Fins Installed on Starship Mk1 in Boca Chica
43 responses to “Fins Installed on Starship Mk1 in Boca Chica”
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those should last about oh Mach 2
So you’re saying an F-4 Phantom would do better? 🙂 BTW heard the Su-57 and MC-21 visited Istanbul’s new airport. What did you think?
actually it was the techno exhibit and it was held at LTBA aka Attaturk…there is really only freight traffic there until the freight docks get finished
I had a day off and an invitation and so I spent a good chuck of one day there…not only saw the flight demonstration of both airplanes but of course the magnificient performance of the Turkish stars and Solo Turk (as well as one of the last phabulous phantoms flying). my oldest was in from Pristina…it was a jolly time
the SU is well magnificent in its handling capabilities…the only two places I suspect it needs some work, is the radar installation and as always its short of fuel in a fight…(all of the fifth generation fighters are) but the Turks think that they can work a deal with Ivan to fix the radar issue…and well it was impressive. the last fighter I have flown is the F22 and the F35 simulator…and it is competitive in a dog fight, and they claim in RCS to both of those.
the MC 21 that I saw was impressive in how it was assembled and the interior attention to detail was good. its not your typical ‘Russian airplane” I got to fly the non motion sim…and its FBW seems to have no real surprises. If they can sell it abroad it will be interesting to see how well it holds up. the hotesses of course were “charming”
as for the phabulous. at one point in its history there was talk of a Mach 3 phantom…the F4X or something like it…anyway it had water for active duty cooling of the airframe and still they were worried about life
I just sit back and watch the show…I can see where decades from now…oh sorry already did that 🙂
I have pictures in Istanbul when i get back there if you are interested
Phwa! Interested? Of course!
It will be interesting to see how this prediction holds up. We should know soon enough that it’s not even worth an argument. An extended series of delays would tend to support your thoughts while a successful test flight could prove you wrong. I’m willing to wait and see.
Too bad they aren’t airfoils.- they’re adjustable drag brakes. Same for the forward mounted “canards.” The reentry angle of attack is almost belly first – with the drag brakes angled dorsally. Think like they’re a skydivers arms & legs.
Bob also isn’t considering that the windward surfaces will be covered in ceramic heat tiles, which have already been to orbit and back on Cargo Dragon (CRS-18). They came through in better shape than the PICA main heat shield. Their attachment was tested further on StarHopper. If, as I suspect, they’re related to NASA’s TUFROC they’ll be pretty damned durable.
no I am not forgetting that…at somepoint I am sure they will try the TPSwe can see how well that works…the trick is not making the thing shed heat…it is of course keeping them on
AS FOR ‘dive brakes’ one person I know refers to them as brakevons (of course there is no such thing)
any rate its a ll exciting…I can see where decades from now they will put the 60 foot statue of Musk with his arms outreached….oh sorry that is another stable genius
The Raptor engines are installed. The propulsion and payload sections will likely be stacked on Wednesday.
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
The TPS stayed on through a full Dragon reentry, and if it is based on TUFROC then NASA designed the fastening system.
If SpaceX decides to call them “brakevons” then there is such a thing, but so far they seem content with fins for short.
skydiver blah blah blah
that is going to put an enormous thermal load on the “fins” or whatever they are being called…as well as an enormous bending motion
as for the raptors hope they remembered the igniter circuits 🙂
So long as the net thermal passthrough is below SS’s limits….
During entry and the skydiver maneuver those fins fold into a dihedral position, the degree adjusting the drag necessary on that side. With the forward “canards” doing the same + the nose thrusters, and the center 3 Raptors firing at a full 15° gimbal it can smartly rotate to vertical for the landing burn.
The Raptors are fully enclosed, out of the air stream.
what is a dihedral position? dihedral is the angle formed by two plane faces …in an airplane it is the angle from the horizontal of the wings of the airplane…there is positive Di and negative An.
The statue will probably go in the middle of Muskopolis, capital city of the Grand Duchy of Muskovy – on Mars. Elon I, founding Grand Duke of Muskovy, will be depicted in full ducal splendor including crown. 🙂
I am curious as well 🙂
It will be interesting to see if indeed they fly this year. If a lot of the hopper carries over they should be able to hop these vehicles fairly soon. There’s a lot of new systems going with these, so as you point out, this next few months will tell us a lot.
