Sounds very encouraging, doesn’t it. Bravo
NASA could brobably salvage their boosters but they don’t dare to try, seeing it not as a goal but as another way to fail.
Private industry strives to be great by finding a way to do what can’t be done.
NASA also has the fed govs printer press go burrrrrr money stream they don’t have to worry about profit or even breaking even. They can throw a 2 billion dollar rocket away everytime they launch ares why because it’s a job welfare program for dozens of states it was never meant to be anything other than pork spending.
Starship will out lift ares and do it for millions not billions per launch. You don’t even need to get Starship all the way to the moon just to low earth orbit with a meth/lox third stage you can send 50+ tonnes to lunar transfer orbit. No need for tanker Starship or any other exotic tech.
Put a 100 tonne third stage powered by two or three RL10 sized methlox engines those weight a couple hundred kg each. Use balloon common bulkhead tanks like centaur those have a 100:1 mass to prop ratio or better. Get Starship to put it into a 180mi orbit from there it’s 3800ms delta V to TLI the rocket equation shows that with a 100:1 tank ratio, 600kg of engines and 400kg of support structure and electronics you have 4000 ms of delta V with 50 tonnes up top. With a methlox lander stage proven to hold prop at cryo temps for the days coast already with the recent private moon landing. It takes 1.72kms delta V to land on or take off from the moon back to low lunar orbit. A 25tonne lander stage could land 25tonnes and take 25 tonnes back up. This is technology we have today as soon Starship RCS issue is fixed disposable mode is then ready to go with big D energy sized payloads. All the reuse stuff is icing on the cake you already have a huge disposable rocket at a fraction of the cost of any NASA pork boondoggle that’s this year months really.
I don’t think people can grasp how much SpaceX is a paradigm shift from NASA and their boondoggle. The current gen of raptor 2 engines already have more thrust than the RS25 that NASA is using for SLS that two billion per launch nightmare. They have four RS25 engines on that turd.
“A total of 46 reusable RS-25 engines, each costing around US$40 million, were flown during the Space Shuttle program, “
These ^^^^^ are used engines....
“NASA announced May 1 it had awarded a contract to Aerojet valued at $1.79 billion to produce 18 RS-25 engines. “
This is $100 million EACH new it should be criminal.
Four Raptor 2 engines have more thrust than 4 RS25 were it not for the H2 vs CH4 you could just buy Raptors
“SpaceX’s Raptors cost about $250k each according to some leaked sources”
Even at $1 million each you can get 100 for the cost of a single RS25.
Even in disposable mode with 31 engines on BFB aka superheavy I’m like Big F*** Booster and BFR that Elon originally wanted to call them. Even at a million dollars each 31 is one third the cost of just one SLS engine add six to nine more for Starship is still only 40 million in engine costs tanks are cheap compared to engines even cheaper if you plan to throw them away. BRB is rumored to cost under ten million without the engines and a throwaway Starship would be under ten million it’s only stainless steel tanks for most of its mass. Forget the chopper payload door, forget the heat shields and the flap mechanisms. Tanks, engine supports, payload support, a huge split faring and explosive bolts bang and it’s off chunk it. Now you have all this extra mass that you are not taking yo orbital delta V 150 tonnes becomes 50% more. All for a fraction of the cost of even a single RS25 that is nothing but a Congress welfare project for their pet districts.
It dawned on me that the SLS external tank is built for each mission so changing the common dome position from where the LOX up front to accommodate the bulk density and mix ratios difference would allow for a massive increase in payload vs H2LOX why...
“Their bulk density (800 kg/m3) is much higher than LOX/LH2 (360kg/m3). The boiling temperatures, 90K for LOX, 110K for CH4, compared to only 20K for hydrogen, simplifies the tanks thermal protection. Another main merit for Methane, it does not require Helium, an expensive and scarce fossil gas to drain and pressurize.”
800kg per cubic meter vs 360 using the same sized tanks you have 2.2 times the mass of fuel and similar sea level ISP only in hard vacuum do RS25 And their 450+ isp pull ahead. This is only in the last few min of flight those engines have been boosting since the launch pad all the way through the atmosphere.
So you need at least 8 raptor 2 not 4 to lift twice as much mass of fuel the two SRB also won’t cut it anymore you would need 4 since each SRB makes 39 MN and each raptor 3 has made 2.64MN 14 would replace one SRB. So keep the two SRB and put 38 raptor on the base of the SLS tank its now a monster of a booster with 200+ tonnes to LEO. 38 raptor 3 which are expected to be $200k each in mass production is 7.6 million is throw away engines that alone would justify the autocad work to move the common tank times since you build a tank each time no sunk capital in tanks. Cheap and powerful it would be twice the lift of Saturn V. The other choice is ask very nicely if SpaceX can modify Raptor 3 to burn a 6 to 1 H2 to LOX ratio keep all the pressures the same or would blow the RS25 out of the water in a smaller package for a fraction of the cost.