Starship test vehicle under assembly will look similar to this illustration when finished. Operational Starships would obv have windows, etc. pic.twitter.com/D8AJ01mjyR
Yep they have shown a design at CES in LV this week it will be 4 passengers and a driver and its in essence a large drone !! UberFlight in a city near you soon !
Engines currently on Starship hopper are a blend of Raptor development & operational parts. First hopper engine to be fired is almost finished assembly in California. Probably fires next month.
You look out the redundant or backup camera/view screen. And if those fail, then just go back to your bunk because there probably wasn’t anything mission critical that you needed to be looking at any way. Spaceships aren’t airplanes and they’re certainly not cars. Our (civilian) intuition for how much control we need based on terrestrial analogies is wholly useless for space travel.
And if the glass windows shatter? Everyone instantly dead.
With failing cameras you could potentially go out and fix them.
Particles in space will be travelling at hypervelocities, even steel will have a tough time holding together when impacted at such speeds. Glass is laughable.
I think the history of structural glass components in US spacecraft demonstrates that the use of said glass (actually glasses) doesn’t provide undo risk.
The Shuttle windows did take a few dings from orbital debris. On the one hand, the debris environment is much more benign above low Earth orbits. On the other hand, big, expansive windows might just be asking for trouble. That’s a very straight-forward trade study: Work out the increased risk per square meter per day, decide what an acceptable risk is, and divide to get the number of square meters of window. Compared to building a rocket engine, that’s almost a trivial calculation.
The first (I believe) window replacement on an operational shuttle took place on Challenger after one or two missions. It had to be replaced because a fleck of paint had hit it in orbit and created enough of a crater that it was replaced. Those windows not only have to contain cabin atmosphere they must also handle the lunar return re-entry environment.
I used an orbital-debris-shattered window pane (the outer pane, meeting the RTLS requirement) in my Damned to Heaven to trap a shuttle in orbit. Shuttle attitude management protocols were modified in the late 90s & 2000s to shield the windows from impact risk, i.e., generic orbital flight had the shuttle flying tail first & belly to the zenith which compromised other demands. Windows are great but they are an undeniable headache & risk for any type of flight in space.
It is not a small concern. I can’t imagine the SpaceX team not accommodating all the known risks in their design, including wear & tear. But what, exactly, is acceptable risk per your ‘trivial’ calculation?
I’m afraid I can’t do that trivial calculation myself. It takes an orbital debris model, and I don’t personally have one. But they exist. The input is an orbit or a position, and the output is the number of hits per square meter per second (or year), as a function of impactor size or energy. A mechanical engineer can tell you how big an impact it would take to damage or penetrate the specific type of window you’re planning to use. Fold in the orientation of the spacecraft to get an exposed area, and you get the mean time between harmful impacts.
How long that needs to be (i.e. the risk of a harmful impact per flight) is up the manufacturer, the customer and the insurance company. But SpaceX actually does already know how to do this. That 1:270 risk limit for Dragon 2 includes damage in orbit, as well as launch and landing, and damage in orbit includes debris. So SpaceX took a limit from the customer, and designed the spacecraft using the sort of models I described, above.
Now, all that may not sound trivial (and it isn’t in an absolute sense.) But I said trivial _compared_to_ building a rocket engine. Actually, when I wrote that, I was thinking designing and building one. That’s probably more accurate.
I don’t disagree with your description but it is of only one element of the ‘window design question’. The windows must also retain atmospheric pressure, shield from radiation (or not), maintain structural & thermal integrity during launch, re-entry, and descent…and hopefully remain transparent…and be fully reusable (versus ‘refurbishable’) for many flights.
I too would hope & expect real windows…if people are going to go, then they ought to be able to directly see the sights/sites. Even exploration submarines have crazy-thick windows down where even light penetration is a problem. Video technology (if that can still be used as the term?) has come far and continues to advance, but still…
Just saying it remains not a small engineering challenge to include them. But then again, Shuttle did pave the way with its historically large suite of historically expansive windows. Imagine that…
I didn’t mean to imply putting windows on a spacecraft is easy. A lot of good, solid engineering work needs to go into that. And I probably should never have used the word trivial, even in a relative sense. I simply meant that the required work for windows is something people know how to do. And that the required work is significantly less that the other tasks involved in building something like the SpaceX Starship.
Remember, this is just a testbed without any crew, so there is no reason to include any windows. The key is to build it quick and strong for its test flight program. The windows will come with the orbital versions that will have crew on board. No point in going around the Moon if there are no windows to look out.
What I am wondering is what motivated Elon Musk to start moving so fast on the Starship. Something put a burr in his saddle as he is working as fast as if it wartime.
