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This morning,

Bob leaving port for its next fairing recovery, and Booster lift...

Photos taken by a friend
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I already put this to Starship section before noticing this thread.

Idea for Lunar Starship (mostly for fun):

- Remove the nosecone part of lunar Starship
- Stack Orion + service module + ICPS (totally about 60 tons) on top of lower part of Starship (tanks + cylindrical part of hab area)
- Have an elevator from Starship's roof to Orion's door and a hatch in Starship's roof
- Land the whole thing to the Moon
- Use ICPS to ascent to LLO and service module to get from LLO to TEI

Pros:
No orbital assembly or docking needed except tanking
No need to lift off from Lunar surface without a pad (never done before)

Another alternative:

- Remove the nosecone part of lunar Starship
- Have a hatch on Starship's roof
- Stack Orion + service module on top of lower part of Starship (tanks + cylindrical part of hab area)
- Go directly to LLO
- Land only Starship, Orion and SM stays in LLO (Apollo style)
- Starship comes back to LLO
- Use SM to get from LLO to TEI

Pros compared to the first alternative:
No need to get out of Orion's door on the Moon
No hydrogen boil-off
(Maybe: Can maybe reuse Starship if it can be somehow refueled)
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Can anyone comment on the latest payload bay size?

For a long time the 1000 cubic meter “larger than a Boeing 747” pressurised volume was the stated goal. But recent specs seemed to indicate a somewhat smaller ~600 cubic meter payload bay size.

Is this expected to be temporary with the larger payload bay returning at some point in the future?  For Mars journeys (and as an initial Mars base) we want Starship’s living and cargo area to be a ~20m, 7 story building, not a just a jumbo version of a space capsule. Also necessary for launching large space telescopes and space habitats.

Any insights on this?

I calculated the payload volume based on known Starship dimensions and never got even close to 1000m3, yeah, more like 600. I think 1000 was always some kind of aspirational number for a stretched future version.

Not that 600m3 is small!
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Completely random thought the other night. Could a booster that was fitted with some type of removable nose cone (for aerodynamics) in place of a ship make it to LEO? If that answer is yes then what kind if potential would a earth orbiting fully refueled booster with a fully fueled ship have?
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https://adm-severouralsk.ru/news/media/2024/3/27/informatsionnoe-soobschenie-2/

"Ракета-носитель «Союз-2-1б» № 067 (стартовая масса 313 тонн, длина 46,3 метра, диаметр 2,9 метра) с разгонным блоком «Фрегат» № 122-05 и космическим аппаратом «Ресурс-П» № 4."

Why are they talking about a Fregat upper stage?
They write about fragments.
I think that's the number of the fairing.
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https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1773329765107187818

Quote
Still at 70% PVO. But it’s a long window, so we are going to give it a go anyway

Edit to add:

https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1773330856045629766

Quote
We’ve launched before in a storm through a 60 second wide hole in the clouds.   This mission has a long window, so we’ll keep pressing for now and make a call further in.
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Advanced Concepts / Re: Spinlaunch on the Moon
« Last post by lamontagne on Today at 11:39 am »
A small array of spinlaunchers close to a lunar factory.  Would need to have more for the full output of the factory..

The towers are 25 m tall, 1.5m in diameter, about 1 cm thick aluminum.  The rotors have a radius of 25m.
These ones have 150 hp motors and launch 50 kg every two hours, 500 kg per hour for the array, ot about 2000 tonnes per year.
Spinlaunch without the box, basically.

Awesome! I like the detail of the factory. And I also appreciate the brown tones in the regolith. Too many space artists just assume that moondirt is just pure grey.

Two things come to mind:

First, though this is likely artistic licence, the spacing of the launchers so close to each other and the rest of the plant. A failure on these things is likely to be catastrophic. Close to release, a broken tip is going to hit the ground at ~2000m/s and then kick up a spray of regolith at similarly high velocities, not to mention a LOX payload rupturing. So you want a good deal of space between them. Or use fewer, beefier ones with higher mass at lower rates?

Second, aluminium might not be the best choice since it has quite a coefficient of expansion and has lifetime fatigue issues (the arms will be rotating quite fast, with a wobble when the payload has departed). On that note, I expect you'll have some really DEEP anchoring. How are tensegrity towers for this kind of application? You could make the tower a tripod, pentapod shape or whatever because you just need to clear the arm (failure modes notwithstanding).

For the last mile problem catching, you could probably use some kind of electrostatically charged net. Payload has a positive charge, and so does the net except near the middle.
-Spacing was more or less based on wind turbines.  They probably wouldn't be all aligned in the way I showed them.
-Perhaps just stronger arms.  The arms mass is a kinetic energy storage and the energy is not lost.  so they can be more massive with little energy cost.
-The tower will probably have problems with whiplash.  Need to redesign I think.  I used wind turbine towers,  but I think I'm wrong on this.  There's probably a reason why the large Spinlaunch is on the side of a mountain!
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Advanced Concepts / Re: Spinlaunch on the Moon
« Last post by lamontagne on Today at 11:29 am »
I'm not sure if I'm thinking this through correctly, but a spin-launch in vacuum would have another advantage: Instead of the payload and small maneuvering unit being mounted perpendicular to the arm (and thus having to be proof against high g-forces to the side), it could be mounted nose-to-arm, thus maybe simplifying construction. As for the maneuvering units, they could be collected after use, and periodically returned in groups to the Moon.

I could see this as a way of getting construction material for large habitats into space. A few handwavy details omitted, of course.
One of the main design problems, I think, is holding the payload in place against the g-force and releasing it at the right time.  Spinlaunch seem to have a handle on that, so I'm going with their arrangement. 
A grapple would need to handle the entire load, so it would be big! Some kind of slider, perhaps combined with a brake on the arm? could limit itself to the force needed to keep the launcher from falling out, which should be smaller.
Yes, collecting the maneuvering units would be part of the system.
I think orbital settlements is the main use case.  It's a specialized system.  No large habitats, no need.  As shielding is the main mass item of habitats, it makes sense to have low costs systems to send up the materials.
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Can anyone comment on the latest payload bay size?

For a long time the 1000 cubic meter “larger than a Boeing 747” pressurised volume was the stated goal. But recent specs seemed to indicate a somewhat smaller ~600 cubic meter payload bay size.

Is this expected to be temporary with the larger payload bay returning at some point in the future?  For Mars journeys (and as an initial Mars base) we want Starship’s living and cargo area to be a ~20m, 7 story building, not a just a jumbo version of a space capsule. Also necessary for launching large space telescopes and space habitats.

Any insights on this?

Elon mentioned that a version 3 of Starship would be longer, so perhaps a cargo stretch.
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https://adm-severouralsk.ru/news/media/2024/3/27/informatsionnoe-soobschenie-2/

"Ракета-носитель «Союз-2-1б» № 067 (стартовая масса 313 тонн, длина 46,3 метра, диаметр 2,9 метра) с разгонным блоком «Фрегат» № 122-05 и космическим аппаратом «Ресурс-П» № 4."

Why are they talking about a Fregat upper stage?
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