Questions tagged [spacex-starship]
Questions regarding SpaceX's Starship, formerly the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) upper stage or BFS
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Why does the heatshield have to be on the outside?
To what extent has internal insulation been tested to deal with the heat of re-entry?
In the case of Starship, is the existing steel strong enough (to be non-ablative!), or would a different type of ...
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Why did Starship start tilting to one side as soon as it lifted off during IFT-2?
I've noticed that no one has talked about this, making me think that maybe it's normal or expected as a way to veer off the launch pad to protect stage 0 equipment. However, no matter how many times I ...
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Is vacuum created between the inner engines under Earth's atmosphere that could affect the booster in the early moments of the ascent?
The booster has a lot more engines than the Starship.
My thoughts are that if there's isn't a pressure relief to the innermost engines they could create a vacuum pulling the hot gasses expelled. I ...
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During Starship's recent flight, the stack appeared to be venting gas during the staging sequence. What was it?
During Starship's launch on November 18, 2023, the two stages successfully executed hot staging and separated from each other. In the seconds leading up to ignition of the upper stage engines, the ...
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Scattering of exhaust gases during Starship IFT-2 hot staging
Various footage of the IFT-2 of SpaceX's Starship show intriguing pattern of, presumably, exhaust gases illuminated by the Ship's 3+3 engines (attached below). While this may be an optical illusion, ...
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Why Spacex Starship is not a modular rocket?
The past Nov 18 was the last launch, of Starship.
The things didn't happen as planned.
But all of us know that soon or later Spacex will make it a successful.
It will be a long time before it can be ...
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Why did Starship perform an abrupt course correction seconds before stage separation?
During Starship second integrated test flight IFT-2
There is a seemingly rapid attitude change seconds before stage separation, the whole vehicle making a turn towards the right of the image.
What is ...
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Was Starship’s “launch window” administrative, rather than due to orbital mechanics?
According to Wikipedia,
a launch window is the time period on a given day during which a
particular rocket must be launched in order to reach its intended
target.
SpaceX’s internet launch coverage ...
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Did Starship Ship 25 burn up on re-entry?
SpaceX Starship Ship 25 launched and managed a successful separation from the booster and reportedly made it into space before the autonomous flight termination system activated, destroying the ...
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(How) would the water deluge system impact Starship superheavy captures?
(How) would the water deluge system impact Starship superheavy captures, when they eventually manage to return to starbase?
Could it be turned on during landing attempts? Would that reduce lift (...
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Why doesn't the starship superheavy booster need heat shielding [duplicate]
Why doesn't it need heat shield while the second stage does?
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How is hot staging of Starship expected to provide such a large (10%) increase in total mass to LEO?
there's a meaningful payload to orbit advantage with hot staging that is conservatively about a 10% increase
(Elon Musk during Twitter Spaces interview on June 24th, 2023, timestamp 37:13)
In a line ...
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square-cube law and TPS
Yesterday, I asked a question about the square-cube law and propellant tanks.
Do larger rockets tend to have a better mass ratio due to the square cube law?
I have a very similar question about TPS ...
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How many tonnes of cargo are stored on the International Space Station?
I think I read somewhere that SpaceX's Starship should carry 100 tonnes to the moon, and that this amount of mass was greater than the total cargo on the ISS, but I can't find a reference confirming ...
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Fastest time to Moon for Starship
What is the fastest time to the Moon possible with Starship in the near future, assuming there is orbital refueling?
Is sustained acceleration and then deceleration possible at say 0.25G, to reduce ...
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What would it take to collect methane from the atmosphere and use it as rocket fuel?
SpaceX is currently dealing with a lot of environmental regulation issues with Starship. One issue they have is the amount of CO2 Starship produces. Their falcon 9 produces 440 tons of CO2 each flight,...
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Why was the ITS concept downscaled?
Note: if you have not heard of the Interplanetary Transport System or ITS, it was a 2016 concept for a fully reusable rocket which could deliver 300 tonnes of paylaod into low earth orbit. It didn't ...
