Thank you for participating in r/SpaceX! Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with our [community rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/rules) before commenting. Here's a reminder of some of our most important rules:
* Keep it civil, and directly relevant to SpaceX and the thread. Comments consisting solely of jokes, memes, pop culture references, etc. will be removed.
* Don't downvote content you disagree with, unless it clearly doesn't contribute to constructive discussion.
* Check out [these threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/threads) for discussion of common topics.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/spacex) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Some updates in here:
— Aiming for up to 150 orbital launches in 2024
— Qualifying Falcon 9 boosters for reuse on up to 40 flights each
— Demonstrated 3-day launchpad turnaround, aiming for under 24 hours by the end of this year
— Shipped the 4th generation Starlink Terminal and introducing Starlink Mini later this year that "can fit in a backpack."
— Building a second Starship tower in Texas
— Aiming to reach orbit with Starship's 3rd test flight
I appreciate the summary.
Orbit for IFT-3 is not wholly unexpected. 24 hour pad turnaround (eventually) is surprising and gratifying. I would have expected them to continue qualifying F9 for reflights in increments of 10, but doubling each time isn't *too* surprising.
Some more stuff from late in the talk.
They want very much to help NASA succeed with their Moon base.
Starship provides the heavy lift capability to get lots of cargo to the Moon. This will be essential to build a robust Moon base with lots of margins of safety.
---
Around 40-42 minutes into the presentation, Musk explains why the second stage exploded on IFT-2.
It was because they were venting excess LOX that they did not need to get the rocket to orbit without any payload. The LOX started a fire, forcing them to terminate the rocket.
If there had been a payload aboard, the rocket would have succeeded and it would have arrived at LEO.
> The stainless steel? nahh
Have you ever seen what burns in pure oxygen? There's an old video you can find on the internet of a guy pouring a bunch of liquid oxygen on a outdoor charcoal grill. It completely evaporates (burns) the steel in the grill until it structurally collapses.
Edit: Found the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8
>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8)
In this newer video ([https://youtu.be/PcXmD8eJuv8?si=SCRNVV-3aVcubJpk&t=654](https://youtu.be/PcXmD8eJuv8?si=SCRNVV-3aVcubJpk&t=654)), they use oxygen to lit charcoal inside a furnace... it is ready in less than two minutes and the furnace is gone too
The term you are looking for is “promoted ignition” of materials in oxygenating environments.
Just because stainless does not burn on contact with oxygen does not mean it cannot if a flame is already present.
> Damn... I assumed since the LOX is held in the same stainless steel, that it is not that flammable
It's not, in normal Earth atmosphere (unless you like superheat it to crazy temperatures and give it more surface area, in which case it'll absolutely burn (the sparks that fly off of metal under a plasma cutter are steel burning)). Pure oxygen is an entirely different situation.
There are some special hazards associated with this too. The original web site advised to always have an ignition source while pouring because LOX soaked charcoal is a bomb. (They also mention that LOX soaked asphalt is just as bad...)
Tldr. Don't try this at home...
i'm assuming the wiring are located in the skirt area. So the dumped LOX manage to cause havoc all the way down there from the vents whith I'm assuming is higher up on the leeward side of the body
Yes there needs to be an underlying reaction for it to participate in, however what I mean to emphasise to OP is that he shouldn’t discount the role of stainless steel as under the right circumstances ferritic oxidation can be an incredibly energetic reaction
The iron oxide in thermite is only half of the recipe, the other half being aluminum powder. Despite the fact that aluminum seems like something that is fairly stable, it really isn’t. It’s highly reactive. It only seems stable because aluminum *oxide* is strong and stable. Pure aluminum oxide in crystal form is corundum, variations of which being ruby and sapphire.
When you expose aluminum to oxygen, it very rapidly forms an oxide layer that then protects the underlying metal.
Anyway, the aluminum really wants the oxygen that is attached to the iron, so it strips it away during the reaction. The end products being aluminum oxide and iron. In other words, the iron oxide is the oxidizer in the reaction. The aluminum is the fuel.
You know what, when you’re wrong you’re wrong and I have to say I totally was. Referencing thermite to talk about iron being oxidised was indeed incorrect. Statement retracted
They were venting while the engines were running. That might be a bad idea.
Yes, they need to sort this out.
It kind of reminds me of Falcon 1 flight 3. one very little software error resulted in the loss of that vehicle. With Starship, like Falcon 1, change a few lines of code and the problem is fixed.
This time. But in case there’s ever a need to vent oxygen due to an exigent circumstance they should have a way of doing so that doesn’t burn a hole in the ship.
Yes. It is clear the fire took them by surprise.
I **think** Starship was above the Karman line when they started venting, and if not, they were almost in an orbital vacuum. I am surprised there was enough pressure anywhere around the rocket, to permit flame, but clearly there was.
Some in the industry doubt the lox itself caused the fire. They suggest the Raptor in this flight had the continuing problem of leaking methane fuel, and the lox mixed with the methane caused the fire.
