Posted on 08/20/2020 7:13:56 AM PDT by Shark24
true
*ping*
"Get your ass to orbit!"
It means that, as far as is known, this is the record. The Russian record is of course taking them at their word, but isn't it odd that they never flew the thing? If anyone had topped that since, they'd have announced it. The main accomplishments of the Soviet and post-Soviet space programs has been bragging and hyperbole.
That sounds like what we were allowed to say when I worked as a mission programmer for the SR-71. Its speed was MACH 3+ and flight altitude was 80,000+ ft. Emphasis on the PLUS.
Don't know the actual altitude they ever got to, but I will say that I did see an SR-71 photo of a Space Shuttle Launch. The photo was taken right as the Solid Rocket boosters detached.
The photo was taken from ABOVE the Shuttle.
...330 bar on Raptor produces ~225 tons (half a million pounds) of force.
Methane is the best option, beats hydrogen in terms of relative ease of handling. Von Braun wanted 100% cryo for the main engines of the uppermost stages of the Apollo stacks, and they used hydrogen, but the quantities were manageable. Assuming SpaceX nails this down, the big freakin' rocket with all those Raptors will dwarf the payload capacity of the Saturn V -- although each F1 engine produced 1.5 million. :^)
To be truthful I really don’t know how to compare Space X with Russian rocket products.
What I do know is that for several years, American space flights were on Russian rockets. I assume that there have been improvements as time went by.
The good thing is that a corporate American company has developed a great product that puts America back in the space business
it would seem so... if thy had it, i think they’d use it
The F-1 was a 1950’s design, and the chamber pressure was only 70 bar. A more powerful version was developed but not used. From Wiki:
During the 1960s, Rocketdyne undertook uprating development of the F-1 resulting in the new engine specification F-1A. While outwardly very similar to the F-1, the F-1A produced about 20% greater thrust, 1,800,000 lbf (8 MN) in tests, and would have been used on future Saturn V vehicles in the post-Apollo era. However, the Saturn V production line was closed prior to the end of Project Apollo and no F-1A engines ever flew.
There were proposals to use eight F-1 engines on the first stage of the Saturn C-8 and Nova rockets. Numerous proposals have been made from the 1970s and on to develop new expendable boosters based around the F-1 engine design. These include the Saturn-Shuttle, and the Pyrios booster (see below) in 2013. As of 2013, none have proceeded beyond the initial study phase. The Comet HLLV would have used five F-1A engines on the main core and two on each of the boosters.
I think the first stage is planned to use 31 Raptors, so the rocket will be about twice the thrust of the Saturn V, but I expect there will be around a 40% payload penalty because of reusability.
Starship will be the most powerful rocket to fly and the cheapest if it’s successfully developed.
They've got the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 development under their belts, but this project is going to beat their asses I think. The reusability of Falcon 9 has been overstated all along, and while they'll no doubt improve reusability and shave some more cost, this Starship design is a SSTO, which has literally never been pulled off. Such a thing can be done, but the payload budget shrinks to nothing just to reach SSTO, meaning it isn't accomplishing the intended goal, it just becomes the goal in and of itself.
OTOH, when underestimating Musk, the world has always been wrong, me included.
Staging makes the most sense. A big-ass booster that is reusable to get the upper stages and crew/colonist vehicles to optimum velocity and altitude might Work better if, after separation, continued on a single orbit trajectory, carrying relatively small solid rocket strap-ons to do the deceleration burn after the big-ass booster has done its main job and approaches it's launch site, having circumnavigated.
Of course, the, uh, vision of Musk is to have the SSTO make the interplanetary transit, thus being able to do a propulsive landing on the surface of the Moon, Mars, or other rocky large body. The Mars round trip will take something like four years, which mitigates against the economy of reusability. Having a series of different vehicles looping on their own job makes more sense. Even better is to send the colonists aboard unitary habitats which would ride to Mars, land, and never fly again. That would give the colonists somewhere and someway to survive on the surface.
Where and when was it built?
The test provided a linear ramp from 150 to 330, at which point it fell to zero as if it reached fuel depletion. No color change to the exhaust and no explosion noted. Needs to run at 100% for a bit over four minutes for the 1st stage boost phase.
Musk made it clear that Starship is not SSTO, but he plans to fly it suborbital point to point like an airliner. SpaceX is already advertising for someone to design the offshore launching and landing platforms.
A-12 at 115,000? Over the curvature of the Earth? Separation at about 24 miles?
Booster fuel reserve of ~77 ton and ~8 ton for Starship upper stage for landing purposes?
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48757.60
He does now, although he also says it will technically be capable of SSTO, but (not surprisingly) can't carry signficant payload. In one of the many vids of him talking about the ongoing design he definitely said it was SSTO.
The system requires two launches of complete stacks in order to put together a Mars shot (or probably a Moon shot as well), which interestingly is the conclusion Von Braun came as a consequence of Apollo development and deployment. VB's estimate was twelve Saturn V stacks to construct a single round-trip Mars mission, IOW, the entire lunar program to make one trip to Mars. I wish NASA had tried it, but am also a little glad NASA didn't, because it seems likely that it wouldn't have been repeated even if successful.
After that success (or maybe failure) the Shuttle (which wound up years behind schedule) might have turned out differently and been a better design, cheaper, more flexible, with a crew-sized craft, smaller capacity launch system, and retain the Saturn V for space station component and other cargo-only launches. End-to-end cost of fitting the single Mars mission and construction of a US-only large permanent space station, plus the access to and from orbit for station crew rotation and perhaps science station on the Moon would have been more fruitful and probably cheaper.
The only people talking SSTO for the upper stage (Starship) were speculating about stripping the landing gear and everything else related to coming back to Earth, to lighten ship. They were thinking of using these stripped ships as habitat modules or strictly for transfers between planets. It might be just possible with no payload and running the tanks dry.
The booster runs 31 engines to put the Starship up forty miles after a four minute burn. Booster and Starship are both reusable.
Believe nine tanker runs to LEO to fully refuel the Starship is the plan, based upon100 tons to orbit per launch.
IIRC, Musk is saying seven refueling missions will be required to go to Mars, which won’t be that big a deal for the frequently flying and cheap Starship.
Von Braun accomplished may great things, but one of his greatest was writing a story about the first ruler of Mars being named Elon. How did he know?
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