46 ms·

Starship Prototype Unveiled

543 points by childintime 7y ago

abledon 7y ago
I would love to know what the "Day-in-the-life" of a welder working on those ships would be. Did they train specifically for aerospace welding? How did they land that specific gig. Must be so inspiring to wake up and work on that.
- varjag 7y ago
  A good weld on 301 steel isn't very different regardless the purpose.
  - allannienhuis 7y ago
    and welds are very testable via x-ray (perhaps some other techniques), and I believe repairable unless someone really screws up.
- discordianfish 7y ago
  I'd love to know the hiring process. There must be many people applying for these positions and I doubt that whiteboard welding is a thing. Or is it? :)
  - RandomTisk 7y ago
    AFAIK it's uncommon skill, you need the steady hands of a surgeon to have a chance. Definitely not work I could do, I know that.
    - adamcharnock 7y ago
      Yeah, having learnt the (very) basics of welding recently it has become very clear to me how much of a skill/art it actually is. Even at the basic level it is a combination of a lot of senses; sight, hearing, touch. And there are multiple movements which need to happen both simultaneously and smoothly, and be adjusted based on the aforementioned senses.
    - jdmn 7y ago
      Sooo...it's rocket surgery for real?
      - kbenson 7y ago
        That's the best description. "Joe over there? Oh, he's a rocket surgeon." Now I can't help remembering a sketch from Mitchell and Webb.[1] 1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I
    - hansthehorse 7y ago
      I used to wander around the reactor auxiliary building at the nuclear plant I worked at and take pictures of the piping welds. They were works of art. The skill was obvious.
      - JshWright 7y ago
        > I used to wander around ... the nuclear plant I worked at and take pictures DHS would like your location...
      - JorgeGT 7y ago
        There's always https://www.reddit.com/r/Weldingporn/top/?t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/Weldingporn/top/?t=all for nice pictures of welds.
        NortySpock 7y ago
        And the NSFW equivalent https://www.reddit.com/r/goneweld https://www.reddit.com/r/goneweld , with naughty captions of welding seams.
    - abledon 7y ago
      Best internet resource that goes into the detail of this?
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      My dad did this kind of work in the oil industry for 30+ years as a pipe fitter. His specialty was stainless and they had to be x-ray perfect welds. He recently retired but was always very proud of his work. It took me a long time to understand why. I wish he could have gotten into the space industry vs oil refineries. The latter is much harder on a person.
      - Florin_Andrei 7y ago
        > was always very proud of his work. It took me a long time to understand why. I'm a mediocre amateur welder and I totally understand why.
      - abledon 7y ago
        Was he prudent in maintaining good work habits? I hear the industry can be quite hard on people if they are not careful in how they work[1] [1] https://www.thefabricator.com/article/safety/the-invisible-risks-of-welding https://www.thefabricator.com/article/safety/the-invisible-r...
        52-6F-62 7y ago
        Ahaha absolutely. He's as square and as prudent as it gets. I mean to an extreme. My siblings have always laughed at him for it [outside of the workplace and in everyday matters where he carries those habits on]. It's hard on people regardless. And the oil industry is not known for being prudent in looking after their workers' health. They got real pissed when he filed a workers compensation claim for a hearing aid before he retired. Thankfully he had support from his union. And the number of stories he's told me where he was nearly killed... I've no sympathy for the industry.
        goldenkey 7y ago
        I've no sympathy for the industry. puts sunglasses on Yeaaaahh!!!!!!
    - infectoid 7y ago
      My Dad tried to teach me to weld. It definitely takes a lot of practices to be average at it. Somehow my Dad managed to swipe that thing around like he was painting or something. It was impressive.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    There is definitely tests for welding jobs. And then their welds are regularly tested to maintain certifications. The tales I heard from my father were X-ray scans of their finished, grinded, polished welds and they had to be perfect. Not a hair-sized infraction would be permitted.
    - sgc 7y ago
      I can't imagine anything but xray for the entire ship, every mm of weld. Given the forces involved, it seems like a completely new level of perfect is required.
- thinkingkong 7y ago
  I think the prototype was built by a company that normally builds water towers, so probably not that different from normal industrial welding.
  - oska 7y ago
    And as I saw someone else say, the welds on a water tower also have to be good under pressure, otherwise the water tower bursts and dumps all its water.
- mbell 7y ago
  I imagine for the Mk1/2 they are using in house teams but for the hopper they contracted out the construction to a company that builds water towers (Caldwell Tanks). I mean - it makes sense, it's really just a water tank with an extra bulkhead that SpaceX just so happens to want to attach a rocket engine to...
- infectoid 7y ago
  I'd watch a Bob Ross of welding if that channel existed.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    You might enjoy https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks then
- mncharity 7y ago
  > How did they land that specific gig The https://www.spacex.com/careers/list https://www.spacex.com/careers/list ? There are currently several entries for Welder (Starship) and Tank Fabricator/Welder.
deleted 7y ago
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codeulike 7y ago
I totally understand why they've gone for that design but the welded together steel plates really make me think of the sort of thing Wallace and Gromit would build.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- faead_ 7y ago
  he addressed in presentation, from what i remember it had a lot to do with cost. Like $130k/ton with carbon vs $3k/ton with steel. He mentioned a few other factors. Also it allowed them to build outside, not sure if t that is true in production.
  - allannienhuis 7y ago
    the material isn't the question, it's why they had to weld it together in a patchwork quilt. Elon talked about the next version would simply have rolled coils with a single seam weld (although the cylinders would have to be welded together too), which would be better structurally and cosmetically, and likely lower cost of production. Sounds like they just didn't have the rolling machines to do the job, or perhaps there was an availability issue with the specific alloy.
    - _Microft 7y ago
      It will reduce the length of the welds (for the hull) quite a bit. The number of rings is roughly 35 for Starship, with about ten vertical seams each. For easier thinking, line the vertical seams up and you see that this gives 50m length per vertical seam from bottom to top of Starship. So there are a total of 500m for that. 35 rings with ~28m circumference add up to about 1km of seams between them. Now if they can use rolls twice as wide and only a single vertical weld each, then that's 500m between the rings and 50m for a single vertical seam. 550m of welds there instead of 1.5m before. This should speed things up quite a lot and reduce the cost of labour. Raptor production is the real bottleneck, though.
dopylitty 7y ago
‘Tis a fine water tower or grain silo, but sure it is no starship, Boerish.
35787 7y ago