> Around 40-42 minutes into the presentation, Musk explains why the second stage exploded on IFT-2.
I'm unable to find it at that timestamp
Edit: It's at 49:20 after the IFT-2 recap video
A few other tidbits that do not seem to be reported in those threads:
- Starlink V2 mini sats: upgraded from 88TB/s to 165TB/s
- Inter-sat laser links:
- up to 100GB per sec
- over 3000km distance
- 9000 active space lasers right now
- Starship: There is a path to 200t to orbit with full reusability
I haven’t kept up with the technology but piping 165TB/s through a phased array antenna servicing hundreds of simultaneous beams seems unfathomable. Wow.
I think he just misspoke. The V2s are expected to do 170Gbps (bits, not bytes) while the V2 minis were expected to do 60Gbps. Perhaps the V2 minis are actually doing 165Gbps OR he double-misspoke (most likely IMO) and the V2s are doing 165Gbps
>Starship: There is a path to 200t to orbit with full reusability
Octaweb Starship? One sea level Raptor in the middle, Surrounded by Vacuum Raptors. Trading landing redundancy for better 2nd stage thrust.
Remember, Starship lights 3 center just in case and lands on one sea level raptor.
F9 currently lands on one Merlin and has nailed something like 200 straight landings. Once raptor reliability is confirmed, this could make sense for cargo flights. It does look to me like 2-3 more vacuum bells could fit and still allow a center engine to gimbal.
They'll never do this config for human flights, though. That will be 3 raptors for a long time.
I think you missed an important fact mentioned late in the presentation.
Around 40-42 minutes into the presentation, Musk explains why the second stage exploded.
It was because they were venting excess LOX that they did not need to get the rocket to orbit without any payload. The LOX started a fire, forcing them to terminate the rocket.
If there had been a payload aboard, the rocket would have succeeded and it would have arrived at LEO.
People can call it whatever they like. If you like to call it X, you can call it that. If you like to call it Twitter you can call it that. I call it Twitter usually but not always.
> Starlink Mini later this year that "can fit in a backpack."
can you use multiple hardware on the same account or would this mean paying for an additional subscription? (assuming you are already a customer)
Presumably, using common existing wireless protocols, you could also seamlessly use a phone with that version, or even USB C to Ethernet if you wanted to keep down your nonstarlink emissions.
Anything about future of space travel? Or is it all ops updates.
We’ve been all talking about how spacex reduced the cost to space, but what are we doing with that capability other than STARLINK?
There being a path to fully reusable version capable of 200 tons to LEO was the only new development in that direction.
We are still at the "build it and they will come" phase. The other exciting stuff besides fully reusable launchers is made possible by the reductions in cost made possible by full reusability among a few other things. Building a rocket out of nonexotic Stainless steel instead of aerospace aluminum is much cheaper, for example.
>— Aiming to reach orbit with Starship's 3rd test flight
Although he also said that IFT2 would have made orbit if it hadn't exploded. So by "orbit" he may just mean orbital energies, and the actual trajectory of IFT3 will be similar to IFT2, and safe if the engines don't relight.
Could be wrong, but I think they mean getting to orbital velocity + deorbit burn. They're not just going to leave starship in orbit as a big tower of space junk
Good point. Kind of scary actually. If they fail to deorbit it's a pretty heavy object with a random reentry point assuming they choose a low orbit to make sure it does.
Not a lot of new information, but what I found interesting is what Elon said at 49:25.
He says that if flight 2 did have a payload, it would actually reach orbit. Because they had vented the excess liquid oxygen they didn't need because they weren't carrying any payload. Also that the liquid oxygen ultimately led to a fire and an explosion.
Edit: He also said that they want to solve orbital refueling this year (!?), but ideally next year. Not too sure if he means ship to ship, but I would guess that he means it, since they would need it next year as they are getting closer to the Artemis deadline.
There’s a separated header tank for LOX use just for the landing.
Also LOX is not fuel… it’s oxidizer. Fuel is methane.
I would be more than happy to assist if you need any more correction so please feel free to let me know.
It wasn't said explicitly, just that they'll try opening and closing the payload bay door in space.
What I **believe** that means is no payload next flight, so they'll have to fix the venting issue.
They could just load less propellants.
On the suborbital flight plan to ~Hawaii, they have about 1/2 hour of coasting time. Maybe a bit more. They could try to do all of the venting when the engines have cooled down.
Or they could just put a block of concrete in the payload bay.
A large bag of sand would be better as less LOX would make the already-underweight rocket even lighter and would really skew the test. Sand instead of concrete as a large, solid block could be dangerous if something goes wrong.
Sand is actually worse: under the right vibrational conditions it turns into a liquid and will slosh around. Cargo ships and sunk due to heavy seas causing their load to slide around.
Yes I heard that too, for the first time.
Still a strange idea to vent LOX before they reached the orbital speed ?
Or did they want to reduce mass for it to reach orbital speed, so how a payload could help by increasing mass ?!
I still do not understand, what is normal operating levels ?
