IIRC Elon himself said the next launch was a go for capture.
Should SpaceX pull this off, the sight of it alone will make me think I’m really living in a Science Fiction movie…
Or maybe a Thunderbirds episode…
Or maybe a Thunderbirds episode…
Elon needs to buy himself a private island in the South Pacific, set up residence there and start naming his male offspring after the Mercury 7 astronauts. Well ok maybe, Scott-X, Allen-X, Virgil-X… Well, you get the idea….
Slightly OT but the proliferation of space based content on YouTube is great. Lots of good channels they go into different degrees of detail in long and short form content.
Number if years back, I suggested to Dr Space that he set up a YouTube channel and do a here’s what happened in space this week show but he said he didn’t want to jeopardize his non profit status. Anyway, its not too late for him to jump in and the process would improve his production of the Space Show.
I dunno, he seems pretty busy these days with a full agenda. I’m amazed he gets as much content out there as he has.
I’m curious how a recovering SB-12 and its 33 Raptor-2 engines will affect their production and launch queue. Will they re-use it because they still have it and it can launch another Starship, or will that just delay the testing and use of SB-13 and subsequent boosters? Basically, will it get two flights before it goes to the scrapyard, and are they going to end up with a bunch of Raptor-2s that will just take up inventory space somewhere?
In fact, they’re going to end up with a lot of surplus Raptor-2s, probably enough spares to overmatch the rest of the world’s launch capacity if they were kept flying. If they end up with six Super Boosters worth of surplus Raptor-2s, that would be enough for almost 100 expendable ULA Vulcans or 28 expendable launches of New Glenn.
If they successfully recover the booster, they may study it to see what improvements need to be made of subsequent boosters. IIRC, SpaceX did that with some of the first Falcon 9 boosters. The improvements culminated in the very successful Block 5 version.
If there weren’t a war raging in Ukraine, one could almost imagine those Raptor 2’s being sold to Roscosmos or Kuznetsov in a reverse NK-33 deal, giving them a leg up in the LCH4 rocket regime using a Russian supplied core.
I suppose there is still JAXA or maybe South Korea or Australia?
Could SpaceX field a cut-down version of a mixed fuel TSTO expendable rocket for export? It would need a cluster of these in the first stage. New core designs don’t seem to be in the works however, unless it’s Turner Rocket Systems. 😉
I can’t see it displacing the BE-4.
By new core designs I mean non-Superheavy designs.
I suspect the fate of retired Raptor 2s will be much the same as that which seems to have befallen most of the also-once-numerous surplus Raptor 1s – they’ll be disassembled and their components scrapped – perhaps after being cut up or otherwise deformed first. The scraps will most likely be sold to whatever metal suppliers SpaceX already buys raw metal stock/3D metal printing powders from.
Even apart from very considerable ITAR-related disincentives, SpaceX has zero motivation to hand any of even its obsolete technology over to anyone else. SpaceX has sold no Kestrels, Merlin 1-Cs or early-generation Merlin 1-Ds and it isn’t going to sell any Raptors. Nor will it license production of any of this stuff.
I don’t recall seeing any mechanisms on the chopsticks to rotate the captured boosters once caught. They must be relying heavily on roll thrusters to align the booster pre-capture. But what if not quite there? Then presumably a crane will have to be brought it to lift and rotate the section into place on the orbital launch mount. Doubly so if the plan is to capture both Superheavy and Starship on the same tower and re-stack in place. Well, it will be interesting to see how this develops.
There is such a mechanism. There are CGI videos from some of the YouTubers who follow SpaceX that show how it’s supposed to work. Search engines are your friends.
When they stack Starship on Superheavy, it has to line up correctly and you can see the lug grippers on the arms roll the ship to the correct orientation. They can also slide in and out together to get under the lugs of a descending booster, if necessary.
OK thanks. I’ll check it out.
“I suppose there is still JAXA or maybe South Korea or Australia?”
As far as Australia goes – LOL!
My condolences…
Every once in a while, it hits me how exciting a time this is for young people. I remember watching the live TV broadcast of Vanguard I’s pad fallback disaster, and then of Alan Shepard’s suborbital launch. I was seven for the latter, but remember it as if it happened this morning. It was the moment I decided what I wanted to do with my life. I watched every manned launch after that (a few in person) right up to the first Shuttle launch. Then life got in the way, and it became less interesting over all. NASA was able to make putting men on the Moon boring, and then topped themselves by making “routine” shuttle flights boring. Neither seemed to have a point.
But today, the pace of SpaceX’s activity is breathtaking, and so many people are making it easy to follow, and understand. It is more exciting than even the early years of space, because it is definitely heading toward a time when anyone can go there. That was always the attraction of rocket launches, IMHO – the idea that one day I could go on one. I’m really glad to see that there is a real interest base among young people, and I’m finding more of them becoming really excited by what SpaceX is doing. Interest in space is returning…
…especially when kids are first taught that they can see the craters of the Moon with their own eyes…
IIRC Elon himself said the next launch was a go for capture.