Eventually the shell will be a single large roll of steel that is unrolled, bent into a tube with a seam going hotdog that is welded. It will be very strong, lighter than the current patchwork, and extremely beautiful. More similar to the renderings. Can’t wait.
- hwillis 7y ago
  Definitely not hotdog (assuming that's from stem to stern). Musk wasn't totally clear when describing it, but he said mk3 would be in three months. The circumference of starship is 28.26 meters. For a single weld the entire length of the ship, the roll itself would need to be that wide. The largest rolling mills in the world are ~4 meters wide[1]. They require backup rollers[2], ie rollers that push down the rollers that push down the rollers that push down the metal. Bending deflection increases with width^2. A 28 meter wide rolling mill does not exist AFAIK and cannot be built in three months. [1]: https://www.aleris.com/company/rolled-products/ https://www.aleris.com/company/rolled-products/ [2]: http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/metallurgy/types-of-rolling-mills-metallurgy/95337 http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/metallurgy/types-of-rollin...
  - 35787 7y ago
    Wow what an incredibly substantive comment. I remember pretty clearly he said that there would be a single seam weld. Maybe I’m remembering wrong. Or maybe they’ll seam weld multiple rolls into a really wide roll and the only weld required to turn the final roll into the shell is that final hotdog weld.
    - paragraft 7y ago
      I think the idea's to go like a Pringles can, with a spiraling single seam.
      - sixQuarks 7y ago
        this is the correct answer. They can simply use the 4 meter wide steel no problem.
hoorayimhelping 7y ago
380s for ISP for the Raptor vacuum engine seems durn good, considering the tradeoffs between hydrogen and methane. The most efficient engines we've flown, the RL-10 [0] (used on the Delta IV and Atlas rockets as part of the Centaur Upper Stage) and the RS-25 [1], (the Space Shuttle Main Engine) get around 450-460s for their specific impulse. These engines use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The issue with liquid hydrogen is twofold: it is not very dense, and to keep it from boiling away in liquid form, it needs to be really cold. So you need huge, insulated tanks to store it. Hydrogen is everywhere, but it's kind of a pain to use as rocket fuel. Merlin Vacuum [2], which is currently used on the Falcon vehicles gets 311s. The RD-0110 [3], used on the Soyuz gets 326s. These use RP-1, which is highly refined kerosene. It's super easy to work with. On earth. Where we have 200 years of infrastructure in place to support using hydrocarbons. It takes that infrastructure to refine it into a form that rocket engines can use without gunking up the works with unburnt carbon and other particulate crap. Raptor uses methane, which is kind of like a jack of all trades between density, efficiency, ease of processing, storage, and ease of use in engines. This is basically how SpaceX seems to operate: rather than optimizing a single part of the system (like trying to get the most efficient engine), they try to optimize from a systems level. I don't really know much more than that, because there hasn't really been a lot of stuff for civilians to read on methane engines. This is kind of the cutting edge of the second golden age of space exploration. This freaking rules, what a time to be alive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RL10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RL10 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0110
- codeulike 7y ago
  Here's a Wired article about the raptor engine - it's "a full-flow staged combustion engine, only the third engine in history to employ this technique ... The previous two attempts at such an engine, one in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and another in the US in the early 2000s, never made it beyond testing." https://www.wired.co.uk/article/spacex-raptor-engine-starship https://www.wired.co.uk/article/spacex-raptor-engine-starshi...
martythemaniak 7y ago
That was a very dense an informative presentation last night, but I think the main take away is that rapid reusability is a game changer. In fact, game-changer is probably an understatement, basically every intuition and rule-of-thumb we have about space launches and travel will have to be rethought. And this will be true even of SpaceX falls well short of meeting their stated targets (2020 orbit, 150t capability, multiple refights per day, etc. Musk stated (I think he just did some mental napkin math at one point) that if they meet their goals, the world's launch capacity will be expanded by two orders of magnitude. How often does any new development in any field bring about two orders of extra capacity? How does this incredible capacity change how you use this thing? First consider prices. A launch would cost fuel + support operations + amortized cost of rocket. The last two will tend towards zero as they can be increasingly automated and will be a small fixed cost. IIRC, fuel costs roughly $60-100 per kilo to LEO, a 100kg person with 100kg of supplies and life-support equipment can reasonably expect to get to LEO for $20000 in fuel costs. Ok, so you need to "rent" the rocket (you want to stay there at least a few days), pay operations, SpaceX margin, R&D etc. Even then, imagine weekend LEO launches for $50,000 in the late 2020s. That's astounding. Given millenials' propensity for "experiences", they're going to have hoards of people buying this. But what about risk? They've been trying to launch Crew Dragon for many years and still haven't. Well, with expandable rockets, you have to establish a safety record, it takes multiple flights, it's extremely expensive, you need a new rocket for each one. With fully reusable rockets, you can literally establish a safety record for an individual rocket within a matter of weeks, not years. Even launching once every three days (ie, far from their daily targets), it would take only a year to do more launches than Falcon or Arienne 5 have made in decades. Also, people are far more willing to take risks than organizations like NASA. Consider a thought experiment: SpaceX does 100 launches of Starship and establishes a safety record of 99% (1 blew up). They then start selling tickets, will people still buy, fully signing away any liability? Yes, you'll still have hoards of people lining up for a chance. Finally, this is going to change science as well. Today, sending a 1 ton rover to the surface of Mars is a Really Big Deal. Hence, probes are made very carefully, very expensively and very very slowly. Not just design and build (it takes a decade), but operations as well (Curiosity traveled only 20km in the last 8 years). Everything is essentially super-low bandwidth. But once you know you can get a cheap ride to Mars (of anywhere else) any time, you don't have to go to such extremes. You can easily send more rovers, more radio relays, they can travel further, experiment more, take more risks and if you lose one, it's just not a big deal anymore!
philwelch 7y ago
I suspect that Starship will fly to space before SLS ever will. I also think Starship has a significantly higher chance of flying at all than SLS.
- DanCarvajal 7y ago
  Starship could have Falcon Heavy level of delays (which I think it will) and still beat SLS.
  - nexuist 7y ago
    Not entirely sure about that. Have no skin in the game but from what I can tell Starship is just a bigger version of the Falcon 9 second stage. FH on the other hand required a lot of engineering investment to figure out how to bolt three F9s together and how to make the software work between all three. I'm certain it will be a long time until it can get to Mars, but LEO within the next 2-3 years is probably realistic.
    - kanox 7y ago
