonization, going-on over many years until the red planet get somewhat self-supportable, would have to occur from outside of earth atmosphere to be sustainable. Probably from the moon.

Why would you mess Earth atmosphere when the nearest celestial body able to sustain such cadences is also the closest?
 
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Since you are going to be in an enclosed environment anyway for colonization I think upper atmosphere of Venus will be much more suitable than Mars. Air pressure will be similar, gravity will be similar, breathable air will be a “lighter than air gas” and you can conceivably “grow” your habitat by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
 
TomcatViP said:
Such massive launch exercise to sustain Mars colonization, going-on over many years until the red planet get somewhat self-supportable, would have to occur from outside of earth atmosphere to be sustainable. Probably from the moon.

Why would you mess Earth atmosphere when the nearest celestial body able to sustain such cadences is also the closest?
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Not necessarily. Methane can be produced from atmospheric carbon, and much of that will be burned beyond Earth, so should companies such as Terraform Industries become successful and scale up, Starship launches can have zero to a positive impact on the atmosphere. That said, it is in SpaceX's interest to have at minimum a base for lunar oxygen mining, because that may cut down on the number of Starships launching propellant versus the number that are Marsbound.

Josh_TN said:
No one has even established if humans can reproduce at 1/3 gravity. I think the colonization plans are a little premature.
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It would be nice if someone would at least run some experiments in LEO on such things, but governments have long since abdicated any responsibility, and the corporations interested are only just now spinning up either design or production of hardware that may suit.

siegecrossbow said:
Since you are going to be in an enclosed environment anyway for colonization I think upper atmosphere of Venus will be much more suitable than Mars. Air pressure will be similar, gravity will be similar, breathable air will be a “lighter than air gas” and you can conceivably “grow” your habitat by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
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A big challenge with colonizing the upper atmosphere of Venus is getting to and from orbit. I could conceive of a scenario where a rotating tether allows for dramatically smaller spacecraft to make the transition, but you're still left with the daunting obstacle of deploying a habitat that can somehow, as you say, 'grow' itself to a sufficient size, or deploy one large enough upon entry, for a vehicle that may mass hundreds or the low thousands of tons to land (without destroying your habitat). Then you have to figure out how a Venus colony will raise investment and convince people to move there. And, since this is a SpaceX topic, how would a Venus settlement contribute to SpaceX's goals? One potential option is the large amount of nitrogen the planet has available, which could be scooped out of the atmosphere and sent to Mars. Refueling might be tricky, though, given Venus's paucity of water (which no doubt the colonists will want for themselves).
 
Venus has the same gravity well as Earth for the most part.... something like PROFAC there?

Draw from atmosphere, spiral out using solar electric?
 
There’s no way to sustain life as we know it in the Venusian atmosphere. The water content would make Death Valley seem hospitable.

There are huge moral problems with actively attempting human reproduction in microgravity, but I would think there are various lab animals with enough similarities to build a body of knowledge. One could could start with mice or rats and scale to pigs or primates if that proved successful. But one thing to keep in mind is that such experiments would probably take decades to actually achieve a body of useful knowledge, and still would not describe the human experience anyway: space colonization might be a dead end without being able to establish spin induced artificial gravity. In the Larry Nivens “Know Space” universe, the belters reproduced on confinement asteroid.

Any permanent colonization attempt of mars would be a massive gamble on the human species’ ability to adapt to a much lower gravity, even if all the other harsh environmental factors are mitigated. IMO it is a pipe dream, but I am a fan of the heavy lift infrastructure the dream of mars is building.
 
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Check that thread folks. NASA G. Landis did some amazing calculations related to Venus airships.

Venus settlers would float where Vega 1 and Vega 2 floated, but Landis rejected helium balloons.

He noted that, on Venus, a human-breathable nitrogen/oxygen air mix is a lifting gas.

A balloon containing a cubic meter of breathable air would be capable of hoisting about half a kilogram, or about half as much weight as a balloon containing a cubic meter of helium.
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As you said - Venus is only marginally smaller than Earth, same for density. So their orbital velocities are too close - close enough for chemical SSTO to end screwed on both worlds. Unfortunately.

Hindenburg was 200 000 cubic meters in volume and, according to Landis, on Venus each cubic meter of breathable air could lift half a kilogram. So 100 000 kg : 100 metric tons.
Or 200 mt if they used helium, but they couldn't breath the dirigible gas without speaking like chipmunks or squirrels (and die).
 
Josh_TN said:
Any permanent colonization attempt of mars would be a massive gamble on the human species’ ability to adapt to a much lower gravity, even if all the other harsh environmental factors are mitigated. IMO it is a pipe dream, but I am a fan of the heavy lift infrastructure the dream of mars is building.
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Likewise. I am not much interested in Mars, but the scale of the effort to settle it would be such that a lot of other cool stuff becomes possible. If Starship is half as good as SpaceX intends, we may see a Cambrian explosion in industrial, scientific, and military/civilian efforts in space.

Archibald said:
Check that thread folks. NASA G. Landis did some amazing calculations related to Venus airships.

As you said - Venus is only marginally smaller than Earth, same for density. So their orbital velocities are too close - close enough for chemical SSTO to end screwed on both worlds. Unfortunately.
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I've read his paper. Cool stuff, just difficult to find an economic case for it. Perhaps if someone can ever create, store, and burn metallic hydrogen for a reasonable price that would ease Venus atmosphere access, whether alone or in combination with a tether.
 