I don’t expect this test vehicle to have windows at all. I was speaking about other vehicles.
As for windows in general in spacecraft, technical concerns aside, there is some value–great value I think– in humans being able to look out into space through a window as opposed to seeing it on a display.
It’s a situation not unlike a submarine, Keith, where sensors of all sorts provide the dat required to keep the boat off the bottom. And that is a well-understood technology.
Nothing however provides the immediacy of an actual window, particularly for tourists; or for colonists, ‘trapped’ inside a tin can for 6 months or more.
Another interesting detail is the heigh of this SpaceX Starship. If the crew is near the front/top, it would be hard for a window to give them a good view of what’s directly below during a landing. That was one concern about direct landing during the early years of the Apollo program. For that sort of spacecraft, landings would have to be by instruments, not visual piloting. And for navigation in space, sensors are much more reliable and accurate than human eyes.
I kind of like the idea of a coupla-type module that gives panoramic views, but can be isolated from the rest of the ship atmosphere in case of an incident.
Currently, Starship has one paying customer. Yusaku Maezawa is not going to pay all that money to fly around the Moon in a windowless metal can. If he wanted to see the scenery through cameras and view screens, he could do that from home.
I don’t think the glass in an aerodynamic sense is any worse or better then a camera setup. With the acceptation of if one is traveling in a spacecraft seeing the outside world with your own eyes is surely much better !
Even though what they are cobbling up at Boca Chica TX is just a boilerplate test hopper, it inspires. It simulates the aerodynamic shape , physical size, and I presume the working weight of the BFS for the purposes of testing the chassis and more importantly the Raptor engines . Although the engines may still be alpha developmentals, not even beta production or mission capable Raptors, they have plenty to teach at this early stage. Nothing beats real world testing with FITH.
Regarding SpaceX’s current BFR/BFS configuration of a very tall multistage stack with an ungodly number of engines in radial configuration , it is hard not to recall the Soviet N-1 Moon rocket. A monster rocket with 30 engines in the first stage and 8 in the second ( not unlike BFR/BFS ) , it was first ignited on the pad in February of 1969 . The Soviets tried to launch N-1 four times , resulting in four spectacular failures , a victim of underfunding and rushed development , something we cannot lay that at the feet of NASA and Boeing with it’s SLS – which apparently has all the time and money in the world and only the vaguest of mission objectives .
SpaceX knows where it’s going and how to get there, and now has a prototype faunching at the bit down there in south Texas. I hope Elon Inc. is not rushing the development, and is mentally prepared for some spectacular unplanned deconstructions. At the end of the day it all comes down to those Raptors. JFK announced the Apollo program and the goal of landing Americans on the Moon in less than a decade only after he was assured by Werner von Braun et al that the revolutionary F-1 engine would be ready do the heavy lfting.
Stop this concern trolling. If SpaceX can ignite 27 Merlins with the triple core Falcon Heavy. Then firing up 31 Raptors with the mono core Super Heavy (aka Big F#!g Booster) will not be as large a leap as from the Falcon 9 to the Falcon Heavy. We will find out in a few months if the SpaceX propulsion department have done as great a job with the Raptor engine as with the Merlin engine.
We have not heard of any serious issues with the Raptor engine. Which will be the world’s first operational full-flow staged combustion engine with nominal operating combustion chamber pressure of 300 bars.
The NK-13 engines in the N-1 was not restartable, so could not be static-fire tested and be used operationally later. Which also means that the initial N-1 first stages was not static-fire tested. In comparison the SpaceX Merlins was exhaustively test fired as are the Raptor engines.
Notably, however, the Enterprise did not have windows on the bridge. In any of the incarnations of that fictional ship. That’s not a bad idea. Compartments with critical functions probably shouldn’t have windows, or be near the pressure hull at all. It would make sense to leave the windows for the recreation rooms and lounges.
Next! Can our flying cars be far behind?
I am sure that a flying Tesla is on his to do list somewhere ?
think he tweeted yesterday about the next tesla roadster having flight ability !
There’s at least one flying Tesla that we know about. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
That’s not flying! It’s falling with style!
Given how many people drive cars on roads, do you really want them behind the wheel of a flying car?
Yep they have shown a design at CES in LV this week it will be 4 passengers and a driver and its in essence a large drone !! UberFlight in a city near you soon !
SpaceX never fails to surprise and astonish. Building a huge rocket out of steel plate in a muddy field, even just a prototype…amazing.
Yes, they will probably have it flying in less time then it would take NASA to issue the RFI for designing a facility to build it in.?
