Topic: Interesting stuff about SpaceX Starship (hate the name)

[Nemesis]

I'm hoping that this is the first of many perfect landings. 

Of course the whole thing with Bezos claiming that Blue Origin was going to put the first woman on the moon is now out the window.  Wonder who will ask him about that boast. 

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The upcoming private Dragon flight will use the Dragon capsule currently at the ISS, so first reuse of a crew Dragon capsule.  No information on whether it will be a reused Falcon.

It is up now and did launch on a reused Falcon.  Wonder if they cut the price/seat when reused?  If not then maybe in the next NASA contract?

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Now Thursday at 4PM.  Make that Friday at 4 PM.  Whoops Monday at 4 PM.  Now Friday the 30th still 4 PM.

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The Boeing Starliner that missed the ISS during its planned last unmanned launch back in 2019?  It was found to have not 1 or 2 flaws but 83!  It was scheduled to launch in March for a reflight but now is delayed till at least late August.  They are blaming the most recent delays on too much traffic at the ISS.  Seems that they had their windows of opportunity and failed to use them.  Not sure I'd want to be flying on it any time soon.

Starliner and Soyuz are charging NASA $90 million per seat.  Crew Dragon $55 million per seat.  Remember NASA only sends 4 astronauts at a time but Crew Dragon can carry 7 so you could get a lower price per seat by sending more crew.  Unfortunately the ISS can't hold them all.  NASA does claim the numbers are lower than that because it doesn't allow for the additional cargo carried in the Dragon and Starliner specifically (they didn't seem to mention cargo with Soyuz). 

Remember the only groups that can fly astronauts to orbit are the Russian government, Chinese government and SpaceX. 

There is of course Starship coming along and Dream Chaser which might just make it as well.  Could be that Dream Chaser could be the next spaceplane for human orbital missions, before Starship is likely to be human rated for launch and landing.  Blue Origins plans for orbital flight (manned or unmanned) are still vapourware.   

Dream Chaser is the craft of the Sierra Nevada Corp.  and they want to use it in conjunction with building their own space station.  Could make it not only viable but a money maker if it works out.  They specifically DON'T plan on using SpaceX for their station plans in any way.  Could allow others to beat them if Starship is cheap enough for high mass/volume cargoes for station construction.

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Starship eating the competition.

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May 8th Elon Musk is hosting Saturday Night Live. 

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Now Thursday at 4PM.  Make that Friday at 4 PM.  Whoops Monday at 4 PM.  Now Friday the 30th still 4 PM.

Getting conflicting info.  Either Friday at 11 AM EDT now 2:30 PM  OR they have to change a raptor and do new static fire delaying things until next week sometime.  The raptor change doesn't come from a source I have high confidence in but could be right.

Monday 11 AM EDT

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They won the NASA budget

Both the National Team (Blue Origin is part) and Dynetics are challenging the results. 

SpaceX has been told by NASA to stop working on the Lunar Starship until this is resolved.

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The four astronauts made it back on the Crew Dragon.

China has put up the first module for their space station. 

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SN15 now Tuesday at 3 PM.  Wednesday 3 2 4  PM.

Launched.  Flew and Landed.  Excellent.

I haven't seen what their plans are for SN15 but what I expect is that it will be taken apart to see what would need to be done to refurbish it for a 2nd launch. 

Waiting for SN16.  Will they go higher? 

[Nemesis]

It looks like they are building fuel storage tanks using the same components as for the Starship/SH. I wonder if the results of the SN7.2 fuel tank with the 3mm material was good enough that they are going ahead with it for future Starship/SH construction and someone said "What are we going to do with all this 4mm material we have on hand"? and have Musk (or someone) say "Build our tank farm out of it damn it!"

They also finally installed the crane in the High Bay.  No more taking the roof off and using extensions on their movable crane to stack SH.

I've seen indications that they are making a 12 meter outer tank to go over the 9 meter tanks.  Insulating foam is to go between the tank and this outer shell giving 1.5 meters of insulation. 

Now some hopeful speculation.  What if this is a "secret" testing for future plans?  The new tanks use the same structure of the tanks in starship.  What if the outer shell is made the same way?  It doesn't need to be because it doesn't hold pressure.  Could be practice for a larger diameter starship.  A 12 meter diameter ups volume (if height is the same) by roughly 75%. 

Now likely this isn't so but I do hope it is.  Would love to see SpaceX go at some point and say that the whole 9 meter design was just to prototype the systems at a lower cost but the REAL Starship is a 12 meter design that they can take pretty much straight to production.  It would really blow the minds of their competitors - and all their plans to counter SpaceX.

Space Cadets would just be shouting YES!

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I haven't seen what their plans are for SN15 but what I expect is that it will be taken apart to see what would need to be done to refurbish it for a 2nd launch

Musk is apparently saying that they will relaunch SN15.  No time frame.  Bold move if they do it.  Excellent if they can make a success of it.

There was a "small"  (compared to SN15) fire.  Some insulation was seen on the ground under it.  At least one of the heat tiles came off.  There was a cable loose in the engine compartment.  It also landed very close to the edge of the landing pad.  Nitpicks yes, but things to address for usability and manned rating as well as for the Lunar Starship.

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Sunday at 2:42 AM EDT SpaceX is launching another Starlink mission.  This time the Falcon 9 is doing its 10th flight.   

Landed.  Now on to flight 11. 

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I haven't seen a lot of details but apparently SpaceX has sold a mission to the moon paid for with Dojecoin. 

