12 thoughts on “No More BFR”

  1. An ambitious name. Akin to calling to-date space travelers “astronauts” (Latin for “star travelers”). The Soviets were a bit more brazen with “cosmonauts” (i.e., “cosmic travelers,” or maybe “universe travelers”).

    We live and hope! 😉

  3. Solarship would have been more accurate. But I suppose it would get confused with solar powered ship, even though I’m sure a part of it will be.

    But I always thought of the BFR as the first stage and the BFS as the second. So Starship would have been more appropos to the BFS, which will be the inhabited part. But hey whatever….

    It’s only a name, yet I got chastised when I called the Falcon Heavy the Falcon 9 Heavy.

    1. Aha, BFR == Super Heavy… Chastised again!
      I guess that’s better than Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

  5. The starship needs a pipelauncher.
    A pipelauncher lifts a large booster from the ocean surface.
    It could lift it from the ground if had you big deep hole in the ground- which is filled with water.
    A pipelauncher is a large pipe with one end capped and should be build in a drydock.
    It’s sort of like a balloon, though get it’s buoyancy from water rather than the atmosphere- it gets lift by displacing water.
    The water is not pushed out the bottom of pipe- it’s not water jet power, rather air is added inside pipe and pipe goes straight up and has booster on top of capped end of pipe. The capped end [and booster] stays above the surface of the water and open end of pipe rises and will or can rise above the surface of the water. Though power of lift only occurs when open end of pipe is under water.

    It’s diameter is about the same diameter or larger than rocket and is taller than the rocket and mass of metal could exceed the the fully fueled gross mass of rocket. Though the lighter the structure the much fuel efficient it is- or it would be better if less less massive than rocket.
    But even if pipelauncher more massive than rocket it should have lower cost in terms of compared to rocket fuel cost of lifting rocket to same velocity. Or the pipelauncher “fuel” is lots of air- warmed air. Or using liquid air and/or LOX and a small amount of kersosene or methane.
    One has to use a very tall pipelauncher to add much velocity to the rocket- and roughly talking about well above sonic speed- or something like 200 mph or less.
    Or to get +200 mph you need very tall pipelauncher and/or over 1 gee [9.8 m/s/s] of acceleration.
    But also pipelauncher needs to be tall [rather than very tall] to work and the material of pipelauncher generally needs to be denser than water- or at least bottom part of pipelauncher needs to denser than water- to make vertical in the water. So aluminum, steel or I suppose, concrete.
    The heat or pressure involved with a pipelaucher is not very significant or the structure could exposed to less than 100 C and less the 100 psi. The pressure is related to how far water inside pipe is depress under the waterline. So 10 meters under waterline is 14.7 psi. And floating with rocket it could be say be 20 meter, and to accelerate upwards, one then make waterline say 40 meter under waterline and keep it 40 meter under waterline by adding air enough air during the time needed.

    The main purpose is launching a rocket from the ocean, but the modest amount of speed added is useful, mainly because you adding velocity at beginning of launch and will allow less thrust added by rockets [or more rocket fuel added to rocket] and/or allow less Max Q pressure [less dynamic pressure] and allow less gravity loss for the rocket.

    1. Yes, “clipper” would have been a better choice. Or anything less generic.

      It’s like starting a competitor to Boeing and Airbus, and calling their first airliner product “Plane”!

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