Thursday's StarLink launch
Time: 1214 Eastern (1614 UT)
https://youtu.be/2gbVgTxLgN0
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Thursday's StarLink launch
Time: 1214 Eastern (1614 UT)
https://youtu.be/2gbVgTxLgN0
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Any news concerning road closures for the 15 km hop?Originally Posted by docmordrid
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This is the run-up, and if all goes well we may see the flight in a week or two.
Meanwhile, hello nurse!!
Austin Barnard @austinbatnard45
NASA Artemis Moon lander anyone?
https://t.co/ORhSMLq12v
IMG_20201022_125012.jpg
https://twitter.com/austinbarnard45/...18065872556035
Last edited by docmordrid; 2020-Oct-22 at 05:11 PM.
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"Stood down" "to allow additional time for mission assurance work". You can kinda tell how big a company is getting by its inability to use clear language.
Meanwhile, down at Boca Chica, both the "Tankzilla" crane and S/N 8 nosecone have arrived at the launch site. I was expecting the crane to arrive on its own crawler tracks, tearing up the highway as it went. But it arrived on a couple of the multiwheel transporters, to be set down onto some cribbing. Which makes perfect sense. Both the crane and transporters belong to the same company, Roll-Lift. Lots of suppliers and contractors and leasing companies are doing pretty well in the Brownsville area lately!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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Integrating SN-08 (LabPadre cam)
Starship SN8 integrated.jpg
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Wow, it is finally starting to look like a real spaceship . . . or something you might see on a science fiction book cover from the 1930s-50s.
"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." — Abraham Lincoln
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?
The Leif Ericson Cruiser
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That certainly seems to be an inspiration!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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Robert A. Heinlein is smiling
IMG_20201022_212729.jpg
https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal/sta...34449579368450
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Yep
https://play-lh.googleusercontent.co...EdEjmynNQ=s200
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I like that one. I set it as my laptop's background. It really does look like another science fiction/reality convergence. It just better work out well, or I'm going to be very disappointed.
"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." — Abraham Lincoln
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?
The Leif Ericson Cruiser
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And to think that this is only half the stack!
With sufficient thrust, water towers fly just fine.
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Yeah, the full stack is taller than Saturn V with >2x the thrust. Beastly.
The fisheye effect in BCG's image got to me a bit, so I ran it through a filter...
IMG_20201022_212729-lens-filter.jpg
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Shiny (deliberate Firefly reference).
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Yes it's sufficiently shiny. But the REAL rocket engineering question is: is it pointy enough? It needs to be pointy. Pointy is scary.
With sufficient thrust, water towers fly just fine.
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For my benefit how many engines at what thrust?
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SN-08 has 3 Raptor sea level engines at about 170 tonnes (~375,000 lbf) thrust each, so 1,125,000 lbf at full throttle.
The full orbital pack is 6 Raptors, either 3 sea level + 3 R-Vacs, or 6 sea levels. 6 sea levels is good for cislunar. Sea level Raptors should be at 250 tonnes (551,000 lbf) by then.
Starship point to point transports could carry as many as 10 sea level Raptors, 3 in the center and up to 7 in the outer ring.
It's not clear if they'd use 300 tonne (661,000 lbf) R-Boost engines in the outer ring of Starships.
Last edited by docmordrid; 2020-Oct-23 at 08:12 PM.
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That doesn't compute to
"Yeah, the full stack is taller than Saturn V with >2x the thrust."
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The full stack also contains a SuperHeavy booster underneath Starship, which will sport up to 30 Raptors as a first stage. Fire me up.
With sufficient thrust, water towers fly just fine.
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Starship is just the upper stage. The Super Heavy booster will have up to 8 sea level Raptors in the center cluster (170 (early) - 250 tonnes), and up to 20 (250 (early) - 300 tonnes) R-Boost engines in its outer ring.
Pending next week's update this means up to 28 engines in the first stage alone, variable by the payloads need.
It's a monster.
Last edited by docmordrid; 2020-Oct-23 at 11:32 PM.
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So it has a possibility of GT 2x Saturn five at 8000 tonnes versus 3850?
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As it is now, but next week SpaceX will post a Starship update and a few things are bound to change. Thrust go down? Not likely - they've been talking ~8000 tonnes for a few years.
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So latest Starlink mission seems to have gone off without a hitch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjJufR31igA
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SN-08 etc. are the small version of SpaceX's Starship.
Caspar 🚀 (Stanley Creative) @Caspar_Stanley
Just a reminder that SpaceX will actually offer a 22-meter extended fairing variant of Starship to future customers. 👀
Current fairing is 17.24 meters tall.
