SpaceX (general discussion)

Dagger said:
Does NASA really need a moon lander as big and heavy as Starship?

In the mean time I read Musk's complete tweet on X.
He says that: "This enables cost per ton to orbital space to be ~10,000% lower than Saturn V"
Somebody should explain to him that something can never be more than 100 % lower than something else.
Hopefully there are no such numerical errors in the design calculations of Starship.

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Who cares about need? SpaceX is building Starship for its own purposes, they’re not going to overoptimize for mass efficiency when they care more about cost efficiency. Plus, there may be other entities operating on the Moon in the future who want to land hundreds, thousands, or more tons of cargo. It’s long past time we get away from the idea that NASA’s needs are the apex of spaceflight ambition.
 
BlueAbyssal said:
Who cares about need? SpaceX is building Starship for its own purposes, they’re not going to overoptimize for mass efficiency when they care more about cost efficiency. Plus, there may be other entities operating on the Moon in the future who want to land hundreds, thousands, or more tons of cargo. It’s long past time we get away from the idea that NASA’s needs are the apex of spaceflight ambition.
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Starship-HLS was offered by SpaceX to NASA in response to a NASA Request for Proposal.
Other companies also submitted proposals but Starship-HLS was selected years ago.
I don't think NASA would select that oversized and overweight HLS design today.

Other entities are not interested in placing hundreds or thousands tons of cargo on the moon. They would be interested in flying a couple of astronauts to the moon, land there, do some exploration and sample collection, and fly back. All in one launch like Saturn V.

Starship is not a "successor to Saturn V", not even if the thrust would be upgraded to three times that of Saturn V as Musk announced in his tweet above. The present design is just a two stage rocket that can only reach LEO in one go, and needs a dozen refuellings to go much further. I'm very disappointed.
 
Dagger said:
Starship-HLS was offered by SpaceX to NASA in response to a NASA Request for Proposal.
Other companies also submitted proposals but Starship-HLS was selected years ago.
I don't think NASA would select that oversized and overweight HLS design today.

Other entities are not interested in placing hundreds or thousands tons of cargo on the moon. They would be interested in flying a couple of astronauts to the moon, land there, do some exploration and sample collection, and fly back. All in one launch like Saturn V.

Starship is not a "successor to Saturn V", not even if the thrust would be upgraded to three times that of Saturn V as Musk announced in his tweet above. The present design is just a two stage rocket that can only reach LEO in one go, and needs a dozen refuellings to go much further. I'm very diss
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Dagger said:
Starship-HLS was offered by SpaceX to NASA in response to a NASA Request for Proposal.
Other companies also submitted proposals but Starship-HLS was selected years ago.
I don't think NASA would select that oversized and overweight HLS design today.

Other entities are not interested in placing hundreds or thousands tons of cargo on the moon. They would be interested in flying a couple of astronauts to the moon, land there, do some exploration and sample collection, and fly back. All in one launch like Saturn V.

Starship is not a "successor to Saturn V", not even if the thrust would be upgraded to three times that of Saturn V as Musk announced in his tweet above. The present design is just a two stage rocket that can only reach LEO in one go, and needs a dozen refuellings to go much further. I'm very disappointed.
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Sorry Dagger, but seriously your bias is verging on the ridiculous. It's not for SpaceX to impress you obviously. Putting that aside, this system enables the major cost of getting hardware to the moon or anywhere else for that matter to be several orders of magnitude lower. Have you soon a Saturn V in reality? I've seen two, and you cannot realistically even imagine the value/cost sunk when one of those babies was launched, all to take practically the lowest amount of mass possible to get men on the moon. Starship is a whole other ballgame, and NASA couldn't even have dared to have the temerity to ask for it directly in their plans even if it's what they would dream of. Try to put aside your rage against your views on the system and recognise that's it's becoming reality that it will exist as a fully functional system that will rewrite the rules for the next 30 years.
 
Dagger said:
Starship-HLS was offered by SpaceX to NASA in response to a NASA Request for Proposal.
Other companies also submitted proposals but Starship-HLS was selected years ago.
I don't think NASA would select that oversized and overweight HLS design today.

