A lot of the Moon mission hinges on Starship being a reliable machine that does all of the things Musk promised. I have no doubt that SpaceX in time could build something good, they do have a lot of good people working there. But the time lines given by Musk to the government in order to get the contracts weren’t viable. And as usual Musk overpromised about the capabilities.
One of the biggest doubts at the moment is about Starship being able to go to the Moon. The plan was to send up a Starship into LEO, then send up another Starship to refuel the first one. That way it would have enough fuel to go to the Moon and work as a lander there. It doesn’t need to do much, just get to the Moon, take the people to the surface and get them back into Lunar orbit.
The issue with this is, a lot of things need to go right in order for this to work. You’d need two functioning Starships, they need to both launch into the correct orbit and rendezvous. Then they need to dock and transfer fuel, undock and separate. This is pretty much never been done, so they would be doing something new, but in theory it can be done. Hard and experimental, but in principle achievable.
However when calculations were made, it turns out once you put a Starship in the right orbit it’s not possible for it to have enough fuel to fully refuel another Starship. So Musk said they would simply stretch a Starship and use it as a fuel station. Nobody is really sure if this stretching is even possible, as this wasn’t part of the original design, but let’s say it is. Now the mission become more complicated still, you’d need the Starship that does the Moon mission. Then you’d need the fuel station ship and another ship to fuel that station. And all of this has to work and be timed properly for the Moon mission to work.
But then further calculations were made and nobody is sure how many Starship launches would be required to fill up that fuel station. Partly because Starship isn’t finalized, so the exact specs are unknown. But back of the napkin calculations put the figure at something like 6 launches. A big problem is the fuel used is very hard to store for any amount of time. As it’s cryogenic, it needs to be kept cold. On Earth this is done by using very thick and sturdy pressure vessels, combined with a bunch of machinery and off-gassing. But in space this gets harder, since the pressure vessels need to be light, they can’t be as sturdy. And there isn’t room (both in volume and weight) for all of the cooling machines, which would require too much power and cooling themselves to even work. So we end up with only off-gassing to maintain temperature. This usually doesn’t matter, on Earth the fuel that’s lost gets replaced right away up to the point of liftoff. After that the fuel is used to fly the mission and usually the rocket’s main fuel tank is empty after that. This puts a lot of time pressure on the whole thing, that fuel station in orbit is losing fuel all of the time. So it’s a race to fill it up faster than it’s losing fuel. So those 6 missions need to be flown within a day or maybe two. And if it turns out the amount of fuel being delivered is lower than expected or the loss is higher, there would need to be 12 fueling missions within a day. Not strictly impossible, but not exactly easy. And the not knowing is making people nervous.
They are so far behind schedule, on a system that hasn’t been finalized, let alone tested, it’s very doubtful they could do it anywhere in the near future. Nasa has since asked other companies if they could build a lander if SpaceX can’t do it. But canceling the whole landing part is an option as well.
I think it’s not one Starship in LEO to refuel the one going to the moon but 8 to 12, depending on how much fuel they loose. It’s super complicated and error prone.
Yes, it was sold as being one Starship in LEO, one Starship to refuel it and off it went. But now they’re onto this plan with a ship to do the mission, a ship with a different design to act as a fuel station and then at least 4 fueling missions, but more likely 8 to 12. It’s ridiculous really, to expect all of this to work out.
At the same time Nasa can’t get SLS to do what they want and that’s just a single mission. A more complicated one for sure, but still a single mission, not a dozen within two days.
They seem to either be incapable or unwilling to revise their design to stop the damned rockets from constantly exploding. If NASA had the same failure rate for a new rocket back in the 50s of 60s they’d have been canned. Hell if the Soviets had a similar failure rate the entire team wouldve been sent to the gulag.
Starship & Booster are continuously improving. When you see that a starship blew up, what’s probably conveniently left off from the headlines you read is its a major revision. New engines, longer, different flaps etc. The last one went up and down wonderfully. The next one launching is v3 and has the latest engines and hundreds of changes and will probably go boom.
There were failures in the race and they were testing things, but failures weren’t the expected outcomes and part of the planned development cycle.
SpaceX has built a manufacturing line to churn these things out and is like we think this might work, let’s try it in flight hardware. Oh okay that didnt work, let’s try something else. Oh okay that did work now, but if we do this does it still work because if it does we can eek out 2% more performance. Oh shit now we have a brand new mark 2 engine. Does it sill work?
