Wiki Super Heavy/Starship - General Development Discussion

[GWord]

But I'm having trouble with the pressure differential part. Rockets are cylinders designed with a high pressure inside. We're proposing burying them with just 1atm inside to keep the pressure out, that there's your differential. But I have no experience or training here to know how difficult a problem that is to solve.

A tremendous amount of civil engineering would go into a final answer, I'm sure. But for the purposes of your thought exercise, I think you can assume the pressure that the Starship hull has to resist to be just the mass of the soil prism over the pipe, times Martian gravity.

This study seems to indicate a depth of around ~5ft (1.5m) into the martial regolith provides adequate shielding against ionizing radiation. Check my math, but I see several studies pegging martian soil density at 1.5 to 2.5 g/cm3. So if I choose 2g/cm3 and multiply by 150cm depth, that's 300g/cm2 (0.3 Bar) of pressure to resist. Obviously to be more accurate one would need integrate the parabola of the hull curve but that doesn't really swing the needle here. And another thing, this doesn't take into account the .38% pull of martian gravity, so it's even less right?

 

[EVCollies]

After my previous post I started thinking and realized I was being dumb. Assuming we can't bury a tank, I suggested we'll cut them up and create something else we would bury. But most likely that thing's shape will also be cylindrical? So...dumb.

But I'm having trouble with the pressure differential part. Rockets are cylinders designed with a high pressure inside. We're proposing burying them with just 1atm inside to keep the pressure out, that there's your differential. But I have no experience or training here to know how difficult a problem that is to solve.

Internal reinforcement: well we'll want floors, walls, bulkheads anyhow, so that can be reinforcement as well, right? At which point the question is about how much of that is in place when it leaves earth, vs shipped as cargo and installed on site?

So remove the engines, cut in half lengthwise and you have two storage units.

Well, after you remove the tanks and manage to get them on their sides.

 

[ICUDoc]

So remove the engines, cut in half lengthwise and you have two storage units.

View attachment 1004611

Well, after you remove the tanks and manage to get them on their sides.

Or use the tanks as the structure.
I would be amazed if the hull and / or the tanks couldn't support a couple of feet of rocks. Maximum transmural weight force would be at the apex, the walls carry increasing vector of the force towards the ground ie not across the wall but along it.

 

[mongo]

Or use the tanks as the structure.
I would be amazed if the hull and / or the tanks couldn't support a couple of feet of rocks. Maximum transmural weight force would be at the apex, the walls carry increasing vector of the force towards the ground ie not across the wall but along it.

Yah, the walls are thinish but as long as you backfill nice and tight it seems like it would be pretty strong.

 

[Buckminster]

Or use the tanks as the structure.
I would be amazed if the hull and / or the tanks couldn't support a couple of feet of rocks. Maximum transmural weight force would be at the apex, the walls carry increasing vector of the force towards the ground ie not across the wall but along it.

Are the main tanks separate structures? I assumed the walls were the external structure.

 

[mongo]

Are the main tanks separate structures? I assumed the walls were the external structure.

Tanks are hull, but cargo hull is not tank .

 

[ecarfan]

S30 has gone to Masseys for cryo testing (B12 is alow there) and B10 was moved back to the MegaBay because…? NSF says “This is likely for final launch checks”, whatever that means. They are just guessing. The dance floor was moved to below the OLM so apparently there is still some work to be done there?

B10 being lowered onto the transport stand, with S27 in the background, still on its suborbital test stand.

B10 being moved on the public road, barely managed to get by this car!

 

[JB47394]

NSF says “This is likely for final launch checks”, whatever that means.

"Is it tall, round and shiny?"
"Check."
"Checklist complete. Send it."

They may have some electronics to update and check out (e.g. Starlink comms, adding cameras and other telemetry sensors). Let's hope it's not a case of more grid fin motors being replaced.

B10 being moved on the public road, barely managed to get by this car!

That's awesome. SPMTs are amazing technology. Look at the incline of the wheels on the car side as they follow the terrain.

For anyone curious, I looked up why SPMTs have additional weights on them when they're already carrying such a massive load.

1. Increase stability. Keeping the center of mass low.
2. Improve traction. Ensuring that there's weight on all the wheels.
3. Absorb shock.

 

[Electroman]

B10 being moved on the public road, barely managed to get by this car!

Thats ridiculous.. there is plenty of space for that car to be parked further away from the road.

