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I don't know about steel but carbon fiber has so far never succeeded as a material for cryogenic rockets or fuel tanks. The proposed space shuttle successor wa
by calaphos 6y ago
I don't know about steel but carbon fiber has so far never succeeded as a material for cryogenic rockets or fuel tanks.
The proposed space shuttle successor was designed around carbon fiber fuel tanks / hull and engineering problems with them eventually killed the project.
The material struggles with low temperatures of cryogenic fuels (brittle), high temperatures of re-entry (just burns), oxidation in oxygen tanks. Also they apparently tend to sponatiously combust with rocket fuels.
Some reference: https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/an-update-on-composite-tanks-for-cryogens https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/an-update-on-compos...
- NortySpock 6y agoThat project that was killed, for those interested, was the Lockheed Martin X-33 / VentureStar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-33
- greglindahl 6y agoRocketLab's rocket has carbon fiber tanks.
- elteto 6y agoBut the scale is much, much smaller than Starship. If I understand correctly after you pass a certain tank radius you basically step into “nobody’s ever done this with CF before”, which is not a good place to be for SpaceX. Starship was on that spectrum.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]