| Author | Message | ||
     Hughlysses |
Starship S20 and booster B4 at SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.  | ||
| Hughlysses |
…and it’s been disassembled. This morning’s operation was for a fit check/publicity. Starship will be headed back to the shipyard today for completion of fit out. Much more testing to come prior to reassembly and near orbital flight, planned for a few weeks from now.  | ||
| Bandm |
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| 86129squids |
HOLEEE CRAP! Ginormous. Wonder who I know near there. They bussed me and my class to the NASA Space Center back in 3rd grade. SUPER COOL. | ||
| Hootowl |
It’s not the size, it’s the payload. Spacex says one Starship carries more mass to orbit than all previous falcon 9 launches combined. It is also the most fuel efficient rocket ever. | ||
| 86129squids |
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| Tpehak |
We need electric rockets without combustion engines. | ||
| 86129squids |
no, you need a trolling motor. | ||
| Aesquire |
We need electric rockets without combustion engines He's half right. Not rockets, though. Or not strictly rockets. An electrical scramjet engine, using plasma to heat propellant, like air, is desirable, and reaction mass, liquid air you collected on the way up, or carried all the way, or fueled in flight, for rocket propulsion in exoatmospheric flight. Power would have to be nuclear, either future fusion or advanced fission. ( plasma core ) Or batteries with a power density better than anticipated.... Ever. Power for a small city. That's the hang up. Or a reactionless drive, which we don't have, probably. | ||
| Mnscrounger |
How about space elevator so the total lift can be mostly payload, not fuel? Though I wonder if a lift system that big would create a "wobble" in our days. | ||
| Hootowl |
We don’t have anything with the compressive strength necessary to make a 22 mile tall building and we don’t have anything with the tensile strength to make a 22 mile tether with the Earth at one end and a weight more massive than the thing we’re trying to left at the other with an angular velocity of nearly 2 miles per second. | ||
| Hootowl |
And yes, there would be wobble. Earth wobbles with the moon, the sun, and even man made satellites. Just not very much with the man made stuff. The moon wobble is significant. Earth and its moon orbit a common point, called a barycenter, about 3000 miles from the center of the Earth. | ||
| Aesquire |
...and we don’t have anything with the tensile strength to make a 22 mile tether ... Almost. Potential future materials that might be nano-assembled, or grown will do it, when? I dunno. Unfortunately, the reason a Clarke Elevator won't be built any time soon, isn't the technology, it's Terrorism. The skyhook falling would lay a blazing trail across more than a thousand miles of the planet. Biblical. | ||
| Aesquire |
Better would be to build an orbiting linear accelerator space station, that you'd fly up to in Business jet sized craft, at low horizontal velocity, it would come along, you'd fly into the cannon's mouth, and it would speed you up to orbital, matching speed. Then Lunch. The return home, the station would shoot you "backwards" in orbit, so you leave the station at low horizontal velocity, and just have to deal with "fall from space" heat, instead of nigh orbital speeds. You'd send craft onward to higher orbits, and interplanetary, by tossing them out the front. As long as you keep the coming's and going balanced, it's practical with today's materials. | ||
| Tpehak |
We can connect the Earth and the Moon with a strong metal rope and use it too lift the things up to the orbit. The only risk is the Moon can start wrapping that rope around the Earth so the Moon and the Earth will pull each other and collapse. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://what-if.xkcd.com/157/ | ||
| Hughlysses |
Unfortunately, the reason a Clarke Elevator won't be built any time soon, isn't the technology, it's Terrorism. The skyhook falling would lay a blazing trail across more than a thousand miles of the planet. Biblical. The consequences of a space elevator failure are covered in Kim Stanley Robinson’s book “Red Mars”. In this case, the story is set on Mars, which is being settled at the time, but the devastation even on a sparsely populated planet is mind-boggling. (Message edited by Hughlysses on August 08, 2021) (Message edited by Hughlysses on August 08, 2021) | ||
| Icantdrive55 |
Best non-motorcycle thread on the BWB forum ever! | ||
| 86129squids |
Dangit Hugh! Now I gotta reboot my old sci-fi mind. Seems I once read about using tidal forces for doing this stuff... serious science for sure. Looking forward to the Dune reboot- I've read many of Frank Herbert's other books. One substitutes a water planet for Arrakis as the main plot McGuffin. Maybe we could become a ripe vessel or something. | ||
| Aesquire |
Back in the ancient times of parallel staged Space Shuttle, it was taking a performance hit every flight by deliberately dropping the Big Fuel Tank in the Indian Ocean with fuel on board that could have been used for a higher orbit and/or bigger payload. Payload... awesome word for what you want to deliver. But if they'd used all the fuel, didn't pause to toss the big tank in a pre-cleared piece of sea, it would tumble, with variable high air drag, and deorbit over some random spot in a fairly broad orbital corridor. There's enough left after a Mach 25 re-entry to flatten a house or sink a boat. Hence a rejected ( budget! And Hard to explain to the Lawyer trained population contest winners in Congress ) scheme, that would tether 2 + tanks together. A long line from nose to nose & another from tail to tail, so the tidal forces keep them parallel to the orbital path. ( one high, one low ) Airlock kite were invented to turn each tank into a two room bungalow. As each launch dropped off a tank, it would be clamped to another, so soon there'd be two "decks" of tanks,like the walls of a hollow log cabin. One tank would store the residual fuel and the rest storage and living quarters. Visualize a drum supported boat dock/deck, a horizontal row of cylinders, oriented flat to the local hypersonic wisps of breeze. Times 2, with really long cables connecting them. Both low drag orientation and micro gravity from tides on each deck. Pulling towards the planet on the low deck, towards the stars on the upper. Not enough "fake Gs" to be long term healthy, but plenty for dropped objects to drift to the "floor". Once you've got 4+ tanks you could actually park a Shuttle on each deck. Living space and extra fuel parked in Low Earth Orbit. LEO. But that, while cheap, wasn't free, and required an ongoing process that budgets and attitudes at NASA didn't support. The same budget cluster deck idea, orbiting like a huge bola @ 1 revolution per orbit, would work with Starships. | ||