I can see them lighting the thing off and driving it around like the grasshopper…I dont see them doing anything like solving the reentry issues this year or next for that matter…or the year after
Yup. I expect every new thing they do with this, esp the real pioneering tasks, and tasks that take advantage of a general purpose approach a large vehicle can do are going to be like running into a series of brick walls. Compounding this will be the ‘fly and try’ approach that so many in new space advocate. We don’t see Space X using NASA’s swimming pools to practice chucking payloads overboard. Nor do we them practicing the function of hold downs on Falcons or even zero g flights. This concept is going to pay the price of trying to make the complex and hard, simple. They’re pioneers and they’ll pay the price very pioneer pays. I just hope it all works out to make it all worth it.
as I said elsewhere I am somewhat surprised they have not tried a subscale model of this from a launch position with a Falcon9
Well if you remember about two years ago we both said that they should, I said they would, do a subscale BF(x) as a reusable 2nd stage on Falcon 9. Then they announced they were going to do just that. It turned out Elon was having a fight with the Carbon camp and the subscale demo model was to test the stainless steel approach as a means of settling the argument. Then he fired the Carbon faction and broke up the Andrew Beal sized winding tool. So we were not far off on that at all. Instead of doing tests Musk pushed forward on the full sized article. And here we are going for an interesting ride.
yes…I think it will be interesting to see how the next three to four years work out…as in that period 1) BO should fly and 2) federal space policy will change, at least I think so after Trump is defeated 🙂
BO and SX are on two different wavelengths in terms of market…both cannot succeed. if SX new whatever is a success then they win as the cost to orbit will be quite low…if they fail and BO beats the Falcon cost …well Sx is finished…
its fun to watch from the cheap seats…the main thing in my life right now is reconstructing two old buildings on the farm. a railroad building left over from 1902 and a late 1940 rambler ranch house that has not been used since well the 1970’s. my oldest wants her own place at the farm and my wifes sister’s kid is getting married and needs a place to stay 🙂
after that…well we tackle the 1940ish operations building/tower that until now has been used for hay storage…new hay storage place ended that requirement and the railroad building going to another task, ended its use as my ham shack 🙂
always something to do 🙂
If BF(x) works, I may try to get into the space telescope business. If not, I have a back yard observing program I’m cutting metal on now to keep me busy for retirement. I’d like to fly for the regionals for my last 10 years before turning 65. Looks like a fun gig with a fast track to Cpt and a bigger paycheck then I’ll ever get in astronomy.
A LONG (really LONG) time ago I knew a group of people who were trying to put together an amateur space telescope. I think there stumbling point turned out to be the pointing issue…I dont know I left for the mideast after grad school and kind of lost track…I do work with a European satellilte called SARA which is primarily up for long wave (ie 10 meter so) reception primarily of Jupiter stuff…its old and cranky but when I (or other command stations) can get it to work…its a nice compliment to my Jupiter long wave stuff
we are trying to get a couple of paylods both flying as free flyers and attached to ISS…mostly amateur radio stuff.
if you want to fly for the regionals (I assume you already have the pilot credentials) then if I can help I would be happy to…it will work you hard but for what it is the money is not bad…
my fun thing is chasing old satellites…
I may have met the same group. They were based partially out of Michigan in the 80’s. Same group? If BF(x) works out I’ll be really interested in exploring how far one can depart from current quality standards. Before I did my Mars work back in the 90’s I had a great series of briesf by Lyle Johnson and Chuck Green of AMSAT on their opinions of what constitutes good satellite design. A truck like BF(x) would allow a satellite designer to think like Johnson and Green on a large scale.
My pension matures in 4 years as soon as I pass a 1st class medical I’ll crash thru my commercial and instrument and build as much time toward my ATP. Hours wise I’m beyond commercial ready now, I just have to take the test and fly some additional cross country in powered aircraft. I’ve been flying mostly gliders building 50 hours a year as a recreational pilot. But I got my PPL in class C at Tucson International airport so working controlled airspace is what I was introduced to.
thats the group…I dont recall the name but Michigan was the game…
AMSAT had some issues starting with AO 40…its the Johson and Green truck:)
as for the flying…however I can help and good luck
And now there’s an effort to build an upper MI spaceport. One candidate site is the retired Wurtsmith AFB.
The former Wurtsmith AFB is in lower MI near the Lake Huron shore.
There are two other former SAC bases in upper MI about which spaceport talk has been heard. One is the erstwhile Kincheloe AFB near Sault Ste. Marie, that is near Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron. The other is the erstwhile K.I. Sawyer AFB near Marquette which is on the Lake Superior shore.
All three sites would require vehicle ascent flight paths to cross quite a bit of Canada which may make them all non-starters. For at least some azimuths, K.I. Sawyer and Wurtsmith might allow expendable 1st stages to be dumped into Lake Superior and Lake Huron, respectively.
If I’d have meant Upper Peninsula I’d have said that, not saying it means upper-lower. We had a house near Wurtsmith.
The Mk1 isn’t designated to solve the hot reentry issues. It will do the high (60k feet) hop and belly flop, then hopefully go to orbit (possibly) on second mission. I think Mk2 is slated to have full TPS and do the high velocity dives.
so it goes to orbit and then like stays?