Josh_TN said:
There’s no way to sustain life as we know it in the Venusian atmosphere. The water content would make Death Valley seem hospitable.

There are huge moral problems with actively attempting human reproduction in microgravity, but I would think there are various lab animals with enough similarities to build a body of knowledge. One could could start with mice or rats and scale to pigs or primates if that proved successful. But one thing to keep in mind is that such experiments would probably take decades to actually achieve a body of useful knowledge, and still would not describe the human experience anyway: space colonization might be a dead end without being able to establish spin induced artificial gravity. In the Larry Nivens “Know Space” universe, the belters reproduced on confinement asteroid.

Any permanent colonization attempt of mars would be a massive gamble on the human species’ ability to adapt to a much lower gravity, even if all the other harsh environmental factors are mitigated. IMO it is a pipe dream, but I am a fan of the heavy lift infrastructure the dream of mars is building.
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I unfortunately can no longer find the post but someone who has decent chemist background came up with a few equations on how to convert sulfuric acid to water and other byproducts when we had the same discussion a while back.
 
This paints the protesters into a corner in that it actually gives them what they claim to want. Instead, an arsonist started a fire at a Texas Gigafactory. Yeah---real green.
 
Like trying to get *anything* going off the ground at all in/from Texas, launching a rocket propelled vehicle from a place like that (remember the state where JFK was offed, and where the wacko Waco Branch Davidian idiots went out in a self induced fiery blaze?) seems like an *extremely* ill conceived idea. These are just some of the many reasons why on a scale from one to five, Texas truly rates as the *lone* star state.
 
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NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS

GH9YKKwWEAAf7lN


source
https://twitter.com/x/status/1765037578343121372
View: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1765037578343121372
 
publiusr said:
This paints the protesters into a corner in that it actually gives them what they claim to want. Instead, an arsonist started a fire at a Texas Gigafactory. Yeah---real green.
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To put in context
Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin is offline
Some Far-Left maniacs have burn down electricity pylon in area
Leaving Gigafactory and Grunheide Industrypark, also Towns of Grünheide, Köpenick and Erkener without electrical power:
Around 23000 people are affected and commerce of Brandenburg serious disrupted

The group called "Vulkangruppe" claim the arson because:
it targeted the site because of the amount of resources and labour it misuses, and the pollution they produce.
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Also in there E-mail Manifest:
call on every Leftist to destroy and burn every Tesla car in Germany
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the million euro damage let to polemic in German Media and put German government in predicament.
 
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IFT3's FTS has been installed so the flight is only a few days away, from the Space Bucket:


We are only a few days away from Starship’s third integrated test flight as SpaceX completes some of the final pre-launch steps. Just yesterday, for example, we saw the flight termination system explosives moved and installed onto the vehicle. This has always been a great launch indicator as it’s only safe to do so right before an actual launch attempt.
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Looking in the past at both IFT-1 and 2, both launches occurred just days after the FTS was installed. To add to this, even SpaceX has announced that March 14th will be the official launch attempt. Here I will go more in-depth into the recent installation, what else SpaceX needs to complete, the plan for IFT-3, and more.
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Full article here - https://thespacebucket.com/starships-...
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Back home from our Spring Break Road Trip with visits to Starbase the afternoon of March 5th and the follow morning March 6th. Tuesday afternoon was cut short by a seriously thick fog. Here's a few pics from Tuesday afternoon. Booster 10 is on the pad, Starship 28 next to it - these are the pair flying next week. Starship 29 was over on the west side of the launch complex.

We stopped by the airport in Brownsville and saw a 737 on the south ramp - turns out that SpaceX bought a 737-800 about a month ago and we were lucky enough to catch it in Brownsville.

Enjoy the Day! Mark
 

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Weather forecast for Wednesday was fog 'til 10am with a solid clouds the rest of the day. We woke up Wednesday morning to hints of blue thru the clouds and only a light haze. When we got to Starbase, the sun was starting to show up more often than not. Nice to be able to drive onto the beach and access the dunes for better angles and keep the sun behind you. Distance to the launch pad is 600-750 feet from the roadway and from the dunes, about 1,100 feet. That's my son standing on the dunes with the complex behind him. Happy kid for sure! Also note the drone which was flying around the section of S28 - seems to have been surveying the tiles.

Enjoy the Day! Mark
 

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We stopped by the airport in Brownsville and saw a 737 on the south ramp - turns out that SpaceX bought a 737-800 about a month ago and we were lucky enough to catch it in Brownsville.
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No markings whatsoever ? and that greyish livery... looks like the (clandestine) plane of a James Bond supervillain. LMAO.
 
I'll finish with some shots from the Production Site. The Booster was the one we saw in March '22 stacked and it is being disassembled. Not sure on which is which with the Starships. The whole site is so different from what we saw in '22 and even more construction underway. What an amazing place to see and take in....

Enjoy the Day! Mark
 

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Archibald said:
No markings whatsoever ? and that greyish livery... looks like the (clandestine) plane of a James Bond supervillain. LMAO.
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We first thought it was a cargo plane but once we looked up the N#, realized what we had caught...
With some of the previous tracking of Elon's private flights, I can see the reason for the subdued markings but like us,
all you have to do is look it up.

Enjoy the Day! Mark
 
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