      > Starship is just a bigger version of the Falcon 9 second stage No way, that's where most of the differences are. The Falcon 9 second stage is a classic expendable stage but Starship is a brand new design which aims to be fully reusable.
    - nordsieck 7y ago
      > Starship is just a bigger version of the Falcon 9 second stage Starship is designed to land from interplanetary speeds (not just LEO orbital speeds), can re-fuel in orbit, and has the world'd most advanced rocket engines. The jump from F9 -> Starship is substantially larger than the jump from F9 -> FH. edit: spelling
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - JshWright 7y ago
schizoidboy 7y ago
The SpaceX/Musk presentation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY
JulianMorrison 7y ago
1950s Science Fiction illustrators are feeling so vindicated right now.
- wanderfowl 7y ago
  That was my very first thought, seeing that image: Ray Bradbury would be absolutely beaming to see it.
- m0zg 7y ago
  For real. I wonder how much innovation really exists because the engineers have read golden age sci-fi 25-40 years ago as kids. Could be also that human aspirations are predictable, but I do believe this link should not be ignored. Musk himself acknowledges it some by naming Space X barges after sentient spaceships from Iain M Banks "Culture" series. Or maybe not Musk himself, but whoever named the barges.
mlindner 7y ago
Some quotes from Elon Musk in the presentation: "If the schedule is long it's wrong, if it's tight its right." "The best part is no part." "The best process is no process." This really is different compared to how the space industry has done things in the past.
- anonytrary 7y ago
  Some statements are so absolute that they cannot possibly be correct. > "The best part is no part." Simple design is better because less moving parts means less complexity. > "The best process is no process." No single process is a panacea for all situations, so strictly adhering to a process will eventually cripple you. The best process is the ability to quickly change your process when it is necessary.
- woodandsteel 7y ago
  In an interview Musk said there is this strange rule that no matter what you make the schedule, it takes twice as long, so what makes the most sense is to just set it unreasonably short, and then it will take longer, but be as fast as possible.
RivieraKid 7y ago
I've had to dismiss 3 popups after opening the article on mobile. This is ridiculous.
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  If you have ublock origin, it redirects you to a "please disable adblocking" page. Blocking scripts prevents the redirect.
  - zamadatix 7y ago
    On uBlock Origin you'll want to enable all of the additional filter lists (except the regions/languages section). Doing so blocks the redirect automatically.
  - megaremote 7y ago
    Why is spacex trying to show you ads?
    - oska 7y ago
      The submission is of a space.com article.
sbr464 7y ago
Is there a better site with fewer ads?
- ninjamayo 7y ago
  Teslarati might be slightly better.
computerex 7y ago
I just want to point out that SpaceX has not yet successfully put a human in LEO. The moon seems well beyond their technical capabilites at the moment and Mars seems like a fools dream at this point in time.
- Cannibusted 7y ago
  Try to relax.
  - dang 7y ago
    Personal attacks aren't allowed here and we ban accounts that post them. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when commenting here?
- SECProto 7y ago
  > I just want to point out that SpaceX has not yet successfully put a human in LEO. Does this preclude them from doing so in the future? They certainly will within the next year or so (crew dragon). The moon has been out of reach of humans for 47-ish years mostly because we haven't had the orbital capacity to get there. Humanity has not had a super-heavy-lift launcher since the Saturn V (excluding the Shuttle and Energia, as they're mostly launching inert structural mass, rather than the fuel necessary to get elsewhere and back). Certainly it's challenging, and their timelines are incredibly optimistic, but I've been watching SpaceX for about a decade, and they generally do the things they claim they will (on delayed timelines).
  - computerex 7y ago
    > Does this preclude them from doing so in the future? Certainly it doesn't preclude them from doing so, but a healthy dose of skepticism never hurts. Talking about the moon and mars when they have not yet successfully put someone in LEO is a little bit like putting the wagon before the horse.
- imron 7y ago
agumonkey 7y ago
I'm surprised to hear Musk tone. He's not that friendly usually. Maybe it's because Tesla is a different business and its struggle got to him. Maybe it's because his inner child dreamt of this ship for decades..
- ChrisClark 7y ago
  I think it's been a good week for him. The Starship of course, but on the Tesla front they are coming up on the end of a quarter with record deliveries, shipping Smart Summon which might let them finally add the FSD revenue to the Tesla reports, etc.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    In his starship talk he recalled how spacex was one failure away from bankruptcy. Crazy to imagine if spacex folded before even vertical landers..
drchewbacca 7y ago
I am so amazed by the genius of making it out of steel. It's just so completely counter intuitive but has accelerated their progress so much. If they told you the stats of the material, better strength at cryo tempertures meaning mass reduction, higher melting point meaning minimal heat shielding and great thermal conductivity it would be easy to imagine it was some new super composite. Then your head explodes when they tell you it's 2% the cost of what they were using before and it's so easy to work with they don't even need a factory they can just weld it in a field. Imo Elon is starting to get into contention for greatest engineer of all time.
- elif 7y ago
  I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    As of the last time I heard, SpaceX was planning to use an extremely aggressive active cooling system: cold fuel would be bled through many holes in the hull, in a process similar to sweating. The hull may never get above room temperature.
    - SECProto 7y ago
      No, the "sweating methane" cooling is no longer happening (per the presentation/q&a last night). Instead they're using ceramic insulating heat shield tiles - similar to the shuttle, but different materials, very different attachment mechanism, and a regular shape (tiles will all be hexagonal)
  - Blakestr 7y ago
    Not a metallurgist but doesn't tempering make steel stronger? (As long as it is quenched properly?)
    - 7y ago
ryanmarsh 7y ago
How do they plan to get 100 tons of cargo from atop the starship down to the surface of Mars? Do you use a crane? I mean, cranes are heavy, right?
- hwillis 7y ago
  Its a two stage rocket. The top bit separates. Cranes are far and away the lightest way to move something up and down. Wires are incredibly strong for their weight; five times stronger than normal mild steel. Thats due to the stress exerted when they are made affecting the crystal structure. Not only that, but tensile stress is the strongest mode in general. Structures holding up mass have to resist buckling from all directions. Tensile structures can use every bit of mass budget to hold force going precisely down. Not only that, but you dont need all of rhe structure to hold a crane up, since its just sticking out the side of the rocket. Not only that, but you dont even need a motor since you just need to slow things down a bit as they descend. Yes, they'll use a crane.
- anonytrary 7y ago
  I think you're getting downvoted because of your flippant tone, but I am also curious how the cargo would get on/off the ship.
