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Extrapolating from the launch time on April 3, 17:24 UTC, forward four days, launch time would be circa 16:00 UTC = ~12:00 noon EDT.

NextSpaceflight (Updated March 28th) has 23:02 as the launch time:
https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/7237
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https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1773445042717290719

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Pump has been repaired. On track for tomorrow’s window
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Ben Cooper's Launch Photography Viewing Guide; updated March 28 before NROL-70 launch; my bold:
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The next SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Eutelsat 36D television satellite from pad 39A on March 30 at 5:52-8:00 p.m. EDT. A Falcon 9 will launch a Starlink batch from pad 40 on March 30 earliest at 6-10 p.m. EDT. A Falcon 9 will launch a Starlink batch from pad 40 on April 5 around 5-9 p.m. EDT. Upcoming launches include more Starlink batches. A Falcon 9 will launch the Bandwagon-1 rideshare mission on  April 7.
Is this back to the April 5 launch?
If so, = 5 April ~21:00 to 6 April ~01:00

Or, is it carrying a missed edit forward?

The NGA website has been updated this morning. I checked the NAVAREA IV active notices for all Rocket Launching notices. What they have matches the NAVAREA IV emails that I'm holding, which are NAVAREA IV 333/24 for March 28 (NROL-70), NAVAREA IV 350/24 for March 30 (Eutelsat 36D), and NAVAREA IV 351/24 for March 31 (Starlink Group 6-45).
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Max payload of Starship V1 in expendable mode (like the other rockets) is ~200 tons.

V3 is expected to be ~200 tons with full reusability and ~400 tons expendable. Length will grow by 20 to 30 meters and thrust to ~10k tons.

Any bets on how much of that 20-30m is SuperHeavy and how much is Starship?

10,000tf thrust with 33 engines would put chamber pressure about 285bar, which would be somewhere between what the previously described Raptor v3.1 and v3.2 were reputed to be.

With subcooled propellants, you get 56.8t of (averaged) methalox per additional meter of tankage.  If each ring segment is 2.3t (my guess for sheet metal + stringers) and 1.829m high (not a guess), that's 106.2t per segment.¹ 

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¹Average methalox is only good for this if we assume that common and forward domes are movable to anywhere to preserve the exact mixture.  Is that true?  For example, if you had to attach dome flanges and doublers across a ring stacking weld, would that be OK?

All going to the Starship.  There's less advantage to putting more fuel in the booster.   Getting up faster (i.e. with more thrust) means less gravity losses, which makes up a bit for having less fuel on the booster.  Also, the boost-back+landing burn uses more fuel than the flip and burn of Starship, so adding dry mass to Booster is contra-indicated.

My prediction:  The starship v3 is getting 5 rings - 3 for fuel, 2 for more cargo space.

I think your estimate for 2.3t per ring is a bit high.  It's 1.68t for the metal sheet, I doubt the stringers mass .62t.

The stringers on the Shuttle External Tank massed 11.3% of the total dry mass of the ET.  On that bases I'd guess at 1.9t-2t.

The prop and cargo volume increases seems to result in about 1,800t total prop and 1200m^3 of cargo volume, if the stretch is equal between prop and cargo ~2.5 rings equivalent each. I went through the complete mass ratios and prop burn ratios for LOX and LNG plus specific mass/m^3 of each to calculate an new value for mass per 1 m^3 of volume. Then multiplied times the volumes available in both 10m sections times the new average mass/m^3 of prop and then add it to the bassline 1200 yielding 1800t. Then doing similar for cargo volumes and the cargo volume doubles from 600 to 1200.

This gives best optimization of prop/ payload mass/ cargo volume.

100t payload capability and cargo volume 600 m^3 with new max payload capability of 200t and cargo volume of1200m^3. A straight factor of 2 for both payload mass and volume.
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The numbers that NSF has gathered through that media platform are truly impressive. It's the top priority for Chris and his team, who are working hard to cover all space-related news and provide successful live launch coverage. I want to express my gratitude to them and to anyone on the forum who has supported Chris and his team in their efforts. I wish them all the best in the future.

