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Space Launches, Landings, and Destinations - SpaceX Thread #3


SpaceChampion

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2 hours ago, Starkess said:

The abbreviation for miles is "mi" not "m" :) 

Unfortunately it's both, such as people write mph for miles per hour, they don't write miph, though that is a bit like how people write kph and not kmph. Do people write m/h or mi/h? When using that notation for metric people write km/h.

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Musk is now talking about the next larger version of Starship & Super Heavy doubling the diameter of the current 9m design to 18m.  Starship-9m already would be the largest, most powerful rocket ever.  It would not just be a matter of scaling up all dimensions relative to the new width, because doubling the width would quadruple the weight, and the engines can't handle that -- so instead it'll get fatter without getting much taller.

A tanker version of the Starship-9m could refuel a passenger Starship-9m for journey to Mars in about 5 tanker flights. 
It's would require a lot of coordination with operations in orbit and on the ground.  A tanker Starship-18m could refuel a passenger Starship-9m in just one flight.

A cargo Starship-18m could land perhaps in the range of 1000-1500 tons on Mars.

Musk's update on the whole Starship program is expected to be September 28th, at Boca Chica and streamed on youtube.

A 20km flight of the first Starship prototype expected for October, with an orbital flight soon after that (a few weeks later?)

Meanwhile Crew Dragon should have it's in-flight abort test in November.

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12 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

A 200km flight of the first Starship prototype expected for October, with an orbital flight soon after that (a few weeks later?)

This would be amazingly fast. It's not the finished product, but going from the first flight test for a completely different kind of engine to an orbital flight in a matter of months hasn't been done for decades. It'll be really cool if they pull it off.

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2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Musk is now talking about the next larger version of Starship & Super Heavy doubling the diameter of the current 9m design to 18m.  Starship-9m already would be the largest, most powerful rocket ever.  It would not just be a matter of scaling up all dimensions relative to the new width, because doubling the width would quadruple the weight, and the engines can't handle that -- so instead it'll get fatter without getting much taller.

A tanker version of the Starship-9m could refuel a passenger Starship-9m for journey to Mars in about 5 tanker flights. 
It's would require a lot of coordination with operations in orbit and on the ground.  A tanker Starship-18m could refuel a passenger Starship-9m in just one flight.

A cargo Starship-18m could land perhaps in the range of 1000-1500 tons on Mars.

Musk's update on the whole Starship program is expected to be September 27th, at Boca Chica and streamed on youtube.

A 200km flight of the first Starship prototype expected for October, with an orbital flight soon after that (a few weeks later?)

Meanwhile Crew Dragon should have it's in-flight abort test in November.

Exciting times. Small correction. Flight to 20km altitude  in October.

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2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Exciting times. Small correction. Flight to 20km altitude  in October.

Ah, thanks for catching that.  Yes, 200km would be orbit!  Not quite ready for that yet. 

Flight to 20km is without Super Heavy, but that's coming along, might be by the end of the year.

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On 8/31/2019 at 1:07 AM, SpaceChampion said:

Musk is now talking about the next larger version of Starship & Super Heavy doubling the diameter of the current 9m design to 18m.  Starship-9m already would be the largest, most powerful rocket ever.  It would not just be a matter of scaling up all dimensions relative to the new width, because doubling the width would quadruple the weight, and the engines can't handle that -- so instead it'll get fatter without getting much taller.

A tanker version of the Starship-9m could refuel a passenger Starship-9m for journey to Mars in about 5 tanker flights. 
It's would require a lot of coordination with operations in orbit and on the ground.  A tanker Starship-18m could refuel a passenger Starship-9m in just one flight.

A cargo Starship-18m could land perhaps in the range of 1000-1500 tons on Mars.

At some point on the complexity level, it makes more sense to launch nuclear powered tugs to commute between Mars and LEO. 

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26 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

At some point on the complexity level, it makes more sense to launch nuclear powered tugs to commute between Mars and LEO. 