  - SECProto 7y ago
    Pop open a hatch, crank out your jib crane [1], use a long steel cable to lower loads down. Pay attention to weight distribution inside starship to ensure it doesn't tip over. [1] like this old-fashioned warehouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pl_gdansk_zuraw_dlugiepobrzeze2006.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pl_gdansk_zuraw_dlugiepob... or the more modern style https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/en/category/Jib-Cranes/Cranes-and-Festoon-Equipment/c/10826 https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/en/category/Jib-Cranes/Cran...
  - ryanmarsh 7y ago
    I have no idea how anybody read that as flippant. It was a sincere question. I’m about done with this community.
woodandsteel 7y ago
It is going to be interesting to see what happens to SLS once SS/SH starts flying. I am guessing there is going to be big public campaign for NASA to cancel SLS and go with the SpaceX craft.
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  Yeah, I've been wondering about this too. In my opinion, it's been apparent for some time now that newer commercial launch providers are going to render SLS obsolete too early in its lifecycle for it to be worth the ongoing costs of continuing to develop it. You might even argue that it's already obsolete, as despite it still potentially being the most capable rocket for some subset of missions, the per-launch costs are so high it might arguably be better to re-architect those missions to use multiple launches of a cheaper vehicle rather than launch on SLS. (You can launch 10 reusable Falcon Heavys for the cost of a single SLS launch.) NASA/Congress has been stubbornly continuing to develop SLS despite that, but how much longer will they be able to hold out? Surely they won't be able to justify continued spending on SLS once there's another operational rocket that's both more capable in every respect, and a couple orders of magnitude cheaper to operate? So at what point will they finally give up? Are they going to wait until after Starship hops? Until after it reaches orbit? Until after it achieves in-orbit refueling? Until after it lands on the Moon? Until after it lands on the moon, with crew? When?
kfrzcode 7y ago
Truly this is faith in humanity boosting stuff. Great news
chriselles 7y ago
I’d be interested to learn if advances in digital computing/controlling potentially solve most of the problems that were seemingly unsolvable in the Soviet era N1 rocket failures. I’m assuming the inability to control and harmonise 30 rocket engines on the N1 first stage for pitch/yaw contributed significantly to the N1 failures and cancellation. Will digital computing/control advances control for that and the 42 rocket engines on the SpaceX starships 1st stage? Or are there other major engineering problems(such as aeronautical/mechanical) to solve as well?
- socialdemocrat 7y ago
  Falcon Heavy managed 27 rocket engines just fine, so the N1 problems has been solved. In fact I don’t think multiple rocket engines ever was a problem with the N1. Its problems were quite different. SpaceX is able to shut down failing engines quickly, as has been demonstrated so multiple engines don’t present added risk. Vibrations from multiple engines is something they are able to model much easier with computer simulations today.
known 7y ago
Does it have Internet connectivity?
nerdponx 7y ago
NASA is still waiting for SpaceX to complete the Crew Dragon spacecraft that will fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The space agency has picked SpaceX (and another company, Boeing) to provide commercial crew flights to the station. While SpaceX did launch an unpiloted Crew Dragon test flight to the space station this year, a subsequent abort system test failed, leading to the destruction of the vehicle. SpaceX aims to resume abort system tests later this year ahead of the first crewed test flight. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, it seems, is not happy with the years-long delays of Crew Dragon, as well as Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, especially after seeing SpaceX build Starship Mk1 this year ahead of its own test flight. "I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow," Bridenstine wrote on Twitter Friday. "In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the taxpayer. It's time to deliver." Interesting.
- Tepix 7y ago
  Here's Elons response given in a CNN interview yesterday: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/29/business/elon-musk-spacex-mars-starship-cost/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/29/business/elon-musk-spacex...
a_imho 7y ago
One of the worst GDPR blocks I've encountered in the wild.
nickpp 7y ago
What I loved the most was the optimistic outlook, the forward looking focus and the implicit belief that any problem will be solved and we'll advance. This is exceedingly rare in a pessimistic world drowning in the voice of Luddites and backwards-looking preservationists. Like always, technology solving real world problems versus politicians (professional or amateurs) creating (and never really solving) self-serving perpetual issues.
- walkingolof 7y ago
  I suspect that having a sense of urgency and limited resources contributed to this phenomenal pace of development, it's in stark contrast to the glacial pace of the SLS project (Boeing/Nasa) which is much better funded.
  - Tepix 7y ago
    One could argue that this also effects Blue Origin, who still haven't reached orbit 19 years after being founded.
  - abcd_f 7y ago
    As someone else aptly remarked - NASA is no longer a space exploration agency. It's now an employment agency. Hence the glacial pace.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      NASA was never a space exploration agency; in its heyday, it was a combination thinly veiled demonstration of military capacity and thinly veiled military projects agency, but most of both of those functions were superfluous by the last decade or so of the Cold War.
Tepix 7y ago
If you've followed the progress of Starship closely over the last months (and its progress has been stunning), you didn't hear much new stuff at the presentation. We heard there will be Starship Mk 1 through 4 before we see manned flights. I wonder what their test payloads are going to be when they go for orbit.
mpweiher 7y ago
For me the biggest "wow" (and there were a lot of those) was the capacity comparison: Currently the entire world has a launch capacity of 200-300 tons into LEO per year. With just ten starship/booster combos, that will change to a max capacity of over a million tons into LEO per year. A factor of over a thousand. The entire current capacity (including the Falcons) at less than 0.1% of the new capacity, a mere footnote. Not even a footnote, really. And apparently they're cheap(er) to build as well. Complete game changer. And game over for everybody else in the launch business. Wow
qaq 7y ago
And US mil. will get a super cheap way to deploy kinetic bombardment system with cost per rod on par with cruise missile.
RegW 7y ago
> This is the rocket that will launch ... a handful of artists on a trip around the moon in the 2020s. ... and so programmed to crash just like Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B?
Symmetry 7y ago
I'm slightly reminded of Sea Dragon[1]. That is, using fairly standard steal construction has the possibility to decrease costs even if it increases the net weight of the vehicle simply because it's so much easier to work with and cheaper than minimum weight high tech alloys. Also, because both are quite big though Elon's ship isn't as huge as Sea Dragon was proposed as being. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)

