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It would be good because there are many people who, roughly, refuse to believe their own eyes and keep moving goalposts, misrepresenting what they said or meant
by avmich 2y ago
It would be good because there are many people who, roughly, refuse to believe their own eyes and keep moving goalposts, misrepresenting what they said or meant earlier, inventing additional conditions, changing their mind etc. If you would honestly believe that Starship can fly frequently when you see it flying frequently, you're already ahead of some.
- jiggawatts 2y agoI remember when people doubted that the full-flow staged combustion methalox engines could work... until SpaceX showed over a hundred of them working now. Then the ULA CEO Tory Bruno claiming that the SpaceX photos of the first Raptor 3 were “partially assembled”, to which Gwynne Shotwell replied with this: https://x.com/Gwynne_Shotwell/status/1821674726885924923?t=vT35PMKOMiUfWg6hun2f_A https://x.com/Gwynne_Shotwell/status/1821674726885924923?t=v...
- avmich 2y agoI'd consider that cheating on the Gwynne side. It could be argued if chamber tilting mechanism is part of the engine - after all, it was added separately to NK-33 - but surely for Raptors it's considered an integral part, the fire test was then a test of chamber, not the engine :) . Though Gwynne had to answer positively, having little good choice.
- timschmidt 2y agoThe outer ring of engines on Superheavy do not tilt. They're rigidly mounted and exclude even the engine start hardware which is contained in the launch mount, further reducing weight. And they're only used during liftoff, not for boostback or landing.
- avmich 2y agoRaptor is non-functional without tilting. That is, it's possible to build rocket where all Raptors are fixed, but that defeats some ideas of Raptors. And I haven't seen tilt mechanisms considered parts of the rocket. So, while engines without tilting have been used - e.g. NK-15 - Raptors aren't from that category.
- modeless 2y agoRaptor is used in a non-tilting configuration on both the booster and ship. You could certainly design a rocket to get to space with only non-tilting raptors, if you wanted. It would be silly to consider it incomplete without tilt, even if Starship does have some tilting ones too. Consider it two variants if you like, both complete on their own.
- timschmidt 2y agoDifferential thrust has been used to steer rockets for decades, and raptor has the sort of deep throttling capability required for it. Tilting is absolutely not required for anything but landing.
- m4rtink 2y agoYeah - you would still need roll-control, but given there are huge potato smashers already bolted on, it should not be an issue while in enough atmosphere. ;-)
- timschmidt 2y agoYup. In addition to the grid fins, there is the warm gas RCS which could perform roll control.
- literalAardvark 2y agoI'd like to suggest the idea that had they been able to operate it "well" without tilting, they wouldn't have added the mass for it. There's clearly a huge advantage somewhere.
- timschmidt 2y agoYeah, landing. As was mentioned. Not necessary for launch.
- modeless 2y agoAlso catching a booster, also landing boosters at all, also achieving cost reduction via landings, also cheap enough phased arrays to make Starlink viable, also also also... SpaceX has a long history of proving doubters wrong.
- sroussey 2y agoI remember talking about landing booster when I was in college in the 1980s. Super awesome I got to see it in my lifetime! And yeah, Starlink was a great purchase by SpaceX.
- modeless 2y agoWhat part of Starlink was purchased?
- rogerrogerr 2y agoIt’s fake news, SpaceX built Starlink internally. Even Wikipedia says so: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
- cwillu 2y agoNot every piece of misinformation floating around is “fake news”
- inemesitaffia 2y agoThere's people on the Internet always arguing SpaceX was purchased. Starlink as an idea within SpaceX is older than it's first launch
- cwillu 2y agoReread my comment.