Best.
Tony.
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Yup, that's a biggie, and likely needs an interplanetary proof-of-concept mission of sufficient duration to evaluate.  But it's a mission that can be mounted as soon as refueling works, at almost any reliability.

I doubt that a Starship can be thrown at Mars once refueling is proven, for a couple reasons.

One, the Starship avionics, comms, etc. for a Mars mission will almost certainly be fundamentally different from the Starship avionics, comms, etc. for a launcher or HLS mission.  The mission durations and distances are orders of magnitude different and that’s going to drive big differences in reliability, redundancy, shielding, comm power, antennas, etc.  Put another way, I would be shocked if what’s flying inside Starship today or a couple years from now is even minimally Mars-capable, forget betting a $10B Mars mission on it.

Two, SX, or at least the Starship “division” (for lack of a better term), appears wholly and totally focused on HLS (with some StarLink deployment along the way).  That will probably tie them up at least thru 2026.  And more likely, Artemis III won’t go off until ~2028, maybe even ~2030.  And then there’s Artemis IV, a somewhat longer-term lunar surface capability, 2 years after that.  I just don’t see SX turning in earnest towards a Mars-capable Starship until one, maybe both, of those missions is done, some 6 to 8 years from now.  And then, even if they’ve done parallel development and a Mars-capable Starship is in the queue, it will take a couple years to run a shakedown mission out to Mars and back, so that’s 8-10 years out.  And if there’s a major hiccup or two along the way — cryo refueling at that scale is really hard to master, an accident with the HLS landers, the Mars shakedown fails — now we’re talking 10+ years.

That’s why I think a decision on whether to risk a big mission like MSR on something like Starkicker is roughly a decade out.  I would love to be proven wrong and shown that the Starships under assembly in TX today have Mars-capable innards.  But as we all know, SX does iterative Silicon Valley development, not all-up NASA development, so it would be highly out-of-character for existing or future Starships to be Mars-capable for some years to come.

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My biggest peeve with the MSR plan of record is that it assumes that an SEP-driven vehicle is going to be the active RPOD element for catching an unpropelled volleyball, out of a fairly loosely determined orbit, and the cumulative risk of that comes out to be anything close to the proper profile for a Class A mission.

If they can't find a way to make a bigger MAV, with a real orbital maneuvering system, then the mission should be shelved until they find a way.  But if they insist on pushing this, give me a 200t spacecraft with a sustainable RCS system (an admittedly sore point after Thursday) over the thing with the Hall thrusters.

I think you’re right that something like Starkicker could allow a Mars sample return mission to trade some of the less-proven, fragile, miniaturized, high-tech, expensive systems that MSR currently baselines for dumb, inexpensive, propellant mass.  I don’t know that this would save $, but it would probably reduce cost growth threats and improve mission reliability over the MSR baseline, if that decision could be made today.  I just don’t think the decision could be made based on where Starship stands today and probably not for the better part of the next decade, is my guess.

As you probably know, mission cost is driven first by s/c mass and second by s/c complexity.  So increasing mass almost never reduces cost except when increased mass enables major reductions in complexity (and managers can also keep customers from adding bells and whistles to the mass budget).  Trading complexity for inexpensive propellant is one of the few ways these increased-mass-for-reduced-complexity trades work and that’s born out by an NRC study or two on what science missions could best make use of superheavy launchers.  This is what I like about Starkicker.  It may not save $ over the MSR redesign — who knows what the new managers will be up against — but it could certainly eliminate a few major cost threats and boost reliability by removing systems complexity.  If a Mars-capable Starship had recently completed a successful shakedown run, something like Starkicker would be a no-brainer to put in the trade space.

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As a practical matter, if the MIRT is supposed to cough up an architecture that's capable of passing a do-over PDR next month, you're right.  But I'm guessing that the output of the MIRT will be whistling past the graveyard, at best.

<rant>The right thing to do is to stay in formulation phase for another synod.  They won't do that, because then they have to fire the staff.  But this has clusterf*ck written all over it. </rant>

I think the MIRT will produce a recommended architecture from a high-level trade space backed by  conservative mass and cost models. It will be enough to get off the stick and say, yes, we’re confident the sample can be this big so start wrapping the rest of the mission systems around that.  But I can’t imagine that it will be a PDR-level product yet.  That will be the work of the new mission managers.