Other entities are not interested in placing hundreds or thousands tons of cargo on the moon. They would be interested in flying a couple of astronauts to the moon, land there, do some exploration and sample collection, and fly back. All in one launch like Saturn V.

Starship is not a "successor to Saturn V", not even if the thrust would be upgraded to three times that of Saturn V as Musk announced in his tweet above. The present design is just a two stage rocket that can only reach LEO in one go, and needs a dozen refuellings to go much further. I'm very disappointed.
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wrong. NASA is worry about cost and using its own SLS.
The other proposals are not close and none could do the all in one launch. they were just landers.
 
Byeman said:
wrong. NASA is worry about cost and using its own SLS.
The other proposals are not close and none could do the all in one launch. they were just landers.
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Even that isn't a reasonable argument. It's Congress that effectively drives NASA to go to SLS route in order to continue with the Shuttle era solution sub systems, at least that's my take.
 
Dagger said:
Starship-HLS was offered by SpaceX to NASA in response to a NASA Request for Proposal.
Other companies also submitted proposals but Starship-HLS was selected years ago.
I don't think NASA would select that oversized and overweight HLS design today.
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Blue Origin's original proposal was unaffordable, and Dynetics's was impossible. SpaceX also had the best technical scores. My guess is that NASA would still pick SpaceX. 'Oversized' and 'overweight' are not engineering terms; you may believe it's too big, but what matters is if it works and is cost-effective.

Dagger said:
Other entities are not interested in placing hundreds or thousands tons of cargo on the moon. They would be interested in flying a couple of astronauts to the moon, land there, do some exploration and sample collection, and fly back. All in one launch like Saturn V.
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I can think of at least three companies who, if they're able to pay for it, collectively will need thousands of tons of cargo delivered to the Moon. Even Artemis, narrow and blinkered as it is, wants to do more long-term than repeating the Apollo missions. So yes, other entities are interested.

Dagger said:
Starship is not a "successor to Saturn V", not even if the thrust would be upgraded to three times that of Saturn V as Musk announced in his tweet above. The present design is just a two stage rocket that can only reach LEO in one go, and needs a dozen refuellings to go much further. I'm very disappointed.
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If your criteria for success are: must be almost completely thrown away; must be unaffordable for any practical program; must have little margin for error, no, it isn't a successor to Saturn V. If you're disappointed, I suggest reframing what you think space is for. As far as I'm concerned, it isn't for small-minded, short-term prestige and geopolitics.
 
FighterJock said:
One second of aborting first catch? It looked like all things went okay when I watched it, obviously things went differently behind the scenes and somone had their fingers on the abort button just in case.
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Wasn't a human doing the aborting, they had an escalating problem that was one second away from tripping a pre-defined limit and forcing an abort when the catch happened.
 
BlueAbyssal said:
Blue Origin's original proposal was unaffordable, and Dynetics's was impossible. SpaceX also had the best technical scores. My guess is that NASA would still pick SpaceX. 'Oversized' and 'overweight' are not engineering terms; you may believe it's too big, but what matters is if it works and is cost-effective.


I can think of at least three companies who, if they're able to pay for it, collectively will need thousands of tons of cargo delivered to the Moon. Even Artemis, narrow and blinkered as it is, wants to do more long-term than repeating the Apollo missions. So yes, other entities are interested.


If your criteria for success are: must be almost completely thrown away; must be unaffordable for any practical program; must have little margin for error, no, it isn't a successor to Saturn V. If you're disappointed, I suggest reframing what you think space is for. As far as I'm concerned, it isn't for small-minded, short-term prestige and geopolitics.
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I am curious who those three companies are, but most interested entities will be countries that only for prestige want to put their astronauts and flag on the moon, whether we like it or not.

You may have missed my point.

It was Musk/SpaceX who claimed in the past that Starship was the successor of Saturn V. Sadly it isn't.

It is Musk/SpaceX that now claims that in a year or so Starship will be three times as powerful as Saturn V.
If that is so then why can't SpaceX come up with a smaller Starship-HLS that can be launched in one go to the moon?
That may require an expendable stage to be inserted between Heavy Booster and smaller Starship-HLS, but so what?
Falcon 9 uses an expendable second stage but that does not prevent it from achieving a high launch rate at low cost.