Yesterday’s science fiction, today’s science fact ..
Looks like a fit check today; put the nose cone on then took it off again.
https://twitter.com/CowboyD…
Yea I think they need to now put all of the rocket stuff inside.
I’m waiting to see if the Raptors on the hopper are real.
According to Elon (I think Disqus embeds tweets…)
<script async=”” src=”https://platform.twitter.co…” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Putting glass windows on spaceships is totally stupid. Better to install cameras and viewscreens.
And if the cameras/view screens fail?
You look out the redundant or backup camera/view screen. And if those fail, then just go back to your bunk because there probably wasn’t anything mission critical that you needed to be looking at any way. Spaceships aren’t airplanes and they’re certainly not cars. Our (civilian) intuition for how much control we need based on terrestrial analogies is wholly useless for space travel.
That is a lot less worse scenario than:
And if the glass windows shatter?
Everyone instantly dead.
With failing cameras you could potentially go out and fix them.
Particles in space will be travelling at hypervelocities, even steel will have a tough time holding together when impacted at such speeds. Glass is laughable.
I think the history of structural glass components in US spacecraft demonstrates that the use of said glass (actually glasses) doesn’t provide undo risk.
The Shuttle windows did take a few dings from orbital debris. On the one hand, the debris environment is much more benign above low Earth orbits. On the other hand, big, expansive windows might just be asking for trouble. That’s a very straight-forward trade study: Work out the increased risk per square meter per day, decide what an acceptable risk is, and divide to get the number of square meters of window. Compared to building a rocket engine, that’s almost a trivial calculation.
The first (I believe) window replacement on an operational shuttle took place on Challenger after one or two missions. It had to be replaced because a fleck of paint had hit it in orbit and created enough of a crater that it was replaced. Those windows not only have to contain cabin atmosphere they must also handle the lunar return re-entry environment.
I used an orbital-debris-shattered window pane (the outer pane, meeting the RTLS requirement) in my Damned to Heaven to trap a shuttle in orbit. Shuttle attitude management protocols were modified in the late 90s & 2000s to shield the windows from impact risk, i.e., generic orbital flight had the shuttle flying tail first & belly to the zenith which compromised other demands. Windows are great but they are an undeniable headache & risk for any type of flight in space.
It is not a small concern. I can’t imagine the SpaceX team not accommodating all the known risks in their design, including wear & tear. But what, exactly, is acceptable risk per your ‘trivial’ calculation?
I’m afraid I can’t do that trivial calculation myself. It takes an orbital debris model, and I don’t personally have one. But they exist. The input is an orbit or a position, and the output is the number of hits per square meter per second (or year), as a function of impactor size or energy. A mechanical engineer can tell you how big an impact it would take to damage or penetrate the specific type of window you’re planning to use. Fold in the orientation of the spacecraft to get an exposed area, and you get the mean time between harmful impacts.
How long that needs to be (i.e. the risk of a harmful impact per flight) is up the manufacturer, the customer and the insurance company. But SpaceX actually does already know how to do this. That 1:270 risk limit for Dragon 2 includes damage in orbit, as well as launch and landing, and damage in orbit includes debris. So SpaceX took a limit from the customer, and designed the spacecraft using the sort of models I described, above.
Now, all that may not sound trivial (and it isn’t in an absolute sense.) But I said trivial _compared_to_ building a rocket engine. Actually, when I wrote that, I was thinking designing and building one. That’s probably more accurate.
I don’t disagree with your description but it is of only one element of the ‘window design question’. The windows must also retain atmospheric pressure, shield from radiation (or not), maintain structural & thermal integrity during launch, re-entry, and descent…and hopefully remain transparent…and be fully reusable (versus ‘refurbishable’) for many flights.
I too would hope & expect real windows…if people are going to go, then they ought to be able to directly see the sights/sites. Even exploration submarines have crazy-thick windows down where even light penetration is a problem. Video technology (if that can still be used as the term?) has come far and continues to advance, but still…
Just saying it remains not a small engineering challenge to include them. But then again, Shuttle did pave the way with its historically large suite of historically expansive windows. Imagine that…
I didn’t mean to imply putting windows on a spacecraft is easy. A lot of good, solid engineering work needs to go into that. And I probably should never have used the word trivial, even in a relative sense. I simply meant that the required work for windows is something people know how to do. And that the required work is significantly less that the other tasks involved in building something like the SpaceX Starship.
Remember, this is just a testbed without any crew, so there is no reason to include any windows. The key is to build it quick and strong for its test flight program. The windows will come with the orbital versions that will have crew on board. No point in going around the Moon if there are no windows to look out.
