8 ms·

We could see an orbital launch of SpaceX’s Starship this year

53 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

PaulHoule 6y ago
I think that's hasty. Starship is not an SSTO and is not expected to reach orbit on its own. To do an orbital flight they'll need to also develop Super Heavy. That's not too crazy because Super Heavy is a stretched Starship, but it will take some time.
- the8472 6y ago
  My understanding is that without payload it is SSTO. Which is mostly useless, but might be good enough for a test flight. And even if not, musk said that starship is the hard part, if they got that one working then adding the booster would be essentially a second starship without nose cone and an interstage instead.
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    Certainly reentry is easier for the Super Heavy
  - simonh 6y ago
    A reasonably optimised Starship can theoretically reach orbit, but it wouldn't have any fuel left to come back down and land, so that isn't happening. Anyway these early prototypes are probably a bit over-engineered and heavy to manage that. This all means that when Hans talks about an orbital flight in 6+ months, he must be talking about flying it with Super Heavy.
- LeonM 6y ago
  I came here just to write that. Starship development iterations are going crazy fast, but to reach orbit they'll also need Super Heavy. Haven't been keeping up on the development lately, but I believe SpaceX is yet to start building a SH prototype.
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    When Atlas was being developed into an orbital vehicle, they blew up a large number of rockets over the course of several years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas#/media/File:USAF_ICBM_and_NASA_Launch_Vehicle_Flight_Test_Successes_and_Failures_(highlighted).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas#/media/File:USAF_I...
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    They've started building the high bay necessary to stack SuperHeavy: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1269419405856763906?lang=en https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1269419405856763906?lang...
    - baking 6y ago
      Also started drilling to put in piles for the super-heavy launch pad this week.
- gpm 6y ago
  The stretching part is dead simple. The hard part of superheavy is that it has a ton of engines complicating the plumbing and thrust structure. Still, spacex has been signaling that they want to get this (orbital starship) done this year. With the moon contacts depending on convincing progress I think it's plausible that they will push hard enough to make it - if things go well (stop exploding sooner rather than later) at least.
  - phkahler 6y ago
    They need to reach orbit this year, master refueling next year, and build a few ships to make the 2022 mars window.
- bbojan 6y ago
  Starship should be able to reach orbit by itself, just without any cargo. See e.g. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1076613555091234816 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1076613555091234816. So it technically is a (not very useful) SSTO. But is enough for it to be tested in orbit before Super Heavy is ready.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    It could be useful as a rescue craft. If someone has a Columbia like damage on liftoff and can't safely reenter you could send up an empty Starship to bring them back. Although come to think of it I don't know if fuel issues would prevent it from being able to land with a full complement of rescued astronauts.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      Hopefully you'd be able to "siphon" (not literally, obviously, but figuratively) the fuel from the stranded ship, assuming the two ships do indeed use compatible fuel.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  The engine production rate is the limiting factor for the super heavy booster. Otherwise They should be able to put together a booster pretty quickly with the same knowledge and tooling they’re developing now.
blakesterz 6y ago
"Once Starship Prototypes are Done Exploding..." I don't really follow along much I was surprised to read so many had exploded. What I didn't see was how do we know when they've stopped exploding? I guess I mean, how many successes would be enough to say "well these are done exploding now"? This year is 1/2 done, are they really able to say that these are safe in just 6 months?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  The Falcon 1 famously blew up^W^W failed 3 times in a row before its first successful launch. A 4th failure would have strangled SpaceX in the crib. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1
  - rrss 6y ago
    This doesn't seem like a very accurate summary - none of them really 'blew up.' The first one lit on fire and crashed at T+41. On the second flight, the first stage bashed into the second stage during stage separation and the second stage lost control. On the third flight, the first stage bashed into the second stage and the second stage didn't get to orbit. The videos are all on youtube, you can watch and observe the lack of explosions. Maybe 'blew up' means something different to you than it does to me, but to me it means there was an explosion.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    Situation is extremely different. It was fully ready design, where they caught last issues in the integration stage. Starship is right now at the state of someone doodling in their notebook.
- fabian2k 6y ago
  It's not a matter of safety right now, they are exploding before they get to fly. I think at least two burst during pressure tests, and the last one exploded during a test because the fuel connection to the rocket leaked or broke in some way. The stuff breaking right now isn't really representative of the final product, it's more like problems in ramping up the manufacturing. And the nice thing about reusable rockets is that you can test them much more thoroughly than if you throw them away after each flight.
squarefoot 6y ago
Not sure if I understand what's wrong with this. "Once starship prototypes stop exploding" sounds to me just like "once experimental software stops crashing". Well, experiments are there to find problems and correct them; we cannot predict or emulate what we don't know; if I was an engineer I would absolutely want a prototype starship to tell me there's something wrong, even by exploding, before real people jumps in for a real flight.
- kortex 6y ago
  Exactly. This is precisely the time for "move fast, break things". They have comfy traffic with their Falcon like, and can (and should) be going full-Kerbal with Starship as long as they can afford to. Especially with all the new techniques they are experimenting with.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  There’s a lot experimental software that never stops crashing.
