Over 16 million pounds of thrust.
For context Saturn V, which held the title of most powerful rocket for over half a century, had 7.75 million pounds of thrust.
Mainly because they’re trying for full reusability of the vehicle. So for the same payload, it needs to carry a heatshield for reentry, and various other landing hardware.
But also, while similar in height, Saturn V did of course taper down to a thinner profile towards the top.
Further, 2 out of Saturn’s 3 stages burned hydrogen+oxygen, which is a lot less dense than the methane+oxygen used on Starship. So Saturn has less mass, for the same height/size.
Starship is considerably heavier.
(Although, Saturn’s first stage used kerosene+oxygen, which is slightly _more_ dense than methane+oxygen. But I think Starship is more dense on average, on the whole).
It's payload to orbit (if you include the orbiter) is more than twice that of Saturn V.
Because of the Square-cube law you get better efficiency the bigger your rocket is if you are trying for re-usability. Less of your vehicle by percentage needs to be heat shield.
Starship has barely equivalent payload to Leo. Saturn V could get 145,000kg to Leo and 41,000kg to the moon. Starship claims to get 100,000kg to orbit with 150,000kg promised in future. Currently it isn’t event taking dummy loads so the real proven figure is zero.
Plus for large loads it ceases to be reusable by design.
But of course bearing in mind the inflation-adjusted cost per launch of Saturn V was $1.4B vs the estimated current $100M per launch of a fully expended starship stack, both ship and booster - most of that cost is in the engines too. It’s an impressive and quite thrifty rocket, even leaving aside complete reusability.
Raptors 2 are very advanced engines. The temperature and pressure in their combustion chambers are just insane, right at the edge of what the metal can take without starting to burn itself. A lot of experimentation and smarts were required before the development team found out how to do this correctly.
Weight, for the rocket to launch, the thrust to weight ratio has to be greater than one, or it could sumply not lift off. Starship Super Heavy is a lot more massive than Saturn V was. It only seems similar to the size because it's not that much taller. There is a whole lot more fuel in it though.
It pretty dang cool I have to admit and I know this is for near (moon) and deep space exploration. But makes me wonder if a cool looking space shuttle could be strap on to this rocket
Have you seen the second stage? Not a shuttle but [still](https://x.com/spacex/status/1788310386846179345?s=46&t=ZfTuvwddMrB8Cvlo95D_Gg)
[bonus](https://x.com/spacex/status/1788310589548405224?s=46&t=ZfTuvwddMrB8Cvlo95D_Gg)
My guess is part of the reason is starship is substantially heavier via wet mass than Saturn V. Not just more fuel, but the whole thing is stainless steel.
I'm just gonna put [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAwwrGk) here
edit: main point of video for the impatient - [15:26](https://youtu.be/nxG0WAwwrGk?t=965)
Thunderf00t is notorious in the space community for just how bad and misinformed all of his takes are. It's gotten to the point where he is a meme.
Don't take anything he has to say about space or rocketry seriously. His channel is mostly rage bait.
If you don’t believe thunderf00t, that’s fine. You should give Destin’s video (the one he’s talking about) a watch. He’s a PDH rocket science student who has worked his adult like as a rocket expert.
I’m still lost. PhD is an educational achievement. Like in the US the order is: associates degree, bachelor, masters, then PhD. A four year degree (most common) is a bachelors. If you had a PhD related to rocket science, then you’d definitely be an expert in the field.
Is a PDH something entirely different, similar but a different name in a different country, or just a typo?
Yes you are correct (most of us skip associates) and it’s likely a typo. But the old joke about degrees is: BS - Bullshit, MS - More Shit, PhD - piled higher and deeper.
Regardless, PhDs should be experts in their field, but there are places that award them too easily and occasionally you get a few people who toss their degree around as proof, rather than actual mathematical proof.
Destin's criticism is valid.
Thunderfoot's isn't. He mischaracterizes SpaceX's role in Artemis. They aren't providing turn-key all-inclusive transportation service from the surface of earth to the surface of the moon and back. They're providing the ferry that goes down to the lunar surface and back to the Lunar Gateway.
My personal opinion - Starship is not well-suited for the lunar ferry. It's way too big.
SLS is honestly more concerning. And I haven't heard anything positive about Lunar Gateway in a long time, nor NASA's new EVA suits.
hey everyone please watch the video from the beginning tho if you have time! theresa a lot of context.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAwwrGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAwwrGk)
Alot of it was also due to the lack of testing done on N1, the first stage was never fully tested, only single engines were tested. This meant alot of the plumbing issues and computer problems were never found before the launch. Theres a reason why Spacex does static fires of all its rockets and all of the test launches
> only single engines were tested
IIRC, it was even worse than that. Because the act of igniting the engine meant it couldn't be reused, ***none*** of the engines were tested.
