SpaceX (general discussion)

RD-270 was the only other liquid fueled engine of any size that was of Raptor’s type—though it used hypergolics.
 
SpaceX made it's 135th flight and 100th ballistic landing of a Falcon 9
with Dragon flight 24th to ISS

And competitions ?
Rocket Lab 23 flights with Electron rocket, working on rocket reuse

Blue Origin made 17 New Shepard suborbital flights. zero New Glenn flights
ULA Zero Vulcan flights
Boeing two failure with Starliner...
 
TomcatViP said:
I guess that plenty of them across the industry won't see much of Santa this year again. ;)
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They get Carbon-fiber from Santa or worst visit by the Krampus...

overview of Falcon 9 fleet
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Last night Booster 4 made ignition test on some of it Raptor engines
On Starship 20 they remove the crane connectors, means the Launch tower hat to put SN20 on booster 4

They stop working on Starship 21, why is unclear, fact they pull Tank and nosecone out of Bays
NSF spottet a Starship barrel section for cargo doors installation, probable test article

Source:
Twitter, NASASpaceflightForum
 
Michel Van said:
TomcatViP said:
I guess that plenty of them across the industry won't see much of Santa this year again. ;)
Click to expand...
They get Carbon-fiber from Santa or worst visit by the Krampus...

overview of Falcon 9 fleet
FHI3l8hXIAAPDmM
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The seem to be missing a few Falcon Heavy Boosters. As I recall they've recovered all of them but it says B1053 is the only one that's flown. :confused:
 
The whole point is not Chinese owned space object or US owned one or French or any other country's. The issue is potentially too many satellites in orbit which may or may not be sticking to their orbits. As years go on, we will have even more near misses. And then actual hits of satellites into various objects from various countries will start happening.

Perhaps it's time for some international regulation in the satellite sector. Otherwise the number of satellites with dangerously close orbits will keep increasing for sure.
 
Josh_TN said:
The Chinese tested a DF-21 based ground to orbit interceptor against one of their defunct satellites back in 2007 and created several thousand pieces of orbital debris. Some of it is still in orbit.
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I'm aware of this test, but I thought there was a recent one and i missed it. Not sure how this 2007 test is related to the recent China's complains about Stalink sats. =/
 
It seems unlikely that space fairing countries will allow their access to space to be limited by an international body, particularly when the three largest space powers are in active strategic competition with each other. Larger constellations are inevitable, as are collisions. Starlink however is probably unique in the shear number of satellites it maintains in LEO - I think it must account for 1/3 of all active satellites already.
 
totoro said:
Perhaps it's time for some international regulation in the satellite sector. Otherwise the number of satellites with dangerously close orbits will keep increasing for sure.
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Nope. NOOOOOOPE.

You want the same countries that are pissed off that SpaceX is racing ahead of them and taking their launch market share to be in charge of what SpaceX can do?

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It's not about countries, it's about companies. Planetlabs or Iceye or Amazon any other company will want to launch satellites too. And they will launch them of course. And there will be hundreds of thousands of satellites in orbit some day, in not too distant future. And bad things will happen. With so much traffic, various crashes are inevitable. At SOME point in the future, there will most likely be calls for some sort of regulation to the market. Maybe certain companies will get certain orbital slices, maybe all companies will be forced to use not super optimal orbits as there will be delineation buffer zones. Who knows.
 
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Josh_TN said:
It seems unlikely that space fairing countries will allow their access to space to be limited by an international body, particularly when the three largest space powers are in active strategic competition with each other. Larger constellations are inevitable, as are collisions. Starlink however is probably unique in the shear number of satellites it maintains in LEO - I think it must account for 1/3 of all active satellites already.
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Starlink satellites can manuever to avoid collisions. Chinese ASAT debris, not so much.
 
totoro said:
It's not about countries, it's about companies. Planetlabs or Iceye or Amazon any other company will want to launch satellites too. And they will launch them of course. And there will be hundreds of thousands of satellites in orbit some day, in not too distant future. And bad things will happen. With so much traffic, various crashes are inevitable. At SOME point in the future, there will most likely be calls for some sort of regulation to the market. Maybe certain companies will get certain orbital slices, maybe all companies will be forced to use not super optimal orbits as there will be delineation buffer zones. Who knows.
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Ahhh... US satellite operators do coordinate with the US government. If others want to coordinate through the US government I have no objection.