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Apparently the FCC of all organizations has released information about the 1st planned orbital flight for Starship.  The booster is expected to "land" in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship 100 miles offshore of one of the Hawaiian Islands. 

SN15 is back on the launch pad.  They need to replace the landing legs of course.

When and if it will actually relaunch?

[Nemesis]

The possibility is being talked about by people that SN16 may never fly as SN15 may well fulfill all targets of the SN15-SN19 craft.  Potentially 1 more SN15 flight then on to SN20/BN3 flight to orbit.  Musk just might shock the industry by reaching his orbital launch by July.  July 1st would be nice as it is Canada Day .

Cargo for SN20 has never been mentioned but it would be a big publicity win if it deployed some Starlink Satellites (doubtful, but I've been wrong before).  Also nothing has been mentioned of recovery of debris from the "ocean landing" and I don't recall if they did any with the early Falcons that did "ocean landings".

Now compare Starship development speed with SLS and New Glenn. 

BO funded by the richest man in the world has delayed their first launch of New Glenn by a year just because they didn't get a government contract. 

BO challenging the HLS mission contract to SpaceX hasn't delayed SpaceX at all.  If Starship can achieve an orbital launch and reentry it provides a big argument in favour of the SpaceX contract as they can point to the orbital capable launch success of a prototype and to the Blue Moon being just a mock-up.  Then comes the refueling and a unmanned lunar landing becomes highly probable.  SpaceX already has a orbital refueling demo contract with NASA and even if that contract were lost SpaceX will continue with it as they need it for their own plans just as NASA needs it for theirs. 

So Starship development is way in front of what most people (even me) expected.  Could Lunar Starship be ready for 2024?  Possibly.  Starship should be a major wake-up call for others who compete for space launches that there is a revolution in place that their existing plans can't compete with.  They need to head for competition with and by Starship (and its successor!) as their current plans to compete with Falcon 9 are already obsolete as those craft will compete instead with Starship. 

Like Musk or not you have to admit in Electric cars and rocket launches he has really shook up the industries.  I don't expect the Boring Company or Hyperloop to do the same but Neuralink may and Starlink is on the verge of the same shaking up. 

Too bad we didn't have a Musk back in the 80s, we'd be on Mars already and have nuclear interplanetary ships.

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On Wednesday, a US senator added an amendment to unrelated science legislation that would impose significant restrictions on NASA and its plans to return to the Moon.

The amendment (see document) was spurred by NASA's decision in April to select SpaceX as its sole provider of a human landing system for the Artemis Program. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from the state of Washington, where Blue Origin is based, authored the legislation. Owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin led a lunar lander bid that was rejected by NASA.

The legislation calls for $10.03 billion in additional funding for NASA to carry out the Human Landing System program. This legislation comes as Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos have been urging Congress to add $10 billion to NASA's budget—enough money to fully fund the development of a second Human Landing System.

Cantwell's amendment mandates that NASA move forward with two landers. If the amendment is signed into law, NASA would likely have to re-open the competition, thus delaying work on the agency's return to the Moon and putting an already difficult target of 2024 into further jeopardy.

Looks like Blue Origin owns a Senator who is trying to hand them billions regardless of NASA needs for Artemis.

The bill would also require NASA to continue development of the "Exploration Upper Stage," which is a new, more powerful second stage for the agency's Space Launch System rocket. Moreover, the bill says this upper stage should be ready for use on the third launch of the rocket.

There's just one problem with this requirement—NASA says it doesn't need the Exploration Upper Stage to complete its early Artemis Moon missions. The first launches will use a commercially available upper stage, which is powerful enough to launch a crew of astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft to the Moon.

This legislation therefore burdens NASA with the upper stage development—likely to cost about $10 billion and take five years—at a time when the agency is busy enough trying to complete the first Moon missions. And although they will not admit this publicly, some NASA engineers are not even sure they need the upper stage. If SpaceX's Starship vehicle is successful, it would be more powerful, cost less, and fly more frequently than the SLS rocket, even with its advanced upper stage.

There is one other novel aspect of this legislation that really drives home its parochial bent. The Cantwell-Wicker amendment says NASA should "initiate development of a main propulsion test article for the integrated core stage propulsion elements of the Space Launch System, consistent with cost and schedule constraints, particularly for long-lead propulsion hardware needed for flight."

So what is this? It's basically a test article of the SLS rocket's core stage. Such an element, which NASA has not asked for, would effectively allow NASA and Boeing to perform tests on an SLS prototype at Stennis Space Center in Southern Mississippi in perpetuity.

Boeing also seems to own their own Senator to hand them billions and the Senator making sure money is spent in his state that is absolutely not needed.

A Democrat and a Republican.  Bipartisanship at its worst.

Corrupt idiots.

[Nemesis]

They can’t even expend their rockets now.
Another fail for SpaceX.

[Nemesis]

Blue Origin is apparently preparing to fly New Shepard in a suborbital tourist hop, 6 employees and 1 tourist who will have to buy the seat at auction.  Lets assume they actually do this and start a tourist business bringing in $$ to fund New Glenn.

What about competition?  Does a "hopper" like this need the same level of certification for man rating as does a fully orbital craft?  If not what if SpaceX makes a Starship to do the same but higher and more spacious, more passengers and cheaper on a per seat basis?  Would they kill the new field for anyone else?  It would definitely be a more exciting ride with the belly flip. 

[Nemesis]

Virgin just had another successful flight of VSS Unity VF-03.  Looks like they carried some stuff for NASA tests so even made some money (BO has done the same with New Shepard previously).