They didn't reach orbital speed or altitude when they vented, they had plenty of time to do that after
From my understanding (which could be ass backwards wrong), when you have payload it's going to take more propellant to get it to orbit, so for example: say you have 2 starships, 1 with payload and 1 without. Both start at 100% fuel, by the time of orbit the starship with payload will have less fuel than the one without as it must use more fuel to carry the extra mass.
So in the case of IFT2, it had more fuel onboard at the given point than it would with a payload, so they decided to vent the excess fuel in order to simulate more normal fuel levels that they'd expect to have when carrying payload
As long as the engines are running the oxygen is pushed to the bottom where your valves are. After cut-off it's floating somewhere in the tank. How are you going to vent it?
Escaping gas will make the pressure drop very quickly. You would have to make sure to get all the liquid to leave before gas reaches the venting point.
If they had a payload onbaord, by the time they had reached orbit they would have almost zero propellant left, which is what they want for reentry. With no payload, they had more propellant than they wanted, so they vented it during the burn.
They didn't want to fully reach orbit with the flight, so they had excess fuel in the main tank. But also they needed the tank to be empty for a proper simulation of reentry.
It is not a mistake. If some of the engines had failed as they did on IFT1 then they would have needed the extra propellant to make it to the sub orbital trajectory.
SpaceX regularly vent propellant when passivating a second stage. In this case there must have been some other situation that combined with the vented LOX and created an explosion.
Probably back to leaks from the methane turbopump on Raptor 2.
No, it’s planned. They filled up the tanks to simulate if it was carrying a payload so they can get ascend data as close to a real mission as possible and then vented the excess LOX to get close to the real de-orbit and reentry weight and also because LOX is extremely volatile and makes everything go boom.
Note that the weight of the actual payload is actually negligible as over 90% of the total weight is just for fuel and oxidizer.
The only mistake they made was probably they thought LOX wouldn’t go boom in space… well it did.
They could have loaded the Lox and methane tanks to about 80%, instead of full.
On the shuttle, they only loaded just enough LOX and liquid hydrogen for the payload and altitude of the mission. A NASA engineer said every shuttle flight finished with the upper tank empty, and the downcomer partially empty. (I think the upper tank was the hydrogen tank.)
The venting was probably slow to prevent it built up and they would want to do it while the ship is accelerating.
Otherwise it would just stuck there around the ship waiting for something to make it go boom.
Then by your definition, nothing is flammable. Nothing would burn without an oxidizer. Your car engine runs on fuel+air mixture. Remove air and your engine will stop running immediately.
Oxidizer is what makes everything flammable. No oxidizer, no fire or flame.
Reading that makes me think they brought extra lox/fuel on starship as a hedge against the booster losing a fair number of engines…seems they were victims of their own success then :-)
Sounds more like they got the modelling wrong: you wouldn't just decide to dump LOX if you thought this was a likely result. I would hope this was basically more of a live test: they didn't know if the fuel dump process would work properly, so the backup if the rocket worked well was to test this system.
Around 40-42 minutes into the presentation, Musk explains why the second stage exploded.
It was because they were venting excess LOX that they did not need to get the rocket to orbit without any payload. The LOX started a fire, forcing them to terminate the rocket.
If there had been a payload aboard, the rocket would have succeeded and it would have arrived at LEO.
Pure speculation on my part, but I think they wanted a full weight launch and flight test, then wanted appropriately empty tanks in orbit.
So they loaded extra oxygen as a disposable mass simulator.
So IFT3 is going for the trifecta
* Zero g burn of an engine using the header tanks (OK just the startup is in zero g)
* Transfer of 10 tonnes of LOX from the header tank to the main tank (to meet NASA project requirements)
* Ejection of at least some Starlink V3 satellites while still in a suborbital trajectory
I thought he said they would try opening the PEZ door, not deploy anything. Certainly by the end of the year he expects to be dispensing v3 starlinks. And by then hopefully demo ship to ship refilling. Sounds like they are going to need more than five launches.
Probably the questions asked were about internal stuff so not for public consumption. SpaceX has never let random employee statements be released publicly (heck that's kind of a rule for any company for that matter). You'll note that the only SpaceX employees that post commonly on Twitter are Vice Presidents or other executives, besides the odd employee that had active social media accounts before they got hired.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[HLS](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khomrh2 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/ki0z8y8 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LOX](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khspvgc "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen|
|[QD](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khokqe0 "Last usage")|Quick-Disconnect|
|[RUD](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khltvym "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unintended Disassembly|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/ki0ymk0 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starlink](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khpt7tb "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[turbopump](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khn3vuo "Last usage")|High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust|
|[ullage motor](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khokqe0 "Last usage")|Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
----------------
^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj)
^(9 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceX/comments/19251pv)^( has 59 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8244 for this sub, first seen 13th Jan 2024, 01:16])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceX) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Hoping to demonstrate propellant transfer in orbit between different vehicles before end of year. That sounds quite ambitious.
Hopes to get crew on Mars by end 2032, "if we're lucky". So accepting it may not happen by then, which is the most pessimistic I've seen him on that.
