The stupefying and stupendous capture of a Starship rocket earlier this month by two mechanical arms marked a significant step forward in SpaceX’s efforts to forever alter humanity’s relationship with the heavens.
I’m reminded of Calvin and Hobbes: Stupendous Man!
Later on these paragraphs caught my eye:
Another major but unappreciated issue is commodities. At liftoff, the Super Heavy booster alone carries a mass of 7.5 million pounds (3,400 metric tons) of cryogenic propellant. Starship requires about a third as much. That sounds like a lot because it is. Liquid oxygen comprises a significant majority of this, and each launch puts a serious dent into the US production of liquid oxygen, which is used by various customers, including hospitals.
Put another way, launching four Starship rockets in a single day would consume all of the nation’s liquid oxygen capacity for that day. Accordingly, SpaceX must find a way to scale production of liquid oxygen, and ensure a tremendous supply to both South Texas and its future Starship launch facilities in Florida.
So a LOX extraction plant also needed at Boca Chica?
Interesting. Wonder if the current fractional distillation method is preferable to zeolite molecular sieves? Should I invest in a zeolite manufacturer?
In “The Martian Way”, Mars was supplied with massive multi-stage nuclear-thermal rockets for which water supplied the reaction mass. The “shells” of the spent rocket stages were salvaged by stereotypical sci-fi “spacers” who patrolled the Asteroid Belt, but the water used as reaction mass was lost.
The Hilder character was an earthbound demagogue who whipped up public sentiment against the Mars colonies as wasting the Earth’s endowment of water. Hilder in real life would be whoever is running the FAA grudgingly approving the Starship test flights.
Then of course there is always the Redlih character, who whips up Martian sentiment against effectively depleting Martian CO2 simply to get back to Earth! You want to go back to Earth? Then STAY THERE!
“This thing is going to use up the Earth’s oxygen and send it wastefully to Mars.”
I think you’ve just given Thunderf00t the idea for his next YT video.
“For the propellant transfer demonstration, SpaceX will launch a Starship “target” into low-Earth orbit to be followed closely by a Starship “chaser.” The vehicles will then rendezvous in space, dock, and in an unprecedented space ballet, the chaser vehicle will transfer a significant amount of cryogenic propellant into the target vehicle. Finally, the ships will undock, and each will perform a deorbit burn.”
Why de-obrit both? If test has problems, then de-orbit both.
It seems the starship holding the rocket fuel, doesn’t have to have reusable second stage- if it re-enters, it burns up, like normal second stages And the other one, is a reuseable second stage, has the heat tiles, etc. And tanker doesn’t need sea level engines and like lunar lander, isn’t made of stainless steel and has no tile heat shield.
And once test is done, the Starships being used to add more rocket fuel to it, can likewise can have no heat shields, stainless, sea level engines, plus smaller payload volume, LOX [or Methane] is dense- compared typical space payloads- 5 meter high of second stage, about 300 tons. Oh, and also, no flaps.
Along slightly different lines, the “transfer” vehicle i.e. the Artemis lander, if never returned to Earth, doesn’t need heat shield tiles OR flaps. If you can either jettison the flaps upon reaching orbit OR replace them with chines then you have a design in which in the future it would be possible (after several landings with construction/digging done) to land them in silos.
This has at least three advantages:
1) You can keep the silo “debris clean” for propulsive landings within and not worry about scattering contaminating rocks and dust.
2) You keep the payload compartment exposed above ground (lunar surface) so that cargo loading/unloading is a simple roll-on/roll-off process. No cranes needed.
3) If you can seal off the nosecone/payload section from the rest of the rocket, you can pressurize what is below in the silo to work on it if need be, in a pressurized, rad-free, shirt-sleeve environment. No spacesuit needed.
Back when I was exploring the Cislunar Econosphere, one of the things I considered was the modularity enabled by in-space infrastructure.
So you have a standardized transport vehicle, designed for x days of life support for y number of people (i.e. 2 weeks/4 people), for operations in cislunar space. If you’re going to GEO to salvage some sats then you bolt on some waldoes. If you’re going to the Moon, you bolt on some landing legs. If you’re carrying freight to L-5 you bolt on a cargo rack.
And if the vehicle is returning to Earth you bolt on a heat shield in LEO. Preferably made of lunar industrial slag exported from the Moon. Dragging a heat shield around cislunar space is just silly if your entire project is trans-LEO.
