Elon Starship Update presentation - April 2024

[r8ix]

It looks like there’s something odd going on with the booster engines in the rendering, like no shielding or something. Any thoughts?

[deltaV]

Interesting things in Twitter video (https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1776669097490776563) with approximate timestamps:

19:09: 2.7M Starlink customers.

21:33: Starship in final form over 200 tonnes to orbit with full reuse, able to fly multiple times per day.

22:50: 80-90% chance catch booster with mechzilla this year.

23:27: want 2 successful ship landings in ocean before trying on land because they don't want to dump debris on land. Probably this year Starship will land in ocean, next year land on land and reuse.

24:25: will build 2 launch towers at starbase, 2 at cape, by sometime next year.

25:15: development launches at starbase, most operational launches from cape, presumably because they can access more inclinations from there

25:58: on Mars use starship as raw materials, not return them to earth usually

26:40: want to build multiple ships per day eventually for Mars. Next year demonstrate ship to ship prop transfer.

27:25: 5-6 refuel flights for every 1 flight to Mars

28:41: thrust for Raptor, 2 and 3. Raptor 3 is 280 tf sea level, 306 tf vaccum.

32:31: flight 3 40-50 tonnes payload to orbit, Starship 2 over 100 tonnes, Starship 3 over 200 tonnes. Starship 3 4050 tonnes booster prop load, 2300 tonnes ship prop load, 3 sea level raptors, 6 vacuum raptors (vs 3 vacuum engines previously).

34:07 Starship cost to LEO goal 2-3M$.

35:18: thousands of ships to Mars every 26 months

36:10: 200+ tonnes to Mars per ship

37:40: Mars landing site criteria: 2 km below "sea level", not too close to poles for better solar power

38:45: listed Mars surface things needed, not developing those yet, don't do cart before horse, starship is first.

39:40: self sustaining needs order 1M people, millions of tonnes

40:25: 10 launches per day, 1.5M tonnes to LEO per opportunity, 250k tonnes to Mars per opportunity

41:26: build ~1000 starships per year

42:04: offshore launch sites

[wannamoonbase]

Was anyone else notice the decrease in V1 payload to 30-50 tons?

No wonder they are eager to get V2 and V3 going. 

I’ve seen questions and wondered myself why not jump right to V3. 

Seems they can go to V2 now but need Raptor V3 for Starship V3 to work. 

There were a few very key pieces of info in that presentation. 

The next year will be exciting.


Edit: Maybe V3 also needs those new taller towers. 

[xvel]

I suppose v2 is somewhat compatible with current launch tower and good enough for now

[ZachF]

Some numbers to digest for Starship 3’s power:

~3.3 GW of pumping power for all the raptors to pump 29.5t of fuel every secondto 380(!?!) bar.

~160 GW of thrust power coming from ~29.5 tonnes of fuel leaving the engine nozzles at ~3,250 m/s every second.

~320 GW of thermal power from 23.06t of O2 oxidizing 5.77t of methane every second.

~356 GW of thermal power when the excess 640kg/s of unburned fuel rich methane burns in the atmosphere is added.

For comparison, the total primary energy consumption of Germany was 12.3 exajoules in 2022, if you divide that by time (since power = energy/time) you get a mean primary energy consumption of 390 GW.

So while Superheavy mk3 is burning, it’s releasing almost as much energy as the entirety of Germany and it’s 84 million people.

[deltaV]

So while Superheavy mk3 is burning, it’s releasing almost as much energy as the entirety of Germany and it’s 84 million people.

With 10 launches per day SpaceX will have a noticeable impact on climate change. I suspect that Congress will force them to use carbon neutral propellant since there are more people concerned about climate change than there are people who care about SpaceX's Mars program.

[ZachF]

So while Superheavy mk3 is burning, it’s releasing almost as much energy as the entirety of Germany and it’s 84 million people.

With 10 launches per day SpaceX will have a noticeable impact on climate change. I suspect that Congress will force them to use carbon neutral propellant since there are more people concerned about climate change than there are people who care about SpaceX's Mars program.

It’s only for 2 minutes though.

It holds ~1380t of methane which should yield about 5000t of CO2 per flight. 3650 flights a year equals 18m tonnes of CO2, which believe it or not would be only 0.05% of the world total.

The largest offender right now is China. China is responsible for >100% of global CO2 emissions growth since 2016, and 75% of global emissions growth since 2000.

[DanClemmensen]

So while Superheavy mk3 is burning, it’s releasing almost as much energy as the entirety of Germany and it’s 84 million people.

With 10 launches per day SpaceX will have a noticeable impact on climate change. I suspect that Congress will force them to use carbon neutral propellant since there are more people concerned about climate change than there are people who care about SpaceX's Mars program.