Despite being attacked by the usual suspects I had the last laugh about the triangles https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/spacex-general-discussion.13774/post-669913
and about Reaction Engines https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...bre-engine-skylon-spaceplane.2455/post-723214
and am confident that SpaceX will change their monstrously huge (as Scott Manley called it) HLS design which will then again put a big smile on my face.
 
Dagger said:
It was Musk/SpaceX who claimed in the past that Starship was the successor of Saturn V. Sadly it isn't.
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To make it clear Starship is NOT Saturn V.
The Saturn V was build for Apollo program as expendable launch rocket.
It was technological new territory, in every aspect.
Saturn V was killed by political decision, even before Neil Armstrong put his feet on Moon.
The lesson learned with Saturn V was used on other Rockets.

The Starship is full reusable Launch system for LEO, GTO, Moon and Mars
It also technological new territory, use of Steel, Raptor engines that burn Methalox.
Build by private company, who don't care about political decision.
The lesson learned with Starship is copy by China, India and other private Launch companies...
(yes Falcon 9 play also roll at copycats, eh other private Launch companies)

Only from Payload and capacity is Starship could be consider as successor of Saturn V.
 
Dagger said:
I am curious who those three companies are, but most interested entities will be countries that only for prestige want to put their astronauts and flag on the moon, whether we like it or not.
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Starpath Space, Interlune, and Argos Space are among them. The rest of your contention is unprovable.
Dagger said:
You may have missed my point.

It was Musk/SpaceX who claimed in the past that Starship was the successor of Saturn V. Sadly it isn't.
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I got your point.
Dagger said:
It is Musk/SpaceX that now claims that in a year or so Starship will be three times as powerful as Saturn V.
If that is so then why can't SpaceX come up with a smaller Starship-HLS that can be launched in one go to the moon?
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They could, but it wouldn’t be worth it. That would consume time, money, and resources better spent on SpaceX’s primary goal, which is Mars. It also isn’t worth it because they don’t want to expend the majority of their hardware.
Dagger said:
That may require an expendable stage to be inserted between Heavy Booster and smaller Starship-HLS, but so what?
Falcon 9 uses an expendable second stage but that does not prevent it from achieving a high launch rate at low cost.
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Money, time, resources, none are infinite. Starship is intended to be cheaper and launch more often than F9. Are you asking in good faith, or are you a troll?
Dagger said:
Despite being attacked by the usual suspects I had the last laugh about the triangles https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/spacex-general-discussion.13774/post-669913
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You haven’t. As Byeman noted, it’s an iterative design.
Dagger said:
and about Reaction Engines https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...bre-engine-skylon-spaceplane.2455/post-723214
and am confident that SpaceX will change their monstrously huge (as Scott Manley called it) HLS design which will then again put a big smile on my face.
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Reaction Engines is unrelated to SpaceX in any way, and numerous people have predicted their eventual demise for quite a while now. You’re not unique, much as you may wish to be. You’re confident, but you’ll likely end up very disappointed. There are many more reasons for SpaceX to adapt their basic Starship design as they’re doing than to develop a new, smaller vehicle. They don’t share your value system.
 
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Dagger said:
Starship is not a "successor to Saturn V", not even if the thrust would be upgraded to three times that of Saturn V as Musk announced in his tweet above. The present design is just a two stage rocket that can only reach LEO in one go, and needs a dozen refuellings to go much further. I'm very disappointed.
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Present design needs refuels to launch with its full LEO payload with full dV of Starship, in one go. Which is an equivalent of at least a dozen of normal superheavy launchers (apollo/artemis lunar vehicles and their dV are, mildly speaking, below 100...200t, as is their effective volume).
If the goal is to launch a Saturn/Artemis-like staged system, it will be able to do so the moment there is a proper payload fairing door.
 
