Steel is cheap. Rapid prototypying, mass production of airframes and engines, no pilot onboard... and Musk now has close from $200 billion in his pockets. He can afford it. And he will charge ahead no matter what.
I don't think Space-X really fits into a discussion of inefficient rocket development. They've achieve revolutionary breakthroughs that eluded government agencies with much larger budgets for decades.@Moose :
I might get frustrated watching such waste of capital but I would think that logic would dictate to go back to small scale demonstrator: If the belly flop pause problem with the fuel, pump and engines, there is nothing that would be done at a smaller scale that wouldn't represent what is happening for real.
Similitudes and flows mechanics (the art of scaling down a process that would still be representative) is not sciences fictions. It has been bread and butter for aerospace since the Wright Brothers and even the Naca.
It won't prevent them to run in parallel their test for re-entry and still opening their flight domain (having an explosion diminish in effect the span of knowledge gained per flight).
My 2 cents only.
I might get frustrated watching such waste of capital...
logic would dictate to go back to small scale demonstrator:
To try and correctly copy and scale the ullage gas ingestion, propellant flow behaviour, including at bends and intersections, heat transfer and temperatures throughout the tanks and plumbing, etc would cost a not-insignificant amount. Producing a sub-scale vehicle would also require new tooling and new launch facilities.I underdtand all the concerns (or lack of) expressed here but once again, they can still build Starships and test them in parallel, avoiding the problematic of the belly flop meanwhile to concentrate on re-entry for example.
Tanks are scalable
Structure is scalable and not part of the problem hence simplified and representative or more rigid should be doable
Plumbing is scalable
Engine can be simulated at pump level (compress neutral gas) and a single raptor fitted instead of a pack of 3 (nbr of engines involved in the belly flop).
So you could make a mini-Starship with a single Raptor engine, simulated trio of engines and smaller tanks in probably a 2meter (6ft) diameter rocket per 18 meter high (based on Starship size of 9m (27ft) in diameter and 55m(60ft) length certainly in much less time and money that it takes for a full scale Starship.
That's before any similitudes techniques are applied.
I underdtand all the concerns (or lack of) expressed here but once again, they can still build Starships and test them in parallel, avoiding the problematic of the belly flop meanwhile to concentrate on re-entry for example.
Tanks are scalable
Structure is scalable and not part of the problem hence simplified and representative or more rigid should be doable
Plumbing is scalable
Engine can be simulated at pump level (compress neutral gas) and a single raptor fitted instead of a pack of 3 (nbr of engines involved in the belly flop).
So you could make a mini-Starship with a single Raptor engine, simulated trio of engines and smaller tanks in probably a 2meter (6ft) diameter rocket per 18 meter high (based on Starship size of 9m (27ft) in diameter and 55m(60ft) length certainly in much less time and money that it takes for a full scale Starship.
That's before any similitudes techniques are applied.
You mean like the kind that takes a decade to build a "new" rocket out of existing parts and not fly? That kind of "sane" engineering?They are churning them out just to be blown up like heretics thrown in the pyre during the Middle Ages...
Did they lost faith in sane engineering?
@Moose :
I might get frustrated watching such waste of capital
@sferrin : Get that. Good point.
Hopper was largely about just flight testing Raptor (I believe Starhopper's first static fire was the first time a Raptor had been operated in a vertical orientation).I understand. But we are not at day one. Structurally, Starship is sound (it survived all the flight just being blown up after hard touchdowns). So it's not about scaling it down but building a representative test model.
Also, with a single engine, it's all the plumbing that are actually installed on Starship that could be mounted on the model.
Notice that this is what earlier test were all about (Hopper).
You mean like the kind that takes a decade to build a "new" rocket out of existing parts and not fly? That kind of "sane" engineering?They are churning them out just to be blown up like heretics thrown in the pyre during the Middle Ages...
Did they lost faith in sane engineering?
There is point hereLike what I'm talking about is - when Starship starts using its header tanks, and you have LOX flowing through 50m of piping from the nose of the vehicle, all the way down to the LOX manifold and engines, how far down the piping does helium or gaseous oxygen get? How does the heat transfer through the 50m of piping affect recondensing of gaseous oxygen? Down at the LOX manifold (which is ~3m wide or ~9m wide if you include all the piping attached to it), how does engine vibration affect the piping and propellant - are there resonant frequencies being achieved in the piping that cause propellant cavitation?
It's my understanding that the LOX header feed line is already full of LOX (and probably some O2 gas) at take-off, as this feed line is also used to fill up the header tank prior to launch. Even if I'm wrong and that feed line gets drained during ascent, we do know that the LOX header tank does get opened up during the descent, which would allow for some time for gases to settle. Even if things do happen to be relatively calm during descent however, once the engines start up and the vehicle begins to flip, things get a lot more chaotic in the pipes.There is point here
in 50 meter long feedline from LOX header tank to Engine
it run true empty LOX and CH4 tank and on Picture inside tank, there is no Isolation on it !
it's quite possible that LOX start boil up on way to engine and
Then Turbopump get mixture of Gas and Liquid during startup, what is not good
Either the preburner or combustion chamber do not ignite or fail work continuous
It wasn't dubbed the Senate Launch System for nothing. (Also, spends lots of money doing nothing.)You mean like the kind that takes a decade to build a "new" rocket out of existing parts and not fly? That kind of "sane" engineering?They are churning them out just to be blown up like heretics thrown in the pyre during the Middle Ages...
Did they lost faith in sane engineering?
I don't know what the hell the SLS team's excuse is but it better be a doozy given the way that SpaceX is advancing in leaps and bounds. Very difficult not to be cynical.
Musk is blofeld ????
So long he not become like Hugo Drax...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQz3-4nPwvE
It's been said Elon is one Persian cat away from being a supervillain.
They still produce them. They need to make a new second stage for every launch, and the production line for the MVacs is the same as the normal Merlins and the line for the second stages is the same as the first stages.Do they still produce Falcon 9 or do they intend to operate indefinitely with the existing stock?
@TomcatViP It's not a waste of capital if they acquire the data and prove/improve the production system. This recent article from Teslarati puts it into perspective@Moose :
I might get frustrated watching such waste of capital but I would think that logic would dictate to go back to small scale demonstrator: If the belly flop pause problem with the fuel, pump and engines, there is nothing that would be done at a smaller scale that wouldn't represent what is happening for real.
Similitudes and flows mechanics (the art of scaling down a process that would still be representative) is not sciences fictions. It has been bread and butter for aerospace since the Wright Brothers and even the Naca.
It won't prevent them to run in parallel their test for re-entry and still opening their flight domain (having an explosion diminish in effect the span of knowledge gained per flight).
My 2 cents only.
SN15 is out of the highbay ready to roll.
Get your motor runnin'
Roll out of the high bay
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
Based on this pic from Mary and another posted on the NSF Forums, looks like SN15 has 829 ties installed on its belly! By far the most we've ever seen. SN11 only had 384, and SN10 had 246.