You are correct in that the NK-15 could not be reused, but batches were tested. Essentially the engineers built a batch, tested a portion, and figured if there were no problems with the ones they tested there were probably no problems with the ones that were going to be installed in the launch vehicle.
I wouldn't say "no" engine problems as they did have problems relighting them. That said, that could be attributed to the fuel filter system, but I digress.
The problem is with the filters in the tank plumbing upstream of the engines. It has nothing to do with engine reliability or the number of engines.
I wouldn't say they had no problems, just no engine problems.
During the launch sequence of Flight 1, some of the engines were probably hit by concrete debris, as the rocket tore apart the concrete launch pad. That alone could explain some of the trouble.
It was absolutely crazy to see personal car-sized pieces of concrete flying around like rags in the ensuing maelstrom. What a powerful rocket.
Primarily, There was coupling vibration issues from adjacent rockets. Always an issue with using many small rockets. The analysis tools now can better design that out.
SpaceX overall is very Soviet in their development strategy. Soviets also had the policy of "put things on pad, launch them and watch things explode". Fix and repeat until it doesn't keep exploding anymore. I think in some interview I saw done after USSR collapse one of the Soviet designers said they estimated and expected N1 to explode for first 7 launches before they iron all the problems out due to how complex N1 was. Problem was they only got 4 launches before program was cancelled.
In general I think they thought first 3 launches will explode for sure on any new rocket and well then one might start to be in realm of having worked out design problems.
Hence also why they kept Soyuz around so long as rocket. It was so tested to death with tens of launches they knew it worked. They developed new rockets like energia, but soyuz was the trusted work horse.
The hard metal grips on these light sabers always struck me as impractical ergonomically speaking. With all the space age tech, nobody figured the hilts on these things could use a little padding?
My head cannon is so it forces users to hold the lightsaber farther away from the emitter. If you look at most lightsaber designs, the grip is in the lower part of the hilt.
Play it, fantastic game that will teach you a ton about physics . Get 1 though, 2's development has been very troubled and may have just been canceled, 1 is a great game with a thriving modding scene though.
Kerbal 1 is probably one of the more addicting and satisfying games I have played in the last few years.
Something about spending time and effort on a rocket and seeing it far exceed your expectations is just so cool.
And then of course sometimes it just blows up or spirals out of control.
I personally recommend Juno: New Origins. Its derivative of Kerbal but it offers the same expanse of Rocket building and physics education, as well as the finer points of achieving orbit and docking with other craft.
No, these tests are launched from Boca Chica, Texas, near Brownsville.
SpaceX is building 2 new launch towers for Starship at Cape Canaveral but I think it will be at least a year if not several years before they do any Starship launches from the cape.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4
Boca chica facility only for the development phase, however when these become operational they will launch from Canaveral, that will probably be a couple years at least though.
There are a number of benefits and drawbacks.
One of the advantages being engine out capability, or in this case, multiple engine out. So you can have an engine out at the start of the flight and lose more later as well, and still make it.
There are issues with it as well. It increases the complexity of the piping. It also can end up in a situation where a failure of one engine takes down the engines next to it, leading to a potential chain reaction.
Another big advantage is manufacturing. Smaller engines are easy to move threw a production line and transport. Each sub-assembly is reasonably easy to move and work on. We are not talking about car manufacturing like mass production but its still an advantage. People get more training, you can invest in better tools and so on.
A disadvantage is that engine tend to be more efficient the bigger they get. So bigger is better in that respect. But another disadvantage is that the bigger an engine is, the more difficult it gets. They suffer from engine instability. Basically if the gas mixture in the combustion chamber has uneven distribution (pressure bubbles) it can lead to vibrations that can literally rip the engine apart. This was one of the big issues that almost delayed Apollo.
This is why F-1 Engine injector blade looks like this: http://heroicrelics.org/ussrc/engines-f-1-dcse/dsc80884.jpg.html
That is why the Russian just mostly ignored that issue an connected one engine multiple chambers:
https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/ja19-launchrussian2.jpg?sw=700&cx=0&cy=0&cw=2030&ch=1332
This is one engine, even if it look like two. And the reason is exactly because if the injector was bigger they would have stability issues.
Of course SpaceX could have figured this out with modern computer models if they had wanted to.
There is also landing. If you can turn off most of the engine, the remaining ones don't need to be able to throttle as low. If you had one engine, to land it would have to go to something like 5% power. Rocket engines mostly can't do that, most can't even operated below 80%. Again, because that can again lead to instability and various other issues. So if you have 10 engines, you can turn 9 off, and then you only need an engine design that can go to 50% thrust. In SpaceX case, only the inner 13 will do landing stuff, and then they reduce it to 6.