Starships blowing up is part of how they are iterating. No one else has done it this way.
The government cant handle things like this because people like you look at it as a failure and shit gets shut down. If they IPO its also going to cause issues for the same reason.
Meanwhile SpaceX has designed, built, flew and landed two orbital boosters before anyone landed one. They fucking caught it in chopsticks.
I’m tired and don’t have the name of the specific parts in my head right now and don’t feel like looking them up. Shit we used to be able to make that is essential to manned spaceflight, that since we decided to get rid of the space shuttle now no longer gets made by anyone. no company nor person has the expertise to simply follow the patents. That’s what trade secrets are for. In short, the supply chain broke and it has not been fixed.
Well, if my google search is right, they’ve already done 15 crewed flights (there/back so 30) with the longest duration in the capsule being over 3 days, and there are people on the ISS, so whatever it is, isn’t needed for any of that manned spaceflight which makes me think its just something that allows for an extended trip, and having a bigger ship, opens the possibilities of other solutions.
For example, they can just take a less complicated but larger CO2 scrubber and/or more oxygen instead of having to use a super complicated one with a material we maybe can’t re-create due to space/weight constraints. They’ll have 100 tonnes to work with. 1 tonne of oxygen would last a small crew for years.
The pic reminds me of a youtuber who debunks SpaceX bullshit almost exclusively. I don’t remember the specifics, but he claimed that the v3 seen here is basically a fantasy.
Seriously, do not trust Musk to build something that works reliably under high stress. Esp. do not entrust human beings to anything Musk builds.
How are the dead in the water in this context?
A lot of the Moon mission hinges on Starship being a reliable machine that does all of the things Musk promised. I have no doubt that SpaceX in time could build something good, they do have a lot of good people working there. But the time lines given by Musk to the government in order to get the contracts weren’t viable. And as usual Musk overpromised about the capabilities.
One of the biggest doubts at the moment is about Starship being able to go to the Moon. The plan was to send up a Starship into LEO, then send up another Starship to refuel the first one. That way it would have enough fuel to go to the Moon and work as a lander there. It doesn’t need to do much, just get to the Moon, take the people to the surface and get them back into Lunar orbit.
The issue with this is, a lot of things need to go right in order for this to work. You’d need two functioning Starships, they need to both launch into the correct orbit and rendezvous. Then they need to dock and transfer fuel, undock and separate. This is pretty much never been done, so they would be doing something new, but in theory it can be done. Hard and experimental, but in principle achievable.
However when calculations were made, it turns out once you put a Starship in the right orbit it’s not possible for it to have enough fuel to fully refuel another Starship. So Musk said they would simply stretch a Starship and use it as a fuel station. Nobody is really sure if this stretching is even possible, as this wasn’t part of the original design, but let’s say it is. Now the mission become more complicated still, you’d need the Starship that does the Moon mission. Then you’d need the fuel station ship and another ship to fuel that station. And all of this has to work and be timed properly for the Moon mission to work.
But then further calculations were made and nobody is sure how many Starship launches would be required to fill up that fuel station. Partly because Starship isn’t finalized, so the exact specs are unknown. But back of the napkin calculations put the figure at something like 6 launches. A big problem is the fuel used is very hard to store for any amount of time. As it’s cryogenic, it needs to be kept cold. On Earth this is done by using very thick and sturdy pressure vessels, combined with a bunch of machinery and off-gassing. But in space this gets harder, since the pressure vessels need to be light, they can’t be as sturdy. And there isn’t room (both in volume and weight) for all of the cooling machines, which would require too much power and cooling themselves to even work. So we end up with only off-gassing to maintain temperature. This usually doesn’t matter, on Earth the fuel that’s lost gets replaced right away up to the point of liftoff. After that the fuel is used to fly the mission and usually the rocket’s main fuel tank is empty after that. This puts a lot of time pressure on the whole thing, that fuel station in orbit is losing fuel all of the time. So it’s a race to fill it up faster than it’s losing fuel. So those 6 missions need to be flown within a day or maybe two. And if it turns out the amount of fuel being delivered is lower than expected or the loss is higher, there would need to be 12 fueling missions within a day. Not strictly impossible, but not exactly easy. And the not knowing is making people nervous.