- caiobegotti 6y ago
  Considering the whole content of the article I'm sure this is exactly what they also tried to mean. Also, "once starship prototypes are done exploding" means a huge step because they can then focus totally on making things to scale and even higher/better/faster, it sounds like a great safety and engineering milestone and I didn't read it as a derogatory thing at all, it's just how rockets are... full of explosive fuel.
- paxys 6y ago
  Who says there is something wrong with this?
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  Personally I’d be concerned if Starship(s) had never exploded. It wouldn’t surprise me with if Blue Origin collapses after a while of having a good record because it has a couple crashes & can’t handle the pressure.
- 6y ago
craftinator 6y ago
Man I'd love to see the data they are gathering for failure analysis. I imagine there have to be thousands of sensors in place for identifying decompression pathways, convection peaks, pressure differentials, all of it. Would be really nifty if they just dropped that data for crowd analysis! Oh, one can dream...
at_a_remove 6y ago
Something about the title reminds me of a line in Buffy, about a high school football team: "If we can focus, keep discipline, and not have quite as many mysterious deaths, Sunnydale is gonna rule!"
geokon 6y ago
Does anyone have a good summary of Starship and what the goal is? I still don't quite understand why they didn't just iterate on the Falcon design and what necessitates a "full stack" clean slate approach. Why do they need to develop new engine for instance? Like.. why couldn't they develop new engine and upgrade the Falcons with them? Once Starship is working consistently, will the Falcons become obsolete b/c Starships will become much more reusable?
- tomp 6y ago
  Different engines (Falcon is Kerosene, Starship is Methane), fully reusable (even the upper "orbital" stage), bigger and simpler (Elon said a while back that designing Falson Heavy (1 upper stage, 3x lower stage) was pretty much as difficult as designing a whole new rocket) and therefore better (in rockets, the bigger the rocket, the better - as the ratio between "framework" (computers, engines, metal exterior) and "fuel+payload" goes down so you can lift more).
- martythemaniak 6y ago
  Starship is a pretty radical redesign with the main goal being reusability. Everything about it is with reusability and and thus scale in mind. A new engine was needed because while the Merlin is a great engine, it could never be reused the thousands of times Raptor is designed to be reused. You can think of engine design as the simultaneous, interdependent optimization across 10+ dimensions, but as an example of one of dimensions - Raptor uses Methane (rather than Kerosene) because it burns cleaner (does not leave residue) and can be manufactured on Mars more easily. Here's an in-depth video about Raptor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbH1ZDImaI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbH1ZDImaI8 The rest of the rocket is similar, in that it is done with manufacturability, reusability and scale in mind. The Falcon design could never stretch to these demands.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Musk figures we need to ship a million tonnes of cargo to Mars colonize it. An upgraded Falcon would cost too much. The Starship design decisions all come from that goal. - big - rapidly and fully reusable - fuel that can be synthesized on Mars
bryanlarsen 6y ago
They haven't even decided what they're going to build Starship out of yet. Current prototypes were built of 301 Stainless Steel, they're currently switching to 304L, and they've indicated that they'll probably end up using a fully custom alloy. But I still believe in the headline. They're building a new prototype every 2 weeks, and they currently have 3 prototypes stacked. This in an industry which usually takes years to build a single prototype. Their velocity is insane.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Jesus. If they can put together two prototypes a month, I can only imagine how many finished versions they might be able to churn out once they're in general production.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    The goal is to manufacture one a week. They expect to be able to fly each one 100 times without any refurbishment, and indefinitely with refurbishment. The other goal is to be able to fly each Starship 3 times per day!
no1youknowz 6y ago
What makes me most excited about Starship. Is not the first iteration. Of course, I will be ecstatic when it finally goes into space. But I cannot wait for version 2! Version 2 [0] has a diameter of 18m and an astonishing payload. Whilst V1 will change space launches forever. I think that V2 will become the most versatile of space vehicles. The capacity so large that it would be able to launch a copy of the ISS by itself. [1]. I think V2 will usher in new capabilities of manufacturing in space, space mining on asteroids and off worlds, interstellar way stations (planet hopping across the solar system) and the ability to launch a global coverage of Starlinks in 1 launch instead of 24 falcon 9 launches [2]. So yes, while V1 changes the game and puts SpaceX at the forefront of space and rockets. Once they turn their attention on V2 and that launches. Absolutely everything changes and true infrastructures can then be built and once an infrastructure to the end of the solar system occurs. We can only imagine what humanity looks like. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/cwurkj/updated_18m_superheavy_vs_9m_superheavystarship/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/cwurkj/update... [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/cy4lno/18m_starship_i_predict_a_first_launch_launch/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/cy4lno/18m_st... [2]: https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlink-broadband-services-in-2020 https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlin...
rotexo 6y ago
I wonder if putting up a space sunshade (the cloud of lenses version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade) would be feasible with starship/superheavy. If so, that strikes me as a way more important project than Mars colonization. I would prefer the sunshade to chemical solar geoengineering (dispersing sulfate aerosols), because it seems like putting objects in space would be more easily reversible. And it seems like some form of solar engineering will be an absolute necessity (projections of wet-bulb temperatures killing millions of humans at a time sometime this century scare the bejeebus out of me).