Should SpaceX pull this off, the sight of it alone will make me think I’m really living in a Science Fiction movie…
Or maybe a Thunderbirds episode…
Or maybe a Thunderbirds episode…
Elon needs to buy himself a private island in the South Pacific, set up residence there and start naming his male offspring after the Mercury 7 astronauts. Well ok maybe, Scott-X, Allen-X, Virgil-X… Well, you get the idea….
Slightly OT but the proliferation of space based content on YouTube is great. Lots of good channels they go into different degrees of detail in long and short form content.
Number if years back, I suggested to Dr Space that he set up a YouTube channel and do a here’s what happened in space this week show but he said he didn’t want to jeopardize his non profit status. Anyway, its not too late for him to jump in and the process would improve his production of the Space Show.
I dunno, he seems pretty busy these days with a full agenda. I’m amazed he gets as much content out there as he has.
I’m curious how a recovering SB-12 and its 33 Raptor-2 engines will affect their production and launch queue. Will they re-use it because they still have it and it can launch another Starship, or will that just delay the testing and use of SB-13 and subsequent boosters? Basically, will it get two flights before it goes to the scrapyard, and are they going to end up with a bunch of Raptor-2s that will just take up inventory space somewhere?
In fact, they’re going to end up with a lot of surplus Raptor-2s, probably enough spares to overmatch the rest of the world’s launch capacity if they were kept flying. If they end up with six Super Boosters worth of surplus Raptor-2s, that would be enough for almost 100 expendable ULA Vulcans or 28 expendable launches of New Glenn.
If they successfully recover the booster, they may study it to see what improvements need to be made of subsequent boosters. IIRC, SpaceX did that with some of the first Falcon 9 boosters. The improvements culminated in the very successful Block 5 version.
If there weren’t a war raging in Ukraine, one could almost imagine those Raptor 2’s being sold to Roscosmos or Kuznetsov in a reverse NK-33 deal, giving them a leg up in the LCH4 rocket regime using a Russian supplied core.
I suppose there is still JAXA or maybe South Korea or Australia?
Could SpaceX field a cut-down version of a mixed fuel TSTO expendable rocket for export? It would need a cluster of these in the first stage. New core designs don’t seem to be in the works however, unless it’s Turner Rocket Systems. 😉
I can’t see it displacing the BE-4.
By new core designs I mean non-Superheavy designs.
I suspect the fate of retired Raptor 2s will be much the same as that which seems to have befallen most of the also-once-numerous surplus Raptor 1s – they’ll be disassembled and their components scrapped – perhaps after being cut up or otherwise deformed first. The scraps will most likely be sold to whatever metal suppliers SpaceX already buys raw metal stock/3D metal printing powders from.
Even apart from very considerable ITAR-related disincentives, SpaceX has zero motivation to hand any of even its obsolete technology over to anyone else. SpaceX has sold no Kestrels, Merlin 1-Cs or early-generation Merlin 1-Ds and it isn’t going to sell any Raptors. Nor will it license production of any of this stuff.
I don’t recall seeing any mechanisms on the chopsticks to rotate the captured boosters once caught. They must be relying heavily on roll thrusters to align the booster pre-capture. But what if not quite there? Then presumably a crane will have to be brought it to lift and rotate the section into place on the orbital launch mount. Doubly so if the plan is to capture both Superheavy and Starship on the same tower and re-stack in place. Well, it will be interesting to see how this develops.
There is such a mechanism. There are CGI videos from some of the YouTubers who follow SpaceX that show how it’s supposed to work. Search engines are your friends.
When they stack Starship on Superheavy, it has to line up correctly and you can see the lug grippers on the arms roll the ship to the correct orientation. They can also slide in and out together to get under the lugs of a descending booster, if necessary.
OK thanks. I’ll check it out.
“I suppose there is still JAXA or maybe South Korea or Australia?”
As far as Australia goes – LOL!
My condolences…
Every once in a while, it hits me how exciting a time this is for young people. I remember watching the live TV broadcast of Vanguard I’s pad fallback disaster, and then of Alan Shepard’s suborbital launch. I was seven for the latter, but remember it as if it happened this morning. It was the moment I decided what I wanted to do with my life. I watched every manned launch after that (a few in person) right up to the first Shuttle launch. Then life got in the way, and it became less interesting over all. NASA was able to make putting men on the Moon boring, and then topped themselves by making “routine” shuttle flights boring. Neither seemed to have a point.
But today, the pace of SpaceX’s activity is breathtaking, and so many people are making it easy to follow, and understand. It is more exciting than even the early years of space, because it is definitely heading toward a time when anyone can go there. That was always the attraction of rocket launches, IMHO – the idea that one day I could go on one. I’m really glad to see that there is a real interest base among young people, and I’m finding more of them becoming really excited by what SpaceX is doing. Interest in space is returning…
…especially when kids are first taught that they can see the craters of the Moon with their own eyes…