543 points by childintime 7y ago

I would love to know what the "Day-in-the-life" of a welder working on those ships would be. Did they train specifically for aerospace welding? How did they land that specific gig. Must be so inspiring to wake up and work on that.

varjag 7y ago
A good weld on 301 steel isn't very different regardless the purpose.
- allannienhuis 7y ago
  and welds are very testable via x-ray (perhaps some other techniques), and I believe repairable unless someone really screws up.
discordianfish 7y ago
I'd love to know the hiring process. There must be many people applying for these positions and I doubt that whiteboard welding is a thing. Or is it? :)
- RandomTisk 7y ago
  AFAIK it's uncommon skill, you need the steady hands of a surgeon to have a chance. Definitely not work I could do, I know that.
  - adamcharnock 7y ago
    Yeah, having learnt the (very) basics of welding recently it has become very clear to me how much of a skill/art it actually is. Even at the basic level it is a combination of a lot of senses; sight, hearing, touch. And there are multiple movements which need to happen both simultaneously and smoothly, and be adjusted based on the aforementioned senses.
  - jdmn 7y ago
    Sooo...it's rocket surgery for real?
    - kbenson 7y ago
      That's the best description. "Joe over there? Oh, he's a rocket surgeon." Now I can't help remembering a sketch from Mitchell and Webb.[1] 1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I
  - hansthehorse 7y ago
    I used to wander around the reactor auxiliary building at the nuclear plant I worked at and take pictures of the piping welds. They were works of art. The skill was obvious.
    - JshWright 7y ago
      > I used to wander around ... the nuclear plant I worked at and take pictures DHS would like your location...
    - JorgeGT 7y ago
      There's always https://www.reddit.com/r/Weldingporn/top/?t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/Weldingporn/top/?t=all for nice pictures of welds.
      - NortySpock 7y ago
        And the NSFW equivalent https://www.reddit.com/r/goneweld https://www.reddit.com/r/goneweld , with naughty captions of welding seams.
  - abledon 7y ago
    Best internet resource that goes into the detail of this?
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    My dad did this kind of work in the oil industry for 30+ years as a pipe fitter. His specialty was stainless and they had to be x-ray perfect welds. He recently retired but was always very proud of his work. It took me a long time to understand why. I wish he could have gotten into the space industry vs oil refineries. The latter is much harder on a person.
    - Florin_Andrei 7y ago
      > was always very proud of his work. It took me a long time to understand why. I'm a mediocre amateur welder and I totally understand why.
    - abledon 7y ago
      Was he prudent in maintaining good work habits? I hear the industry can be quite hard on people if they are not careful in how they work[1] [1] https://www.thefabricator.com/article/safety/the-invisible-risks-of-welding https://www.thefabricator.com/article/safety/the-invisible-r...
      - 52-6F-62 7y ago
        Ahaha absolutely. He's as square and as prudent as it gets. I mean to an extreme. My siblings have always laughed at him for it [outside of the workplace and in everyday matters where he carries those habits on]. It's hard on people regardless. And the oil industry is not known for being prudent in looking after their workers' health. They got real pissed when he filed a workers compensation claim for a hearing aid before he retired. Thankfully he had support from his union. And the number of stories he's told me where he was nearly killed... I've no sympathy for the industry.
        goldenkey 7y ago
        I've no sympathy for the industry. puts sunglasses on Yeaaaahh!!!!!!
  - infectoid 7y ago
    My Dad tried to teach me to weld. It definitely takes a lot of practices to be average at it. Somehow my Dad managed to swipe that thing around like he was painting or something. It was impressive.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  There is definitely tests for welding jobs. And then their welds are regularly tested to maintain certifications. The tales I heard from my father were X-ray scans of their finished, grinded, polished welds and they had to be perfect. Not a hair-sized infraction would be permitted.
  - sgc 7y ago
    I can't imagine anything but xray for the entire ship, every mm of weld. Given the forces involved, it seems like a completely new level of perfect is required.
thinkingkong 7y ago
I think the prototype was built by a company that normally builds water towers, so probably not that different from normal industrial welding.
- oska 7y ago
  And as I saw someone else say, the welds on a water tower also have to be good under pressure, otherwise the water tower bursts and dumps all its water.
mbell 7y ago
I imagine for the Mk1/2 they are using in house teams but for the hopper they contracted out the construction to a company that builds water towers (Caldwell Tanks). I mean - it makes sense, it's really just a water tank with an extra bulkhead that SpaceX just so happens to want to attach a rocket engine to...
infectoid 7y ago
I'd watch a Bob Ross of welding if that channel existed.
- michaelt 7y ago
  You might enjoy https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks then
mncharity 7y ago
> How did they land that specific gig The https://www.spacex.com/careers/list https://www.spacex.com/careers/list ? There are currently several entries for Welder (Starship) and Tank Fabricator/Welder.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

codeulike 7y ago

I totally understand why they've gone for that design but the welded together steel plates really make me think of the sort of thing Wallace and Gromit would build.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
faead_ 7y ago
he addressed in presentation, from what i remember it had a lot to do with cost. Like $130k/ton with carbon vs $3k/ton with steel. He mentioned a few other factors. Also it allowed them to build outside, not sure if t that is true in production.
- allannienhuis 7y ago
  the material isn't the question, it's why they had to weld it together in a patchwork quilt. Elon talked about the next version would simply have rolled coils with a single seam weld (although the cylinders would have to be welded together too), which would be better structurally and cosmetically, and likely lower cost of production. Sounds like they just didn't have the rolling machines to do the job, or perhaps there was an availability issue with the specific alloy.
  - _Microft 7y ago
    It will reduce the length of the welds (for the hull) quite a bit. The number of rings is roughly 35 for Starship, with about ten vertical seams each. For easier thinking, line the vertical seams up and you see that this gives 50m length per vertical seam from bottom to top of Starship. So there are a total of 500m for that. 35 rings with ~28m circumference add up to about 1km of seams between them. Now if they can use rolls twice as wide and only a single vertical weld each, then that's 500m between the rings and 50m for a single vertical seam. 550m of welds there instead of 1.5m before. This should speed things up quite a lot and reduce the cost of labour. Raptor production is the real bottleneck, though.

dopylitty 7y ago

‘Tis a fine water tower or grain silo, but sure it is no starship, Boerish.

