Author Topic: SpaceX News  (Read 126825 times)

WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #325 on: March 03, 2021, 06:24:08 PM »
The Leaning Tower of SN10
But on the ground.
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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #326 on: March 03, 2021, 06:25:15 PM »
99% nail it
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RocketMan

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #327 on: March 03, 2021, 06:25:50 PM »
Lit the three engines a little sooner, shut down two, landed on one.
Who needs landing legs as long as you stick a soft touchdown.
Pretty good fire around the base of the rocket.
If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #328 on: March 03, 2021, 06:30:02 PM »
BOOM!
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RocketMan

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #329 on: March 03, 2021, 06:30:38 PM »
Yup...  Shame.  It came shortly after the fire fighting system was shut down.
My live stream is several seconds behind, not really very live.

Timeline adjusted on my feed.  Last step was "Vehicle Safing"  The added a new last step "Or Not".

Still, it was the best flight yet.  Landing legs did actually deploy, but one or more may have had problems.  Musk is known to be less than satisfied with the current landing leg design.  SpaceX will get a lot of good data from this flight.
If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #330 on: March 03, 2021, 06:36:10 PM »

Timeline adjusted on my feed.  Last step was "Vehicle Safing"  The added a new last step "Or Not".

LOL just noticed that
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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #331 on: March 03, 2021, 06:39:48 PM »
Landing legs needs work
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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #332 on: March 03, 2021, 06:40:49 PM »
"Starship SN10 landed on the landing zone, then burned off the excess propellant in a rapid fashion."
If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #333 on: March 03, 2021, 07:04:06 PM »
SN11 peaking out of the high bay "No boom?"



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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #334 on: March 03, 2021, 07:24:13 PM »
I might not last very long or be very effective but I'll be a real pain in the ass for a minute!
MOLON LABE!

WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #335 on: March 03, 2021, 08:56:34 PM »
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Elon Musk
@elonmusk
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1h
RIP SN10, honorable discharge
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kgbsquirrel

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #336 on: March 03, 2021, 10:27:11 PM »
SN11 peaking out of the high bay "No boom?"

"No, boom."  =D

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #337 on: March 03, 2021, 10:31:21 PM »
"Starship SN10 landed on the landing zone, then burned off the excess propellant in a rapid fashion."

We got everything today: launch, dive, landing, and explosion!  Good work SN10.

WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #338 on: March 04, 2021, 09:23:29 AM »
Got my first chance to really get a good look at some videos full screen

1) Looks like the legs did deploy but couldn't tell if it was all of them or not. Plus one or more may not have locked in place.

2) Looking at this video full screen it appears she may have bounced a few times upon touchdown which may or may not have damaged the legs https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1367254064791244800
Either way the legs IMHO need to be far beefier. I know Musk is obsessed with cutting every oz, for very good reasons, but he may have to accept some weight gain in a few areas IMHO.

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #339 on: March 04, 2021, 09:38:12 AM »
SpaceX has already said several times this isn't the actual landing leg design.  These legs are a "placeholder" design while they get more of the vehicle designed and tested.  No point in designing robus Mars Capable landing legs until you know if the part of the rocket they attach to is at it's final design.

WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #340 on: March 04, 2021, 09:42:22 AM »
SpaceX has already said several times this isn't the actual landing leg design.  These legs are a "placeholder" design while they get more of the vehicle designed and tested.  No point in designing robus Mars Capable landing legs until you know if the part of the rocket they attach to is at it's final design.

Aware, just feel if they want to recover their test vehicles intact beefier legs would probably help. I'm sure they would like to at least recover the raptors. 
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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #341 on: March 04, 2021, 10:37:05 AM »
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What about it!?
@FelixSchlang
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I'm guessing, we already have a name for Starship #11! Geronimo!
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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #342 on: March 04, 2021, 10:38:25 AM »
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us".
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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #343 on: March 04, 2021, 12:20:21 PM »
Scott Manley has his video up

At 04:03 you can see some of the legs just kind of flopping around. 3 appear be locked, 3 not so much.
After that part stay tuned for his analyst of the fire and explosion


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF9mdMI1qxM
« Last Edit: March 04, 2021, 01:34:44 PM by WLJ »
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AZRedhawk44

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #344 on: March 04, 2021, 02:32:02 PM »
Correct me if my understanding is wrong. but what we have here in Starship is a LOX header tank in the nose.  After that we have a large empty space in the nose cone which will ultimately be either cargo or human habitat depending on craft version and design.  After that we have the methane tank.  Between the primary methane tank and the bottom LOX tank, we have the methane header tank.  Finally, we have the primary LOX tank and then engines and landing gear at the bottom.  The LOX header is in the nose for ballast/balance reasons, since O2 is heavier than CH4 and serves to counterbalance the mass of the engines at the rear.

So there are two header tanks, and two primary tanks.

The task of the primary tanks is to provide fuel for launch and acceleration operations in flight, and to provide fuel storage and plumbing facilities for orbital fuel transfer operations.

The task of the header tanks is to provide fuel for post-belly-flop landing maneuvers, so that the tank is full and slosh is minimized for reliable delivery to the turbopumps.

SpaceX has said before that they intend to expose the primary tanks to vacuum during routine spaceflight.  This is supposed to help insulate the header tanks so that their cryogenic payload is easier to maintain on their limited electrical budget in the vehicle.  Obviously they had neither the time nor the altitude to accomplish that here, and suffered from an artificially imposed altitude ceiling from the flight plan.  They cannot safely burn 100% of the fuel in the primary tanks without damaging the engine turbopumps, and they cannot vent the tanks in Earth atmosphere during the belly flop since there is neither time nor ecological willpower to spray methane into the atmosphere.  So these low altitude test flights and landings will all suffer from the drawback of having residual fuel in the primary tanks.

So on a real flight, an energetic explosion like this is considerably less likely because the primary tanks would be empty.

But:

One would hope that the primary tanks are not holding vacuum during reentry to Earth or Mars.  Hopefully they're sucking ambient atmosphere in to maintain neutral pressurization during reentry, or being gently pressurized by a suitable inert gas during descent.  A jarring impact like seen during yesterday's landing would result in a vacuum container crumpling much more easily than a container at one atmosphere of pressure.  And while Raptor offers autogenous pressurization of its fuel tanks via exhaust recirculating, apparently it does not offer enough spare exhaust to 100% pressurize the header tanks without assistance from nitrogen COPV's right now.  So it certainly cannot pressurize the much larger primary tanks with O2 or CH4 exhaust from the respective preburners.
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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #345 on: March 06, 2021, 09:45:29 AM »
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Mary
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Sunrise with Tankzilla at SpaceX Boca Chica launch site.This is the crane that will lift Starship SN11 onto the launch stand as early as Monday, March 8.
https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal/status/1368185882696708102?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Eprofile%3ABocaChicaGal%7Ctwcon%5Etimelinechrome&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.starshipstalker.com%2F
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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #347 on: March 08, 2021, 07:58:39 AM »
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Hawkmoon - Never underestimate another person's capacity for stupidity. Any time you think someone can't possibly be that dumb ... they'll prove you wrong.

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Stupidity will always be its own reward.
Bad decisions make good stories.

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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #348 on: March 08, 2021, 11:05:27 AM »
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us".
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WLJ

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Re: SpaceX News
« Reply #349 on: March 11, 2021, 08:54:43 AM »
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us".
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