The good news is that doing HLS has been a sobering experience for SpaceX. So *much* to do even with a relatively short mission duration.
Just possibly the NASA strategy of using the Moon as a training mission for Mars is the correct approach after all.
In the words of a spectator to the first America's Cup race to Queen Victoria, "Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second."[\[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Cup#cite_note-13)
This guy has an imagination most wish for and somehow makes things happen. Not saying we’re going to occupy mars anytime soon. I appreciate his willingness, effort and enthusiasm. I trust him as much as I don’t but he’s really just another one of Us. Go SpaceX and all of Elon’s teams. Thanks for the Doge joke if it’s real it’s….
Thank you for participating in r/SpaceX! Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with our [community rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/rules) before commenting. Here's a reminder of some of our most important rules: * Keep it civil, and directly relevant to SpaceX and the thread. Comments consisting solely of jokes, memes, pop culture references, etc. will be removed. * Don't downvote content you disagree with, unless it clearly doesn't contribute to constructive discussion. * Check out [these threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/threads) for discussion of common topics. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/spacex) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Some updates in here: — Aiming for up to 150 orbital launches in 2024 — Qualifying Falcon 9 boosters for reuse on up to 40 flights each — Demonstrated 3-day launchpad turnaround, aiming for under 24 hours by the end of this year — Shipped the 4th generation Starlink Terminal and introducing Starlink Mini later this year that "can fit in a backpack." — Building a second Starship tower in Texas — Aiming to reach orbit with Starship's 3rd test flight
I appreciate the summary. Orbit for IFT-3 is not wholly unexpected. 24 hour pad turnaround (eventually) is surprising and gratifying. I would have expected them to continue qualifying F9 for reflights in increments of 10, but doubling each time isn't *too* surprising.
Some more stuff from late in the talk. They want very much to help NASA succeed with their Moon base. Starship provides the heavy lift capability to get lots of cargo to the Moon. This will be essential to build a robust Moon base with lots of margins of safety. --- Around 40-42 minutes into the presentation, Musk explains why the second stage exploded on IFT-2. It was because they were venting excess LOX that they did not need to get the rocket to orbit without any payload. The LOX started a fire, forcing them to terminate the rocket. If there had been a payload aboard, the rocket would have succeeded and it would have arrived at LEO.
Wonder what caught on fire when a whole bunch of oxygen is dumped? The stainless steel? nahh... the heatshield tiles? can't be... I'm stumped
> The stainless steel? nahh Have you ever seen what burns in pure oxygen? There's an old video you can find on the internet of a guy pouring a bunch of liquid oxygen on a outdoor charcoal grill. It completely evaporates (burns) the steel in the grill until it structurally collapses. Edit: Found the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8
>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8) In this newer video ([https://youtu.be/PcXmD8eJuv8?si=SCRNVV-3aVcubJpk&t=654](https://youtu.be/PcXmD8eJuv8?si=SCRNVV-3aVcubJpk&t=654)), they use oxygen to lit charcoal inside a furnace... it is ready in less than two minutes and the furnace is gone too
Thanks for linking something that was not filmed on a potato at 5 fps
Damn... I assumed since the LOX is held in the same stainless steel, that it is not that flammable
The term you are looking for is “promoted ignition” of materials in oxygenating environments. Just because stainless does not burn on contact with oxygen does not mean it cannot if a flame is already present.
> Damn... I assumed since the LOX is held in the same stainless steel, that it is not that flammable It's not, in normal Earth atmosphere (unless you like superheat it to crazy temperatures and give it more surface area, in which case it'll absolutely burn (the sparks that fly off of metal under a plasma cutter are steel burning)). Pure oxygen is an entirely different situation.
Watch the second part of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8
There are some special hazards associated with this too. The original web site advised to always have an ignition source while pouring because LOX soaked charcoal is a bomb. (They also mention that LOX soaked asphalt is just as bad...) Tldr. Don't try this at home...
LOX soaked anything is...basically terrifying.
Filmed on a Nokia.
Well the video is over 20 years old. It long pre-dates Youtube.
Wiring?
i'm assuming the wiring are located in the skirt area. So the dumped LOX manage to cause havoc all the way down there from the vents whith I'm assuming is higher up on the leeward side of the body
I have no idea but I'm sure there is wiring farther up the rocket too for other functions. But I have no idea if that is what caught on fire or not.
Almost anything will burn with enough oxygen concentration!
Bear in mind oxidised iron is literally thermite
No, iron oxide & aluminum powder is literally thermite. Can't have thermite without the fuel.
Yes there needs to be an underlying reaction for it to participate in, however what I mean to emphasise to OP is that he shouldn’t discount the role of stainless steel as under the right circumstances ferritic oxidation can be an incredibly energetic reaction
The iron oxide in thermite is only half of the recipe, the other half being aluminum powder. Despite the fact that aluminum seems like something that is fairly stable, it really isn’t. It’s highly reactive. It only seems stable because aluminum *oxide* is strong and stable. Pure aluminum oxide in crystal form is corundum, variations of which being ruby and sapphire. When you expose aluminum to oxygen, it very rapidly forms an oxide layer that then protects the underlying metal. Anyway, the aluminum really wants the oxygen that is attached to the iron, so it strips it away during the reaction. The end products being aluminum oxide and iron. In other words, the iron oxide is the oxidizer in the reaction. The aluminum is the fuel.