35787 7y ago

Eventually the shell will be a single large roll of steel that is unrolled, bent into a tube with a seam going hotdog that is welded. It will be very strong, lighter than the current patchwork, and extremely beautiful. More similar to the renderings. Can’t wait.

hwillis 7y ago
Definitely not hotdog (assuming that's from stem to stern). Musk wasn't totally clear when describing it, but he said mk3 would be in three months. The circumference of starship is 28.26 meters. For a single weld the entire length of the ship, the roll itself would need to be that wide. The largest rolling mills in the world are ~4 meters wide[1]. They require backup rollers[2], ie rollers that push down the rollers that push down the rollers that push down the metal. Bending deflection increases with width^2. A 28 meter wide rolling mill does not exist AFAIK and cannot be built in three months. [1]: https://www.aleris.com/company/rolled-products/ https://www.aleris.com/company/rolled-products/ [2]: http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/metallurgy/types-of-rolling-mills-metallurgy/95337 http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/metallurgy/types-of-rollin...
- 35787 7y ago
  Wow what an incredibly substantive comment. I remember pretty clearly he said that there would be a single seam weld. Maybe I’m remembering wrong. Or maybe they’ll seam weld multiple rolls into a really wide roll and the only weld required to turn the final roll into the shell is that final hotdog weld.
  - paragraft 7y ago
    I think the idea's to go like a Pringles can, with a spiraling single seam.
    - sixQuarks 7y ago
      this is the correct answer. They can simply use the 4 meter wide steel no problem.

hoorayimhelping 7y ago

380s for ISP for the Raptor vacuum engine seems durn good, considering the tradeoffs between hydrogen and methane. The most efficient engines we've flown, the RL-10 [0] (used on the Delta IV and Atlas rockets as part of the Centaur Upper Stage) and the RS-25 [1], (the Space Shuttle Main Engine) get around 450-460s for their specific impulse. These engines use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The issue with liquid hydrogen is twofold: it is not very dense, and to keep it from boiling away in liquid form, it needs to be really cold. So you need huge, insulated tanks to store it. Hydrogen is everywhere, but it's kind of a pain to use as rocket fuel. Merlin Vacuum [2], which is currently used on the Falcon vehicles gets 311s. The RD-0110 [3], used on the Soyuz gets 326s. These use RP-1, which is highly refined kerosene. It's super easy to work with. On earth. Where we have 200 years of infrastructure in place to support using hydrocarbons. It takes that infrastructure to refine it into a form that rocket engines can use without gunking up the works with unburnt carbon and other particulate crap. Raptor uses methane, which is kind of like a jack of all trades between density, efficiency, ease of processing, storage, and ease of use in engines. This is basically how SpaceX seems to operate: rather than optimizing a single part of the system (like trying to get the most efficient engine), they try to optimize from a systems level. I don't really know much more than that, because there hasn't really been a lot of stuff for civilians to read on methane engines. This is kind of the cutting edge of the second golden age of space exploration. This freaking rules, what a time to be alive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RL10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RL10 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0110

codeulike 7y ago
Here's a Wired article about the raptor engine - it's "a full-flow staged combustion engine, only the third engine in history to employ this technique ... The previous two attempts at such an engine, one in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and another in the US in the early 2000s, never made it beyond testing." https://www.wired.co.uk/article/spacex-raptor-engine-starship https://www.wired.co.uk/article/spacex-raptor-engine-starshi...

martythemaniak 7y ago

That was a very dense an informative presentation last night, but I think the main take away is that rapid reusability is a game changer. In fact, game-changer is probably an understatement, basically every intuition and rule-of-thumb we have about space launches and travel will have to be rethought. And this will be true even of SpaceX falls well short of meeting their stated targets (2020 orbit, 150t capability, multiple refights per day, etc. Musk stated (I think he just did some mental napkin math at one point) that if they meet their goals, the world's launch capacity will be expanded by two orders of magnitude. How often does any new development in any field bring about two orders of extra capacity? How does this incredible capacity change how you use this thing? First consider prices. A launch would cost fuel + support operations + amortized cost of rocket. The last two will tend towards zero as they can be increasingly automated and will be a small fixed cost. IIRC, fuel costs roughly $60-100 per kilo to LEO, a 100kg person with 100kg of supplies and life-support equipment can reasonably expect to get to LEO for $20000 in fuel costs. Ok, so you need to "rent" the rocket (you want to stay there at least a few days), pay operations, SpaceX margin, R&D etc. Even then, imagine weekend LEO launches for $50,000 in the late 2020s. That's astounding. Given millenials' propensity for "experiences", they're going to have hoards of people buying this. But what about risk? They've been trying to launch Crew Dragon for many years and still haven't. Well, with expandable rockets, you have to establish a safety record, it takes multiple flights, it's extremely expensive, you need a new rocket for each one. With fully reusable rockets, you can literally establish a safety record for an individual rocket within a matter of weeks, not years. Even launching once every three days (ie, far from their daily targets), it would take only a year to do more launches than Falcon or Arienne 5 have made in decades. Also, people are far more willing to take risks than organizations like NASA. Consider a thought experiment: SpaceX does 100 launches of Starship and establishes a safety record of 99% (1 blew up). They then start selling tickets, will people still buy, fully signing away any liability? Yes, you'll still have hoards of people lining up for a chance. Finally, this is going to change science as well. Today, sending a 1 ton rover to the surface of Mars is a Really Big Deal. Hence, probes are made very carefully, very expensively and very very slowly. Not just design and build (it takes a decade), but operations as well (Curiosity traveled only 20km in the last 8 years). Everything is essentially super-low bandwidth. But once you know you can get a cheap ride to Mars (of anywhere else) any time, you don't have to go to such extremes. You can easily send more rovers, more radio relays, they can travel further, experiment more, take more risks and if you lose one, it's just not a big deal anymore!

philwelch 7y ago

I suspect that Starship will fly to space before SLS ever will. I also think Starship has a significantly higher chance of flying at all than SLS.