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SpaceX Starship refueling in Mars orbit
I was wondering if the propellant required to leave Earth orbit, accelerate to Mars' orbital velocity and then perform orbital insertion will leave the starship with enough propellant to perform a ...
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Why were 4 engines shutdown prematurely during Booster 9's static fire?
Recently (August 7), Booster 9 conducted a static fire test where it only ignited 29 of 33 engines. This is the big static fire, there not another one. I have found that they were shutdown prematurely ...
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How feasible is a manned flight to Apophis in 2029 using Artemis or Starship?
Apophis will fly by Earth around GEO altitude in 2029. May NASA consider launching an Orion spacecraft on a (sub-)orbital trajectory whose apogee is very close to Apophis so that astronauts can study ...
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Why can’t we send people to the moon in a falcon 9? Why do we need falcon heavy or starship instead when falcon 9 is capable of traveling very far?
NASA’s DART mission flew on a falcon 9, but it flew 7 million miles. That’s a lot further away than the moon is, so why would falcon heavy or starship ever be necessary to go there? Why can’t people ...
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Why not try to land all SpaceX Starships and boosters?
From the latest news about the prior flight of Starship
For this demo, SpaceX won’t attempt any landings of the rocket or the spacecraft. Everything will fall into the sea.
Since SpaceX has never ...
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What amount of unburned methane was released in the atmosphere during the Starship orbital test abort?
On April 20, 2023, SpaceX attempted an orbital flight of the Starship rocket. The test ended when the Flight Termination System blew up the rocket after it started tumbling out of control.
When the ...
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Why will Starship's 150 ton payload capacity be sufficient to carry 100 people to other planets?
The ISS weighs 450 tons and carries 7 people for three months without resupply.
Starship is supposed to carry 14 times as many people for more than twice the duration with one third the mass.
How?
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What are these composite overwrapped pressure vessels on Super Heavy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Super_Heavy
The oxygen tank has four chines attached. These protect the various COPVs on board, as well as providing lift during flight.
First I've heard of ...
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Is the rocket exhaust plume at liftoff of a liquid fuled rocket cold? Can it condense? [duplicate]
I try to understand what the exhaust cloud on the ground from the start of Starship consists of.
Of course it was unusually mineral-rich, but I try to understand whether we saw much else, apart from ...
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Was the exhaust cloud at the Starship launch mostly pulverized launchpad?
The launch of Spacex Starship on April 20 2023 looked pretty normal on first sight, apart from some engines not running, and some concrete flying around.
The huge exhaust cloud looked normal, because ...
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How are engines numbered on Starship and Super Heavy?
I was watching this video summarizing Elon Musk's recent remarks on the orbital test flight, and they mention specific engines. But unless a named engine shuts down and is shown on the small display ...
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For Starship, using B9 and later, how will separation work if the Hydraulic Power Units are no longer needed for the TVC System?
On the SuperHeavy booster, the 33 engines break down into two sets, 20 outer engines that cannot relight (That equipment is actually on the pad itself) and cannot gimble.
The inner 13 consist of a ...
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Does methalox fuel have a coking problem at all?
Methane was chosen for SpaceX Raptor because it has less coking problem that kerosene. But does it completely eliminate it? If not, how much less severe is it?
I googled 'thermal decomposition of ...
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SpaceX Raptor Vs Raptor Boost
I'm asking all these questions as one because I don't think they're worth cluttering the site separately for.
How much does Raptor Boost weigh compared to normal Raptor?
How much more thrust does ...
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Where are the Raptor Boost engines on Super Heavy?
SpaceX Super Heavy has two types of Raptor, one of them being Raptor Boost, which has no gimbals and limited throttling but increased thrust.
But I can't find information on Wikipedia on how many ...
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Will spaceX crewed boosters have a self-destruct mechanism?