They are so far behind schedule, on a system that hasn’t been finalized, let alone tested, it’s very doubtful they could do it anywhere in the near future. Nasa has since asked other companies if they could build a lander if SpaceX can’t do it. But canceling the whole landing part is an option as well.
I think it’s not one Starship in LEO to refuel the one going to the moon but 8 to 12, depending on how much fuel they loose. It’s super complicated and error prone.
Yes, it was sold as being one Starship in LEO, one Starship to refuel it and off it went. But now they’re onto this plan with a ship to do the mission, a ship with a different design to act as a fuel station and then at least 4 fueling missions, but more likely 8 to 12. It’s ridiculous really, to expect all of this to work out.
At the same time Nasa can’t get SLS to do what they want and that’s just a single mission. A more complicated one for sure, but still a single mission, not a dozen within two days.
You had me in the first sentence.
tl;dr: SpaceX might be good enough to launch relatively cheap equipment into space but that’s about it.
They seem to either be incapable or unwilling to revise their design to stop the damned rockets from constantly exploding. If NASA had the same failure rate for a new rocket back in the 50s of 60s they’d have been canned. Hell if the Soviets had a similar failure rate the entire team wouldve been sent to the gulag.
What are tou talking about?
Falcon 9 is fine.
Starship & Booster are continuously improving. When you see that a starship blew up, what’s probably conveniently left off from the headlines you read is its a major revision. New engines, longer, different flaps etc. The last one went up and down wonderfully. The next one launching is v3 and has the latest engines and hundreds of changes and will probably go boom.
In no way is SpaceX messing up here though.
dude, please read up on the space race. we have designed rockets in the open before. they blew up far less frequently.
None of that was like what SpaceX is doing.
There were failures in the race and they were testing things, but failures weren’t the expected outcomes and part of the planned development cycle.
SpaceX has built a manufacturing line to churn these things out and is like we think this might work, let’s try it in flight hardware. Oh okay that didnt work, let’s try something else. Oh okay that did work now, but if we do this does it still work because if it does we can eek out 2% more performance. Oh shit now we have a brand new mark 2 engine. Does it sill work?
Starships blowing up is part of how they are iterating. No one else has done it this way.
The government cant handle things like this because people like you look at it as a failure and shit gets shut down. If they IPO its also going to cause issues for the same reason.
Meanwhile SpaceX has designed, built, flew and landed two orbital boosters before anyone landed one. They fucking caught it in chopsticks.
And yet they still can’t do shit we could do 60 years ago
Like deliver 100 tonnes to the moons surface in a single ship?
What do you think they’re failing at so badly compared to 60 years ago.
When does it arrive? Something as spectacular as that they’re probably launching twice a week.
Not as good as my rocket though, it’s powered by Ai and does three laps around the moon powered by bandwidth lazers.
I’m tired and don’t have the name of the specific parts in my head right now and don’t feel like looking them up. Shit we used to be able to make that is essential to manned spaceflight, that since we decided to get rid of the space shuttle now no longer gets made by anyone. no company nor person has the expertise to simply follow the patents. That’s what trade secrets are for. In short, the supply chain broke and it has not been fixed.
Well, if my google search is right, they’ve already done 15 crewed flights (there/back so 30) with the longest duration in the capsule being over 3 days, and there are people on the ISS, so whatever it is, isn’t needed for any of that manned spaceflight which makes me think its just something that allows for an extended trip, and having a bigger ship, opens the possibilities of other solutions.
For example, they can just take a less complicated but larger CO2 scrubber and/or more oxygen instead of having to use a super complicated one with a material we maybe can’t re-create due to space/weight constraints. They’ll have 100 tonnes to work with. 1 tonne of oxygen would last a small crew for years.
I’m tired as well, I’m going to head off to bed.
The pic reminds me of a youtuber who debunks SpaceX bullshit almost exclusively. I don’t remember the specifics, but he claimed that the v3 seen here is basically a fantasy.
Seriously, do not trust Musk to build something that works reliably under high stress. Esp. do not entrust human beings to anything Musk builds.
Was it thunderf00t by any chance?
Not sure. A middle aged guy from some English speaking country. Debunking Musks BS was pretty much his channels focus.