53 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

I think that's hasty. Starship is not an SSTO and is not expected to reach orbit on its own. To do an orbital flight they'll need to also develop Super Heavy. That's not too crazy because Super Heavy is a stretched Starship, but it will take some time.

the8472 6y ago
My understanding is that without payload it is SSTO. Which is mostly useless, but might be good enough for a test flight. And even if not, musk said that starship is the hard part, if they got that one working then adding the booster would be essentially a second starship without nose cone and an interstage instead.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  Certainly reentry is easier for the Super Heavy
- simonh 6y ago
  A reasonably optimised Starship can theoretically reach orbit, but it wouldn't have any fuel left to come back down and land, so that isn't happening. Anyway these early prototypes are probably a bit over-engineered and heavy to manage that. This all means that when Hans talks about an orbital flight in 6+ months, he must be talking about flying it with Super Heavy.
LeonM 6y ago
I came here just to write that. Starship development iterations are going crazy fast, but to reach orbit they'll also need Super Heavy. Haven't been keeping up on the development lately, but I believe SpaceX is yet to start building a SH prototype.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  When Atlas was being developed into an orbital vehicle, they blew up a large number of rockets over the course of several years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas#/media/File:USAF_ICBM_and_NASA_Launch_Vehicle_Flight_Test_Successes_and_Failures_(highlighted).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas#/media/File:USAF_I...
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  They've started building the high bay necessary to stack SuperHeavy: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1269419405856763906?lang=en https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1269419405856763906?lang...
  - baking 6y ago
    Also started drilling to put in piles for the super-heavy launch pad this week.
gpm 6y ago
The stretching part is dead simple. The hard part of superheavy is that it has a ton of engines complicating the plumbing and thrust structure. Still, spacex has been signaling that they want to get this (orbital starship) done this year. With the moon contacts depending on convincing progress I think it's plausible that they will push hard enough to make it - if things go well (stop exploding sooner rather than later) at least.
- phkahler 6y ago
  They need to reach orbit this year, master refueling next year, and build a few ships to make the 2022 mars window.
bbojan 6y ago
Starship should be able to reach orbit by itself, just without any cargo. See e.g. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1076613555091234816 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1076613555091234816. So it technically is a (not very useful) SSTO. But is enough for it to be tested in orbit before Super Heavy is ready.
- jandrese 6y ago
  It could be useful as a rescue craft. If someone has a Columbia like damage on liftoff and can't safely reenter you could send up an empty Starship to bring them back. Although come to think of it I don't know if fuel issues would prevent it from being able to land with a full complement of rescued astronauts.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Hopefully you'd be able to "siphon" (not literally, obviously, but figuratively) the fuel from the stranded ship, assuming the two ships do indeed use compatible fuel.
mrfusion 6y ago
The engine production rate is the limiting factor for the super heavy booster. Otherwise They should be able to put together a booster pretty quickly with the same knowledge and tooling they’re developing now.

