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The comparison has been made of the Superheavy/Starship to the multiply failed Soviet N-1 rocket. Starship defenders argue the comparison is not valid because the N-1 rocket engines could not be tested individually, whereas the Raptor engines are. However, a key point in this has been missed: even when the Raptor engines are successfully tested there is still a quite high chance it will fail during an actual flight.
SpaceX should withdraw its application for the Starship as an Artemis lunar lander.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/0 … ation.html
Robert Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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Robert Clark I would like you to clarify your position, are you saying Musk should just go direct to Mars or are you asking for changes in vehicle? Looking at past critics, the first Integrated Flight Test of its Starship was not the explosion some people thought it would be. I sometimes don't understand your position and other people's position, for example your posts on its explosive 'thermal energy' and it being like a bomb are much debated it is not in such a heavily populated area. However there are costs and politically there is need to have payload on the Moon getting it there soon and there is something of a race even if it is at a glacial pace it is still a kind of Race. They need to get payload to the Lunar surface, Super-Heavy class rockets defined by some as 50 metric tons (110,000 lb) or as more than 100 metric tons (220,000 lb). Currently there is Space Launch System (SLS) maybe Starship soon to the Moon or there is the Chinese version, China might have more than one super-heavy carrier rocket concept in development. Other rockets are Ariane less payload, not ready and when it is finally ready not reusable, Boeing Delta and Lockheed Martin Atlas EELV families. Other debated options are alternative timeline 'fictions' or philosophy debates or scifi ideas, the Buran is over and even if it existed sanctions are on Russia after the Ukraine invasion, the Saturn rocket is over. Relations are already bad between the Joe Biden Kamala Harris Admin and Elon Musk, this would only make political relations worse. A slow assembly of multiple launches to space on smaller rockets would only add to over all time and launch costs I am also not sure about concepts about the SSTO project. Finally price, the main issue that would damage long term habitation is SLS is very expensive.
Your signature says “Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.” but SLS costs something like $4.1 Billion to 5 Billion Per Launch.
I also believe it unfair to compare the launch site to Beirut, the larger city large of Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region.
My opinion is that Musk can deliver both, a large payload to Mars and perhaps a Moon mission where SLS will fail not by its rocket but fail by its over priced costs.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-14 18:57:01)
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Thanks for responding. My sig file was stating the opinion the Old Space companies will find a way to make anything they are contracted for cost billions of dollars even if commercial space could do it for a hundred million or even for just a few tens of millions.
About the Superheavy/Starship, much discussion has been over comparing it to the multiply failed N-1 rocket. Starship defenders deny this comparison because the N-1’s rocket engines were not properly tested. The key point I’m making is that even though the Raptor engines are individually tested they still have a 1 in 4 chance of failing on an actual flight.
The upshot is for all practical purposes the SH/ST is like N-1 rocket in that it will be launching with engines with poor reliability.
This can have catastrophic results. Elon has been talking like he wants to relaunch, like, tomorrow. But nobody believes the Raptor is any more reliable that it was during the April launch. It is likely such a launch will fail again. The only question is when. This is just like the approach taken with the N-1 rocket. Four engines having to shut down on the recent static fire after only 2.7 seconds does not inspire confidence; it does the opposite. Either the Raptor is just as bad as before or the SpaceX new water deluge system makes the Raptor even less reliable than before.
Since nobody knows when such a launch would fail, it is quite possible it could occur close to the ground. The public needs to know such a failure would likely be 5 times worse than the catastrophic Beirut explosion.
Robert Clark
Last edited by RGClark (2023-08-15 09:39:44)
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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I would like to point out that the booster will not be used on the Moon. Just the Starship, and that is to have 6-9 engines. Also, it may land with special engines on the sides of the ship. And it will be tested uncrewed at least once. Even if it proves unreliable, it may still be useful to deploy cargo to the Moon.
The first thing to look at where the engines shut down, is did the monitoring system make a mistake?
Then I guess, did the support equipment for the engines fail?
And then, is it actually engine failures?
As for testing modes, I anticipate that the stack will not be lifting cargo, so then it also does not have to be fully filled, at least I think that is true. So, you have a greater tolerance for engine failures doing "Empty" testing. The only good way to perfect the engines is to test them closer and closer to the actual environment that they must work in.
I recently read a claim of 200 tons of cargo to orbit, due to hot staging and perhaps some other changes. Previously I thought it was 100 to 150 tons to orbit.