You know what, when you’re wrong you’re wrong and I have to say I totally was. Referencing thermite to talk about iron being oxidised was indeed incorrect. Statement retracted
Ok but…if they ever have to vent they need to sort that out regardless.
They were venting while the engines were running. That might be a bad idea. Yes, they need to sort this out. It kind of reminds me of Falcon 1 flight 3. one very little software error resulted in the loss of that vehicle. With Starship, like Falcon 1, change a few lines of code and the problem is fixed.
It's good that it happened now and not later with an expensive payload or even people on board
He said it wouldn't have happened if it had a payload.
This time. But in case there’s ever a need to vent oxygen due to an exigent circumstance they should have a way of doing so that doesn’t burn a hole in the ship.
Odd they didn’t just partially fill the tanks at launch.
Most likely they wanted to be as flight representative as possible. Seems odd not to have a dummy payload though.
I imagine the extra margins were important too, especially considering the amount of engine-outs on IFT 1.
Well with no payload door there is no way to put a payload in a finished rocket that doesnt involve cutting it apart.
I'm not saying they could have, just odd that it wasnt planned into the build.
Yes. It is clear the fire took them by surprise. I **think** Starship was above the Karman line when they started venting, and if not, they were almost in an orbital vacuum. I am surprised there was enough pressure anywhere around the rocket, to permit flame, but clearly there was.
Some in the industry doubt the lox itself caused the fire. They suggest the Raptor in this flight had the continuing problem of leaking methane fuel, and the lox mixed with the methane caused the fire.
This ....
> Around 40-42 minutes into the presentation, Musk explains why the second stage exploded on IFT-2. I'm unable to find it at that timestamp Edit: It's at 49:20 after the IFT-2 recap video
Hey Mike! Good to see you outside of LinkedIn!
Yo! 🤙
A few other tidbits that do not seem to be reported in those threads: - Starlink V2 mini sats: upgraded from 88TB/s to 165TB/s - Inter-sat laser links: - up to 100GB per sec - over 3000km distance - 9000 active space lasers right now - Starship: There is a path to 200t to orbit with full reusability
I haven’t kept up with the technology but piping 165TB/s through a phased array antenna servicing hundreds of simultaneous beams seems unfathomable. Wow.
Because it is. The 165TB/s is for the whole constellation
That makes more sense.
I think he just misspoke. The V2s are expected to do 170Gbps (bits, not bytes) while the V2 minis were expected to do 60Gbps. Perhaps the V2 minis are actually doing 165Gbps OR he double-misspoke (most likely IMO) and the V2s are doing 165Gbps
>Starship: There is a path to 200t to orbit with full reusability Octaweb Starship? One sea level Raptor in the middle, Surrounded by Vacuum Raptors. Trading landing redundancy for better 2nd stage thrust. Remember, Starship lights 3 center just in case and lands on one sea level raptor.
> Trading landing redundancy Please don't
F9 currently lands on one Merlin and has nailed something like 200 straight landings. Once raptor reliability is confirmed, this could make sense for cargo flights. It does look to me like 2-3 more vacuum bells could fit and still allow a center engine to gimbal. They'll never do this config for human flights, though. That will be 3 raptors for a long time.
What’s the path to 200t?
Streeeeetch
I think you missed an important fact mentioned late in the presentation. Around 40-42 minutes into the presentation, Musk explains why the second stage exploded. It was because they were venting excess LOX that they did not need to get the rocket to orbit without any payload. The LOX started a fire, forcing them to terminate the rocket. If there had been a payload aboard, the rocket would have succeeded and it would have arrived at LEO.
I wasn’t trying to be comprehensive, but yea that was another good tidbit. Here’s hoping they sort that for IFT-3!
You need to up your Twitter game again, haven't seen you in a while
Huh he posts there every day from what I've seen
I used to see his posts but now the algorithm doest show me
Oh I'm following so it might be why
Most likely. Seems most of my tweets are seen these days by followers, and I stopped gaining new ones.
Twitter?
People can call it whatever they like. If you like to call it X, you can call it that. If you like to call it Twitter you can call it that. I call it Twitter usually but not always.
One of my goals in life is to dap you up ala Shaq
🤝😄
> Starlink Mini later this year that "can fit in a backpack." can you use multiple hardware on the same account or would this mean paying for an additional subscription? (assuming you are already a customer)
We won’t know until Starlink rolls it out. That’s the kind of policy decision they could make or change at any time.
Presumably, using common existing wireless protocols, you could also seamlessly use a phone with that version, or even USB C to Ethernet if you wanted to keep down your nonstarlink emissions.