 

[scaesare]

So... I was reminded of this informative article on Superheavy Booster Plumbing Internals I read a while back, when the next installment regarding Starship Prop Plumbing was just released, and I realized I never posted links here, which I assume you fellow rocket nerds would like.

Both quite interesting.

 

[ecarfan]

So... I was reminded of this informative article on Superheavy Booster Plumbing Internals I read a while back, when the next installment regarding Starship Prop Plumbing was just released, and I realized I never posted links here, which I assume you fellow rocket nerds would like.

For sure! What a great resource. I had forgotten that SH contains a 3m diameter LOX landing tank that sits inside the main LOX tank and feeds the center 13 engines during the landing burn. But there is no methane landing tank.

…a large frustum-shaped component is installed on top of the manifold ring, which expands outwards to eventually house the Liquid Oxygen landing tank.

I had to look up the definition of “frustum”.

In geometry, a frustum (Latin for 'morsel');[a] (pl.: frusta or frustums) is the portion of a solid (normally a pyramid or a cone) that lies between two parallel planes cutting the solid. In the case of a pyramid, the base faces are polygonal and the side faces are trapezoidal.

 

[ecarfan]

In the Starship Prop Plumbing article there is a cool photo of a Starship “Vacuum Raptor mount assembly”…in the bed of a Cybertruck!

 

[JB47394]

So... I was reminded of this informative article on Superheavy Booster Plumbing Internals I read a while back, when the next installment regarding Starship Prop Plumbing was just released, and I realized I never posted links here, which I assume you fellow rocket nerds would like.

They need another writer. Jax is far too verbose and professorial in his writing. Also, the original photographs should not be used. They're blurry, occluded and oriented at every possible angle. They have 3D models and they should have relied on them, using labels and coloring to correlate with the text of the article.

Kudos for doing the work, but they need to develop some skills for presenting information. A reading of Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte might help them a bunch. For reference, he helped make Charles Joseph Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia famous. If you've never seen it, it's a masterwork of an incredibly tragic event.

I learned some stuff from the articles, but I never developed that intuitive sense of how everything goes together.

 

[scaesare]

They need another writer. Jax is far too verbose and professorial in his writing. Also, the original photographs should not be used. They're blurry, occluded and oriented at every possible angle. They have 3D models and they should have relied on them, using labels and coloring to correlate with the text of the article.

Kudos for doing the work, but they need to develop some skills for presenting information. A reading of Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte might help them a bunch. For reference, he helped make Charles Joseph Minard's map of Napoleon's invasion of Russia famous. If you've never seen it, it's a masterwork of an incredibly tragic event.

I learned some stuff from the articles, but I never developed that intuitive sense of how everything goes together.

An animated rendered exploded parts diagram would be cool... (says this guy who isn't getting busy doing one, lol)

 

[JB47394]

An animated rendered exploded parts diagram would be cool... (says this guy who isn't getting busy doing one, lol)

Yes, it calls out for a video like that. Obviously, that's a lot more work and expense. I was toying with the idea of doing the 3D model in Blender until I realized that they already had one.

This video is from 2021 and is only for Starship, but it's in the right ballpark.

 

[scaesare]

Yes, it calls out for a video like that. Obviously, that's a lot more work and expense. I was toying with the idea of doing the 3D model in Blender until I realized that they already had one.

This video is from 2021 and is only for Starship, but it's in the right ballpark.

That is very cool...

 

[ecarfan]

S28 has been removed from the suborbital stand and rolled back to a bay for final pre-flight checks, maybe? Also there’s another new sign at the launch site, and one of the large water tanks that suffered damage during IFT-1 (I assume) and was not being used was lifted off it’s foundation and presumably will be scrapped.

 

[mongo]

S28 has been removed from the suborbital stand and rolled back to a bay for final pre-flight checks, maybe? Also there’s another new sign at the launch site, and one of the large water tanks that suffered damage during IFT-1 (I assume) and was not being used was lifted off it’s foundation and presumably will be scrapped.

View attachment 1006619

Oh... it's scraped... (the tank, not the ship)
Crane is attaching to the second tank now.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1743722005877170230

 

[ecarfan]

Oh... it's scraped

It may have been scraped during removal but it is definitely scrapped now. Second tank will probably be all cut up by end of day tomorrow.

 

[mongo]

It may have been scraped during removal but it is definitely scrapped now. Second tank will probably be all cut up by end of day tomorrow.

Looks like second tank is only losing the outer shell for now. They've loosed the cutting crew on it and it's dying by their arms tonight.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1743817940187726008