Timeline for Why is Elon Musk building the Starship first?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
29 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 10, 2020 at 4:14 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Christopher James Huff: Baloney! It is just as capable of being the first stage of a launch vehicle as for instance the Saturn V first stage was. | |
| Aug 9, 2020 at 3:54 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @jamesqf Superheavy is completely incapable of delivering anything to orbit without Starship. It is not a SSTO launch vehicle. Again, ask your own questions. I will not respond to you again here. | |
| Aug 9, 2020 at 1:09 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Christopher James Huff: Nobody could possibly want to launch large chunks of a space station or lunar/planetary mission? You're the one that seems to have problems, since you just implied that there would be a market for launching 100+ tons. | |
| Aug 8, 2020 at 0:27 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @jamesqf SpaceX needs a booster for Starship and that's what they're building. Nobody else has upper stages that would be able to use such a booster. It's clear you have some kind of problem with this, but it's the simple truth. You can not just throw a second stage on any booster and expect the stack to work. If you can't see why, ask your own question on the topic. And if you don't see a use for dramatically lower launch costs and the ability to send 100+ t to anywhere from LEO to the surfaces of the moon and Mars, ask one about that...maybe someone will be able to help you. | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 22:23 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Christopher James Huff : There. Isn't. A. BFR. Booster. Either. The point is that it could be built, and second stages could be built and/or adapted to it, allowing it to do something useful. SpaceX could then charge customers for the use of it, unlike the Starship, which even if it works, seems to serve no useful purpose. | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 13:08 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @jamesqf There. Aren't. Any. Disagree? NAME ONE. | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 4:20 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Christopher James Huff: Anything someone wants to put on top of a big first stage. | |
| Aug 5, 2020 at 18:07 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @jamesqf What "different stages"? | |
| Aug 5, 2020 at 16:34 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Christopher James Huff: Re Musk's design sources, I draw your attention to the 2nd image in the question, particularly the September and December 2018 versions. WRT the second stage question, just because something has been done one way in the past doesn't mean that it has to be done that way in the future. Adapting for different stages would seem not much more of a technical challenge than adapting for different payloads. | |
| Aug 4, 2020 at 18:07 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @jamesqf it has nothing to do with "taking vehicle designs from 1950s SF magazine covers". Launch vehicles rarely support more than one second stage, and when they do it's typically minor variations of the same stage, like the 4 and 5 meter Delta IV upper stages. And again, what alternate stage are they going to support? | |
| Aug 4, 2020 at 16:13 | comment | added | jamesqf | @MSalters: I think it's more a question of viewpoint. If you're Elon Musk, taking your vehicle designs from 1950s SF magazine covers, it perhaps makes sense to build a single-purpose booster. If you're a SpaceX shareholder, perhaps not so much. | |
| Aug 3, 2020 at 16:47 | comment | added | xyious | I would like to add that most of the steps they're currently taking to develop starship directly apply to the superheavy booster as well.... The diameter is the same, the tanks will be extremely similar.... There's no engineering time wasted by working on starship. On the other hand there's a huge loss in potential testing time by not having starship ready sooner. | |
| Aug 3, 2020 at 16:34 | comment | added | Chris B. Behrens | I'd like to add that this approach - do the hard, high-risk stuff first - is a principle of Lean Manufacturing and Lean Software development, which clearly inform SpaceX processes. | |
| Aug 3, 2020 at 13:01 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @jamesqf okay, now they're spending engineering time on an adapter to use...what stage, exactly? Give just one example of an existing stage that would actually work with Superheavy. | |
| Aug 3, 2020 at 9:24 | comment | added | MSalters | @jamesqf: I think you're asking the wrong question. The booster is designed for Starship, and the design will be changed to match Starship. Adding a second design constraint for a different upper stage will hinder development at this point. Once the booster is built however, and the design is stable, it becomes possible to build alternative upper stages. We're far from that point. SpaceX typically designs iteratively, so the booster design is nowhere near stable. | |
| Aug 3, 2020 at 4:51 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Christopher James Huff: Why? I know of no reason why 2nd and later stages need to be the same diameter as the first. Indeed, here's an example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V Fairings and adapters should be simple. | |
| Aug 3, 2020 at 1:14 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | The widest diameter second stage currently available would be the Delta IV DCSS. This is a little over half the diameter it'd need to be, and even with its maximum payload is around 1/25th the mass that Superheavy is designed to lift. It uses hydrogen fuel which isn't supported by the Starship launch pads, and since it isn't designed to stage at ~3 km/s, it would just fall into the ocean after separation. You need a 9 m ~1.5 kt methalox upper stage that stages at around 3 km/s. No such thing exists, and Starship is the only one under development. | |
| Aug 3, 2020 at 0:21 | comment | added | Erin Anne | If you're looking at Huff's "that's Starship" without context I can totally understand that not seeming correct, but literally any second stage for Super Heavy at this point is Starship. That's the system SpaceX has declared they're working on (including passenger, cargo, and tanker variants proposed). The Starship is the thing they want to fly; Super Heavy is practically support equipment. | |
| Aug 2, 2020 at 17:26 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @jamesqf To do that, you need a second stage. That's Starship, and only Starship. This isn't a cop-out, nothing else will work. | |
| Aug 2, 2020 at 16:19 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Christopher James Huff: That seems like a complete cop-out. IF there was a super-heavy booster, you could stick a second stage (or even a third) on top of it, and launch heavier planetary exploration probes, moon base or space station components, or whatever. Which is not to say that it might not be cheaper to do those with multiple smaller launches... | |
| Aug 2, 2020 at 14:07 | comment | added | TooTea | Nice answer, but perhaps the most important point could be stressed more: Super Heavy is a first stage, so it's entirely useless without a matching second stange. It simply can't replace Falcon (9/Heavy) or launch Starlink satellites at all. | |
| Aug 2, 2020 at 3:19 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @chrylis-cautiouslyoptimistic- monetary budget, time budget, mass budget, they're all good. | |
| Aug 2, 2020 at 1:41 | comment | added | chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- | @ErinAnne You forgot "gain budget"! | |
| Aug 2, 2020 at 0:50 | history | edited | Christopher James Huff | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Cleaned up some wording, expanded on and clarified the relative ease of development and issues with developing the booster first.
|
| Aug 2, 2020 at 0:25 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | @jamesqf sure, it can launch any heavy payload that mechanically fits the Superheavy upper stage mounting and separation hardware and which needs to be launched to a low suborbital trajectory. Here's a comprehensive and complete list of such payloads: Starship. | |
| Aug 2, 2020 at 0:19 | comment | added | Erin Anne | This answer comes very close, but I think it's worth saying more explicitly--being "much more constrained" in the Starship design means that Starship's mass gets constrained, and there's nothing an aerospace project loves to do more than gain mass. Something like the reverse happened during Constellation, where the boosters (particularly Ares I-X) were designed early on and then Orion's mass spiraled out of control and all kinds of problems resulted. | |
| Aug 1, 2020 at 23:15 | comment | added | jamesqf | Why would the booster's only use be for Starship? Surely you could use it to launch any heavy payload. | |
| Aug 1, 2020 at 21:46 | vote | accept | Nikolai Frolov | ||
| Aug 1, 2020 at 16:22 | history | answered | Christopher James Huff | CC BY-SA 4.0 |