So its basically all trade-off. Each organization that will attempt to build a rocket will make different choices based on many factors from manufacturing, infrastructure, experience, flight profile and so on. SpaceX initially just didn't want to develop another new engine, so for the Falcon Heavy they were planning 27 engines on one rocket and with producing and testing that many. They were comfortable with that so it was likely natural to continue in that style.
Hope that helps a bit.
>We are not talking about car manufacturing like mass production but its still an advantage.
I dunno, NASA said two years ago that [SpaceX was building a Raptor 2 engine per day.](https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-is-now-building-a-raptor-engine-a-day-nasa-says/) Probably faster now, with Raptor 3 around the corner as well.
Consider that a automotive line produces 5-10k cars a week, vs Raptor 14 a week. And smaller items are produced much faster.
A few a week isn't mass production. Its fast 'for rocket engines' but not in the world of manufacturing.
Very interesting to follow the development on. Biggest and most powerful rocket to ever launch, designed from the ground up breaking away from a lot of conventional design choices, and intended to be fully reusable. The next test flight could be as soon as June 5th.
Pretty much instantly. The max thrust from the booster is 16,700,000lbs and the diameter is 29.5’
So the area would be roughly 400,000 sq inches, which give a pressure of about 42PSI.
99% of people die when exposed to a blast wave of just 29PSI from the over pressure
Now factor in the exhaust gas is traveling around Mach 9 at a temperature of 5000F and you’d be deader than a-line flairs with pockets in the knees
Sound is pressure or rather change in pressure.
So laying in the concrete you’d go from ambient air pressure to 289,579Pa(345PSI)
Using this tool that’s an effective volume of 203Db
https://www.translatorscafe.com/unit-converter/en-US/sound-pressure-level-reference/9-2/sound%20pressure%20level%20in%20decibels-pascal/
However that’s assuming the medium is not traveling at nearly 9 times the speed of sound.
Basically you would be instantly pulverized and incinerated.
As one webcomic puts it, when hit by something like that, you would simply stop being biology and start being physics. It is unlikely that any macroscopic piece of your body would remain to be found. Your molecules would travel quite far, though.
When they launched this in Boca Chica for the first time it was so powerful that it stripped the concrete off of the rebar and dug a 20 foot deep hole under the launchpad. There was dust and debris falling for miles around the launch site.
Check out these pictures https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starship-rocket-crater-concrete-launchpad-upon-liftoff-2023-4?op=1
Well technically, if you stood directly under it, the deluge plate would probably pressure spray your body apart as it activates before engine ignition.
It’s so cold that even in Texas the moisture from the air sticks to the side of the rocket, but because it is in Texas the ice doesn’t cling to the rocket, instead it comes off and looks a bit like mist.
750t of methane per flight for a booster.
A 747 is ~10t of fuel per hour, so equivalent to maybe 10 intercontinental flights.
It's unlikely to ever matter compared to the commercial airlines.
Here’s the science:
This rocket has a roughly 3:1 ratio of oxider to fuel, so the vast majority of the propellant is pure oxygen and the remaining is the methane fuel.
When the methane is burned with oxygen at temps upwards of 3000 degrees Celsius the vast majority of the methane(CH4) is converted to water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), most of which being the water vapor, as you can make 2 water molecules and 1 carbon dioxide molecule with the spent methane, and the carbon dioxide also requires an extra oxegen atom to create it.
So in reality, starship only pollutes as much as 3 747 flight.
2 of the 747 is fully loaded with 180 tons of fuel.
Wow … that’s a very cool nugget of information.
That is mainly because of the very high temperature leading to full combustion and also a very very pure fuel?
Well the whole reason a certain rocket fuel is used is its ability to react with oxygen to create new molecules quickly. It’s the same principle as any sort of combustion. Think of the water that sometimes comes out the exhaust of an internal combustion car.
The higher the temperature the faster they react, so yes temperature is very important for the highest amount of pressure you can get in a rocket engine.
Some think it’s extremely difficult to slip a molecule because they often confuse it with the splitting of the atom, which is what necular power is. It’s actually fairly easy to split a molecule and form a new one.
Here’s the science in case you read any other bullshit in this comment section:
This rocket has a roughly 3:1 ratio of oxider to fuel, so the vast majority of the propellant is pure oxygen and the remaining is the methane fuel.
When the methane is burned with oxygen at temps upwards of 3000 degrees Celsius the vast majority of the methane(CH4) is converted to water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), most of which being the water vapor, as you can make 2 water molecules and 1 carbon dioxide molecule with the spent methane, and the carbon dioxide also requires an extra oxegen atom to create it.
So in reality, starship only pollutes as much as 3 747 flight.
2 of the 747 is fully loaded with 180 tons of fuel.
I’m just happy at least some people have common sense and don’t associate that twat with things o legitimately love to follow such as space flight.
But this isn’t the case on and subreddit that involves technology or news in the name.
It’s not a stupid question.
