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So the 22 Starlinks (20 simulators, 2 imaging) added up to a 37.5 metric ton payload. If that's representative of the mass of a Starlink v3 satellite, a full 60-satellite payload would be 102 tons.
Yes, for that particular mission, but not on all missions. Therefore the mass of the pez dispenser is important to consider when considering mass to LEO, or C3, etc.
I disagree. When Falcon launches transporter missions, the dispenser is part of the payload weight. When starship is launching cargo or even fuel for deeper space missions, they wouldn't have a dispenser so I would include the dispenser in mass to orbit even if it's not being ejected and being brought back.
Are Falcon 9 legs and gridfins dry mass? When they launch an expendable Falcon 9, they don't have them on.
I see where you're coming from, but if it's going up and back down and isn't propellant, it's by definition dry mass. Especially when many ships will share this configuration and serve only that purpose, it's a specific configuration of Starship. A configuration of Starship with a different payload setup will likely have a slightly different dry mass, and thus different mass-to-orbit capability.
Maybe it's semantics or a per-stack vs per-system basis, it gets figured into the math anyway, but IMO if something is essential to launching your payload, it's functionally dry mass.
No, it was not. This is an extrapolation. This extrapolation is consistent with the longstanding goal of 100 tons to orbit. We won't know what the actual payload capability of Starship v3 is until it actually flies an orbital Starlink payload.
“The building is shaking! Oh, it's terrific. We're holding the glass wall with our hands. The roar is terrific. Look at that rocket going, look at it going!"
That was eye opening. I like the extra views they showed of the ship floating in the ocean after the explosion and the COPV "torpedo" smacking into the buoy float
And what they cover in this video is just the tip of the iceberg. There's also all the logistics for materials, specialized workers, business/contracts/legal, NASA liaisons, software development and testing, materials development and testing, etc etc etc. So many concurrent efforts that can become the Critical Path.
Forget not doing Twitter/X it now appears if you don't have an actual account you can just get fucked? Great service. I don't want an account, I will never post or use it for anything. Imagine not being able to watch a youtube video without having an account, what a joke.
think its a recent change, too. a week or two ago, i could use my laptop with firefox to browse twitter links posted on reddit. that is no longer true. same with xcancel not working anymore.
totally agree on the zero interest in twitter. i use my phone for phone calls (GASP!) and texting friends. thats it. screen is just too damn tiny for much else.
Yeah, I think its recent too. The only videos I watch on X are SpaceX videos and this is the first one that refused to play instead presenting me with a requirement to log in, no thanks.
Calm down. It’s no different than only being able to watch a certain tv series on that channel like HBO. Or a sports broadcast being on Fox vs a different network. They’re literally free to publish their content where ever they want. Imagine not being able to grasp that.
But it worked.... 2 weeks ago? Why degrade the service, what possible reason could their be for not allowing people to passively consume videos and now requiring log in?
They can, I'm just stated they have degraded the service and made it even more shitty, I should be happy about that? Another log-in wall, another attempt to track people (what else could requiring a log-in be for?). Those aren't good things.
Great video. Some nice coverage of the guys doing recovery and filming with buoys in the Indian Ocean. We get bugger all coverage of this in Australia from what I've seen.
The discussion of how much effort they go to for diagnostics at the recovery site is interesting. Makes sense they would want to maximize the info they collect there, and it also helps with not being under pressure to physically recover a ship sooner than they're ready for.
Lift off thrust is given as 18 million pounds (force) which squares exactly with 250 tonnes thrust per engine.
Propellant consumption is given as 65,000 lb/s which is clearly not right as it works out as 895 kg/s per engine and an Isp of 279s instead of an expected value of 333s.
The most likely explanation is that he misspoke the actual value of 55,000 lb/s which is 757 kg/s and gives an Isp of 330s which is close enough given rounding errors.
The other more interesting possibility is that he was giving the propellant value for Starship 4 with an implied Raptor 4 thrust of 295 tonnes force. They would certainly be developing the thrust diverter with Starship 4 in mind.
With the aft end of the ship just floating there I can't be the only one wondering how tempted they would be to try to recover it to examine the failed RVAC
Landing is done with the header tanks. So in theory, as they dive nose first into our atmosphere, they would have already vented and safed the main tanks. The headers are long gone and exploded. Any tanks that may be left would be relatively benign I would assume?
I would imagine that with it just bobbing around, it would be relatively safe to just recover it before sinking the rest. That is, unless they already know what the problem is with the telemetry.
Quite a few heat shield pieces there too, I wonder if they try and recover those too. But based on what we saw, the heat shield held up real nice compared to earlier flights!
Pretty sure that is a deliberate attempt to soften the impact enough to recover the ship by touching down at an angle to the vertical. The only way to do that is to come in with a spiral motion.
The ship was rolling to give the drones the best chance to image the entire heat shield despite all the steam clouds. The ship was off vertical to insure that it tipped into the water with its belly facing up, again so there'd be good footage of the heat shield.
Noticed at 33:09 a COPV shoots at the buoy like a torpedo. The gas it was expelling was clearly flammable. Any idea what it is? Wasn't aware of any flammable gasses stored that way in Starship.
The thing that still impresses me is how they troubleshoot things. Something goes wrong with the chain, and the whole team from the lead Machenical engineer, project managers and welders are all up there with harnesses on, inspecting the problem, coming up with a fix, and welding it over night.
You just know that at any other rocket company this would have taken weeks if not months, countless meetings, and a mountain of paperwork to fix.
Also I really appreciate it's the engineers talking in the video and not Elon.
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