Dagger said:
Other entities are not interested in placing hundreds or thousands tons of cargo on the moon.
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Other companies, even government agencies, would most likely laugh at that prospect because the technology does not currently exist to make it affordable or viable.
In my experience once a capability exists and is demonstrated, imaginations open up rather quickly to new financial realities.

I personally have thought that Starship would be most useful prepositioning fuel and supplies into orbit for smaller dedicated landers, be it Mars or the Moon. But Musk and SpaceX have bigger dreams (and a bigger budget) than I. If they make it work, a market will open up.
 
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Dagger said:
It was Musk/SpaceX who claimed in the past that Starship was the successor of Saturn V. Sadly it isn't.
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That is blatantly wrong. A "successor" does not have to be the same or or bigger than the predecessor. As an HLV, the Starship is the successor to the Saturn V. As a single use all in one launch vehicle for flag and footprints missions, it is not.

Anyways, the Starship's main purpose is to reduce cost per pound to LEO and not to lift the most pounds to LEO. Lowest cost is better than the most payload to orbit.

Starship can put more payload into LEO for less cost than the Saturn V. That is the point of Starship.
 
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Dagger said:
The present design is just a two stage rocket that can only reach LEO in one go, and needs a dozen refuellings to go much further. I'm very disappointed.
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It is a two stage fully reusable launch vehicle, whose second stage can be used as a tanker, lander, stand alone spacecraft, etc. It could fly high energy two stage missions like the Falcon 9, Atlas V, etc if they wanted to expend the second stage.,
 
TomcatViP said:
Personally, I think that there is much more here than deorbit a station right after it was deemed non-operational as if it was an anonymous piece of industrial junk. The ISS is a symbol of international cooperation and shows the hard work we've put into our space endeavour.
Using it as a demo for a responsible sustainable space would be a great occasion.

Then there is the timing. Why would you spend such amount of money now with a risky technical project when you can expect future Space operations to be able to tackle that problem much more easily, and at a bargain. Raise a budget and save it for the next generations to be able to do it (see it as a time capsule). In 100 year, we will have mass transfer in and out of orbit on a massive scale regarding today and the ISS would be seen as not much but an average daily load to move*.


hence, IMOHO, what would be more rational should be:
1. Demo a process (deorbit a piece of ISS valuable for preservation)
2. Do that as a multi-national competition/challenge to nurture an economy around it
3. Raise the rest on a holding orbit step by step (1000 year is too costly in term of fuel? Well, raise it for 20/50 year and wait to see what kind of actors and tech emerge meanwhile).
4. Contain it in space for long "on-orbit storage"

The picture around orbit congestion, debits etc.. can only change regarding the situation we know today. What best that an epic international gigantic space station to empower the forces and endeavour to make near-earth orbit sustainable*?

*Is that really exaggerated?
(Edited)
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Well, I am not alone on that anymore:

View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M7JS20U4s3I?feature=share
 
Keeping the ISS in orbit would be expensive. Regular reboostings would be required, or one massive boost to put it in higher orbit. But which orbit? At 1000 km you have a lot of space debris to damage the station, at higher orbit you're in the van Allen belts with far more radiation than in LEO.

Keeping the ISS in orbit means you keep a source of space debris in orbit. When the ISS is no longer able to maneuver to avoid debris, one strike would produce massive pollution of the orbital plane it's in.

The station would have to be passivated. Tanks vented, atmosphere vented, electrical systems switched off. That means no more power to orient the station or keep it from tumbling. A tumbling station is near impossible to recover.
Without thermal management, every component on the station undergoes thermal cycling every 90 minutes (or however long the orbit is going to be). This kills the electronics.

Pretty soon, all you'll have is 400 tons of fatigued metal, useless for anything more than scrap.
 
Once deserted, ISS can be paired with a long term energy generation device, like an atomic battery. Voyager vehicle have been there for longer.
I understand the cons, but it could be an interesting test bench for long duration travel as we will invariably experience at one time or another.
 
TomcatViP said:
Once deserted, ISS can be paired with a long term energy generation device, like an atomic battery. Voyager vehicle have been there for longer.
I understand the cons, but it could be an interesting test bench for long duration travel as we will invariably experience at one time or another.
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No, still wonn't provide attitude control. Voyager still uses thrusters for that.
It has no use as bench test because it will continually require resources to maintain it to keep from being a debris generator.
Other objects that already exist and have been in space longer can be used for research instead.
 