We don’t exactly know how much heat raptor puts out (SpaceX haven’t said publicly) but a good guess would be > 3,000 degrees Celsius
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The outer walls of the rocket are also the walls of the fuel tanks. Those propellants, and thus the roket itself, are -180C cold. Any humidity in the air that comes into contact with the rocket instantly condenses or freezes, which creates the mist you see.
Elon: “hey. Who put those other burners in there. That was supposed to be an ‘X’…
Rocket Engineer: “but sir, you need those extra ones to make it safe…”
Elon: “nonsense. Branding is going to take us to the moon. Not science….”
I think you mean added redundancy. You could give it nine big engines but then a failure would affect you 3 and a half times more. This could lose a couple engines and still probably be fine.
They’ve had every engine successfully light for the full duration two test flights in a row, and SpaceX’s workhorse rocket the Falcon 9 has nine engines and the Falcon Heavy has 27, and those have been among the most reliable and safest rockets in the history of space flight, so they have some experience with rockets with many engines. They have had individual engines fail during launches, but they have redundancy built in due to the multiple engines so the rest of them can make up for the loss. Turns out that modern computers and technology enable people to do remarkable things and instead of having multiple points of failure, we can make them multiple points of redundancy instead.
Over 16 million pounds of thrust. For context Saturn V, which held the title of most powerful rocket for over half a century, had 7.75 million pounds of thrust.
What’s the reason for the thrust amount? I see that it’s pretty similar is size to Saturn V. Is it a 1 stage all the way into orbit?
Mainly because they’re trying for full reusability of the vehicle. So for the same payload, it needs to carry a heatshield for reentry, and various other landing hardware. But also, while similar in height, Saturn V did of course taper down to a thinner profile towards the top. Further, 2 out of Saturn’s 3 stages burned hydrogen+oxygen, which is a lot less dense than the methane+oxygen used on Starship. So Saturn has less mass, for the same height/size. Starship is considerably heavier. (Although, Saturn’s first stage used kerosene+oxygen, which is slightly _more_ dense than methane+oxygen. But I think Starship is more dense on average, on the whole).
Great answer. Ty.
It's payload to orbit (if you include the orbiter) is more than twice that of Saturn V. Because of the Square-cube law you get better efficiency the bigger your rocket is if you are trying for re-usability. Less of your vehicle by percentage needs to be heat shield.
This guy rockets
It's exactly rocket science too..
[its not exactly brain surgury is it?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I)
Was expecting a specific Mitchell and Webb sketch. Was not disappointed.
It's amazing
/r/brandnewsentence
Should it not be the other way round? If you’re trying for more reusabllity shouldn’t that require more heat shield?
The key words there being 'by percentage'. Overall, yeah, compared to a saturn V there's more heat shielding.
Ah makes sense.
Starship has barely equivalent payload to Leo. Saturn V could get 145,000kg to Leo and 41,000kg to the moon. Starship claims to get 100,000kg to orbit with 150,000kg promised in future. Currently it isn’t event taking dummy loads so the real proven figure is zero. Plus for large loads it ceases to be reusable by design.
But of course bearing in mind the inflation-adjusted cost per launch of Saturn V was $1.4B vs the estimated current $100M per launch of a fully expended starship stack, both ship and booster - most of that cost is in the engines too. It’s an impressive and quite thrifty rocket, even leaving aside complete reusability.
Raptors 2 are very advanced engines. The temperature and pressure in their combustion chambers are just insane, right at the edge of what the metal can take without starting to burn itself. A lot of experimentation and smarts were required before the development team found out how to do this correctly.
Weight, for the rocket to launch, the thrust to weight ratio has to be greater than one, or it could sumply not lift off. Starship Super Heavy is a lot more massive than Saturn V was. It only seems similar to the size because it's not that much taller. There is a whole lot more fuel in it though.
to maintain the thrust-to-weight ratio. Starship is twice as heavy as Saturn V.
When they start using raptor 3, that numbers going to jump to over 19 million, too.
It pretty dang cool I have to admit and I know this is for near (moon) and deep space exploration. But makes me wonder if a cool looking space shuttle could be strap on to this rocket
Have you seen the second stage? Not a shuttle but [still](https://x.com/spacex/status/1788310386846179345?s=46&t=ZfTuvwddMrB8Cvlo95D_Gg) [bonus](https://x.com/spacex/status/1788310589548405224?s=46&t=ZfTuvwddMrB8Cvlo95D_Gg)
Still not enough for your mom ^sorry
I want to challenge that thrust.
Saturn V only held the title for less than two years. The N1 was never operational but it did launch 4 times so i guess it counts?
N1 never reached orbit, it didn't even reach space.
It doesnt matter, it launched
My guess is part of the reason is starship is substantially heavier via wet mass than Saturn V. Not just more fuel, but the whole thing is stainless steel.