DanCarvajal 7y ago
Starship could have Falcon Heavy level of delays (which I think it will) and still beat SLS.
- nexuist 7y ago
  Not entirely sure about that. Have no skin in the game but from what I can tell Starship is just a bigger version of the Falcon 9 second stage. FH on the other hand required a lot of engineering investment to figure out how to bolt three F9s together and how to make the software work between all three. I'm certain it will be a long time until it can get to Mars, but LEO within the next 2-3 years is probably realistic.
  - kanox 7y ago
    > Starship is just a bigger version of the Falcon 9 second stage No way, that's where most of the differences are. The Falcon 9 second stage is a classic expendable stage but Starship is a brand new design which aims to be fully reusable.
  - nordsieck 7y ago
    > Starship is just a bigger version of the Falcon 9 second stage Starship is designed to land from interplanetary speeds (not just LEO orbital speeds), can re-fuel in orbit, and has the world'd most advanced rocket engines. The jump from F9 -> Starship is substantially larger than the jump from F9 -> FH. edit: spelling
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - JshWright 7y ago

schizoidboy 7y ago

The SpaceX/Musk presentation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY

JulianMorrison 7y ago

1950s Science Fiction illustrators are feeling so vindicated right now.

wanderfowl 7y ago
That was my very first thought, seeing that image: Ray Bradbury would be absolutely beaming to see it.
m0zg 7y ago
For real. I wonder how much innovation really exists because the engineers have read golden age sci-fi 25-40 years ago as kids. Could be also that human aspirations are predictable, but I do believe this link should not be ignored. Musk himself acknowledges it some by naming Space X barges after sentient spaceships from Iain M Banks "Culture" series. Or maybe not Musk himself, but whoever named the barges.

mlindner 7y ago

Some quotes from Elon Musk in the presentation: "If the schedule is long it's wrong, if it's tight its right." "The best part is no part." "The best process is no process." This really is different compared to how the space industry has done things in the past.

anonytrary 7y ago
Some statements are so absolute that they cannot possibly be correct. > "The best part is no part." Simple design is better because less moving parts means less complexity. > "The best process is no process." No single process is a panacea for all situations, so strictly adhering to a process will eventually cripple you. The best process is the ability to quickly change your process when it is necessary.
woodandsteel 7y ago
In an interview Musk said there is this strange rule that no matter what you make the schedule, it takes twice as long, so what makes the most sense is to just set it unreasonably short, and then it will take longer, but be as fast as possible.

RivieraKid 7y ago

I've had to dismiss 3 popups after opening the article on mobile. This is ridiculous.

jniedrauer 7y ago
If you have ublock origin, it redirects you to a "please disable adblocking" page. Blocking scripts prevents the redirect.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  On uBlock Origin you'll want to enable all of the additional filter lists (except the regions/languages section). Doing so blocks the redirect automatically.
- megaremote 7y ago
  Why is spacex trying to show you ads?
  - oska 7y ago
    The submission is of a space.com article.

sbr464 7y ago

Is there a better site with fewer ads?

ninjamayo 7y ago
Teslarati might be slightly better.

computerex 7y ago

I just want to point out that SpaceX has not yet successfully put a human in LEO. The moon seems well beyond their technical capabilites at the moment and Mars seems like a fools dream at this point in time.

Cannibusted 7y ago
Try to relax.
- dang 7y ago
  Personal attacks aren't allowed here and we ban accounts that post them. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when commenting here?
SECProto 7y ago
> I just want to point out that SpaceX has not yet successfully put a human in LEO. Does this preclude them from doing so in the future? They certainly will within the next year or so (crew dragon). The moon has been out of reach of humans for 47-ish years mostly because we haven't had the orbital capacity to get there. Humanity has not had a super-heavy-lift launcher since the Saturn V (excluding the Shuttle and Energia, as they're mostly launching inert structural mass, rather than the fuel necessary to get elsewhere and back). Certainly it's challenging, and their timelines are incredibly optimistic, but I've been watching SpaceX for about a decade, and they generally do the things they claim they will (on delayed timelines).
- computerex 7y ago
  > Does this preclude them from doing so in the future? Certainly it doesn't preclude them from doing so, but a healthy dose of skepticism never hurts. Talking about the moon and mars when they have not yet successfully put someone in LEO is a little bit like putting the wagon before the horse.
imron 7y ago

agumonkey 7y ago

I'm surprised to hear Musk tone. He's not that friendly usually. Maybe it's because Tesla is a different business and its struggle got to him. Maybe it's because his inner child dreamt of this ship for decades..

ChrisClark 7y ago
I think it's been a good week for him. The Starship of course, but on the Tesla front they are coming up on the end of a quarter with record deliveries, shipping Smart Summon which might let them finally add the FSD revenue to the Tesla reports, etc.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  In his starship talk he recalled how spacex was one failure away from bankruptcy. Crazy to imagine if spacex folded before even vertical landers..

drchewbacca 7y ago

I am so amazed by the genius of making it out of steel. It's just so completely counter intuitive but has accelerated their progress so much. If they told you the stats of the material, better strength at cryo tempertures meaning mass reduction, higher melting point meaning minimal heat shielding and great thermal conductivity it would be easy to imagine it was some new super composite. Then your head explodes when they tell you it's 2% the cost of what they were using before and it's so easy to work with they don't even need a factory they can just weld it in a field. Imo Elon is starting to get into contention for greatest engineer of all time.

elif 7y ago
I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  As of the last time I heard, SpaceX was planning to use an extremely aggressive active cooling system: cold fuel would be bled through many holes in the hull, in a process similar to sweating. The hull may never get above room temperature.
  - SECProto 7y ago
    No, the "sweating methane" cooling is no longer happening (per the presentation/q&a last night). Instead they're using ceramic insulating heat shield tiles - similar to the shuttle, but different materials, very different attachment mechanism, and a regular shape (tiles will all be hexagonal)
- Blakestr 7y ago
  Not a metallurgist but doesn't tempering make steel stronger? (As long as it is quenched properly?)
  - 7y ago

ryanmarsh 7y ago

How do they plan to get 100 tons of cargo from atop the starship down to the surface of Mars? Do you use a crane? I mean, cranes are heavy, right?

