Sunday, September 29, 2019

Musk's 2019 Starship presentation

At Boca Chica Texas, right next to the silvery finished (almost—that'll take another month) Starship Mark 1, lit by searchlights, Musk shared his ideas about the future with us as well as providing us with new renderings of Starship.

The new look stainless steel Starship.  Big fins at the back are (mostly) not for lift but to slow down the descent,
like a skydiver.  The aim will be to slow re-entry enough to reduce heat, so some small lift in the upper atmosphere.
Small nubs are landing leg housings.
Steel costs 2% of carbon fibre composite, is much better at cryogenic temps and also at high temps.
Is also re-usable in an emergency and can be re-welded on Mars/the Moon if needed.
The reason they're being built outdoors is that putting up buildings would have taken too long.

The three sea-level engines (with the smaller bows) are in the centre.  They can
gimbel by up to 15%.  The outer three are for deep space travel, and don't gimbel. 
Musk said in a tweet that there were 6 landing legs. 
Presumably the two not shown are buried in the fins right next to the body.

Starship entering Mars's atmosphere.
Heat shield made of small ceramic tiles (material looking like spaghetti under the microscope???)

Use of steel which has melting point of 1500 degrees C permits thinner and lighter
heat shield.  Carbon fibre composite and aluminium melt at 400 degrees.

Super heavy also of stainless steel.  Little fins at the base serve little aerodynamic purpose.
They're housings for the landing legs.

Height of Starship 50 m, of Super Heavy 68 m.

Super Heavy returning to launch pad.
Musk says aim is to re-use both Starship and Super Heavy within 6 hours of landing.

Starship at Moon Base Alpha.
Musk thinks settlement on the Moon will be unlikely,
but permanent scientific bases as with Antarctica will exist.

Not just our moon, but also the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

But colonisation of Mars remains primary goal.  We may be the only places with sentience in our galaxy.
There's no evidence of alien civilisations (The Fermi paradox). And it took 4.5 billion years for sentience to emerge here.
If it had taken just 10% longer, it would have been incinerated as the sun heated up over the next
500 million years.  Implication:  we have duty to spread life and sentience through the universe.
 
I'm doing this from memory, as the livestream video won't play, now that the presentation is over.  No doubt, SpaceX will upload the video in the next few days.  His timetable is as usual tight:

  • Starship Mk1 flying to 20 km (65 K feet) within a month or two
  • Starship Mk 3 and 4 built within 6 months.  These will be full sized.  Can't reach orbit by themselves, so Super Heavy must be built first.  Expects that to happen within 6 months, so first orbital tests next year.
  • Is only devoting less than 5% of SpaceX's resources to Starship.  However, cost of testing and iterative development much more expensive than building the prototypes.  Still focused on getting Crew Dragon working ASAP.  
  • Expects that they will build at least 10 Starships.  Total annual launch capacity (because they'll be rapidly re-usable) will be 50 times larger than total existing launch capacity, including SpaceX's existing fleet.  (I see capacity is back up to 150 tonnes from 100 in the previous version)  Unstated implication is that launches with Starship/Super Heavy will be super cheap, else where will demand come from? 
  • Will use both Boca Chica and Florida for launches.  Was cagey about what Boca Chica would look like in 10 years, but it's obvious: a massive spaceport.
  • Because both Super Heavy and Starship will be rapidly re-usable, testing will be able to proceed much more rapidly and much more rigorously.  With expendable rockets you'll need 10 rockets to test the design 10 times.  With Starship, you'll only need one.
  • Will test uncrewed first.  So first Mars and Moon missions will be automated and uncrewed.
  • The biggest difficulty he sees in the design and construction of the spaceships.  Life support, for example, he sees as a much easier.
  • Will ultimately make methane on Earth as well as Mars using the Sabatier method.  Needs 3.5 tonnes of oxygen for each tonne of methane and will extract the oxygen near the spaceport, rather than shipping the huge volumes needed in.
  • Rapid technological and manufacturing progress.  For example, will no longer cut the steel into squares, but will just unroll it from the rolled steel coil and shape it to the circumference of Starship with a single cut and weld.  Hence even more rapid timetable than we have seen to date. Will have to step up pace of Raptor engine manufacture from one every 8 to 10 days to one a day by or before Q2 next year.
My conclusions?  SpaceX is very much on track to achieve its timetable.  

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