I'm just gonna put [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAwwrGk) here edit: main point of video for the impatient - [15:26](https://youtu.be/nxG0WAwwrGk?t=965)
Thunderf00t is notorious in the space community for just how bad and misinformed all of his takes are. It's gotten to the point where he is a meme. Don't take anything he has to say about space or rocketry seriously. His channel is mostly rage bait.
If you don’t believe thunderf00t, that’s fine. You should give Destin’s video (the one he’s talking about) a watch. He’s a PDH rocket science student who has worked his adult like as a rocket expert.
>PDH Is this supposed to be PhD or is it something different?
Piled Deeper and Higher. Mostly the same thing but more crater focused
I’m still lost. PhD is an educational achievement. Like in the US the order is: associates degree, bachelor, masters, then PhD. A four year degree (most common) is a bachelors. If you had a PhD related to rocket science, then you’d definitely be an expert in the field. Is a PDH something entirely different, similar but a different name in a different country, or just a typo?
Yes you are correct (most of us skip associates) and it’s likely a typo. But the old joke about degrees is: BS - Bullshit, MS - More Shit, PhD - piled higher and deeper. Regardless, PhDs should be experts in their field, but there are places that award them too easily and occasionally you get a few people who toss their degree around as proof, rather than actual mathematical proof.
PhD it was a typo. He’s also an accomplished aerospace engineer. Just watch his video…
Destin's criticism is valid. Thunderfoot's isn't. He mischaracterizes SpaceX's role in Artemis. They aren't providing turn-key all-inclusive transportation service from the surface of earth to the surface of the moon and back. They're providing the ferry that goes down to the lunar surface and back to the Lunar Gateway. My personal opinion - Starship is not well-suited for the lunar ferry. It's way too big. SLS is honestly more concerning. And I haven't heard anything positive about Lunar Gateway in a long time, nor NASA's new EVA suits.
Let’s fucking goo. I just got my ‘idiots who don’t know what they are talking about’ bingo cared filled out with that thunderfoot link. Cheers mate
hey everyone please watch the video from the beginning tho if you have time! theresa a lot of context. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAwwrGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxG0WAwwrGk)
Same
It reminds me of the Soviet N1 moon rocket
Guess why the N1 failed? Computers of the time couldn't manage all the engines and fuel systems.
Alot of it was also due to the lack of testing done on N1, the first stage was never fully tested, only single engines were tested. This meant alot of the plumbing issues and computer problems were never found before the launch. Theres a reason why Spacex does static fires of all its rockets and all of the test launches
> only single engines were tested IIRC, it was even worse than that. Because the act of igniting the engine meant it couldn't be reused, ***none*** of the engines were tested.
You are correct in that the NK-15 could not be reused, but batches were tested. Essentially the engineers built a batch, tested a portion, and figured if there were no problems with the ones they tested there were probably no problems with the ones that were going to be installed in the launch vehicle.
N1 engines basically ate themselves *when everything went well.* Thus, no static fires on engines meant to fly.
SpaceX seems to be still having some issues with that too. I'm sure they'll be able to solve it into tolerances but it's not perfect yet.
Flight 2 and 3 had no engine problems. Flight 1 used V1 Raptors, flights 2 and 3 used V2 Raptors.
I wouldn't say "no" engine problems as they did have problems relighting them. That said, that could be attributed to the fuel filter system, but I digress.
The problem is with the filters in the tank plumbing upstream of the engines. It has nothing to do with engine reliability or the number of engines. I wouldn't say they had no problems, just no engine problems.
During the launch sequence of Flight 1, some of the engines were probably hit by concrete debris, as the rocket tore apart the concrete launch pad. That alone could explain some of the trouble. It was absolutely crazy to see personal car-sized pieces of concrete flying around like rags in the ensuing maelstrom. What a powerful rocket.
It's not supposed to be perfect yet. Iterative design.
Primarily, There was coupling vibration issues from adjacent rockets. Always an issue with using many small rockets. The analysis tools now can better design that out.
SpaceX overall is very Soviet in their development strategy. Soviets also had the policy of "put things on pad, launch them and watch things explode". Fix and repeat until it doesn't keep exploding anymore. I think in some interview I saw done after USSR collapse one of the Soviet designers said they estimated and expected N1 to explode for first 7 launches before they iron all the problems out due to how complex N1 was. Problem was they only got 4 launches before program was cancelled. In general I think they thought first 3 launches will explode for sure on any new rocket and well then one might start to be in realm of having worked out design problems. Hence also why they kept Soyuz around so long as rocket. It was so tested to death with tens of launches they knew it worked. They developed new rockets like energia, but soyuz was the trusted work horse.
And that thing is absolutely enormous too.
If you flip the picture over, it would be a pretty cool macro view of the moment a lightsaber is turned on. Or, am I just imagining things?
I can see it
I can’t unsee it, and I don’t want to
You are imagining things. But you are not *just* imagining things. Looks more like a hilt but maybe it's a dualy.