If you’re going to GEO to salvage some old satellites, your best bet would be a refuellable, uncrewed tug. Fly it to GEO, grab the target object, and do a large burn to lower the perigee into the upper atmosphere. Use aerobraking to lower the apogee and change the inclination as needed. Do what you want with the satellite, refuel the tug, and repeat as necessary. Having a propellant depot in LEO makes a lot of things possible.
Speaking of modularity. Why not build a slew of one-way Starship landers with enough cargo capacity to build out what you need on the moon without the necessity of return at least for the cargo haulers. In fact they could also serve as first article habitats ala Mars Direct. Call it Moon Direct. Seems like there is a lot of transferable tech that would work between initial Lunar Base set up and that for a Mars Base. With the easier logistics of cis-lunar space. If not returning from the moon, less refueling needed in LEO?
Yes. The moon base would expand quickly. The new problem would be what to do with all that useable volume.
I don’t believe it would be worth the effort to even remove and recover the engines – they’ll be building so many relatively inexpensively anyway.
Where’s the grift? How does Legacy Space get their cost-plus share?
And the second stages you don’t reuse, you use up all the raptor 2 engines. And since got 33 engines back, and may get more back, you finish lunar program using them up on the expendable second stages.
[But might use the sea level engines- if they are significantly cheaper.]
So make second stage all fuel tank [and header tank and fuel transfer stuff] and no payload area, no stainless steel, no flaps, tiles, no sea level engines. It gets refueled by reuseable starship [or not reuseable] and it deorbits.
The tanker carries a lot more LOX, and gets filled and goes to Lunar orbit with +100 tons of LOX once it gets to lunar orbit. And stores the LOX in lunar orbit. And in orbit with more night than day. So that is the test article, and will have tested taking and giving LOX in LEO. And next launched tanker, stays in LEO. And when go to Moon you use the Lunar tanker to transfer it’s LOX to it. So that would be the one without the crew.
Hmm.
Not as simple as thought. I was thinking of an elliptical orbit. Reality, in any orbit, one has more daylight than night. Ie, ISS gets 60% of orbit getting solar energy. And Low lunar orbit takes about 2 hours, ISS is 90 minutes.
And if high elliptical, say more than 1000 km, I lose nighttime time due to being at higher orbit. Not sure could even get down 50% day and 50% night.
Looking more at it:
“Feb 18, 2021 — The lowest orbit achieved would probably be PFS-2, a small satellite deployed from Apollo 16’s service module. It was intended to go into a 55×76-mile orbit.”
And:
“The orbit of PFS-2 rapidly changed shape and distance from the Moon. In 2-1/2 weeks the satellite was swooping to within a hair-raising 6 miles (9.7 km) of the lunar surface at closest approach. As the orbit kept changing, PFS-2 backed off again, until it seemed to be a safe 30 miles away. But not for long: inexorably, the subsatellite’s orbit carried it back toward the Moon. And on May 29, 1972—only 35 days and 425 orbits after its release”—PFS-2 crashed into the Lunar surface.”
Instead of “55×76-mile orbit.{55×76-mile orbit [88.5139 x 122.31 km]” it seems to me a 55 x 200 mile orbit is one to could start with and get better understanding at at some place and time one could put it into 55×76-mile orbit
Or say start 100 km by 400 km and by using rocket thrust when at lowest or highest part of orbit, you could lower the 100 km and raise the 400 km “or raise the 100 km and lower the 400”.
And you roughly trying to fly over moon at when it’s near noon and midnight. And it could be polar or equator or anything in between.
And by flying find the best orbit which use lunar gravity anomalies, to use least amount rocket power to maintain a orbit with most night time.
And might be say 30 km by 800 km in some duration of it’s operation.
“There have been rumors about a partnership with Australia, and one source told Ars that SpaceX was scouting the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year. Such locations would allow for a safer return of Starship to land. However, such an approach would also necessitate landing legs.”
That there isn’t a tower under construction at a different site or no legs on any of the Starships doesn’t really mean much since they move so fast. Why not use a barge? That could help them practice dealing with the tippy problem.
You gotta admit, the guy has a way with words:
The stupefying and stupendous capture of a Starship rocket earlier this month by two mechanical arms marked a significant step forward in SpaceX’s efforts to forever alter humanity’s relationship with the heavens.
I’m reminded of Calvin and Hobbes: Stupendous Man!