It doesn't work that way. Even setting aside the regulatory hurdles, nuclear power only provides energy for electricity -- you still need some kind of propellant for momentum. The few nuclear-powered aircraft that have flown all rely on moving air from in front of them to behind them at high speeds. There were some ideas of using the nuclear reactor to heat the fuel and expel it backwards at a high speed, but you still need to bring a lot of fuel along so you have not saved much complexity to offset the nuclear reactor.

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SpaceX has been asking the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE team at NASA for high resolution images of potential landing sites.  Doing this years before an actual landing is necessary because it would take a while to assess the geography and geology of the terrain at all sites for comparing and choosing the optimum.

An old article from two years indicated SpaceX's Mars campaign team has an interest in Arcadia Planitia.
A current article looks deeper into the search criteria -- many of the top candidates are near areas where there is strong evidence for buried glaciers.
 

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SpaceX’s current favorite place to land on Mars is reportedly Arcadia Planitia, which combines flat terrain, potential deposits of water ice and an equatorial region well-suited for solar power.

There are also sites in that region of astrobiological interest, such as gullies formed on the south facing sides of craters where it appear liquid water has incised the slopes periodically, perhaps seasonally.
 

 

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17 hours ago, Altherion said:

It doesn't work that way. Even setting aside the regulatory hurdles, nuclear power only provides energy for electricity -- you still need some kind of propellant for momentum. The few nuclear-powered aircraft that have flown all rely on moving air from in front of them to behind them at high speeds. There were some ideas of using the nuclear reactor to heat the fuel and expel it backwards at a high speed, but you still need to bring a lot of fuel along so you have not saved much complexity to offset the nuclear reactor.

No. Electric and plasma engines has ISPs that are impossible to achieve using combustion engines (>3000s vs 300-500 of chemical fuels). This means that the amount of propellant needed is much smaller than in SpaceX concepts and because of the much higher exhaust velocities acceleration is much higher. What is needed are engines with enough thrust to achieve a decent cruise velocity in a reasonable amount of time. See for example the NASA VASIMR engine.

 

 

 

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Exciting news! https://www.space.com/water-vapor-rain-clouds-exoplanet-k2-18b.html

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In a major first, scientists have detected water vapor and possibly even liquid water clouds that rain in the atmosphere of a strange exoplanet that lies in the habitable zone of its host star about 110 light-years from Earth.

 

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A Second Interstellar Object Has Almost Certainly Been Found In Our Solar System

A comet, with a tail.... or the 'Oumuamua was the vanguard and here comes the fleet?

 

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At its closest, the object is expected to reach about 1.88 times the Earth-Sun distance (1.88 AU, or astronomical units) on December 10 – it was discovered at a distance of three AU. This orbit will bring it extremely close to Mars, perhaps “within 10 million kilometers” or so according to physicist Marshall Eubanks from Space Initiatives. “An interesting question is whether you could see it with the naked eye from Mars,” he says.

Would be neat if they can get Curiosity to take a photo of it.

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11 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

A Second Interstellar Object Has Almost Certainly Been Found In Our Solar System

A comet, with a tail.... or the 'Oumuamua was the vanguard and here comes the fleet?

 

Would be neat if they can get Curiosity to take a photo of it.

Is the track similar to Oumuamua?  

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I was surprised to see that paper claim the second interstellar object, as I think CNEOS 2014-01-08 was already identified as an interstellar asteroid by Siraj & Loeb. I never saw that get any press though so there may have been a weakness in their claim (I haven't closely read the paper). In any case, this is the first interstellar comet and that's pretty cool, especially as it's been detected prior to perihelion.

On 9/12/2019 at 10:57 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is the track similar to Oumuamua?  

No, they came from different directions ('Oumuamua came from Vega, C/2019 Q4 Borisov came from Cassiopeia) and have pretty different trajectories. 'Oumuamua only had an eccentricity of 1.2, while Borisov has >3 (which wow!).   

 

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