What I am wondering is what motivated Elon Musk to start moving so fast on the Starship. Something put a burr in his saddle as he is working as fast as if it wartime.
I don’t expect this test vehicle to have windows at all. I was speaking about other vehicles.
As for windows in general in spacecraft, technical concerns aside, there is some value–great value I think– in humans being able to look out into space through a window as opposed to seeing it on a display.
when has glass shattered on an spacecraft in the US fleet ?
It’s a situation not unlike a submarine, Keith, where sensors of all sorts provide the dat required to keep the boat off the bottom. And that is a well-understood technology.
Nothing however provides the immediacy of an actual window, particularly for tourists; or for colonists, ‘trapped’ inside a tin can for 6 months or more.
Another interesting detail is the heigh of this SpaceX Starship. If the crew is near the front/top, it would be hard for a window to give them a good view of what’s directly below during a landing. That was one concern about direct landing during the early years of the Apollo program. For that sort of spacecraft, landings would have to be by instruments, not visual piloting. And for navigation in space, sensors are much more reliable and accurate than human eyes.
Falcon uses GPS and Ground Radar I think it would be about the same idea basically , LM could now see alot beneath it either and used radar !
I kind of like the idea of a coupla-type module that gives panoramic views, but can be isolated from the rest of the ship atmosphere in case of an incident.
Currently, Starship has one paying customer. Yusaku Maezawa is not going to pay all that money to fly around the Moon in a windowless metal can. If he wanted to see the scenery through cameras and view screens, he could do that from home.
I doubt it’ll be “glass.” More like a layred design using polycarbonate and ALON (which can stop a .50 sniper round cold)
I don’t think the glass in an aerodynamic sense is any worse or better then a camera setup. With the acceptation of if one is traveling in a spacecraft seeing the outside world with your own eyes is surely much better !
I’m going with BFR = Buck . F_ing. Rogers
Even though what they are cobbling up at Boca Chica TX is just a boilerplate test hopper, it inspires. It simulates the aerodynamic shape , physical size, and I presume the working weight of the BFS for the purposes of testing the chassis and more importantly the Raptor engines . Although the engines may still be alpha developmentals, not even beta production or mission capable Raptors, they have plenty to teach at this early stage. Nothing beats real world testing with FITH.
Regarding SpaceX’s current BFR/BFS configuration of a very tall multistage stack with an ungodly number of engines in radial configuration , it is hard not to recall the Soviet N-1 Moon rocket. A monster rocket with 30 engines in the first stage and 8 in the second ( not unlike BFR/BFS ) , it was first ignited on the pad in February of 1969 . The Soviets tried to launch N-1 four times , resulting in four spectacular failures , a victim of underfunding and rushed development , something we cannot lay that at the feet of NASA and Boeing with it’s SLS – which apparently has all the time and money in the world and only the vaguest of mission objectives .
SpaceX knows where it’s going and how to get there, and now has a prototype faunching at the bit down there in south Texas. I hope Elon Inc. is not rushing the development, and is mentally prepared for some spectacular unplanned deconstructions. At the end of the day it all comes down to those Raptors. JFK announced the Apollo program and the goal of landing Americans on the Moon in less than a decade only after he was assured by Werner von Braun et al that the revolutionary F-1 engine would be ready do the heavy lfting.
Stop this concern trolling. If SpaceX can ignite 27 Merlins with the triple core Falcon Heavy. Then firing up 31 Raptors with the mono core Super Heavy (aka Big F#!g Booster) will not be as large a leap as from the Falcon 9 to the Falcon Heavy. We will find out in a few months if the SpaceX propulsion department have done as great a job with the Raptor engine as with the Merlin engine.
We have not heard of any serious issues with the Raptor engine. Which will be the world’s first operational full-flow staged combustion engine with nominal operating combustion chamber pressure of 300 bars.
The NK-13 engines in the N-1 was not restartable, so could not be static-fire tested and be used operationally later. Which also means that the initial N-1 first stages was not static-fire tested. In comparison the SpaceX Merlins was exhaustively test fired as are the Raptor engines.
https://goo.gl/images/6Cy2JE
Is it just me, or does the Dragon 2 CAA look like the lunar shuttle bus fuselage in 2001?
https://mk0spaceflightnoa02…
https://www.popsci.com/site…
Notably, however, the Enterprise did not have windows on the bridge. In any of the incarnations of that fictional ship. That’s not a bad idea. Compartments with critical functions probably shouldn’t have windows, or be near the pressure hull at all. It would make sense to leave the windows for the recreation rooms and lounges.