Wiki Super Heavy/Starship - General Development Discussion

[Grendal]

Nice little article that sums up an important point and makes an important judgement about BFR.
Why Orion, Dragon 2, and Starliner are the Past – and Big Falcon Spaceship (BFS) is the Future – of Human Spaceflight|National Space Society

 

[Cosmacelf]

Nice little article that sums up an important point and makes an important judgement about BFR.
Why Orion, Dragon 2, and Starliner are the Past – and Big Falcon Spaceship (BFS) is the Future – of Human Spaceflight|National Space Society

Yes, once again NASA is actually retarding space flight. SpaceX could have done away with parachutes for Dragon 2 and used propulsive landing as a precursor to BFS, but they are requiring parachutes. Anyways, glad to see SpaceX step up to the plate once again.

 

[ecarfan]

Thanks for posting that link. Excellent analysis in that article. The BFR can’t come soon enough!

 

[RDoc]

Agreed, excellent post. I've been wondering for awhile if the BFS also obsoletes things like the ISS.

What's the point having a long duration pressurized volume in orbit when the BFS has about the same volume and not only can stay in orbit for long periods, but can also return to Earth? It's a whole lot easier to replace, maintain, upgrade, and change equipment in Florida than having to lift it all in small pieces and do the work in orbit. If you need more volume, dock two (or more) together and bring them back as needed.

Leaving things like solar panels, very long duration unmanned experiments, some instruments, etc., sure, but all the manned and human supervised stuff seems to be a lot easier to just move up and down. If you need to change crew, put up another BFS, either to exchange crew or completely replace the one(s) in orbit.

Maybe this is how the ISS really gets privatized? SpaceX just leases them to NASA.

 

[Bobfitz1]

Agreed, excellent post. I've been wondering for awhile if the BFS also obsoletes things like the ISS.
What's the point having a long duration pressurized volume in orbit when the BFS has about the same volume and not only can stay in orbit for long periods, but can also return to Earth? It's a whole lot easier to replace, maintain, upgrade, and change equipment in Florida than having to lift it all in small pieces and do the work in orbit. If you need more volume, dock two (or more) together and bring them back as needed. Leaving things like solar panels, very long duration unmanned experiments, some instruments, etc., sure, but all the manned and human supervised stuff seems to be a lot easier to just move up and down. If you need to change crew, put up another BFS, either to exchange crew or completely replace the one(s) in orbit.
Maybe this is how the ISS really gets privatized? SpaceX just leases them to NASA.

This is a fabulous idea. So much more cost effective than ISS, I would think it must eventually be adopted.

"To date, the International Space Station has cost as much as $160 billion, with the United States providing the bulk of the money — nearly $100 billion." A search finds NASA budget for ISS is 3 billion annually.

If a core portion is really needed to stay up indefinitely, it ought to be possible to customize a single BFS and leave it up indefinitely with the option of bringing it down if ever needed for refurbishment. At any one time the cluster would be the core BFS plus one or more that come and go as required.

 

[ecarfan]

@RDoc fascinating idea. We don’t know yet what it will cost SpaceX to build a BFS and get it to LEO with a BFT (and likely neither does SpaceX at this point) but I my WAG would be much less than $1 billion. To keep it in LEO and maintain it would likely be far less costly than the current ISS budget. It could be resupplied, and have crews changed, using an F9/Crew Dragon or another BFR/BFS.

 

[jdevo2004]

I wonder how a pad abort or in flight abort system would work on the BFS.

Having such a huge ship with integrated second stage would make it very heavy and therefore difficult to get away from a first stage explosion. Furthermore, what if there was a problem with the second stage. One has to assume that the very top of the BFS will be detachable for aborts and will be where the astronauts will sit during launch.

 

[aronth5]

This is an excellent article tracing "The Evolution of the Big Falcon Rocket"
The Evolution of the Big Falcon Rocket – NASASpaceFlight.com

 

[ecarfan]

This is an excellent article tracing "The Evolution of the Big Falcon Rocket"
The Evolution of the Big Falcon Rocket – NASASpaceFlight.com

Thanks for posting that link. The most interesting part of the article to me was this section on the final page, quote: “Somewhat ironically, the trimming of the vehicle’s size from 10,500 tonnes to 4,400 tonnes was what enabled the BFR’s uses to expand so dramatically. It also alleviated the most pressing design concerns over development cost, exclusion zones, and launch pads.”

So there were multiple reasons for reducing the scale of the vehicle from the 2016 IAC presentation.

 

[Grendal]

It looks like there will be an update coming in a month or so:
Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[mongo]

It looks like there will be an update coming in a month or so:
Elon Musk on Twitter

So last week?
(tweet was from Jul 13th)
Or is it still one month out...

