** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

Come on guys, its called Elon Time for a reason. I'd say there is zero chance of a Starship heading to Mars in 2 years and the first one that does won't land in one piece. 6 years is a far more likely timeline and fits with Elon Time.
 
I don't think anyone expects it to land first time. I think the best they can hope for is refining their understanding of ship performance during reentry. 2 years is tight given the fact they also have to send up an unmanned Artemis test flight in the same time frame. I less worry about SpaceX's ability to throw hardware out of the door and more about the regulatory hurdles. The latest FAA judgement puts StarShip IFT5 back 2 months. They could probably build 12 StarShip and Heavy Boosters and 3 Towers in 2 years given where they are already but they might struggle to get another 3 flights in the next year.
 
Technically all four space walked as the entire cabin was exposed to the vacuum of space. Yet another astonishing feat removing the need for an airlock entirely. I'd be interested what sort of effect that had on electronic devices, biological, like food and such and whatever else could be affected by a total vacuum.
 
darkgen said:
Technically all four space walked as the entire cabin was exposed to the vacuum of space. Yet another astonishing feat removing the need for an airlock entirely. I'd be interested what sort of effect that had on electronic devices, biological, like food and such and whatever else could be affected by a total vacuum.
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part of the issue is the air reserves. it was mentioned on live stream about not having enough spare air. and its a big volume to fill if something goes wrong.
maybe i miss heard that part?
 
LostCorpse said:
part of the issue is the air reserves. it was mentioned on live stream about not having enough spare air. and its a big volume to fill if something goes wrong.
maybe i miss heard that part?
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Yep. Enough Nitrogen / Oxygen liquid mix to repressurise once. Still incredible, everything worked all to plan. I wonder how viable an airlock-less method is on future missions but then was not the same method used for the Apollo missions (Goes to find out).

e: Lunar lander indeed used same method.
 
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I guess they are heading for a full wet dress to test the tank farm again
I do wonder how much they have considered doing a ift4 reflight with the landing in the sea since they have the next ship and boster almost ready as well.
More learning /testing of the control systems and then the catch can be atempted in the new year in good time and onwards from there.
 
I think 1 to Mars was a stretch given the Artemis commitments 5 seems deeply unlikely. I think SpaceX can produce the hardware but the regulatory hurdles to do the testing seem likely to utterly undermine that time line. They need to move to catch attempts and re-flight before they can seriously move to in orbit fuel transfer.
 
Penfold101 said:
Each one needing up to 20 other starships to fuel them up with a system that hasn’t even been trialled yet. Colour me skeptical…
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red white and blue, i got you covered i just need you to hold still fr 5minutes
:D

i think the US gov will try and slow it down, it'll be a bit embarrising a private company did something in the space of 10 years they havent done as a nation in over 50yrs.
you do have the issue of i orbit explosions causing a bad situation long term
 
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LostCorpse said:
red white and blue, i got you covered i just need you to hold still fr 5minutes
:D

i think the US gov will try and slow it down, it'll be a bit embarrising a private company did something in the space of 10 years they havent done as a nation in over 50yrs.
you do have the issue of i orbit explosions causing a bad situation long term
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Although they aren’t directly comparable, I’ve currently found NASA’s effort much more impressive. It sent a capsule to the moon on its first a launch, whereas Starship has yet to achieve orbit.

I wish it wasn’t so painfully slow and embroiled in US politics though, which private companies are less susceptible to.

Anything in space is good though - it’s only when you play Kerbal Space Program do you get the beginning of the vaguest of hints of how hard it actually is to do…
 
Penfold101 said:
Each one needing up to 20 other starships to fuel them up with a system that hasn’t even been trialled yet. Colour me skeptical…
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Yep and will suffer from boil off all the time its sat in orbit. So unless they can launch those 20 refuel Starships fairly quickly it will just mean more launches as more and more fuel boils off. Are they really going to try and relaunch a Starship again within a few days or the booster? If not that is a lot of boosters and Starships required to make this happen.
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
Yep and will suffer from boil off all the time its sat in orbit. So unless they can launch those 20 refuel Starships fairly quickly it will just mean more launches as more and more fuel boils off. Are they really going to try and relaunch a Starship again within a few days or the booster? If not that is a lot of boosters and Starships required to make this happen.
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And the fuel to lift the fuel. So much fuel.







And emissions - hydrogen and oxygen has its advantages…
 
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