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I'm kinda surprised that the nav aspects are a big deal.  Isn't the nav tech easily portable to almost any spacecraft?  And you have plenty of time to fiddle with the guidance on the way home.  As long as JPL coordinates the onboarding the appropriate black boxes, this doesn't seem like a TRL<8 kind of problem.

I suppose JPL could one-time provide comms for Starkicker, but SX will eventually need that capability in-house for its own Mars missions.  The DSN is way oversubscribed as is — no way JPL can support scores of SX crew/passengers trading videos with family back on Earth.

But my point was about more than comms.  JPL is almost unique institutionally in its ability to precisely and reliably operate s/c at interplanetary distances.  Even if you have the comms — and I don’t think SX really knows yet how it will create a DSN-like capability — the mission ops are still a very big deal in terms of developing the human expertise, the computer models, the procedures, etc.  Navigation at the Moon and navigation at Mars require precision that is orders of magnitude different because the distances are orders of magnitude different.  Operations at the Moon can be managed in near-real time with only a couple second comm lag, while operations at Mars are radically different because of the 20-40 minute comm lag.  Etc.  I’m not saying that SX can’t develop such a capability.  I’m just saying that it’s going to take time and effort and that there’s no a whole lot out there to build on, use as a model, or steal expertise from besides JPL.

A lot of what many NASA centers do in-house can be done with existing workforces and facilities elsewhere in the space sector.  That’s not true of JPL, at least until SX or someone else replicates some of that capability.

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Again, I think the Iron Law of Bureaucracy forbids a StarKicker solution.

I don’t think so.  I think it’s just poor timing. 

NASA’s charter to the second MSR independent review board directed Figueroa and his team to look at “outsourcing” options that could “reduce technical risks” or “improve schedule and/or cost margins”.  So NASA, or at least Zurbuchen and his team, was/is open to solutions like Starkicker, which basically outsources the cruise, arrival, part of the sample rendezvous, and the return to a Starship.

I know Figueroa and one of the cost estimators on the review board.  They’re good, open-minded guys.  But there wasn’t much that they could do with that part of their charter.  As they explain in their report, outsourcing decisions for something like MSR require that “possible sources” show “credible and assured availability” and there is just no way to do that yet for something like Starkicker.

I would contrast that with the old COTS program that I helped start.  COTS was not launching or operating segments of a one-of-a-kind, $10B mission.  As folks liked to derisively joke at our expense, we were outsourcing the shipment of astronaut underwear to the ISS.  If we screwed up, billions of taxpayer dollars were not flushed down the toilet, a once-in-a-generation research opportunity was not lost, and there were backups in Progress, ATV, HTV, (theoretically) Orion, and (last resort) reduced use of ISS logistics.  So we COTS managers could take risks and place bets that MSR managers cannot.  We could bet that a company that had only sorta flown an SLV (F1) could eventually launch human-scale capsules to the ISS on an MLV (F9).  Although Starship is much farther along than F9/Dragon was when we started COTS, MSR managers are not in a position to make such a bet yet just by the much more conservative nature of their mission.

Again, if a Mars-capable Starship was now successfully completing the return leg of its shakedown cruise to Mars and back, this conversation and Figueroa’s report and the options actually available to the MIRT and the new MSR managers would be very different.  But SX is just not there yet, probably won’t be for considerable years to come, and NASA has to make a near-term decision on MSR.  It’s not a conspiracy.  It’s just poor timing.

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Do you think that NASA needs to have a Big Cheap Cat IVb Lander strategy for Mars?

I think folks are getting worked up over a problem that hasn’t been posed in any concrete way yet and need to relax.  The bottom line is that COSPAR and NASA PPO don’t have planetary protection guidelines and requirements for human or other “dirty” landed missions on Mars because there are no such missions on the books yet. I have no reason to believe that when SX or whoever starts seeking US govt approval for a landed Starship dry run to Mars that NASA PPO won’t work to accommodate it or that COSPAR will work against it — these are planetary geologists, astrobiologists, etc. that want that kind of capability more than anyone else.  But depending on the specifics of the mission, they’re going to say things like stay at least X kilometers away from these sensitive sites, don’t dig/drill in these areas, etc.  And X may change over time depending on the specific mission (unmanned dry-run versus manned mission) and/or what researchers find at Jezero, the poles, etc. in the years to come.

