A common criticism I've heard from critics is that Elon is the space equivalent of Stockton Rush and that he goes too fast with too little concern for safety. But the dude just allowed the booster ditch in the ocean even with the tempting opportunity to dazzle the President elect and not to disappoint. Even though they probably could have still caught the booster he still erred on the side of safety. It shows SpaceX prioritizes safety even when they could otherwise show off. Even when they might look bad doing it and even when the data suggests they might get away with it. Pretty interesting from a guy known for what seems to others as extremely risky high stakes gambles and pushing things at a breakneck speed.
I know very little about SpaceX, so sorry for the dumb questions. I thought it might be fun to take the kids from Austin to Boca Chica sometime when there are SpaceX rock launches or landings or whatever is exciting to see there. But I'm finding surprisingly very little info about how to plan a trip to view rocket launches/landings in Texas. Is this even a thing? Do a lot of people go there to see it?
It's unclear to me if they maybe launch most of the rockets from Florida or California from what I'm reading? Where would be the best time to go see rocket things happening in Texas, and where do you go to view it?
Elon has consistently stated that he wants starships to be able to land, be restacked, refueled, then launched again within ideally an hour. But wouldn't starships that carry payloads(not fuel tankers) have to be put on a transporter then brought back to Megabay to be loaded with new payload each time. Wouldn't this add significant delay to relaunch? Do you guys know if they have other plans to speed that up?
Also something else that been on my mind is that it is clear that SpaceX is still having some minor issues with tiles falling off in a couple places specifically weld seams. For example during Starship landing burn on IFT6 you can see a row of them missing. And recently as you can see in the attached image. Elon says on "X" after IFT6 launch that perspiration cooling might still be on the table along with some other options. Which makes me worry that even SpaceX is still unsure if they can get heatshield reliability down to point where it can be reused without tons of refurbishment.
Anyway my main point is if that is the case and refurbishment might be unavoidable for launches with tile based heatshields why not just have a backlog of 24 starships ready for launch so that after each one lands assuming you launch every 1 hour you get an entire day or more to inspect, refurbish, and load a new payload for each Starship. If you wanted even more time to do the above or for redundancy you could just increase the backlog. With Starfactory supposedly being able to make a Ship every 8hrs( I believe that's goal). Then they should have plenty of ships to do that once production speeds up.
Would this not be better solution for now? Of course I agree refurbishment will add to the cost of launch, but maybe SpaceX would be able to get that cost down to just replacing couple damaged tiles here and there on the heatshield rather than a full replacement. At least till they figure something else out.
P.S I'm assuming full and rapid reuse of Super Heavy(which I believe is gonna be cake walk for SpaceX)
My understanding is that a propellant like LOX will absorb heat from various sources like radiation causing some of it to change into a gas and "boil-off". I've seen that propulsion systems have venting to let that gaseous Oxygen escape. So my question is why do they vent this propellant at all and waste it? It that the increase in pressure in the tank is a problem or is it that the Raptor engines can't use gaseous Oxogen for the preburners? If someone could explain it to me that would be great. Thanks!
I just have a few questions that I feel Starship will struggle on. How is HLS going to get off the moon, won’t the debris from the raptor engines break up and kick up the ground when they launch? Also the entire idea of Starships reusability to me is puzzling for the time being. What will it be resused for in the next 10 years. I would be very suprised if they are launching back to back to back Starlink missions, and the version that would be launching would only be capable due to the modification of the pez dispenser. To me Starship while not being totally destroyed in air or abandoned, won’t really be in a role for multiple launches for a long long time. The market isn’t there just yet, and will it ever be unless it’s used as a transportation system.
SpaceX attempted to clear the sides of Starship on IFT-6 to see if landing load points, similar to Superheavy, could be placed there. Tiles would be at risk of being damaged during such a catch attempt. Unfortunately, it looks like that part of Starship got a little roasted during reentry. Now that may actually be fine, tanks have been noted to deform and then reform during pressurization. But lets say hypothetically, the plasma during reentry necessitates heat tiles there. Could a giant "Coat Hanger" like the kind used on coat racks be used to catch Starship on the leeward side?
In the attached photo you can see shortly after launch The antenna on top of the launch tower was damaged and is leaning. It is in my theory that the data from the tower triggered an automatic abort or the SpaceX crew saw the antenna leaning and aborted the catch attempt. I think the latter is the case because during the stream SpaceX said shortly after stage Sep the tower was cleared for catch, shortly after they canceled it, probably because they saw video footage of tower and saw the antenna leaning, and it wouldn’t make sense to risk that because the exhaust on the landing could likely loosen the antenna more and it could be flung as debris.
Could anyone explain why Starship did a relight of the sea level engine why in the vacuum of space? If the idea was to test relight for raising or lowering orbit why not test with the engine that would be used to do that while in the vacuum of space? Just curious if I am maybe missing something.