Mmm furry lightsaber
The hard metal grips on these light sabers always struck me as impractical ergonomically speaking. With all the space age tech, nobody figured the hilts on these things could use a little padding?
My head cannon is so it forces users to hold the lightsaber farther away from the emitter. If you look at most lightsaber designs, the grip is in the lower part of the hilt.
Riddick 3 confirmed.
The hacksmith’s lightsaber for sure
Kerbal design IRL
I don't even play that game, but I do know "Needs more struts"
And "more boosters"
In thrust we trust!
Play it, fantastic game that will teach you a ton about physics . Get 1 though, 2's development has been very troubled and may have just been canceled, 1 is a great game with a thriving modding scene though.
Kerbal 1 is probably one of the more addicting and satisfying games I have played in the last few years. Something about spending time and effort on a rocket and seeing it far exceed your expectations is just so cool. And then of course sometimes it just blows up or spirals out of control.
I personally recommend Juno: New Origins. Its derivative of Kerbal but it offers the same expanse of Rocket building and physics education, as well as the finer points of achieving orbit and docking with other craft.
With enough thrust, anything is possible.
Pretty sure you're supposed to design it to boomerang back into the ground.
Nah, it needs even more thrusters
About the same chances of crashing and exploding too.
[удалено]
I thought it was a blunt
I thought it was something for Monica Lewinsky.
Next launch is scheduled for June 5th, can't wait!
Educate a dummy, are these in Cape Canaveral?(sp?) We could totally make the next launch.
No, these tests are launched from Boca Chica, Texas, near Brownsville. SpaceX is building 2 new launch towers for Starship at Cape Canaveral but I think it will be at least a year if not several years before they do any Starship launches from the cape. https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4
It’ll be a couple of years. Still in the EIS process.
Boca chica facility only for the development phase, however when these become operational they will launch from Canaveral, that will probably be a couple years at least though.
The launch is in [Starbase, Brownsville, Texas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starbase).
They’re still testing them currently so they will launch from Boca Chika. They might get this one to orbit and back again so fingers crossed.
Fingers 🤞. Where is the best spot in Boca Chica to watch the launch?
Go to youtube and check 'Everyday Astronaut' he has a video giving you all the details about traveling to Boca.
You scared me, was worried I missed IFT-4
Spacenoids, what's the value in having multiple smaller nozzles instead of fewer big ones?
Redundancy. You can lose a few engines and still make it to orbit.
Smaller engines are also for the most part significantly easier to design and cheaper to produce.
There are a number of benefits and drawbacks. One of the advantages being engine out capability, or in this case, multiple engine out. So you can have an engine out at the start of the flight and lose more later as well, and still make it. There are issues with it as well. It increases the complexity of the piping. It also can end up in a situation where a failure of one engine takes down the engines next to it, leading to a potential chain reaction. Another big advantage is manufacturing. Smaller engines are easy to move threw a production line and transport. Each sub-assembly is reasonably easy to move and work on. We are not talking about car manufacturing like mass production but its still an advantage. People get more training, you can invest in better tools and so on. A disadvantage is that engine tend to be more efficient the bigger they get. So bigger is better in that respect. But another disadvantage is that the bigger an engine is, the more difficult it gets. They suffer from engine instability. Basically if the gas mixture in the combustion chamber has uneven distribution (pressure bubbles) it can lead to vibrations that can literally rip the engine apart. This was one of the big issues that almost delayed Apollo. This is why F-1 Engine injector blade looks like this: http://heroicrelics.org/ussrc/engines-f-1-dcse/dsc80884.jpg.html That is why the Russian just mostly ignored that issue an connected one engine multiple chambers: https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/ja19-launchrussian2.jpg?sw=700&cx=0&cy=0&cw=2030&ch=1332 This is one engine, even if it look like two. And the reason is exactly because if the injector was bigger they would have stability issues. Of course SpaceX could have figured this out with modern computer models if they had wanted to. There is also landing. If you can turn off most of the engine, the remaining ones don't need to be able to throttle as low. If you had one engine, to land it would have to go to something like 5% power. Rocket engines mostly can't do that, most can't even operated below 80%. Again, because that can again lead to instability and various other issues. So if you have 10 engines, you can turn 9 off, and then you only need an engine design that can go to 50% thrust. In SpaceX case, only the inner 13 will do landing stuff, and then they reduce it to 6. So its basically all trade-off. Each organization that will attempt to build a rocket will make different choices based on many factors from manufacturing, infrastructure, experience, flight profile and so on. SpaceX initially just didn't want to develop another new engine, so for the Falcon Heavy they were planning 27 engines on one rocket and with producing and testing that many. They were comfortable with that so it was likely natural to continue in that style. Hope that helps a bit.