hwillis 7y ago
Its a two stage rocket. The top bit separates. Cranes are far and away the lightest way to move something up and down. Wires are incredibly strong for their weight; five times stronger than normal mild steel. Thats due to the stress exerted when they are made affecting the crystal structure. Not only that, but tensile stress is the strongest mode in general. Structures holding up mass have to resist buckling from all directions. Tensile structures can use every bit of mass budget to hold force going precisely down. Not only that, but you dont need all of rhe structure to hold a crane up, since its just sticking out the side of the rocket. Not only that, but you dont even need a motor since you just need to slow things down a bit as they descend. Yes, they'll use a crane.
anonytrary 7y ago
I think you're getting downvoted because of your flippant tone, but I am also curious how the cargo would get on/off the ship.
- SECProto 7y ago
  Pop open a hatch, crank out your jib crane [1], use a long steel cable to lower loads down. Pay attention to weight distribution inside starship to ensure it doesn't tip over. [1] like this old-fashioned warehouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pl_gdansk_zuraw_dlugiepobrzeze2006.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pl_gdansk_zuraw_dlugiepob... or the more modern style https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/en/category/Jib-Cranes/Cranes-and-Festoon-Equipment/c/10826 https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/en/category/Jib-Cranes/Cran...
- ryanmarsh 7y ago
  I have no idea how anybody read that as flippant. It was a sincere question. I’m about done with this community.

woodandsteel 7y ago

It is going to be interesting to see what happens to SLS once SS/SH starts flying. I am guessing there is going to be big public campaign for NASA to cancel SLS and go with the SpaceX craft.

Ajedi32 7y ago
Yeah, I've been wondering about this too. In my opinion, it's been apparent for some time now that newer commercial launch providers are going to render SLS obsolete too early in its lifecycle for it to be worth the ongoing costs of continuing to develop it. You might even argue that it's already obsolete, as despite it still potentially being the most capable rocket for some subset of missions, the per-launch costs are so high it might arguably be better to re-architect those missions to use multiple launches of a cheaper vehicle rather than launch on SLS. (You can launch 10 reusable Falcon Heavys for the cost of a single SLS launch.) NASA/Congress has been stubbornly continuing to develop SLS despite that, but how much longer will they be able to hold out? Surely they won't be able to justify continued spending on SLS once there's another operational rocket that's both more capable in every respect, and a couple orders of magnitude cheaper to operate? So at what point will they finally give up? Are they going to wait until after Starship hops? Until after it reaches orbit? Until after it achieves in-orbit refueling? Until after it lands on the Moon? Until after it lands on the moon, with crew? When?

kfrzcode 7y ago

Truly this is faith in humanity boosting stuff. Great news

chriselles 7y ago

I’d be interested to learn if advances in digital computing/controlling potentially solve most of the problems that were seemingly unsolvable in the Soviet era N1 rocket failures. I’m assuming the inability to control and harmonise 30 rocket engines on the N1 first stage for pitch/yaw contributed significantly to the N1 failures and cancellation. Will digital computing/control advances control for that and the 42 rocket engines on the SpaceX starships 1st stage? Or are there other major engineering problems(such as aeronautical/mechanical) to solve as well?

socialdemocrat 7y ago
Falcon Heavy managed 27 rocket engines just fine, so the N1 problems has been solved. In fact I don’t think multiple rocket engines ever was a problem with the N1. Its problems were quite different. SpaceX is able to shut down failing engines quickly, as has been demonstrated so multiple engines don’t present added risk. Vibrations from multiple engines is something they are able to model much easier with computer simulations today.

known 7y ago

Does it have Internet connectivity?

nerdponx 7y ago

NASA is still waiting for SpaceX to complete the Crew Dragon spacecraft that will fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The space agency has picked SpaceX (and another company, Boeing) to provide commercial crew flights to the station. While SpaceX did launch an unpiloted Crew Dragon test flight to the space station this year, a subsequent abort system test failed, leading to the destruction of the vehicle. SpaceX aims to resume abort system tests later this year ahead of the first crewed test flight. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, it seems, is not happy with the years-long delays of Crew Dragon, as well as Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, especially after seeing SpaceX build Starship Mk1 this year ahead of its own test flight. "I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow," Bridenstine wrote on Twitter Friday. "In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the taxpayer. It's time to deliver." Interesting.

Tepix 7y ago
Here's Elons response given in a CNN interview yesterday: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/29/business/elon-musk-spacex-mars-starship-cost/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/29/business/elon-musk-spacex...

a_imho 7y ago

One of the worst GDPR blocks I've encountered in the wild.

nickpp 7y ago

What I loved the most was the optimistic outlook, the forward looking focus and the implicit belief that any problem will be solved and we'll advance. This is exceedingly rare in a pessimistic world drowning in the voice of Luddites and backwards-looking preservationists. Like always, technology solving real world problems versus politicians (professional or amateurs) creating (and never really solving) self-serving perpetual issues.

walkingolof 7y ago
I suspect that having a sense of urgency and limited resources contributed to this phenomenal pace of development, it's in stark contrast to the glacial pace of the SLS project (Boeing/Nasa) which is much better funded.
- Tepix 7y ago
  One could argue that this also effects Blue Origin, who still haven't reached orbit 19 years after being founded.
- abcd_f 7y ago
  As someone else aptly remarked - NASA is no longer a space exploration agency. It's now an employment agency. Hence the glacial pace.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    NASA was never a space exploration agency; in its heyday, it was a combination thinly veiled demonstration of military capacity and thinly veiled military projects agency, but most of both of those functions were superfluous by the last decade or so of the Cold War.

Tepix 7y ago

If you've followed the progress of Starship closely over the last months (and its progress has been stunning), you didn't hear much new stuff at the presentation. We heard there will be Starship Mk 1 through 4 before we see manned flights. I wonder what their test payloads are going to be when they go for orbit.

mpweiher 7y ago

For me the biggest "wow" (and there were a lot of those) was the capacity comparison: Currently the entire world has a launch capacity of 200-300 tons into LEO per year. With just ten starship/booster combos, that will change to a max capacity of over a million tons into LEO per year. A factor of over a thousand. The entire current capacity (including the Falcons) at less than 0.1% of the new capacity, a mere footnote. Not even a footnote, really. And apparently they're cheap(er) to build as well. Complete game changer. And game over for everybody else in the launch business. Wow

qaq 7y ago

And US mil. will get a super cheap way to deploy kinetic bombardment system with cost per rod on par with cruise missile.

RegW 7y ago

> This is the rocket that will launch ... a handful of artists on a trip around the moon in the 2020s. ... and so programmed to crash just like Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B?

Symmetry 7y ago

I'm slightly reminded of Sea Dragon[1]. That is, using fairly standard steal construction has the possibility to decrease costs even if it increases the net weight of the vehicle simply because it's so much easier to work with and cheaper than minimum weight high tech alloys. Also, because both are quite big though Elon's ship isn't as huge as Sea Dragon was proposed as being. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)