So, if it turns out that the engines actually themselves explode/rupture/internal failures, then I guess they will have to back off on the performance of the engines and add some mass where appropriate.
200 tons to orbit would be elegant.
150 tons nice.
100 tons acceptable.
75 tons to orbit better than 0 tons to orbit.
It is way too early to trash things and then do a restart of the pork barrel, oink, oink process.
And we have Vulcan, New Glen, Terran-R, and others that are coming down the pipeline, and give 5-10 years some of them might work out.
If only one of them is suitable for crewed spaceflight then the Starship might still be good for delivering cargo to the Moon.
Done.
Last edited by Void (2023-08-15 10:09:14)
Done.
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I believe Beirut 2020 explosion event and the Space-X launch site are two totally different things, 'Space-X' is in Texas, it operates at Cape Canaveral Florida, the Kennedy Space Center Florida and Vandenberg. There are populated cities in Texas, El Paso is a large Texan city, there is Austin, Texas, Dallas, Fort Worth, these big cities of Texas they are far away from any rocket, Kingville and San Antonio are very far away. The Boca Chica spaceport is relatively isolated and under populated, Space-X does follow safety when it had a test flight failure it did not injure anyone, it launches out to the Sea, it has a rocket not a bomb but many things are potential 'bombs'. A pressure cooker can cook food or it can be made into a bomb as seen in Boston. in Beirut inside a city they stored a chemical compound used to fertilize soil but also a chemical that can easily transform into a bomb, the chemical product is very similar it can be used by farmers or mining, quarrying or used by a terrorist to make a bomb. In Beirut they unloaded thousands upon thousands of tonnes cargo of the potentially explosive substance into the Middle of a Large City of Millions of people. There were hundreds of deaths in Lebanon, thousands of injuries, hundreds upon hundreds of thousands homeless and US$15 billion in property damage. I believe it is unfair to compare the capital city of Lebanon 'Beirut' to 'Boca Chica Beach' and Boca Chica Village has an official population of 26.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-15 10:43:53)
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I'm confident that SpaceX will improve the engines to the point they are reliable. They will have reliability required for a human launch vehicle. That's what it was designed for. Work is on-going, it isn't done yet. Through my life I've often encountered individuals who are alarmist, who claim that if something is not completely finished right this second then it's an absolute failure so should be cancelled. That is unfair to software developers, unfair to technician/installers, and unfair to the engineers developing Starship. It's just not finished yet.
As for safety, realize the Faro Bagdad lighthouse in Mexico will have to be evacuated, for each launch. SpaceX has offered to buy all houses in the village of Boca Chica. If anyone chooses to remain, they do so at their own risk. The aforementioned sites are far enough from the launch site that there will be no blast damage; however, debris could cause damage. Starbase was built in an isolated area specifically for safety.
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The 1-in-4 failure rate from the first Superheavy launch is complicated by the very high probability that at least some of those engines were hit and damaged by the flung debris at launch. That debris traces directly to the extremely-stupid decision to launch a Nova-class rocket without a water-deluge flame diverter. The flung debris from that launch violated the terms of their launch license, which got them into trouble (again) with the FAA.
And you don't learn very much that is useful from a test flight that is so fatally-complicated by such damage at launch. Some of the engines actually operating were not providing much thrust: you can see their plumes as the subsonic flame sheaths surrounding the supersonic plumes of the good engines, and there were at least 3 of these directed out to the side instead of aft, right before the vehicle tumbled.
And, no, I do NOT believe the explosion was due to the flight termination charges! I believe the air loads broke up the vehicle as it fell back tumbling into denser air. I saw a lot of those mid-air break-ups in the 1960's, and this looked exactly like those! The 41 second delay between sending the signal to destruct, and the actual explosion, tells you pretty much all you need to know about what really happened.
They've been lighting Raptors at full power in the tests at the McGregor site. It sounds like a bomb going off when they do that, suggesting large shock loads trying to burst those chambers at ignition. My front porch is 6 miles from their test stands, as the crow flies, so I hear what they do quite clearly. Plus, I have multiple years experience with rocket tests, myself. Those shock loads severely risk damaging something, particularly 3-D-printed metals, which still do not have the elongation capability of wrought metals. Not just the chambers, but the turbopump machinery, is quite vulnerable to such mechanical shock.
I'd hazard the guess that they will (finally) learn to light the Raptor engines at a reduced power setting, then quickly throttle up to full thrust. Which is what Von Braun found that he had to do, back in 1942 with the V-2. And which lesson everyone has followed since, except SpaceX with its Raptor. They don't do that full-power ignition with their Merlins, and 27 Merlins works just fine on the Falcon-Heavy.