Later on these paragraphs caught my eye:
Another major but unappreciated issue is commodities. At liftoff, the Super Heavy booster alone carries a mass of 7.5 million pounds (3,400 metric tons) of cryogenic propellant. Starship requires about a third as much. That sounds like a lot because it is. Liquid oxygen comprises a significant majority of this, and each launch puts a serious dent into the US production of liquid oxygen, which is used by various customers, including hospitals.
Put another way, launching four Starship rockets in a single day would consume all of the nation’s liquid oxygen capacity for that day. Accordingly, SpaceX must find a way to scale production of liquid oxygen, and ensure a tremendous supply to both South Texas and its future Starship launch facilities in Florida.
So a LOX extraction plant also needed at Boca Chica?
Interesting. Wonder if the current fractional distillation method is preferable to zeolite molecular sieves? Should I invest in a zeolite manufacturer?
Stupendous & tremendous all in the same article! The only word missing is prodigious!
This thing is going to use up the Earth’s oxygen and send it wastefully to Mars.
This was also explained by the character named Hilder in the Asimov novella “The Martian Way.”
Are you suggesting that other than Trump, Elon Musk might be the next Hilder?
In “The Martian Way”, Mars was supplied with massive multi-stage nuclear-thermal rockets for which water supplied the reaction mass. The “shells” of the spent rocket stages were salvaged by stereotypical sci-fi “spacers” who patrolled the Asteroid Belt, but the water used as reaction mass was lost.
The Hilder character was an earthbound demagogue who whipped up public sentiment against the Mars colonies as wasting the Earth’s endowment of water. Hilder in real life would be whoever is running the FAA grudgingly approving the Starship test flights.
Then of course there is always the Redlih character, who whips up Martian sentiment against effectively depleting Martian CO2 simply to get back to Earth! You want to go back to Earth? Then STAY THERE!
“This thing is going to use up the Earth’s oxygen and send it wastefully to Mars.”
I think you’ve just given Thunderf00t the idea for his next YT video.
“Prodigious” wasn’t in the article? That’s undeniably inexplicable.
Inconceivable!
“For the propellant transfer demonstration, SpaceX will launch a Starship “target” into low-Earth orbit to be followed closely by a Starship “chaser.” The vehicles will then rendezvous in space, dock, and in an unprecedented space ballet, the chaser vehicle will transfer a significant amount of cryogenic propellant into the target vehicle. Finally, the ships will undock, and each will perform a deorbit burn.”
Why de-obrit both? If test has problems, then de-orbit both.
It seems the starship holding the rocket fuel, doesn’t have to have reusable second stage- if it re-enters, it burns up, like normal second stages And the other one, is a reuseable second stage, has the heat tiles, etc. And tanker doesn’t need sea level engines and like lunar lander, isn’t made of stainless steel and has no tile heat shield.
And once test is done, the Starships being used to add more rocket fuel to it, can likewise can have no heat shields, stainless, sea level engines, plus smaller payload volume, LOX [or Methane] is dense- compared typical space payloads- 5 meter high of second stage, about 300 tons. Oh, and also, no flaps.
Along slightly different lines, the “transfer” vehicle i.e. the Artemis lander, if never returned to Earth, doesn’t need heat shield tiles OR flaps. If you can either jettison the flaps upon reaching orbit OR replace them with chines then you have a design in which in the future it would be possible (after several landings with construction/digging done) to land them in silos.
This has at least three advantages:
1) You can keep the silo “debris clean” for propulsive landings within and not worry about scattering contaminating rocks and dust.
2) You keep the payload compartment exposed above ground (lunar surface) so that cargo loading/unloading is a simple roll-on/roll-off process. No cranes needed.
3) If you can seal off the nosecone/payload section from the rest of the rocket, you can pressurize what is below in the silo to work on it if need be, in a pressurized, rad-free, shirt-sleeve environment. No spacesuit needed.
Sorry I meant target vehicle.
It’d be helpful if the Boring Company had a division dedicated to working in the Z dimension.
Back when I was exploring the Cislunar Econosphere, one of the things I considered was the modularity enabled by in-space infrastructure.
So you have a standardized transport vehicle, designed for x days of life support for y number of people (i.e. 2 weeks/4 people), for operations in cislunar space. If you’re going to GEO to salvage some sats then you bolt on some waldoes. If you’re going to the Moon, you bolt on some landing legs. If you’re carrying freight to L-5 you bolt on a cargo rack.