It might not look like a big difference here, but that's an extra 4.76 meters, which adds a good ~239m³ of volume! 🤯
IMG_20201024_212244.jpg
IMG_20201024_212643-highlighted.jpg
https://twitter.com/Caspar_Stanley/s...31919858860032
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SpaceX is now actively involved in developments in the space industry, but a question came to my mind that I could not find an answer to in this thread. Is there a collaboration between SpaceX and other companies? Are the developments of other companies used to create shuttles, etc.? The question came to my mind because I began to wonder what companies in the world are developing shuttles, rockets, and components for spacecraft. If you take a payload control system, Skyrora is developing and producing this part https://www.skyrora.com/third-stage which allows you to put a satellite or shuttle into orbit. That is why the question arose. Because, it seems to me, developing a device with the involvement of other companies is a sane idea that will help save time and achieve a quick overall result.
Last edited by Kay Burton; 2020-Oct-26 at 08:07 AM.
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I think the major collaborations SpaceX has are NASA and the DoD. SpaceX doesn't really work with other spacecraft developers, SpaceX's approach is 'vertical integration' of production, essentially building everything in house. The other news space companies are either too small or direct rivals and old space like Boeing and Lockheed Martin are part of the problem not the solution.
Last edited by Garrison; 2020-Oct-26 at 11:22 AM.
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SpaceX does work with other companies, and has outside suppliers, but it's not often reported.
Further, starting in August, 2018 they began Mars Workshops starting at the University of Colorado, Boulder. This included a large & diverse group,
https://www.space.com/41404-spacex-s...-workshop.html
In Feb. 2018 they also held the MarX: Mars Subsurface Exploration symposium at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
https://kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/marsX/marsX.html
Last edited by docmordrid; 2020-Oct-27 at 02:03 AM.
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Crew Dragon Crew-1 "Resilience": game on
HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 7:49 p.m. EST Saturday, Nov. 14, for the launch of the first crew rotation mission to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
Managers of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission will hold a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 28, to discuss the upcoming launch, including results from recent testing of the Falcon 9 Merlin engines following unexpected data SpaceX noted during a recent non-NASA launch. Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website.
Briefing participants include:
Kathy Lueders, associate administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston
Hans Koenigsmann, vice president, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX, Hawthorne, California
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission will launch the agency’s astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission specialist Soichi Noguchi, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.
Crew-1 astronauts will join the Expedition 64 crew of Commander Sergey Ryzhikov, and Flight Engineers Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins. The arrival of Crew-1 will increase the regular crew size of the space station’s expedition missions from six to seven astronauts, adding to the amount of crew time available for research.
The Crew-1 mission will launch a few days after the Nov. 10 scheduled launch of NASA’s Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, following a thorough review of launch vehicle performance.
Audio of the teleconference will stream live online at:
https://www.nasa.gov/live
For more information about the mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
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Oh, good! The previous schedule had it in the middle of the night, this is a better time to watch!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
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Starlink US pricing,
After the FCC rural subsidy auction, and assuming SpaceX gets funding, covered customer's costs should be lower.
And if those revenue estimates hold up, SpaceX will have 50% more income than NASA has budget.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/spac...st-begins.html
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service is priced at $99 per month, according to e-mail
SpaceX is expanding the beta test of its Starlink satellite internet service, reaching out via email on Monday to people who expressed interest in signing up for the service.
Known as the “Better Than Nothing Beta” test, according to multiple screenshots of the email seen by CNBC, initial Starlink service is priced at $99 a month – plus a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit. That kit includes a user terminal to connect to the satellites, a mounting tripod and a wifi router. There is also now a Starlink app listed by SpaceX on the Google Play and Apple iOS*app stores.
>
...Elon Musk’s company posted that form in June and, less than two months later, SpaceX said that “nearly 700,000 individuals” across the United States had indicated interest in the service.
>
...The network is an ambitious endeavor, which SpaceX has said will cost about $10 billion or more to build. But the company’s leadership estimate that Starlink could bring in as much as $30 billion a year, or more than 10 times the annual revenue of its rocket business.
>
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This assumes that the 20.4 B is an all or none among the applicants. Otherwise it is a fraction of NASA's budget. Even if it were split among the parties involved NASA's budget would likely be more. It is a generous amount though. Besides the company's estimate? Over what time frame is it talking about?
Last edited by bknight; 2020-Oct-28 at 02:49 AM.
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