blakesterz 6y ago

"Once Starship Prototypes are Done Exploding..." I don't really follow along much I was surprised to read so many had exploded. What I didn't see was how do we know when they've stopped exploding? I guess I mean, how many successes would be enough to say "well these are done exploding now"? This year is 1/2 done, are they really able to say that these are safe in just 6 months?

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
The Falcon 1 famously blew up^W^W failed 3 times in a row before its first successful launch. A 4th failure would have strangled SpaceX in the crib. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1
- rrss 6y ago
  This doesn't seem like a very accurate summary - none of them really 'blew up.' The first one lit on fire and crashed at T+41. On the second flight, the first stage bashed into the second stage during stage separation and the second stage lost control. On the third flight, the first stage bashed into the second stage and the second stage didn't get to orbit. The videos are all on youtube, you can watch and observe the lack of explosions. Maybe 'blew up' means something different to you than it does to me, but to me it means there was an explosion.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  Situation is extremely different. It was fully ready design, where they caught last issues in the integration stage. Starship is right now at the state of someone doodling in their notebook.
fabian2k 6y ago
It's not a matter of safety right now, they are exploding before they get to fly. I think at least two burst during pressure tests, and the last one exploded during a test because the fuel connection to the rocket leaked or broke in some way. The stuff breaking right now isn't really representative of the final product, it's more like problems in ramping up the manufacturing. And the nice thing about reusable rockets is that you can test them much more thoroughly than if you throw them away after each flight.

squarefoot 6y ago

Not sure if I understand what's wrong with this. "Once starship prototypes stop exploding" sounds to me just like "once experimental software stops crashing". Well, experiments are there to find problems and correct them; we cannot predict or emulate what we don't know; if I was an engineer I would absolutely want a prototype starship to tell me there's something wrong, even by exploding, before real people jumps in for a real flight.

kortex 6y ago
Exactly. This is precisely the time for "move fast, break things". They have comfy traffic with their Falcon like, and can (and should) be going full-Kerbal with Starship as long as they can afford to. Especially with all the new techniques they are experimenting with.
justapassenger 6y ago
There’s a lot experimental software that never stops crashing.
caiobegotti 6y ago
Considering the whole content of the article I'm sure this is exactly what they also tried to mean. Also, "once starship prototypes are done exploding" means a huge step because they can then focus totally on making things to scale and even higher/better/faster, it sounds like a great safety and engineering milestone and I didn't read it as a derogatory thing at all, it's just how rockets are... full of explosive fuel.
paxys 6y ago
Who says there is something wrong with this?
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
Personally I’d be concerned if Starship(s) had never exploded. It wouldn’t surprise me with if Blue Origin collapses after a while of having a good record because it has a couple crashes & can’t handle the pressure.
6y ago

craftinator 6y ago

Man I'd love to see the data they are gathering for failure analysis. I imagine there have to be thousands of sensors in place for identifying decompression pathways, convection peaks, pressure differentials, all of it. Would be really nifty if they just dropped that data for crowd analysis! Oh, one can dream...

at_a_remove 6y ago

Something about the title reminds me of a line in Buffy, about a high school football team: "If we can focus, keep discipline, and not have quite as many mysterious deaths, Sunnydale is gonna rule!"