Anything about future of space travel? Or is it all ops updates. We’ve been all talking about how spacex reduced the cost to space, but what are we doing with that capability other than STARLINK?
There being a path to fully reusable version capable of 200 tons to LEO was the only new development in that direction. We are still at the "build it and they will come" phase. The other exciting stuff besides fully reusable launchers is made possible by the reductions in cost made possible by full reusability among a few other things. Building a rocket out of nonexotic Stainless steel instead of aerospace aluminum is much cheaper, for example.
Wasn’t Falcon supposed to be build it and they will come? All they’ve done is pollute the skies with thousands of starlink
What path! What does that mean?
Thanks for the details, because of what Elon's done to twitter I can't even watch the video there. Constantly hanging.
I was disappointed in the poor video quality compared to Youtube.
>— Aiming to reach orbit with Starship's 3rd test flight Although he also said that IFT2 would have made orbit if it hadn't exploded. So by "orbit" he may just mean orbital energies, and the actual trajectory of IFT3 will be similar to IFT2, and safe if the engines don't relight.
IFT2 was never intended to make orbit though
So no more Hawaii splashdown? Full orbit?
Could be wrong, but I think they mean getting to orbital velocity + deorbit burn. They're not just going to leave starship in orbit as a big tower of space junk
Good point. Kind of scary actually. If they fail to deorbit it's a pretty heavy object with a random reentry point assuming they choose a low orbit to make sure it does.
Not a lot of new information, but what I found interesting is what Elon said at 49:25. He says that if flight 2 did have a payload, it would actually reach orbit. Because they had vented the excess liquid oxygen they didn't need because they weren't carrying any payload. Also that the liquid oxygen ultimately led to a fire and an explosion. Edit: He also said that they want to solve orbital refueling this year (!?), but ideally next year. Not too sure if he means ship to ship, but I would guess that he means it, since they would need it next year as they are getting closer to the Artemis deadline.
So payload on the next one then?
Tesla Semi?
I doubt it. They just won't vent the excess LOX this time
Extremely volatile flammable substances + reentry heat… sounds like a really good recipe for RUD
Wouldn’t they need to keep some LOX for the landing burn? Or are we just talking LOX from the main tank?
There’s a separated LOX header tank just for landing.
Venting for landing would just be the main tanks.
Doesn’t look like he really wants to land them until they get Mechazilla up and running.
No fuel + reentry = loss of craft with ground.
There’s a separated header tank for LOX use just for the landing. Also LOX is not fuel… it’s oxidizer. Fuel is methane. I would be more than happy to assist if you need any more correction so please feel free to let me know.
Woudn't it make reentry harder?
They can burn it in orbit.
Exactly what he said orbital burn
From the header tanks. They will still need to dump the excess LOX before entry or the ship will be too heavy to enter safely.
It wasn't said explicitly, just that they'll try opening and closing the payload bay door in space. What I **believe** that means is no payload next flight, so they'll have to fix the venting issue.
They could just load less propellants. On the suborbital flight plan to ~Hawaii, they have about 1/2 hour of coasting time. Maybe a bit more. They could try to do all of the venting when the engines have cooled down. Or they could just put a block of concrete in the payload bay.
A large bag of sand would be better as less LOX would make the already-underweight rocket even lighter and would really skew the test. Sand instead of concrete as a large, solid block could be dangerous if something goes wrong.
Other way around. They use concrete for dummy payload weights because it stays put - unlike sand which can move around.
Granted it's a very low orbit, but please let's not bring bags of sand up there, orbital debris is bad enough as it is.
The test flights are a small puff short of orbital velocity. The ship and everything on board is never going to end up as orbital debris.
Sand is actually worse: under the right vibrational conditions it turns into a liquid and will slosh around. Cargo ships and sunk due to heavy seas causing their load to slide around.
Hence "bag." Sand well confined to a bag (or box) will not slosh/slide around.
is this the PEZ dispenser bay door? or it will be a Shuttle like bay door?
The Pez dispenser door.
They aparently have a plan to perform the inter-tank (still within a single vehicle) propellant transfer for NASA on IFT-3.
He said they plan to test the payload door in this next launch as well.
IFT3 is going to demonstrate Pez dispenser operation but likely with dummy Starlink v3 satellites. So not useful payloads that stay in orbit.
I thought the pez door was a single inward moving piece, the graphic showed 3 outwarding doors
Very interesting. So this appears to be the cause of the RUD for flight 2 Starship. That is news.
Yes I heard that too, for the first time. Still a strange idea to vent LOX before they reached the orbital speed ? Or did they want to reduce mass for it to reach orbital speed, so how a payload could help by increasing mass ?!