But at the moment, who else has had the vision, engineering acumen, and resources to embark on such a project? The companies you mention do not have any meaningfull operational projects. Should we hold back on providing Internet access to the world while others attempt to replicate such a feat? Shall we wait for the CCP, Russia, or even the EU? No, friend. There are bad actors in space. Everyone knows who's responsible for problematic space debris.

SpaceX is transforming access to space and space is "really, really big", to quote EM. If others bad behavior continue to be a problem I feel confident SpaceX and others will engineer a solution. These constellations will not be problematic.
 
publiusr said:
220 tons reusable? What would it be expendable?
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if i got with classic data on ballistic recovery
need Superheavy 16% (fuel) and Starship 37% (heat shield + fuel + subsystems ) of it mass for reuse.
so 53% more payload if they are expendable

337 metric tons payload in Low earth orbit.
 
Michel Van said:
TomcatViP said:
I guess that plenty of them across the industry won't see much of Santa this year again. ;)
Click to expand...
They get Carbon-fiber from Santa or worst visit by the Krampus...

overview of Falcon 9 fleet
FHI3l8hXIAAPDmM
Click to expand...
Hi everybody
Just a small question. Does anybody know how SpaceX boosters designation system work?
B stands for "booster", obviously. But I don't get the exact meaning of the next 4 digits, albeit the last two seem to refer to production numbers. What does "10" stand for?
Thx.
A.
 
antigravite said:
Just a small question. Does anybody know how SpaceX boosters designation system work?
B stands for "booster", obviously. But I don't get the exact meaning of the next 4 digits, albeit the last two seem to refer to production numbers. What does "10" stand for?
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It's just B and a 4-digit number that grows by one for every new one they make. They started at 0001 for the F9 structural test article. The first one that flew was 0003. For some reason when they upgraded to the 1.1 version they jumped to 1003.
 
during the Nightshift the Catch arms were move again
over day they installed heavy steel cover on Launch pad to protect the fragile subsystem on side

Looking on Wide Bay construction at Starbase, a question came in my mind
How they gonna store the Booster and Superheavy at Cape ?
it's clearly to see that SpaceX took vertical assembly in contrast to Horizontal of Falcon 9
but from SpaceX new facility in KSC it's a 12 km trip to LC-39A
either they build a High Bay near LC39A
or they gonna lease VAB space for Starship and Superheavy storage and maintenance ?

Now with LC-49 last one would makes sense if you extent the road of LC-39B north to it.

VAB has four high bay (original four Saturn V assembly) currently one is used for SLS
in theory SpaceX could lease two bay for Storage and maintenance of Starship/superheavy

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUKgGxXwTtw
 
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I could definitely see SpaceX placing a hangar / highbay for Starships and payload integration at LC-39A, although I think moving vehicles from SpaceX's Roberts Rd facility to LC-39A won't be too bad; it's only about 3x the distance that they already transport vehicles down the highway at Boca Chica. For LC-49 they'll almost certainly have hangars / highbays given that it'll be nearly 20km from the Roberts Rd facility (using existing roads) and dedicated to Starship operations.

It's worth noting too that there's been rumours that SpaceX is talking to NASA about using / leasing one of the bays in the VAB for Starship / Super Heavy checkouts; I can't see any reason for SpaceX to not do this (at least in the short term), nor any reason for NASA to deny them, so I really won't be surprised if we see it happen.
 

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