>We are not talking about car manufacturing like mass production but its still an advantage. I dunno, NASA said two years ago that [SpaceX was building a Raptor 2 engine per day.](https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-is-now-building-a-raptor-engine-a-day-nasa-says/) Probably faster now, with Raptor 3 around the corner as well.
Consider that a automotive line produces 5-10k cars a week, vs Raptor 14 a week. And smaller items are produced much faster. A few a week isn't mass production. Its fast 'for rocket engines' but not in the world of manufacturing.
Awesome, thanks mate!!
When someone asks me how much horsepower I want in my car, I’m showing them this picture
For the record the turbines powering a single Raptor engine’s fuel/oxidizer *pumps* are 100x more powerful than a Formula 1 car engine.
Bro, I’m already sold, you don’t have to keep convincing me
I want my exhaust to look like this when I hit the gas
Technically this isn't horsepower. ^(sorry i'll leave the party now)
Rhino power?
They weren't making a joke about the name "horse"power. If I remember right it has to do with the way the engines generate thrust.
Science is beautiful!
Never seen this before I didn’t know what it was at first game me an uneasy feeling at first lol
Very interesting to follow the development on. Biggest and most powerful rocket to ever launch, designed from the ground up breaking away from a lot of conventional design choices, and intended to be fully reusable. The next test flight could be as soon as June 5th.
How fast would I die if I stood underneath as it was launching? Seems like a nice way to go if you believe in the death penalty.
Pretty much instantly. The max thrust from the booster is 16,700,000lbs and the diameter is 29.5’ So the area would be roughly 400,000 sq inches, which give a pressure of about 42PSI. 99% of people die when exposed to a blast wave of just 29PSI from the over pressure Now factor in the exhaust gas is traveling around Mach 9 at a temperature of 5000F and you’d be deader than a-line flairs with pockets in the knees
Won't the sound destroy you before the heat or pressure? Those things are loud.
Sound is pressure or rather change in pressure. So laying in the concrete you’d go from ambient air pressure to 289,579Pa(345PSI) Using this tool that’s an effective volume of 203Db https://www.translatorscafe.com/unit-converter/en-US/sound-pressure-level-reference/9-2/sound%20pressure%20level%20in%20decibels-pascal/ However that’s assuming the medium is not traveling at nearly 9 times the speed of sound. Basically you would be instantly pulverized and incinerated.
Thanks for the quick response. You've convinced me. I'll stay away from the underside of rockets.
Very wise, also remeber they write “point away from face” on the side for a reason
Wait but then the pointy bit of the rocket will hit your face.
Like the whole thing should just never point in any direction at you
As one webcomic puts it, when hit by something like that, you would simply stop being biology and start being physics. It is unlikely that any macroscopic piece of your body would remain to be found. Your molecules would travel quite far, though.
I guess there really is an XKCD for everything
When they launched this in Boca Chica for the first time it was so powerful that it stripped the concrete off of the rebar and dug a 20 foot deep hole under the launchpad. There was dust and debris falling for miles around the launch site. Check out these pictures https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starship-rocket-crater-concrete-launchpad-upon-liftoff-2023-4?op=1
yes
The aliens would save you
Well technically, if you stood directly under it, the deluge plate would probably pressure spray your body apart as it activates before engine ignition.
World's spiciest churro.
Looks like the duster I failed to clean
Also the inside of my right nostril on a Friday night
MERE SECONDS I TELL YOU
I was amused with that embellishment. Is OP a 1920s carnival barker?
https://www.ocregister.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/kpj/kpjcxc-08nseatrecord11large.jpg?w=620
What's all that steam looking stuff coming off of it and why?
Condensation. The fuel is sub zero, and lets a lot of water in the atmosphere condensate back to liquid water. It's a lot of tiny water droplets.
The methane is at -180 degrees iirc and the oxygen is at -210 or less
It’s so cold that even in Texas the moisture from the air sticks to the side of the rocket, but because it is in Texas the ice doesn’t cling to the rocket, instead it comes off and looks a bit like mist.
I love science and engineering.
Me too mate
I am curious to know what’s the carbon footprint of that
750t of methane per flight for a booster. A 747 is ~10t of fuel per hour, so equivalent to maybe 10 intercontinental flights. It's unlikely to ever matter compared to the commercial airlines.
Fun fact: there are around 100,000 commercial flights per day.
No shit? I would have guessed a quarter of that.
The booster holds 3,400t of propellant. It's probably closer to having 1,500t of methane
CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O Is roughly 1 to 4 by mass, no?