geokon 6y ago

Does anyone have a good summary of Starship and what the goal is? I still don't quite understand why they didn't just iterate on the Falcon design and what necessitates a "full stack" clean slate approach. Why do they need to develop new engine for instance? Like.. why couldn't they develop new engine and upgrade the Falcons with them? Once Starship is working consistently, will the Falcons become obsolete b/c Starships will become much more reusable?

tomp 6y ago
Different engines (Falcon is Kerosene, Starship is Methane), fully reusable (even the upper "orbital" stage), bigger and simpler (Elon said a while back that designing Falson Heavy (1 upper stage, 3x lower stage) was pretty much as difficult as designing a whole new rocket) and therefore better (in rockets, the bigger the rocket, the better - as the ratio between "framework" (computers, engines, metal exterior) and "fuel+payload" goes down so you can lift more).
martythemaniak 6y ago
Starship is a pretty radical redesign with the main goal being reusability. Everything about it is with reusability and and thus scale in mind. A new engine was needed because while the Merlin is a great engine, it could never be reused the thousands of times Raptor is designed to be reused. You can think of engine design as the simultaneous, interdependent optimization across 10+ dimensions, but as an example of one of dimensions - Raptor uses Methane (rather than Kerosene) because it burns cleaner (does not leave residue) and can be manufactured on Mars more easily. Here's an in-depth video about Raptor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbH1ZDImaI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbH1ZDImaI8 The rest of the rocket is similar, in that it is done with manufacturability, reusability and scale in mind. The Falcon design could never stretch to these demands.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
Musk figures we need to ship a million tonnes of cargo to Mars colonize it. An upgraded Falcon would cost too much. The Starship design decisions all come from that goal. - big - rapidly and fully reusable - fuel that can be synthesized on Mars

bryanlarsen 6y ago

They haven't even decided what they're going to build Starship out of yet. Current prototypes were built of 301 Stainless Steel, they're currently switching to 304L, and they've indicated that they'll probably end up using a fully custom alloy. But I still believe in the headline. They're building a new prototype every 2 weeks, and they currently have 3 prototypes stacked. This in an industry which usually takes years to build a single prototype. Their velocity is insane.

yellowapple 6y ago
Jesus. If they can put together two prototypes a month, I can only imagine how many finished versions they might be able to churn out once they're in general production.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  The goal is to manufacture one a week. They expect to be able to fly each one 100 times without any refurbishment, and indefinitely with refurbishment. The other goal is to be able to fly each Starship 3 times per day!

no1youknowz 6y ago

What makes me most excited about Starship. Is not the first iteration. Of course, I will be ecstatic when it finally goes into space. But I cannot wait for version 2! Version 2 [0] has a diameter of 18m and an astonishing payload. Whilst V1 will change space launches forever. I think that V2 will become the most versatile of space vehicles. The capacity so large that it would be able to launch a copy of the ISS by itself. [1]. I think V2 will usher in new capabilities of manufacturing in space, space mining on asteroids and off worlds, interstellar way stations (planet hopping across the solar system) and the ability to launch a global coverage of Starlinks in 1 launch instead of 24 falcon 9 launches [2]. So yes, while V1 changes the game and puts SpaceX at the forefront of space and rockets. Once they turn their attention on V2 and that launches. Absolutely everything changes and true infrastructures can then be built and once an infrastructure to the end of the solar system occurs. We can only imagine what humanity looks like. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/cwurkj/updated_18m_superheavy_vs_9m_superheavystarship/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/cwurkj/update... [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/cy4lno/18m_starship_i_predict_a_first_launch_launch/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/cy4lno/18m_st... [2]: https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlink-broadband-services-in-2020 https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlin...

rotexo 6y ago

I wonder if putting up a space sunshade (the cloud of lenses version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade) would be feasible with starship/superheavy. If so, that strikes me as a way more important project than Mars colonization. I would prefer the sunshade to chemical solar geoengineering (dispersing sulfate aerosols), because it seems like putting objects in space would be more easily reversible. And it seems like some form of solar engineering will be an absolute necessity (projections of wet-bulb temperatures killing millions of humans at a time sometime this century scare the bejeebus out of me).