 

[Cosmacelf]

So last week?
(tweet was from Jul 13th)
Or is it still one month out...

Yeah, I think Elon got busy with another small project in between.

 

[Grendal]

Paul Wooster of SpaceX gives a presentation at The Mars Society conference of SpaceX's plans for Mars. Terrible video and sound but here it is for those willing to endure it.

Here is an article from Teslarati going over the presentation and highlighting the interesting points.
SpaceX wants to use the first Mars-bound BFR spaceships as Martian habitats

 

[ecarfan]

Thanks for the link. I’ll try to get through the video later, but read the Teslerati article. I see that SpaceX is sticking with the incredibly aggressive / near delusional (?) goal of two cargo BFRs on Mars in 2022 and humans in 2024. Seems impossible, but I admire the determination!

Quote: “Perhaps the most interesting detail to come out of Wooster’s August 25th talk, however, was the slight affirmation that SpaceX is seriously thinking about leaving the first landed BFR spaceships on Mars indefinitely, although it’s not entirely clear which spaceships he was referring to. According to paraphrased notes taken from the webcast, early BFR spaceships on the Martian surface would remain there to be used as resources (habitats). He subsequently noted that early colonists would “probably” live out of the first landed spaceships, to begin with, suggesting that the uncrewed, cargo-dedicated spaceships would still return to Earth, as they will not feature human-rated life support systems of any of the necessities for living.”

And this photo of a key slide is interesting. I like the idea of landing more than enough payload supplies to assure redundancy and large margins.

Also, this: “Free-return outbound trajectories & in-space rescue options”. Smart.

 

[Grendal]

Better video of the presentation by Paul Wooster:

 

[sandpiper]

Agreed, excellent post. I've been wondering for awhile if the BFS also obsoletes things like the ISS.

What's the point having a long duration pressurized volume in orbit when the BFS has about the same volume and not only can stay in orbit for long periods, but can also return to Earth? It's a whole lot easier to replace, maintain, upgrade, and change equipment in Florida than having to lift it all in small pieces and do the work in orbit. If you need more volume, dock two (or more) together and bring them back as needed.

Leaving things like solar panels, very long duration unmanned experiments, some instruments, etc., sure, but all the manned and human supervised stuff seems to be a lot easier to just move up and down. If you need to change crew, put up another BFS, either to exchange crew or completely replace the one(s) in orbit.

Maybe this is how the ISS really gets privatized? SpaceX just leases them to NASA.

This is all good in theory, but I'm a little concerned. There was already one large scale attempt at creating a low cost, highly reusable vertically launched vehicle with a large internal volume. It didn't turn out the be as simple as everyone expected and it was certainly never inexpensive.

I'm sure SpaceX being very careful to not repeat the major errors made on the shuttle program. But every part of me is telling me that "they don't know what they don't know" as yet.

 

[ecarfan]

Thanks for posting a link to that video. Good quality and easy to understand the audio. Paul Wooster was very careful not to say anything fundamentally new and not to get drawn into discussions of how the BFR is a fraction of the cost of what NASA is planning to use for lunar expoloration.

Better video of the presentation by Paul Wooster:

 

[ecarfan]

This is all good in theory, but I'm a little concerned. There was already one large scale attempt at creating a low cost, highly reusable vertically launched vehicle with a large internal volume. It didn't turn out the be as simple as everyone expected and it was certainly never inexpensive.

I'm sure SpaceX being very careful to not repeat the major errors made on the shuttle program. But every part of me is telling me that "they don't know what they don't know" as yet.

And I think SpaceX is smart enough to be aware of that. So what’s your point?

 

[sandpiper]

And I think SpaceX is smart enough to be aware of that. So what’s your point?

Good question... what's my point? Maybe there's not a major point.

Sometimes, with the SpaceX hype, I (and I suspect other SpaceX fans) forget that it's not the first time that there has been a large scale reusable space vehicle, including reusable boosters and all. The shuttle, for all it's flaws, was a pretty darn capable machine and it flew 3 decades ago.

It's also not a forgone conclusion that the BFR will be cost effective. The devil is in the details. The shuttle was supposed to be cheap too, and it just never worked out that way.

 

[ecarfan]

NASA head hints that reusable rocket cos. like SpaceX will enable Moon return

I think that in the very near future, NASA administrator Bridenstine is going to try to severely limit spending on the SLS/Orion project and propose using the BFR instead. Of course, that spending is controlled by Congress.

“It’s on me to figure out how to [return to the Moon] sustainably. … And this time, when we go, we’re gonna go to stay. So how do we do go sustainably? Well, [we take] advantage of capabilities that didn’t exist in this country even five or ten years ago. We have commercial companies that can do things that weren’t possible even just a few years ago … to help develop this sustainable [Moon exploration] architecture.” – NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, 08/29/2018