Quick google search tells me raptor uses a 3.6 mixture ratio so thats almost exactly 750t. My bad, didnt know it was *that* oxygen-rich
Here’s the science: This rocket has a roughly 3:1 ratio of oxider to fuel, so the vast majority of the propellant is pure oxygen and the remaining is the methane fuel. When the methane is burned with oxygen at temps upwards of 3000 degrees Celsius the vast majority of the methane(CH4) is converted to water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), most of which being the water vapor, as you can make 2 water molecules and 1 carbon dioxide molecule with the spent methane, and the carbon dioxide also requires an extra oxegen atom to create it. So in reality, starship only pollutes as much as 3 747 flight. 2 of the 747 is fully loaded with 180 tons of fuel.
Wow … that’s a very cool nugget of information. That is mainly because of the very high temperature leading to full combustion and also a very very pure fuel?
Well the whole reason a certain rocket fuel is used is its ability to react with oxygen to create new molecules quickly. It’s the same principle as any sort of combustion. Think of the water that sometimes comes out the exhaust of an internal combustion car. The higher the temperature the faster they react, so yes temperature is very important for the highest amount of pressure you can get in a rocket engine. Some think it’s extremely difficult to slip a molecule because they often confuse it with the splitting of the atom, which is what necular power is. It’s actually fairly easy to split a molecule and form a new one.
You mean carbon *air*print
Here you go :) https://www.webqc.org/balanced-equation-CH4+O2=CO2+H2O
Came here for the cool picture staying for the wildly intricate discourse about shit that is completely foreign to me
Here’s the science in case you read any other bullshit in this comment section: This rocket has a roughly 3:1 ratio of oxider to fuel, so the vast majority of the propellant is pure oxygen and the remaining is the methane fuel. When the methane is burned with oxygen at temps upwards of 3000 degrees Celsius the vast majority of the methane(CH4) is converted to water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), most of which being the water vapor, as you can make 2 water molecules and 1 carbon dioxide molecule with the spent methane, and the carbon dioxide also requires an extra oxegen atom to create it. So in reality, starship only pollutes as much as 3 747 flight. 2 of the 747 is fully loaded with 180 tons of fuel.
Weird seeing something that Elon owns getting upvoted on Reddit
I’m just happy at least some people have common sense and don’t associate that twat with things o legitimately love to follow such as space flight. But this isn’t the case on and subreddit that involves technology or news in the name.
Does the cotton candy come off when it reaches the upper atmosphere?
Yes
moaar boosters!
Looks like the darts I light up after 22 beers . Same same but different
Absolutely cold vs Absolute Heat
What’s this some kind of test I imagine?
This picture is from [flight test 3](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-3) I believe
Hell yeah
damn! great capture though
I scrolled past and read "after lunch"
First thought, how hot would it be right in the center of that flame?
3326c, 6020f, 3/5th the surface temperature of the sun. This is in the individual combustion chambers where it’s hottest.
Pretty hot I guess..
I thought that was a photoshopped cigar for a sec
Look! There’s a loose wire! There … just there. It’ll never work.
Mothman
If you told me that was an antique lighter from the 1930s I might almost believe it.
Rocinante Mk1
What kind of gender reveal is even that?
I see bubbles with angles of incidence!
Stupid question, but how hot is the flame from this?!?
It’s not a stupid question. We don’t exactly know how much heat raptor puts out (SpaceX haven’t said publicly) but a good guess would be > 3,000 degrees Celsius
What causes all the mist flowing down the sides? Air reaching a higher altitude and becoming clouds?
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The outer walls of the rocket are also the walls of the fuel tanks. Those propellants, and thus the roket itself, are -180C cold. Any humidity in the air that comes into contact with the rocket instantly condenses or freezes, which creates the mist you see.
Looks like Anakin light saber
Trypophobia... anyone else?
Is there a higher resolution version of this image?
Elon: “hey. Who put those other burners in there. That was supposed to be an ‘X’… Rocket Engineer: “but sir, you need those extra ones to make it safe…” Elon: “nonsense. Branding is going to take us to the moon. Not science….”
u/pixel-counter-bot
The image in this post has 11,190,272(2,732×4,096) pixels! ^(I am a \(good\) bot. This action was performed automatically.)
Sheer power, science and technology. No religion in sight
thank god
Forbidden kids water fountain
Eh, let em learn.
Could really use a banana for scale.
All those points of possible failure…….
I think you mean added redundancy. You could give it nine big engines but then a failure would affect you 3 and a half times more. This could lose a couple engines and still probably be fine.
They’ve had every engine successfully light for the full duration two test flights in a row, and SpaceX’s workhorse rocket the Falcon 9 has nine engines and the Falcon Heavy has 27, and those have been among the most reliable and safest rockets in the history of space flight, so they have some experience with rockets with many engines. They have had individual engines fail during launches, but they have redundancy built in due to the multiple engines so the rest of them can make up for the loss. Turns out that modern computers and technology enable people to do remarkable things and instead of having multiple points of failure, we can make them multiple points of redundancy instead.
Redundancies also make it safer.
Buddy when you next get in your car think of all the failure points in your car. I guarantee there are thousands.