And if the vehicle is returning to Earth you bolt on a heat shield in LEO. Preferably made of lunar industrial slag exported from the Moon. Dragging a heat shield around cislunar space is just silly if your entire project is trans-LEO.
If you’re going to GEO to salvage some old satellites, your best bet would be a refuellable, uncrewed tug. Fly it to GEO, grab the target object, and do a large burn to lower the perigee into the upper atmosphere. Use aerobraking to lower the apogee and change the inclination as needed. Do what you want with the satellite, refuel the tug, and repeat as necessary. Having a propellant depot in LEO makes a lot of things possible.
Speaking of modularity. Why not build a slew of one-way Starship landers with enough cargo capacity to build out what you need on the moon without the necessity of return at least for the cargo haulers. In fact they could also serve as first article habitats ala Mars Direct. Call it Moon Direct. Seems like there is a lot of transferable tech that would work between initial Lunar Base set up and that for a Mars Base. With the easier logistics of cis-lunar space. If not returning from the moon, less refueling needed in LEO?
Yes. The moon base would expand quickly. The new problem would be what to do with all that useable volume.
I don’t believe it would be worth the effort to even remove and recover the engines – they’ll be building so many relatively inexpensively anyway.
Where’s the grift? How does Legacy Space get their cost-plus share?
And the second stages you don’t reuse, you use up all the raptor 2 engines. And since got 33 engines back, and may get more back, you finish lunar program using them up on the expendable second stages.
[But might use the sea level engines- if they are significantly cheaper.]
So make second stage all fuel tank [and header tank and fuel transfer stuff] and no payload area, no stainless steel, no flaps, tiles, no sea level engines. It gets refueled by reuseable starship [or not reuseable] and it deorbits.
The tanker carries a lot more LOX, and gets filled and goes to Lunar orbit with +100 tons of LOX once it gets to lunar orbit. And stores the LOX in lunar orbit. And in orbit with more night than day. So that is the test article, and will have tested taking and giving LOX in LEO. And next launched tanker, stays in LEO. And when go to Moon you use the Lunar tanker to transfer it’s LOX to it. So that would be the one without the crew.
“And in orbit with more night than day. ”
Hmm.
Not as simple as thought. I was thinking of an elliptical orbit. Reality, in any orbit, one has more daylight than night. Ie, ISS gets 60% of orbit getting solar energy. And Low lunar orbit takes about 2 hours, ISS is 90 minutes.
And if high elliptical, say more than 1000 km, I lose nighttime time due to being at higher orbit. Not sure could even get down 50% day and 50% night.
Looking more at it:
“Feb 18, 2021 — The lowest orbit achieved would probably be PFS-2, a small satellite deployed from Apollo 16’s service module. It was intended to go into a 55×76-mile orbit.”
And:
“The orbit of PFS-2 rapidly changed shape and distance from the Moon. In 2-1/2 weeks the satellite was swooping to within a hair-raising 6 miles (9.7 km) of the lunar surface at closest approach. As the orbit kept changing, PFS-2 backed off again, until it seemed to be a safe 30 miles away. But not for long: inexorably, the subsatellite’s orbit carried it back toward the Moon. And on May 29, 1972—only 35 days and 425 orbits after its release”—PFS-2 crashed into the Lunar surface.”
Instead of “55×76-mile orbit.{55×76-mile orbit [88.5139 x 122.31 km]” it seems to me a 55 x 200 mile orbit is one to could start with and get better understanding at at some place and time one could put it into 55×76-mile orbit
Or say start 100 km by 400 km and by using rocket thrust when at lowest or highest part of orbit, you could lower the 100 km and raise the 400 km “or raise the 100 km and lower the 400”.
And you roughly trying to fly over moon at when it’s near noon and midnight. And it could be polar or equator or anything in between.
And by flying find the best orbit which use lunar gravity anomalies, to use least amount rocket power to maintain a orbit with most night time.
And might be say 30 km by 800 km in some duration of it’s operation.
“There have been rumors about a partnership with Australia, and one source told Ars that SpaceX was scouting the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year. Such locations would allow for a safer return of Starship to land. However, such an approach would also necessitate landing legs.”
That there isn’t a tower under construction at a different site or no legs on any of the Starships doesn’t really mean much since they move so fast. Why not use a barge? That could help them practice dealing with the tippy problem.
Solving the Liquid Oxygen Problem: A Rare Look Inside Working at SpaceX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4OovdoG80w