Does that suggest something? It should!
What I'm seeing suggests that "not invented here" syndrome has become almost as strong at SpaceX as it is at NASA or any of the other government laboratories. That is an inherent bureaucratic failing of large organizations to be avoided in the rocket vehicle business. And SpaceX is now big enough to suffer from it.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-08-16 08:24:33)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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I have another post, but cannot upload it from an offline document, because of the "internal server error". Does not matter how I try, not even one sentence at a time works. This problem REALLY needs to be fixed!
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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SpaceX should withdraw the SH/ST from Artemis III consideration because it is leading them to compress the normal testing process of getting engine reliability. The engineers on the Soviet N-1 Moon rocket were under the same time pressures in launching the N-1 before assuring engine reliability in order to keep up with the American's Moon program. The results were quite poor.
The difference was the N-1 launch pad was well away from populated areas. On that consideration, you can make an argument the scenario SpaceX is engaging in is worse than for the N-1.
After SpaceX withdraws from Artemis III, if they want to spend 10 years perfecting the Raptors reliability before doing another full scale test launch that would be perfectly fine.
(They could also launch 20 miles off shore as originally planned.)
Robert Clark
Last edited by RGClark (2023-08-17 07:08:31)
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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...
They've been lighting Raptors at full power in the tests at the McGregor site. It sounds like a bomb going off when they do that, suggesting large shock loads trying to burst those chambers at ignition. My front porch is 6 miles from their test stands, as the crow flies, so I hear what they do quite clearly. Plus, I have multiple years experience with rocket tests, myself. Those shock loads severely risk damaging something, particularly 3-D-printed metals, which still do not have the elongation capability of wrought metals. Not just the chambers, but the turbopump machinery, is quite vulnerable to such mechanical shock.I'd hazard the guess that they will (finally) learn to light the Raptor engines at a reduced power setting, then quickly throttle up to full thrust. Which is what Von Braun found that he had to do, back in 1942 with the V-2. And which lesson everyone has followed since, except SpaceX with its Raptor. They don't do that full-power ignition with their Merlins, and 27 Merlins works just fine on the Falcon-Heavy.
Does that suggest something? It should!
What I'm seeing suggests that "not invented here" syndrome has become almost as strong at SpaceX as it is at NASA or any of the other government laboratories. That is an inherent bureaucratic failing of large organizations to be avoided in the rocket vehicle business. And SpaceX is now big enough to suffer from it.
GW
You've must have heard quite few explosions as well during Starship testing, both during static engine tests and for the Starship short hops.
About your last point, I have been quite annoyed that SpaceX dismisses the lessons of Apollo rather than learning from them, a major case in point is dismissing a flame trench.
Robert Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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'SpaceX report on troubled April launch is actually a step toward future liftoffs from Boca Chica'
https://www.expressnews.com/business/ar … 298651.php
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-17 09:07:18)
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SpaceX should withdraw the SH/ST from Artemis III consideration because it is leading them to compress the normal testing process of getting engine reliability.
No. It's development. Let them finish.
The engineers on the Soviet N-1 Moon rocket were under the same time pressures in launching the N-1 before assuring engine reliability in order to keep up with the American's Moon program. The results were quite poor.
Again no. Soviet engineers required a test stand for each stage. The problem is one Russian politician didn't agree with the space program at all, took funding to build the test stand for Block A, the big first stage, and used the money for something completely unrelated to space. Without a test stand the engineers had no alternative but to launch the rocket and see what happens. When the first stage of Saturn V was tested, it had problems too. The F-1 engines had a thrust oscillation (POGO) that grew in strength with each oscillation until either the engine was shut down or it exploded. The difference was this was discovered on the static test stand. So American engineers could discover the problem before launch and fix it. Soviet engineers were deprived of their test stand. They did have test stands for other stages, but not the big first stage.
Boca Chica is well away from populated areas too. If remaining residents of the village do want want to leave then they do so at their own risk.
After SpaceX withdraws from Artemis III, if they want to spend 10 years perfecting the Raptors reliability before doing another full scale test launch that would be perfectly fine.
No, that's the crap Old Space has been doing. They charge billions of dollars to accomplish nothing. They make some small progress but stretch it out over decades until change of politicians cancels the project. Apollo showed you how to get anything accomplished. Push forward fast and hard, don't hesitate or slow down until you have something practical that can be used on a regular basis. That's what SpaceX is doing. They're doing it right, just stay out of their way. Yea, launching without a flame trench or water deluge system was stupid, but they're moving.