In fact Rummel et al 2014 argued that based on available data there are no special regions on Mars, what they have is some uncertain regions.

Decade out of date.  NASA PPO requirements are from 2022 (I think) and remain the same.  Something like Starship that can’t be built in a clean room can’t meet the requirements for a location like Jezero, whether the location is called “special”, “uncertain”, or something else.

See also paragraph directly above.  No one has grappled with planetary protection for a manned Mars landing (or similar) because there’s no such mission on the books.  Places like Jezero will probably remain out of bounds for some time to come, but there’s no reason to believe that such landings will be ruled out  by planetary protection requirements, either.  The work on them just has yet to take place.

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So you're betting SpaceX wouldn't get to Mars orbit in 10+ years, well let's wait and see then.

A decade, give or take, yes.  See top of this post.

Another way to think about it... F9/Dragon first launched to orbit in June 2010.  That’s about where Starship is now.  It would be another decade, May 2020, until the first manned F9/Dragon mission to ISS.  That’s about where Starship needs to get to for Artemis III.  Assuming Musk doesn’t get run over by the proverbial bus in the interim, I think only sometime after Artemis III (maybe IV) will SX be able to turn Starship development towards Mars in earnest.

Unlike the decade between orbit and first manned mission for F9/Dragon, I don’t think it will take from 2024 today to 2034 for Starship to achieve its first manned landing on the Moon.  But it won’t be 2026 like on the current Artemis manifest.  2028-2030 is much more likely.  If you don’t believe me, listen to another old industry hand:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/the-oracle-who-predicted-slss-launch-in-2023-has-thoughts-about-artemis-iii/

Until the first successful HLS landing or two, Starship development will likely be consumed just getting to the Moon.  I think only sometime after that will significant resources be allocated to producing and testing a Mars-capable version of Starship, and that will require a couple more years just for the shakedown cruise alone.

Add that assumes no major problems.  A major accident proving out refueling, lunar landing, or the Mars shakedown could add a couple more years.

Add it up, and I think we’re out in the 2032-2036 timeframe before SX has completed the shakedown cruise of a Mars-capable Starship, and we can responsibly begin to consider it for something as costly and critical as MSR.

I’d love to be proven wrong and find out that the Starships sitting in TX are Mars-capable.  But that’s just not how SX does development.

There's room for argument for whether SpaceX will be allowed to land a private mission, with no NASA funding, on Mars without the hardware being Category IVa-compliant.  But for NASA missions, there's no room at all.

No, if SX is a US company launching a private Mars landing from US soil, then they have to get a license from the US federal government for the mission.  Whether civil, commercial, or military, it’s a US government obligation under the Outer Space Treaty to ensure that launches and missions from its soil and managed by entities under its jurisdiction don’t do various bad things to the interests of other signatories to the treaty.  It’s unclear at this point whether the Dept of Commerce or the FAA will oversee the licensing process for such novel private missions.  But for planetary protection concerns, either Commerce or the FAA will almost certainly turn to NASA PPO for their expertise and requirements in this area, which don’t exist anywhere else in the government.

Again, I don’t think this is a cause for worry.  Just because requirements for human/dirty Mars landers don’t exist, doesn’t mean that the government will forbid them.  It just means that the government hasn’t had the problem posed to it in any concrete way yet.

VSECOTSPE is claiming Starship is not technically capable of reaching Mars orbit in 10+ years,

No, I’ve argued that due to programmatic constraints — workforce, budget, management attention — SX won’t be finishing Starship’s first shakedown cruise to/from Mars for another decade, give or take.  See top of this post and my response a few paragraphs above to your earlier post.

If the Starship development program was focused solely on Mars, could SX throw a Mars-capable Starship at the red planet in the next, say, five years, by 2029-ish?  Sure.  I think that’s realistic.

Is that realistic when Starship development is focused instead on HLS, likely thru 2028-2030?  No, I don’t think that’s realistic.