I think the idea was more vent it that way it'd have closer to normal operating levels
I still do not understand, what is normal operating levels ? They didn't reach orbital speed or altitude when they vented, they had plenty of time to do that after
From my understanding (which could be ass backwards wrong), when you have payload it's going to take more propellant to get it to orbit, so for example: say you have 2 starships, 1 with payload and 1 without. Both start at 100% fuel, by the time of orbit the starship with payload will have less fuel than the one without as it must use more fuel to carry the extra mass. So in the case of IFT2, it had more fuel onboard at the given point than it would with a payload, so they decided to vent the excess fuel in order to simulate more normal fuel levels that they'd expect to have when carrying payload
They probably wanted to dump it before they reached full speed so there wasn't a cloud of oxygen trailing them up to the full altitude.
isn't it safer to dump it after engine cut-off ?
As long as the engines are running the oxygen is pushed to the bottom where your valves are. After cut-off it's floating somewhere in the tank. How are you going to vent it?
Could only vent it as fast as it boils off .
It would be a mix of liquid and gas but it could still be vented. Tank pressure does not suddenly drop to 0 when gravity does away.
Difficult to vent just liquid in zero g. Venting gas would just drop ullage pressure while not removing significant mass from the LOX tank.
Escaping gas will make the pressure drop very quickly. You would have to make sure to get all the liquid to leave before gas reaches the venting point.
Probably.
If they had a payload onbaord, by the time they had reached orbit they would have almost zero propellant left, which is what they want for reentry. With no payload, they had more propellant than they wanted, so they vented it during the burn.
Payload would help burning the excess LOX without needing to vent
yes I understand it, but first, why did they need to vent LOX ?
So that they can demonstrate the stage two flight with the proper weight
In real use, they should spare fuel for landing
They have a separated header tank for that… use just for lighting the engines for landing.
In real use they would not have that extra LOX as it would need to be burned to get the payload into orbit.
They didn't want to fully reach orbit with the flight, so they had excess fuel in the main tank. But also they needed the tank to be empty for a proper simulation of reentry.
So the answer is they miscalculated the amount of fuel required for a given payload( or lack of). Sorry but that's a really dumb mistake.
It is not a mistake. If some of the engines had failed as they did on IFT1 then they would have needed the extra propellant to make it to the sub orbital trajectory. SpaceX regularly vent propellant when passivating a second stage. In this case there must have been some other situation that combined with the vented LOX and created an explosion. Probably back to leaks from the methane turbopump on Raptor 2.
No, it’s planned. They filled up the tanks to simulate if it was carrying a payload so they can get ascend data as close to a real mission as possible and then vented the excess LOX to get close to the real de-orbit and reentry weight and also because LOX is extremely volatile and makes everything go boom. Note that the weight of the actual payload is actually negligible as over 90% of the total weight is just for fuel and oxidizer. The only mistake they made was probably they thought LOX wouldn’t go boom in space… well it did.
They could have loaded the Lox and methane tanks to about 80%, instead of full. On the shuttle, they only loaded just enough LOX and liquid hydrogen for the payload and altitude of the mission. A NASA engineer said every shuttle flight finished with the upper tank empty, and the downcomer partially empty. (I think the upper tank was the hydrogen tank.)
LOX is extremely volatile and flammable add that to flame and heat generated during reentry… I’m not sure but I have a RUD feeling about that.
They would have had about 1/2 hour at orbital altitude, in the vacuum of space. They should have vented the LOX then, after the engines shut down.
Might not be so easy in orbit, venting it as a gas would be too slow and venting liquid would need ullage thrust.
The venting was probably slow to prevent it built up and they would want to do it while the ship is accelerating. Otherwise it would just stuck there around the ship waiting for something to make it go boom.
LOX is not flammable.
No but it makes everything flammable, even metal
It literally did blew up the ship… Yes, by itself alone it’s not but you won’t find any where on Earth that it won’t blew up.
Tell that to the Apollo 1 flight crew. Oxidizer is the most flammable shit by design lol.
Sorry, but LOX does not burn. Sure it causes almost everything else to burn, but that is not in the definition of "flammable."
Then by your definition, nothing is flammable. Nothing would burn without an oxidizer. Your car engine runs on fuel+air mixture. Remove air and your engine will stop running immediately. Oxidizer is what makes everything flammable. No oxidizer, no fire or flame.
That's my point. LOX is not flammable, you cannot mix it with air and burn it.
Ask Apollo 1 crew who were in 100% oxygen rich environment… Your fart could probably cause the air to ignite.
Reading that makes me think they brought extra lox/fuel on starship as a hedge against the booster losing a fair number of engines…seems they were victims of their own success then :-)
Sounds more like they got the modelling wrong: you wouldn't just decide to dump LOX if you thought this was a likely result. I would hope this was basically more of a live test: they didn't know if the fuel dump process would work properly, so the backup if the rocket worked well was to test this system.
> Not a lot of new information, but what I found interesting is what Elon said at 49:25. There's a lot more new information than you listed actually.
He meant ship to ship refueling. IFT3 is going to demonstrate header tank LOX transfers to the main tank.
Why would they not just under fuel stage 2? Already no payload so not the normal liftoff mass anyway
Possibly to have wiggle room in case the booster underperformed due to engine failures, like in IFT-1.
That means they'll be accelerating too hard as the stage runs out of fuel.
I'm confident the smart team at SpaceX would be able to account for this in the flight profile.