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SpaceX's problems have been more managerial than technical. Although, technical problems with Raptor 1 persisted longer than need be, again, primarily because of managerial problems. Its turbopumps could not supply enough propellant flow rate to reach the design chamber pressure. Shotwell and her engineering team finally fixed this with the Raptor-2 design, not Musk. She and her team are engineers, Musk is not.
It was Musk pushing for an earlier launch without a flame diverter, that led to the disaster that was the the first Superheavy launch. Shotwell and her engineers knew better, but were over-ruled by Musk. It will take both time, and explicit managerial decision-making changes, to repair that breach with the FAA over violating the terms of their launch license.
Bear in mind that NASA never flew a Nova-class design from Canaveral because 3 miles to populated zones was not enough. 3 miles was enough for Saturn-5, but nothing any bigger. And that's how close populated zones are from Canaveral.
Superheavy is a Nova-class rocket. Its launch pad is some 5 miles from the city limits of Brownsville, Texas. The first Superheavy launch threw sand 6 miles from the pad, and big fragments of debris several thousand yards. A flame diverter would have stopped that.
That does leave the question of abort in-flight. The 41-second delay between signal and explosion says the destruct charges were NOT what blew up the tumbling vehicle, the broadside airloads were. That needs improvement before they are allowed to fly again.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-08-17 17:41:06)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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That does leave the question of abort in-flight. The 41-second delay between signal and explosion says the destruct charges were NOT what blew up the tumbling vehicle, the broadside airloads were. That needs improvement before they are allowed to fly again.
Yes, we know that. Elon Musk admitted that in an interview shortly after the flight. They're aware and are working on it. You don't have to keep rubbing their nose in it.
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I have no objection to SpaceX performing full scale test flights before perfecting the Raptors reliability. It’s their money they can spend it anyway they want. I just don’t want them doing those full scale test launches within 5 miles of populated areas. If they want to do those test launches 20 miles off shore that would be perfectly fine.
By the way, I made the argument also on Reddit that the desire to meet the Artemis III launch schedule puts undue pressure on the SpaceX safety procedures. I got the response Artemis does not add any more pressure to the engine/Starship development than SpaceX has created for themselves by making Starship crucial for their business model (Starlink).
However, if it is the case the need to be profitable rapidly is driving the approach SpaceX is taking developing the SH/ST, then that’s even worse since the public safety is being risked on the basis of SpaceX fast profitability.
Robert Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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I am not entirely rejecting your thinking, but lets consider how many people are dying each day/week/month/year, from driving cars?
Something here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Quote:
Deaths and Mortality
Data are for the U.S.Number of deaths: 3,464,231
Death rate: 1,043.8 deaths per 100,000 population
Source: National Vital Statistics System – Mortality Data (2021) via CDC WONDERLife expectancy: 76.4 years
Infant Mortality rate: 5.44 deaths per 1,000 live births
Source: Mortality in the United States, 2021, data tables for figures 1, 5Number of deaths for leading causes of death:
Heart disease: 695,547
Cancer: 605,213
COVID-19: 416,893
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 224,935
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 162,890
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 142,342
Alzheimer’s disease: 119,399
Diabetes: 103,294
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: 56,585
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 54,358
I don't intend to trivialize the risks at Boca Chica. I do think that the potential for a nasty Rud on the ground exists, and if it did it would set things back quite a bit.
But static firing can likely be done without a full fuel load for the Booster, and perhaps none for the Starship. So, they can keep doing static firings, until they get the engine out problem fairly solved.
At that point, you have much improved odds of getting the stack off of the launch pad and I would hope a fair distance out into the gulf, before it may malfunction to the point that it has to be exploded for safety concerns.
SpaceX must know something about what they are doing, as they seem to have a rather good record of no Rud's from Falcon 9.
Of course, this new stack has the strong potential to go wrong. But are the risks to the public greater than allowing people to drive cars?
We could worry about other accidental deaths.
Done
Last edited by Void (2023-08-19 07:53:32)
Done.
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Regarding this topic by RGClark ... I've seen teaser headlines from recent YouTube space video's suggesting that NASA may be rethinking use of SpaceX Starship for lunar landing. I haven't taken the time to view any of the videos, but would appreciate seeing a report if any of our members have time to investigate.