I could be wrong, but I don’t see any evidence to the contrary.  And, FWIW, I did predict the year for the first Orion/SLS launch (2022), way back in 2014, when the PMs were still claiming first launch by 2018.

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and until they do NASA cannot rely on SpaceX for transportation to Mars orbit. The latter claim is wrong, given NASA is already relying on SpaceX and Blue Origin to transport astronauts to lunar surface even though neither have demonstrated any capabilities around the Moon.

Apples and oranges, programmatically.  Artemis is a series of largely interchangeable missions, with backup capabilities (at least the two different HLS landers) and off-ramps (Gateway).  If a mission fails, the program is not lost.  MSR is a one-time mission to bring back a specific set of samples.  If the mission fails, the program is lost.  Programmatically, Artemis can take chances that MSR cannot.

Now the counterargument to that is Mars sample return should also be a series of missions.  And there may be merit to that, and NASA and its science community is beginning to think in those terms for other needed support capabilities at Mars.  See article linked below. 

https://spacenews.com/nasa-studies-to-examine-commercial-partnerships-for-mars-exploration/

But to redo MSR in such a way would require us to turn back the clock a couple decades to when the planetary science community started to get serious about Mars sample return yet have the prescience to understand that a capability like Starship would be in the offing in a generation, even though it probably wasn’t even a glimmer in Musk’s eye at that point.  And then get the science community to start planning a program leading to multiple sample returns built around this non-existent commercial heavy launch/interplanetary cruise capability.  It’s an understatement to say that’s kind of unrealistic.

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The former shows he has very low opinion of SpaceX's technical capabilities, even though they are the most powerful and innovative space company on this entire planet.

On the contrary, I was the program exec at NASA HQ who started COTS, the program that saved SX.  I long believed and still do that the private sector can fulfill roles and manage capabilities in civil space that have been limited to government actors for decades and do so more efficiently and reliably.  SX is the proof.  But I’ve been in this sector for several decades, and there are limits to how fast an organization can get something developed and tested, like a Mars-capable version of Starship, especially when that organization is laser-focused on a different goal, like HLS.  The military saying about armchair generals and logistics also applies to space cadets and company workforce, resources, and attention.

Hope this helps, everyone.
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Missions To The Moon (HSF) / Re: Gateway Updates Thread
« Last post by sdsds on Today at 07:10 pm »
[...]
I don't think this is an absurd architecture.

Starship propellant tank sizing shows what it takes for a single-stage vehicle to get from LEO to the edge of the Moon's gravity well, and then down to the lunar surface and back, while taking copious habitable volume along for the ride.

What's stunning to the point of absurdity is that LEO refilling enables a lunar lander that huge.
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Chinese Launchers / Re: Shenzhou-18 - CZ-2F/G - Jiuquan - NET Mar, 2024
« Last post by JSz on Today at 07:07 pm »
There is a month left before the launch of the Shenzhou-18 manned spacecraft. The Shenzhou 18 manned spacecraft is expected to be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China on April 25 around 20:00 Beijing time.
Crew forecast: 01. Ye Guangfu (commander, 1st space flight on Shenzhou-13, 182 days), 02. new from the third batch of astronauts in 2020, 03. new from the third batch of astronauts in 2020 (payload specialist).

Is there any basis for these predictions in the form of information or even leaks from sources close to the official ones? I am referring to the date of the launch as well as the name of the commander. Because I am convinced that since they are given here, there is some basis.
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Other US Launchers / Re: US Launch Schedule
« Last post by Salo on Today at 07:07 pm »
https://spacenews.com/vast-space-hires-former-voyager-space-executive/
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While Vast does not have a NASA award to work on commercial space station designs, it is privately developing Haven-1, a crew-tended module it plans to launch as soon as the end of the next year. It will be visited by one or more crews flying on SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/haven-1.htm
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Not necessarily, if you were to use the booster as a kick stage in conjunction with the Moon for a slingshot maneuver for a high energy departure into the system, you could use the Moon to help bring the booster back to low Earth orbit. Unfortunately, the outer 20 engines would be useless dead weight without modifications to make them restartable or have them drop off above the Karman line.

Kickstage remaining in space is an interesting idea, but I don't think it is realistic, it would still require maintenance and refurbishment, which is rather difficult to do in space.
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