SpaceX's most recent launch went awry and they triggered the self-destruct. Crewed missions have a launch escape system which is a high-thrust rocket that can get the capsule clear of the main rocket ...
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Is StarShip/Booster stack inherently unstable after Booster burns most of its fuel?
Few will ever forget the flight of Starship 24/Booster 7.
Perhaps the first moon rocket to perform aerobatics and hold itself together before finally self destructing. But would it be aerodynamicly ...
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Does a fully loaded Starship really have a thrust to weight ratio less than 1 at sea level?
If Superheavy fails during launch (or even fails to launch in an unsafe way) the Starship itself might well be able to just light its engines and fly a suitable suborbital trajectory
https://space....
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On April 20 2023, how did Super Heavy burn for 40% longer than planned?
The launch profile as planned had the booster shutting down at 169 seconds.
In the event, it burned for 239s, or more than 40% longer. We know that the booster lost 5-7 engines during the flight, ...
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Is the failure to separate Starship from the Super Heavy booster a "dumb failure" and does it tell something about the project reliability? [duplicate]
Sorry for the possibly dumb question, but I don't know much about rocket technology.
As I gather, the main problem in the recently failed Elon Musk's Starship launch was that the Starship "...
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Why didn't SpaceX scrub the 4/20 Starship launch when they saw the launch pad being shredded?
While Starship took to the skies on its maiden flight, the slow build of power started to devastate the launch pad (or Stage Zero as SpaceX refers to it) and surrounding area with debris. Though ...
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Why was the launchpad not destroyed during Super Heavy test firings?
It's becoming clear now that the 4/20 launch devastated the launchpad, leaving a massive crater and flinging debris - perhaps into the booster itself.
But why did this not happen during test firings ...
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Why was Space X's Starship blown up?
I understand that thousands of small rocket fragments will cause less damage when they fall than an intact rocket. But at the time Starship was detonated, I believe it was over the ocean, and not ...
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Did the April 20 explosion invalidate the Starship launch license?
I had heard that the reason Starship launch was being delayed was because they were doing an environmental impact assessment. During the April 17 NASASpaceflight coverage
, it was stated that this was ...
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Why did Starship separation fail?
After seeing the live stream: https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test I was curious why the separation failed . The first stage went normally. Then it failed to ...
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For the 4/20 Launch of Starship does anyone know what was inside starship?
I was curious to know if they built rooms or had dummies inside, or what they put in it to simulate weight.
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How will Starship get ullage during launch?
All the Starship air-starts up to this point have been landing burns using small header tanks which gave less ullage requirements, but I can't recall any mention of how Starship settle it's propellant ...
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When lower stages explode, can upper stages just fire and escape?
If Superheavy fails during launch (or even fails to launch in an unsafe way) the Starship itself might well be able to just light its engines and fly a suitable suborbital trajectory to a safe landing ...
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From how far away is Starship expected to be visible?
I’ve seen graphics like this one from NASA for Artemis 1 and these for Antares launches out of Wallops.
I can’t seem to find any decent info regarding the upcoming Starship flight test. I’ve seen a ...
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Would the steel frame/skin of Starship be able to endure loss of a heat shield tile during reentry?
STS-27 was able survive reentry without a tile because the was over a metal component with sufficient thermal inertia to serve as a heat sink without melting.
Would the steel frame of Starship be able ...
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Why don't SpaceX boosters belly flop?
The first F9 booster landing attempts failed because the booster broke up. After that, they began lighting the engines in the upper atmosphere to slow the booster.
It seems to me that their problem ...
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How can Starship belly flop with a full payload?
Starship had an empty weight of under 100 tons. Of this, less than 12 tons is accounted for by the engines. Starship is supposed to be able to make atmospheric entry with a 150 ton payload in the nose....
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Where and how many RCS thrusters are installed on Starship?
Starship from SpaceX will soon launch. During the 10 km test it used RCS thrusters to flip itself in the right position. On the website it mentions how important it is to use air friction to slow down ...
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