At this point, as far as I can tell, NO ONE on Earth has a reliable lunar landing system capable of safely delivering humans to the surface, and returning them to orbit. The ONLY working example of such a system is on display in the Smithsonian, and ** it ** is not under consideration for future flights.
(th)
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Old Space has increased price for SLS to US$2 billion per launch, not including development. Annual cost US$2.555 billion for FY2021. Project cost US$23.8 billion. Total number of launches: 1. And that was block 1, which uses an upper stage from Delta IV. It will *NEVER* be used to send humans to Mars. Those working on SLS are far too slow and cost far too high.
Comparable launch vehicles:
Area V - dead, became SLS
Energia - Russian, would require restoration of infrastructure (not likely)
N1 - Soviet, dead
Saturn V - dead
Falcon Heavy - not big enough for Mars
Long March 9 - Chinese
New Glenn - under development, stalled, not likely to ever be finished
This means our only hope to get to Mars is Starship. Development is far safer than the space program in the 1960s, so stop trying to sabotag it.
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I also have had a thought. The title of this topic is " SpaceX should withdraw Starship as an Artemis lunar lander."
But most of the negative press here has been about launching the Starship booster, which is for many things.
In truth, I am more comfortable with Lunar Starship being a freighter, to land freight and robots. I think that although landing a person of a gender and a "Color" is important to our culture, there is no rush. We can put such people into space station missions to demonstrate sincerity. With Optimus coming along and other types or robot, I think a great deal could be done just landing test equipment in bulk along with some robots.
I actually see the space station to LEO part of Starship as becoming the most important of all for now.
But testing refilling in orbit and trying to land on the Moon, that could be frosting on the cake.
I think Robert is right that a pattern exists where old space and politicians crash the space program over and over again before it reaches a goal, only to restart. I am sorry, but I think this is a ploy to divert taxpayer money to certain pockets.
As for the safety of launch, 0 danger is not possible. But if you launch 1 Starship, or 4 smaller ships from a different vendor, have you reduced risk? Four launches give four chances of failure.
Are we complaining about the whole Starship Project, or just the Lunar Lander?
Done.
Last edited by Void (2023-08-19 10:31:44)
Done.
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I did not intend to be brutal. Sorry about that.
Done.
Done.
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Old Space has increased price for SLS to US$2 billion per launch, not including development. Annual cost US$2.555 billion for FY2021. Project cost US$23.8 billion. Total number of launches: 1. And that was block 1, which uses an upper stage from Delta IV. It will *NEVER* be used to send humans to Mars. Those working on SLS are far too slow and cost far too high.
Comparable launch vehicles:
Area V - dead, became SLS
Energia - Russian, would require restoration of infrastructure (not likely)
N1 - Soviet, dead
Saturn V - dead
Falcon Heavy - not big enough for Mars
Long March 9 - Chinese
New Glenn - under development, stalled, not likely to ever be finished
This means our only hope to get to Mars is Starship. Development is far safer than the space program in the 1960s, so stop trying to sabotag it.
I agree that is currently the case. But I’m tending to agree with that comment made on Reddit that the undue speed SpaceX is progressing with the Starship development is driven by the desire to be rapidly profitable. If it were only to get to Mars, I don’t think even Mars advocates would care if it took into the 2030’s to get it perfected. That is after all the time frame expected to get to Mars.
If you want to do it quicker than that, launch off shore.
Bob Clark
Last edited by RGClark (2023-08-20 05:10:17)
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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This post is intended to deliver a comment by GW Johnson, if the Apache Internal Server Error will allow it...
OK ... the first attempt with the full post was declined ... I'll try dividing the post into chunks ...
Delivered to NewMars by tahanson43206, as an experiment.
Apache Internal Server Error refused to accept this document, as originally offered by GW Johhson
Begin Quotation:
As for how fast Starship/Superheavy might be ready to perform real missions, read on:
Above is part 1
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Part 2
Starship/Superheavy is a radically-innovative but extremely-immature rocket vehicle technology. The engines individually more-or-less finally work right, meaning up to the original expectations for thrust and Isp performance. (The shortfall was in the original turbopump design, since replaced.) It could not keep up with enough flow rate to reach full design chamber pressure.
Above is part 2
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Part 3
The new design can, and it is simpler and more cleanly-organized in its plumbing.
Part 3
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Part 4
The very high individual engine reliability, necessary to make so many Raptor engines work simultaneously, remains to be seen and demonstrated, although 27 Merlins seems to work OK with Falcon-Heavy.
Part 4
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