"The first Super Heavy reuse will be a step towards our goal of zero-touch reflight."
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Rocket Report: Next Starship flight to reuse booster; FAA clears New Glenn
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Nora Lenderbee
Ars Tribunus Militum
I want to read the inside scoop of how they convened the Patch Design Committee, selected one from a short list of four, then solicited bids on producing a few dozen of them, with the entire process only taking 18 months and costing less than $500 per patch.
/s (from someone who has seen the federal procurement process inaction.)
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- It wasn't so long ago that the entire world put together had fewer than 50 launches a year. Now SpaceX alone does more than 100 a year easily and China's heading there too.
- That said, remember what Gwynne Shotwell said about how eventually none of the dedicated smallsat launch providers will survive because there just wasn't a viable market? I see Isar, PLD Space and all these other European startups going bust unless the ESA is willing to subsidise their very existence like it's been doing for ArianeGroup abd Avio.
- That said, remember what Gwynne Shotwell said about how eventually none of the dedicated smallsat launch providers will survive because there just wasn't a viable market? I see Isar, PLD Space and all these other European startups going bust unless the ESA is willing to subsidise their very existence like it's been doing for ArianeGroup abd Avio.
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So you'll be piping up next Wednesday when ULA dump 5 SRBs and a kerosene fuelled core stage in to the Atlantic?
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He is mixing things, SuperHeavy doesn't needs to be pressurized to remain stable. Pressurization is only needed to keep the fuel in a super cooled state and liquid.
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On the oxygen side, why don’t they tap after the compressor, but before the pre-burner/turbine, as shown (probably incorrectly) here? I suppose the answer is that it needs to be gaseous. But surely the methane side isn’t gaseous until after the pre-burner as well?
Edit: looking more closely, that image shows gas for tank pressurization and a heat exchanger for oxygen - which is the part that might be incorrect. To answer my own question, once the propellants are heated at high pressure, I assume it is straightforward to gasify a needed amount by reducing the pressure?
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Most startups fail. If they succeed, they usually stop acting like startups at some point. SpaceX looked a lot like Isar at one point.
Europe in general needs to spend more on space if they want even 1 really competitive launch company. Or they can subsidize, but that won't make them competitive.
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Between the pump and the preburner the oxygen is high pressure, but it's still cryogenic liquid, so it can't be used as pressurant - the goal is to get all the liquid out of the tanks, and you can't do that by pressurizing with liquid.
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Pressure doesn't really affect the temperature or phase of the propellant in this context. The tanks are pressurized mainly to flow huge amounts of liquid. Each Raptor is sucking down 500+ kg per second.
SuperHeavy probably also needs pressure for structural stability under flight loads. But that's secondary to keeping the Raptors fed.
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It’s fascinating that water/CO2 in the tanks is considered potentially less problematic than a pure oxygen heat exchanger.
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So from this it looks likely that the 120 deg pie slices that were glimpsed in NGs first launch attempt when talking about mega constellation work were in fact Kuiper.
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Well it depends quite a bit on temperature. In order to minimize the amount of ullage gas you bleed off your cycle you want those gases to be screaming hot. Hot oxygen is corrosive, and whatever coatings and metallurgy that they do to the normal hot oxygen gas path may not make for the best heat transfer medium. It's a solvable problem, but SpaceX isn't trying to solve it all at once.
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It would help if you didn't quote bad posts so they're amplified. The person making that post has been asked to leave the thread.
Rocket Report remains Not The Place To Complain About Elon Musk.
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SpaceX is the only company that is actually avoiding throwing their boosters in the ocean or attempting to avoid throwing their upper stages in the ocean. Your complaints would be much better directed at literally anyone else.
And the tiles are made out of silica fibers. A couple months on a beach will mechanically degrade them back into sand.
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raschumacher
Ars Praetorian
V1 and V2 were intended to kill people and destroy things. SH/SS do so only by accident. It makes a difference.
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Soyuz out of Baikonur also avoids dropping boosters in the Ocean /nitpick
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raschumacher
Ars Praetorian
I suppose SpaceX expected that any water ice formed in the LOX tank would not be a problem, because it's less dense than LOX and therefore should float away from the downcomer inlet(s)? So I wonder how is ice causing trouble? Hmm... how dense can water ice/LOX or water ice/O2 clathrates be?
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Wild speculation, but the entire tank is subject to tremendous acceleration and vibration throughout, perhaps that causes some turbulence/mixing beyond what was expected?
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I'm kind of assuming that Europe is willing to subsidize a couple domestic small-launch companies, in the hopes that they'll eventually grow. As Eric notes, however, there are at least six in development (off the top of my head: Isar, RFA, and HyImpulse in Germany; Skyrora and Orbex in the UK; Latitude in France; and PLD Space in Spain), and I'd be surprised if more than three survive.
The other question is US-based startups. With Rocket Lab and Firefly owning the 300kg and 1-ton classes, respectively, I don't think there's room for more companies here. Really, this illustrates the importance of the first-mover advantage: Electron is somewhat undersized, but came early enough to secure its place in the market. Firefly Alpha is a tad smaller and more expensive (on paper, at least) than the rockets it once competed against (Relativity's Terran 1 and ABL's RS1), but since it launched first, the other two gave up entirely. Something similar could happen in Europe, unless two or more companies with similar rockets get going at almost the same time.
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Dance party, in spaaaaace....
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Dry (CO2) ice would be the main issue as far as engine intake/sump clogging goes. Water ice would be more of a problem around the vents / RCS thrusters.
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It looks like a big chunk of water ice isn't going to act very different in LOX than in water. So if there is enough turbulence in the flow, it's possible that they can get sucked under.
Edit: I totally forgot about dry ice, which would be the bigger problem for intakes. Although that doesn't necessarily explain the vibration problem from flight 6 or why the engine bell was burning through on flight 7
Edit: I totally forgot about dry ice, which would be the bigger problem for intakes. Although that doesn't necessarily explain the vibration problem from flight 6 or why the engine bell was burning through on flight 7
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The V1 was a winged cruise missile powered by a pulse jet engine, not a rocket. It was ground launched by a steam powered catapult, conceptually similar to those used on aircraft carriers.
You’re probably thinking of the technically unrelated V2 rocket.
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It is more than just speculation. SpaceX basically admitted to it in the wake of the IFT-2 mishap investigation:
The same generation of Raptors is still flying on the current 'Block 1' Boosters.
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I have to admit that I initially dismissed Fram2 as a Virgin Galactic style space tourist ride, but on actually following along with it I find a group of men and women who would be at home (and have been at home) on any deep polar expedition. Interviews with them have been uniformly interesting and informative -- and I'm looking forward to more after their return.
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