SpaceX Starship

Go to ~1:06:50

 

To clarify the starship did not crash at full speed

 

Very nice summary montage (slightly annoying overly dramatic music) of the catch:

 

The 'side fire' was the intentional venting of the lines through the quick disconnect port. Apparently, the fire was anticipated (at least to some degree), the intent was to purge the lines and reduce the pressure to avoid internal leaks and fires. I'm sure there are plenty of undisclosed issues and unseen damage but for a first 'prototype' catch attempt, it was wildly successful!

The splashdown was 'successful' in that the Starship orbiter came to a controlled stop, under power, above the water at the target destination before splashing into the water. We know this because there was a camera on the water filming it, in addition to the on-board cameras. It then hit the water and exploded once it hit the water. Although I don't know the details, the thermal shock of that thing being hot from reentry then rupturing when being dropped in the water makes sense. It's much much bigger than the little crew capsules that are designed for water landings and the starship isn't designed for one. There is still plenty to do, the heat shield isn't optimized yet, but they are probably close to being ready to orbit it and try to catch it. Also, they need to make it do 'things' in space - rocket relights, ejecting satellites, fuel transfer, etc. They are making amazing strides and doing so quickly!

Regards,

Art S.

 

This is what the US space program should have been doing for the past 50 yrs. Maybe there wasn't the computer power we have todaty, but there are many things Musk is doing that could have been achieved long ago. Of course it required private enterprise rather than government overwatch.

 

Musk's goal of a one hour turn around on Super Heavy booster seems far fetched but I thought landing Falcon 9s for multiple re-use was far fetched.

 

You may want to rethink that - the 'space race' / 'moon shot' were basically cover for developing ICBMs (with the bonus of winning hearts and minds). Once the capability was achieved, we were pretty burned out. The last few moon missions were canceled due to cost/benefit. The country took a pause. Unfortunately, the pause allowed bloat and bureaucracy to flow in creating stagnation.

Believe it or not, NASA and others did a lot (quietly) during those 50 years in spite of very poor upper level management. The initial engine designs for both Falcon and Starship were based on proven designs (Russian) and the Star Hopper (the first 'Starship' that went up, over and then landed) were basically bringing in-house what had been done. Musk had a lot at his disposal to build on. That said, he is a genius in many aspects which has given him the ability to run with those initial building blocks and as a result of his successes, his organization has hit critical mass in attracting talent.

BTW, most of the work his other companies are doing will be needed for his Mars vision to succeed, especially The Boring Company.

Regards,

Art S.

 

Musk's real-time reaction, kind of fun!:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j3x05SYtSMY

 

Not at all. You made my point. Everything Musk has built on should have been built on 30-40 yrs ago.

 

Art- Kind of hard to correlate the solid rocket ICBMs after the Titan and Atlas with the liquid fuel systems on Saturn and even STS. So, I think your summary is a gross over-simplification. Calling Falcon a system based on Russian rockets is also a gross over-simplification just because both used LOX/RP.

 

and ULA (Boeing and Lockheed) just straight up use Russian engines. No attempt at using them as a template to create something better.

 

Atlas V did, but Congress took care of that. The now defunct Delta IV series were LOX/H2 and unrelated to Russian designs. Also, very expensive, so now uncompetitive.

 

Upper stage landing:

 

Looks like soft landing then self destruct? I wonder why? Would it sink or float? I'd think they would want to recover it, if possible

 

My guess, thermal shock. The thing was hot and then hit cold water - something then cracked and boom.

 

Yes, if we kept pushing. However, there were limits reached in secondary technology, such as computing, as well as limits in public and political will. They then overpromised and underdelivered with the Space Shuttle and that was it. Things bubbled along bureaucratically until technology caught up and a guy like Musk came along. Look, Bezos is impressive but isn't moving faster than Boeing.

It took Musk to use the technology while reverting to the early spirit.

Regards,

Art S.

 

Terry,

Of course it's an oversimplification, it's a forum post... :^)

The point being the work through Titan and Atlas were what was needed to bring parity with the USSR. The Space race provided cover. Also, the number 2s in both programs Robert Seamans (who I knew) and Gwynne Shotwell (who I don't know) fill the roll of making the dream work.

There is an argument to be made that the Russian rocket design approach was simpler and in some ways, more practical than the more elegant and powerful Rocketdyne (F-1) approach. I would argue that Musk took the Russian engine as a starting point to derive the Merlin.

The DC-X of the 1980s and 1990s was the predecessor of the landing system:



Regards,

Art S.

 

Art- I worked on the DC-Xa for the predecessor of AFRL. If NASA had chosen McD instead of L-M for the X-33, we would have actually flown something that would work. The USAF program manager for DC-X quit the minute the award was announced because we knew X-33 was not going to work.
I met both Elon and Gwynne while working for the Military Spaceplane office in the 90s. Space-X took the best technology they could find for Falcon, wherever it originated, but by no stretch was it a Russian derived design.
We never could interest the ELV centric USAF in reusables. Best we could do was X-40/X-37.

 

Terry,

Very cool! We travel in similar circles (I'm mostly in combustion initiation), were you on the civilian or govt. side at the time of DC-Xa?

None of the politics surprises me. The wonderful situation is SpaceX was able to unchain the engineers and let them run. As a result he has drawn talent to him then pushes this talented team hard! Musk may be the second coming of Kelly Johnson but space focused, with the business gift, and able to run one level (or two levels, depending on your interpretation) higher within the organization.

My point wasn't that the overall Falcon was Russian derived, just the engine was the starting point for the Merlin design - he very much did his own thing but started there. As you pointed out, the DC-Xa passed much DNA to SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Regards,

Art S.

 

Art- I was a SETA and worked for AFRL, AFSPC, DARPA, DTRA and a few others. We had an entire reusable architecture in the mid-1990s, but only a couple of pieces got funded enough to go to space. X-37 was the main success story, which started as a much smaller Boeing concept and we called Space Maneuver Vehicle. Wingspan is still 14.5' after three size iterations, so it could be launched from the STS Orbiter and its 15' width payload bay doors. We always said it was too expensive to launch it from ELVs, but time proved us wrong.