SpaceX Super Heavy and Starship updates

By DocM
in Science News & Discussion

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Grand Master

DocM

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There's a LOT of construction coming up; the legs and fins on both Starships, the Coco FL Starship being transported to KSC, the Cocoa FL Super Heavy booster build starting (19+ ring segments are already fabbed), LC-39A modifications, etc. 

 

Busy-Busy....

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Grand Master

Skiver Veteran

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That's pretty awesome, it looks like it made the hop between the two pads fairly effortlessly.

 

So next is the Space X presentation which was expected to happen Mid Sept? Hopefully a Star ship prototype will be ready soon after to do hopper tests also?

Grand Master

DocM

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7 hours ago, Skiver said:

That's pretty awesome, it looks like it made the hop between the two pads fairly effortlessly.

 

So next is the Space X presentation which was expected to happen Mid Sept? Hopefully a Star ship prototype will be ready soon after to do hopper tests also?

 

Musk will likely want to show off  an assembled Mk1 vehicle during the presentation. 

 

Starship Mk1 at Boca Chica should be getting her fins etc. soon since some airfoils were trucked in a few days ago, and pics of workers preparing the modules for them are now public.

Grand Master

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Yeah ... diminishing returns on engine output vs fuel consumption, no matter how good Raptor becomes, will limit how heavy it can be (therefore how tall it will be). It will gain some height, though -- just not a linear scale upwards. I still think 18 meters is too wide. There's no possible way it can pack 70-100 engines ... it would destroy itself from any number of acoustic energies and other effects simply igniting all of those engines not to mention being inefficient (diminishing returns again) and way too complicated to engineer (let alone build).

 

It'd call for an upscaled Raptor design ... and I'm not certain that SpaceX is ready for that yet. They wanna get Raptor fully ironed out and flying, then evolve it over a service life of 5~10 years (or more) like they've done with the Merlin series. If they were to go that route (upscaled Raptor) they'd HAVE to get started on it NOW.

 

Now -- could Raptor see iterative gains like Merlin, where it sees double the efficiency and nearly 3x the thrust output (or more)? Sure, as long as the SpaceX boffins put in that R&D and don't cut corners. It won't just be the engine itself but the platform that'll contribute to that endeavour. The current gen of Falcon-9 is so much more than the 1.0 version that really it's only the outer shell that's anything like the first iteration (and that isn't even completely the same nowadays, what with that composite upperstage at the top 1/5th of the booster).

 

The next 20 years are going to be very interesting, development-wise and evolutionary-wise, for Starship and Super Heavy. Not sure how feasible 18m is actually gonna be though ... 

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