| Panhead_dan |
I've been following space-x and others (as much as I can) for a couple of years now and seen some amazing things. When I saw two orbital boosters land simultaneously back on the launch pad I was just completely blown away! Then there are the activities on the moon and Mars. There are more plans in the works, too. After watching this stuff for years now I have some questions which don't seem to have conclusive answers. Probably the biggest is WHY? What is the objective? The only answers I get do not make sense at all. One example I'm told is that they are working towards colonization of the moon and of Mars which does not make sense at all. Both are not habitable. They are both toxic and will not support human life. There is no geomagnetic field on either one. The moon has an abrasive aggregate that destroys stuff like space suits and moving equipment. There is a lot of money and effort being directed towards space with no clear objective publicly given. Money that could be used to deal with problems closer to home. Seems like something is fishy! I am getting the feeling that when the reason for this massive, unparalleled global effort come to light, the shit is gonna hit the fan. In the mean time, it's an amazing show! Looking forward to the Starship test flight. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Musk is very clear that he thinks it’s important to make humanity a multi-planetary species. His long-term objective is to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars. That’ll take a whole lot of work beyond building spaceships to transport people and stuff there. The reason he thinks this is important is he wants humanity to survive in the event of another dinosaur killer asteroid strike, a truly incurable pandemic, World War III, or whatever. Sounds like a worthy goal to me. | ||
| Tpehak |
The World War III is going to be the war between the Mars colonies and the Earth. This is going to be the war for Mars independence and freedom. There is also going to be a civil war on the Mars between the north and the south. North states of the Mars will fight against slavery in the south states of the Mars. (Message edited by TPEHAK on August 09, 2021) | ||
| Panhead_dan |
Link to this message Hughlysses Posted on Monday, August 09, 2021 - 02:04 pm: Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Custodian/Admin only) Musk is very clear that he thinks it’s important to make humanity a multi-planetary species. His long-term objective is to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars. That’ll take a whole lot of work beyond building spaceships to transport people and stuff there. The reason he thinks this is important is he wants humanity to survive in the event of another dinosaur killer asteroid strike, a truly incurable pandemic, World War III, or whatever. Sounds like a worthy goal to me. I hope you're right. I know that our destiny lies beyond earth. It just seems the he's in a really big hurry. Interestingly, it seems like every country on the planet with the means is in a race for the same thing all of a sudden. (Message edited by panhead_dan on August 09, 2021) | ||
| Hootowl |
16 Psyche is estimated to contain one thousand trillion dollars worth of gold (at current market value - and estimates vary widely) plus many other valuable metals. There is a massive incentive to become a spacefaring civilization. It’s a lot easier to soft land stuff for processing on the moon than the Earth, and it takes a fraction of the energy to go from the moon to the Earth as it does to go from Earth to the moon. | ||
| Mnscrounger |
"16 Psyche is estimated to contain one thousand trillion dollars worth of gold". That may be true, but I think the most valuable commodity in space will be water. | ||
| Hootowl |
Nah. I’m already an ugly bag of mostly water.  | ||
| Mnscrounger |
Relative value Hoot, in space we're worth more.. | ||
| Hootowl |
Water is recyclable. And is a byproduct of combustion. I don’t think water will be an issue. | ||
| Aesquire |
Water is the Fossil Fuel of space. It's rocket fuel, with some electrolysis and then it's water again after you use it. ( but a thin vapor leaving fast ) You make the part of air we use out of water. Plants need it, and they separate the carbon from our exhalations, and give us Oxygen. Plenty of chemical reactions outside our bodies use water. Yep, we exhale water vapor. Water vapor management is a big part of enclosed environmental systems. And on the Moon, Mars, and in space, any air leaks lose water & oxygen unrecoverably. Every time you use an airlock, you lose a little. You need water, Solar, ( seriously off grid, eh? ) and someplace to dump heat. If there's no big mass to warm up, radiators, probably on the backside of the solar panels. Like the space movie Avatar or not, the big space ship was a practical design, and has Huge radiators. | ||
| Hughlysses |
If you’re following SpaceX, I guarantee you’ll find this recent 3-part interview with Elon very interesting: These videos were made a couple of weeks ago, before the launch table was placed on the stand, booster 4 was placed on the launch table, or S20 was stacked on the booster. Cool factoid from the last video: They’d originally planned to lift the launch table with the biggest crane, but this would have required 4 additional days to reconfigure the boom for the lift. It occurred to someone “What if we shared the load between our two biggest cranes?” and it turned out that would work without requiring the biggest crane to be reconfigured. 4 days saved. Brilliant! | ||
| Alchemy |
The 3 part StarBase videos are amazing. It is like listening in on some rocket jocks shooting the breeze. Great stuff. Guys obviously in pain after recovering from neck surgery of some sort. It has got to be the best interview Everydayastronaut could ever hope for. |
