SpaceX Starship SN5 Makes Lots Of Noise In Texas
Starship takes flight pic.twitter.com/IWvwcA05hl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 5, 2020
Starship takes flight pic.twitter.com/IWvwcA05hl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 5, 2020
Congratulations to Space! Hopefully the manufacturing bottleneck has been broken and they will start producing them quickly now. They are already building the VAB for the Super Heavy!
I think the Raptor is the bottleneck.
Base on a tweet by Elon a short time ago, about an increase in thrust, it seems like they are still refining the Raptors design.
Yes, I believe this was Raptor 26. But they have been refining it for over a year at McGregor. The latest version is suppose to have 30% more thrust for the same weight over the original.
Starship SN5 has Raptor SN27…
Great! Each iteration better than the one before. That is real progress!
Musk tweeted upcoming vehicles get 60% larger v1.1 legs, then comes a set of “like Falcon” longer/wider v2 legs for unprepared surfaces.
This is gonna be fun
Sixty percent larger is more than double the size. That can’t be right.
Should have said “longer”.
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
Okay.
I guess that includes super heavy then.
Just the legs.
Haha, wut? 60% larger means 1.60 the size of the original item, not double the size! Double the size would be 100% larger, or 2.0 times the size of the original item. It’s that damn new math!
The real fun starts when they fire 31 engines.
Makes sense. They’re going to need those v2 legs for the lunar landing version of Starship. This should help show NASA that they’re making real progress towards lunar Starship.
What manufacturing bottleneck? Space X is producing rockets with dramatic new technology at record breaking speed. Contrast with Orion, Boeing, Blue Origin, etc.
Sure it’s fast compared to Legacy Space firms especially with regard to ancient handcrafted systems like SLS and Orion (Years and years to build a single booster???) But Elon Musk and his fans have higher expectations… After all he will need dozens and dozens of Starships just for point to point passenger routes.?
I’m extremely skeptical of P2P transportation using Starship/Super Booster. This thing will be V1.0 of a fully reusable TSTO. I doubt it will be reliable enough for “routine” P2P passenger transport.
That’s not to say a V2.0 or V3.0 couldn’t be used for P2P. But I think that’s a decade or two down the line, IMHO.
I’m betting that you’ll need at least v2.0 before you can launch and land crews with it. A system that can’t do a pad abort sounds pretty iffy to me, as does one that has to land upright and not fall over during an EDL that doesn’t end at a prepared pad.
They’ve had more of a testing bottleneck than a manufacturing one. I don’t know that they even have a reason to fly SN6 with SN8 in its state of construction, unless they lose SN5 while working the kinks out of the ground equipment and launch procedures.
A NASA engineer, one who worked on the LEM, told me you always need at least three airframes for a good test program so you are able to continue testing even if you lose one or two. It also allows you to take more risks exploring the performance envelope.
In Elon‘s case it also helps train the folks he has building the rockets, most of whom were hired from the oil industry and the ship breaker yards in the region. It’s amazing that he is not only testing the design, but creating a brand new workforce and creating an assembly line all at the same time for Starship.
Sure, but holding off on testing to make sure you have three airframes doesn’t speed things up. They’ve had to hold off on testing SN5 because they blew up their test pad and took the opportunity to rebuild it with upgrades they’d been planning anyway.
Guys…they have SN-05 flying (they’re putting it on the roll-lifts today for a move. Test stand for a reflight or to the build site? Hmmm…
SN-06 is stacked, and SN-08 is stacking with its fins and nose cone waiting their turn.
https://youtu.be/nTeeT4WVIfY
It makes all kinds of sense to continue a number of 150m hops using both SN5 and SN6. They need to work out some bugs, particularly 1) the stuck valve issue that delayed an earlier hop; 2) the explosion on the ground support equipment, evident moments after lift off; 3) the fire that was evident on the Raptor engine on the descent. And that is only the issues we know about. So, work out all the bugs on that, hop a few times to make sure you are confident, and then move on to higher altitude testing with SN8.
I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense to do that now, but they’re only in a position to do so because testing SN5 had to wait for new ground support infrastructure and a new test stand to be built.
In another timeline, SN6 might have started construction while SN5 was being tested, following the “multiple airframes” principle mentioned. If SN5 had been destroyed before SN6 was ready, then they would indeed have been bottlenecked on production. But it wasn’t and they weren’t, they’ve been bottlenecked on testing, not manufacturing.
Good job for SpaceX in what has already been a good week for them!
Yeah, I was just thinking that SpaceX has had some red-letter weeks before, but this is probably the high point. And they launched another batch of Starlinks this morning.
Progress!
To some outsiders, it still may not look like much (it’s been called a flying grain silo online). But, this is what iterative development looks like. Each step of of testing and flying allows the design and processes to be optimized.
Just need to tell the critics okay you make a grain silo fly and see how easy it is.
Flying is easy, it is landing in one piece that is difficult.?
Somebody once told me that almost anyone can make an aircraft take off and fly someplace; but they pay pilots to land the plane.
May not look like much, but it’s a working and nearly complete propulsion subsystem, lacking only the oxygen header tank which will be located in the nose and the mounts for the vacuum Raptors. It’s the real core of Starship as a launch vehicle, and everything they need to start testing flights with the complete hull and control surfaces.
This is a history making flight that will go down in history and be remembered. It is even more important than the Dragon return of the two astronauts a few days ago.
It’s also the first Artemis HLS prototype to fly.
Amazing! Heh, it looks so implausible, but it works. They still have a ways to go… when they can match the in-air maneuverability of the DC-X that’ll be something. Can’t wait. Hard to believe the DC-X was 25+ years ago…
Yes, I remember seeing it fly. An amazing sight.
Ummm. Are you not considering the development of Falcon 9 Reusable when it was called Grasshopper? Not to take anything away from McDonnel Douglas on that DC-X, SpaceX developed a much more capable vehicle and especially the control software to return the F9 booster back to land. This includes multiple systems, Merlin engine restart and control the flight using anywhere from 1-9 engines as needed, nitrogen reaction control system, aerodynamic fins and deployable legs, all designed and built with elegance and efficiency. The complexity and speed of state of the art electronics, GPS & inertial navigation precision is a bigger &, IMO, more impressive accomplishment. SpaceX is writing the book in state of the art rocketry.
I’ve seen Grasshopper footage, but can’t say I followed it closely as I have Starship development… sorry, but for me that footage doesn’t quite have the same impact as this Starship flight. Something about the intent, manufacturing process, size/shape/proportions, lack of visible legs, and off-center exhaust… Anyway, my DC-X comment related to the landing maneuver that Starship will have to execute. It’s reminiscent (to me) of the “swan dive” maneuver demonstrated by the DC-X. I’ve viewed many a F9 launch and landing, but I’d be quite surprised if the booster could do some of the in-air acrobatics demoed by the DC-X. SpaceX has designed an efficient minimalist system with the F9 booster, and the landings (particularly the dual landings) are a sight to behold. However, all the technology existed in the 1990s. Not to take anything away from SpaceX, but while the system design is novel, the component use in space vehicles is not… well except perhaps for deployable legs on a booster.