Another reason to have multiple launch pads in Boca Chica.
Around 40-42 minutes into the presentation, Musk explains why the second stage exploded. It was because they were venting excess LOX that they did not need to get the rocket to orbit without any payload. The LOX started a fire, forcing them to terminate the rocket. If there had been a payload aboard, the rocket would have succeeded and it would have arrived at LEO.
Why not just load less props to begin with?
They were preparing for engine-outs on SH, but SH performed flawlessly
Pure speculation on my part, but I think they wanted a full weight launch and flight test, then wanted appropriately empty tanks in orbit. So they loaded extra oxygen as a disposable mass simulator.
Ballast.
At 45:22 there is a great video of the electric thrust vector control testing / engine wiggle.
oh yea, that was hot
So IFT3 is going for the trifecta * Zero g burn of an engine using the header tanks (OK just the startup is in zero g) * Transfer of 10 tonnes of LOX from the header tank to the main tank (to meet NASA project requirements) * Ejection of at least some Starlink V3 satellites while still in a suborbital trajectory
I thought he said they would try opening the PEZ door, not deploy anything. Certainly by the end of the year he expects to be dispensing v3 starlinks. And by then hopefully demo ship to ship refilling. Sounds like they are going to need more than five launches.
All burns in space are zero g
All burns in orbit start in zero g. Just getting to space does not.
Is funny hoy they record for example this presentation in ultra high quality 4k cameras just to be posted on X in a 1080p (or below) low quality lol
It looks like a 360p/480p ffs
It's 720p. I ripped it.
It doesn't matter. With very low bitrate even 2160p video can look like 360p.
I ripped it from Twitter/X and it's 720p.
Consider yourself lucky. Some rockets have used as low as 240x320 for their onboard video during launches.
who gives a shit. maybe just be thankful you get something?
I’m sure we will get the 4k version on the next netflix special. Elon knows what he’s doing.
Sometimes it does take him a few trials before he knows what he’s doing
Sometimes?
It depends on how you define “sometimes” 🤷🏻♂️
Do we not have the Q&A footage?
Probably the questions asked were about internal stuff so not for public consumption. SpaceX has never let random employee statements be released publicly (heck that's kind of a rule for any company for that matter). You'll note that the only SpaceX employees that post commonly on Twitter are Vice Presidents or other executives, besides the odd employee that had active social media accounts before they got hired.
People act like this isn't new important when it is new official information not random youtube stalkers.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[HLS](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khomrh2 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[LEO](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/ki0z8y8 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LOX](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khspvgc "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen| |[QD](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khokqe0 "Last usage")|Quick-Disconnect| |[RUD](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khltvym "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly| | |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly| | |Rapid Unintended Disassembly| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/ki0ymk0 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starlink](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khpt7tb "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[turbopump](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khn3vuo "Last usage")|High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust| |[ullage motor](/r/SpaceX/comments/1958e15/stub/khokqe0 "Last usage")|Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(9 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceX/comments/19251pv)^( has 59 acronyms.) ^([Thread #8244 for this sub, first seen 13th Jan 2024, 01:16]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceX) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
So I assume the plume we saw from S25 was them venting the excess LOX?
See this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1958e15/spacex_watch_elonmusk_deliver_a_company_update/khm3h7w/
Hoping to demonstrate propellant transfer in orbit between different vehicles before end of year. That sounds quite ambitious. Hopes to get crew on Mars by end 2032, "if we're lucky". So accepting it may not happen by then, which is the most pessimistic I've seen him on that.
The good news is that doing HLS has been a sobering experience for SpaceX. So *much* to do even with a relatively short mission duration. Just possibly the NASA strategy of using the Moon as a training mission for Mars is the correct approach after all.
Short? One of the requirements is for the lander has to be able to wait in lunar orbit for 90 days in case there are delays in getting people there.
Yup still short compared with a four year return mission. Yes SpaceX did quietly abandon 4 month transits and 22 month return missions some time ago.
Great job Elon and everyone at SpaceX for your incredible contributions to humanity and beyond.
god, twitter's video player is so fucking bad. Why can't we choose our resolution?
You'll watch what the algorithm tells you is best for you and you'll *like* it!
In the words of a spectator to the first America's Cup race to Queen Victoria, "Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second."[\[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Cup#cite_note-13)
This guy has an imagination most wish for and somehow makes things happen. Not saying we’re going to occupy mars anytime soon. I appreciate his willingness, effort and enthusiasm. I trust him as much as I don’t but he’s really just another one of Us. Go SpaceX and all of Elon’s teams. Thanks for the Doge joke if it’s real it’s….
"watch Elon Musk"... no
It's taken right from the tweet and it's the yearly company update on SpaceX.
when are we getting the IPO? hopefully 2025
For SpaceX, never. Starlink may be split off into a separate company and go public, but not for a while.
that sucks because im a shareholder 😭
Hmmm
They are aiming for 150 orbital launches in 2024 and to reach orbit with Starship's 3rd test flight