No, it either doesn’t make it to orbit or makes it to low unstable orbit and reenters pretty quickly due to ballistic coefficient. Will do the top of the re-entry profile and collect data before it burns to hell. This is based on understanding that the TUFROC isn’t going on this Mk1. I could be wrong though.
You’re not even trying now. The XB-70 and Mig-25 were both stainless steel and had no problem going a lot faster than that.
The XB 70 managed a bit over Mach 3 for about 20 or so minutes (from memory) but it did it with substanital parts of the airframe not in the thermal loads and acting as a heat sink, as well as a lot of very cold fuel
with all the belly flop etc things…well see how it works out
We’re gonna see how it works out? In less than a year, perhaps? Soup to nuts in less than two? Built on a beach, then launched from that beach? Maybe even land it on the beach? That’s good enough for me.
And if it doesn’t work then Starship MK1 2.0 will do something different.
This is what Old Space doesn’t understand about Elon Musk, he tries ideas out, if they fail, he tries out something else until he finds what works. It’s call experimentation and it’s what NASA used to do when it was NACA.
sorry that really does not impress me all that much
from what I can grasp aside from the method of reentry and the ability of the thermal protection system to work…thats about all this “soup to nuts” vehicle does…OK thats important but other then those things it tell little else about the capability and operational issues of the vehicle…and that includes (or excludes data) on the economics of it
but lets just stick with the concept testing part that this thing is suppose to do
it looks like (to me at least I am sure the experts here will correct me) that there are two “reentry” profiles in issue…the first is the first stage (this seems to be where Falcon first stages are running into reusability issues) and the second stage…which has never really been done before (unless you count the orbiter as the second stage)
and as even SpaceX “enthusiast” Tom Matula seems to acknowledge…there is some doubt as to if all this works.
so riddle me this. why has the second stage at least (or even the first stage) gone through some sub scale testing in real operations by using operational models launched on either Falcon first stages (to simulate first stage recovery) and/or some subscale testing to check out the second stage recovery system by flying some sub scale model on a Falcon 9 putting it into orbit and recoverying it…or at least see it reenter?
it all sounds exciting of course the second stage reenters like a sky diver with their arms extended…wow this wonderful example negates the reality that a sky diver deals with no thermal loads and the kinetic loads are dealt with wow by a parachute. there is really no simularity between a skydiver and a vehicle that has converted to Mach 25 somewhere in the high atmosphere and has to maintain stability as it trips down the reynolds numbers dealing with massive heat loads
so why not the subscale testing?
the answer to me is not that they are stupid but it is that they have simply decided to skip that step because they are quite certain that “they have it all figured out”and nothing of the history of the company tells me that they do
but its their nickle and I am in the cheap seats and so I just sit back and watch and wait for that inevitable moment with them where having it all figured out they blow up the vehicle and say “wow that is why we test”
but anyone who thinks that from this “vehicle” they leap up to Dear Moon headed off for the moon and do it in “just a few years” (which seems to be the sentiment here) is to me full or more hope then reality. but then thats Musk world, he has a word for it “aspirational”
RGO
The thermal tiles they’re using are “ceramic,” which fits in with the Space Act Agreement they have with Ames for NASAs TUFROC, which is used on X-37. It’ll also be used on Dream Chaser.
Did you notice the multiple launch and landings of F9 first stages?. Apparently not, since you believe SpaceX to be populated by stupid engineers. Perhaps your assessment from a distance is less informed than you would like to believe, but keep on digging that hole for yourself, it should be deep enough by now that your credibility will never crawl out.
This is an unsubstantiated assertion based on you looking at a photograph. I’m sure that the SpaceX engineers disagree with your assertion considering they’ve done the engineering analyses required to prove that they won’t fail during flight.
I thought it was supposed to land on the fins.
Not for these first two prototypes. Check the twitter conversation thread by clicking on Elon’s twit above. Elon is going with the engineers’ recommendations to have separate fins and landing legs to save weight for these two prototypes, even though he is not totally convinced.
If they are really going attempt SSTO with these things and bring them back in order to prove out their reentry scheme then they are going to need to shave off whatever weight they can. So no weight room in this model, and scratch the inflight entertainment system.
Last word from Elon on SSTO was that they cannot go SSTO, AND have a enough fuel to land. So, orbit and safe return requires Super Heavy. They could still go very high and accelerate back in with the help of gravity to simulate return from orbit, which I believe was one suggested test regime.
Details are of course subject to correction on Saturday or beyond.
The attachment does look a bit flimsy, doesn’t it?
Well, the SpaceX engineers know this too, so either they’ve done the analysis and it’ll hold, or this is just to have something together for the presentation and changes will be made either before first flight or at least before higher speed flights. Or they’re screwing up 😀
Anyway, it’s just a prototype.
Can’t wait to see the whole thing assembled!