Enough with the childish bickering my multiple members.
As already stated:
If some of you cannot discuss facts, but just start a quarrel, then, please, use the ignore button, or go on via PM !
But don't bother the other participants !

Further occurrences will result in warnings and potential thread posting bans.
 
Hobbes said:
Keeping the ISS in orbit would be expensive. Regular reboostings would be required, or one massive boost to put it in higher orbit. But which orbit? At 1000 km you have a lot of space debris to damage the station, at higher orbit you're in the van Allen belts with far more radiation than in LEO.

Keeping the ISS in orbit means you keep a source of space debris in orbit. When the ISS is no longer able to maneuver to avoid debris, one strike would produce massive pollution of the orbital plane it's in.

The station would have to be passivated. Tanks vented, atmosphere vented, electrical systems switched off. That means no more power to orient the station or keep it from tumbling. A tumbling station is near impossible to recover.
Without thermal management, every component on the station undergoes thermal cycling every 90 minutes (or however long the orbit is going to be). This kills the electronics.

Pretty soon, all you'll have is 400 tons of fatigued metal, useless for anything more than scrap.
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Put ion boosters on it and gradually raise orbit over a few decades.
 
siegecrossbow said:
Put ion boosters on it and gradually raise orbit over a few decades.
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Not feasible. Propellant for operation of ion engines on the ISS for decades is an unheard of amount. How does it get theref?
Anyways, still need hypergolic propellant for attitude control. And what organization with what money is going to still monitor and control it during these "few decades"?
 
Hobbes said:
Keeping the ISS in orbit would be expensive. Regular reboostings would be required, or one massive boost to put it in higher orbit. But which orbit? At 1000 km you have a lot of space debris to damage the station, at higher orbit you're in the van Allen belts with far more radiation than in LEO.

Keeping the ISS in orbit means you keep a source of space debris in orbit. When the ISS is no longer able to maneuver to avoid debris, one strike would produce massive pollution of the orbital plane it's in.

The station would have to be passivated. Tanks vented, atmosphere vented, electrical systems switched off. That means no more power to orient the station or keep it from tumbling. A tumbling station is near impossible to recover.
Without thermal management, every component on the station undergoes thermal cycling every 90 minutes (or however long the orbit is going to be). This kills the electronics.

Pretty soon, all you'll have is 400 tons of fatigued metal, useless for anything more than scrap.
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Anyone got any ideas about how to boost this into a higher orbit - ideas that take into account the structural strengths of the long sections, the joints between sections, etc?



iss027e036685.jpg
 
BlackBat242 said:
Anyone got any ideas about how to boost this into a higher orbit - ideas that take into account the structural strengths of the long sections, the joints between sections, etc?
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A few dozen draco thrusters and a really big propellant tank would be the only solution that woukd be availablein time. A similar system to what is planned to deorbit the station. The thrusters will give a gentle acceleration but they can run for an hour to raise the orbit.

Impulse Space with their Helios system will probably handle jobs like this in the future. Their first version of Helios is designed to fit in Falcon 9 to take large satellites to GEO. I expect Impulse Space to offer a scaled up version that is compatible with Starship for the future Moon cargo mission. A single Starship launch from Earth can arrive at LEO and then deploy the large Helios on a one way mission to send 50 ton of payload to Lunar Gateway. The Starship is then reused.

Using Starship to go to Lunar Gateway would require a dozen refueling tankers to refill the Starship in Earth orbit before it heads to the moon. The one Starship might only be able to deliver 200 ton of payload with over a dozen Earth Starship launches. Not as cost effective as 50 ton with only one launch.
 
BlackBat242 said:
Anyone got any ideas about how to boost this into a higher orbit - ideas that take into account the structural strengths of the long sections, the joints between sections, etc?



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You could use a Lunar Gateway PPE module with any required modifications to raise its' orbit, perform orbit maintenance and to keep the ISS stable.
 

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