Bitcoin mining currently consumes perhaps 2% of US electrical consumption, and nobody seems to care:
    https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364

[Twark_Main]

Grid fins now again 90deg apart?

I can't see why. That would be a performance regression.

Could be they just changed the alignment, so one pair of grid fins is now in-line with the body flaps. That would reduce drag somewhat, at the expense of sacrificing the "pretty" symmetry.

[docmordrid]

So while Superheavy mk3 is burning, it’s releasing almost as much energy as the entirety of Germany and it’s 84 million people.

With 10 launches per day SpaceX will have a noticeable impact on climate change. I suspect that Congress will force them to use carbon neutral propellant since there are more people concerned about climate change than there are people who care about SpaceX's Mars program.

It’s only for 2 minutes though.

It holds ~1380t of methane which should yield about 5000t of CO2 per flight. 3650 flights a year equals 18m tonnes of CO2, which believe it or not would be only 0.05% of the world total.

The largest offender right now is China. China is responsible for >100% of global CO2 emissions growth since 2016, and 75% of global emissions growth since 2000.

To put that 18m tons of CO2 into context

#89 Sri Lanka 18,454,691t

[JWC]

Was anyone else notice the decrease in V1 payload to 30-50 tons?

No wonder they are eager to get V2 and V3 going. 

I’ve seen questions and wondered myself why not jump right to V3. 

Seems they can go to V2 now but need Raptor V3 for Starship V3 to work. 

There were a few very key pieces of info in that presentation. 

The next year will be exciting.


Edit: Maybe V3 also needs those new taller towers.

I always thought that they were building these things like battleships and the 100 tonnes was aspirational in initial prototypes.  I have posted about this before but nobody bought the idea.  Just like early F9 vs current F9s, the payload was low initially and grew up to (above?), it's aspirational goal through constant improvements.  I was surprised to see any confirmation of this.  Nice transparency on the part of SpaceX....

Agree that these are exciting times.

[Barley]

Easy enough to add a bolt ring interface and tweak the bulkhead layout to be easily separable, so the tanks become... tanks, and the hab section becomes a hab. Smart reuse.

People overestimate the permanence of welds and both the permanence and removability of nuts.   

Sometimes a designed cutline is better than a bolt circle.  Particularly if you're worried about leaks or would need a torch and a sledge to shift the **** bolts.

In any case there are several levels of reuse between erector set and melt it down.  You really need to run the trades instead of your gut.

[Twark_Main]

So while Superheavy mk3 is burning, it’s releasing almost as much energy as the entirety of Germany and it’s 84 million people.

With 10 launches per day SpaceX will have a noticeable impact on climate change. I suspect that Congress will force them to use carbon neutral propellant since there are more people concerned about climate change than there are people who care about SpaceX's Mars program.

It’s only for 2 minutes though.

It holds ~1380t of methane which should yield about 5000t of CO2 per flight. 3650 flights a year equals 18m tonnes of CO2, which believe it or not would be only 0.05% of the world total.

The largest offender right now is China. China is responsible for >100% of global CO2 emissions growth since 2016, and 75% of global emissions growth since 2000.

To put that 18m tons of CO2 into context

#89 Sri Lanka 18,454,691t

Even more context:

(source)

[alugobi]

I suspect that Congress will force them to use carbon neutral propellant

Is SLS carbon neutral?

[chopsticks]

Grid fins now again 90deg apart? Also looks like they are very low and actuators are inside the tank...

They look bigger as well.

[Twark_Main]

Grid fins now again 90deg apart? Also looks like they are very low and actuators are inside the tank...

They look bigger as well.

Honestly it just looks like a rendering mistake. Nothing about the new grid fin locations makes any sense.

It's not even reverting back to the old "X-Wing" configuration, which had the grid fins all at 45 degrees (45, 135, 225, and 315).  Instead, this is notably a cruciform arrangement (0, 90, 180, and 270), but there's no logical reason to put a grid fin smack dab in the leeward side of the body where it's totally useless.   

Insight appreciated. Can anyone figure out what's "delightfully counterintuitive" about this?

[wannamoonbase]

Was anyone else notice the decrease in V1 payload to 30-50 tons?

No wonder they are eager to get V2 and V3 going. 

I’ve seen questions and wondered myself why not jump right to V3. 

Seems they can go to V2 now but need Raptor V3 for Starship V3 to work. 

There were a few very key pieces of info in that presentation. 

The next year will be exciting.


Edit: Maybe V3 also needs those new taller towers.

I always thought that they were building these things like battleships and the 100 tonnes was aspirational in initial prototypes.  I have posted about this before but nobody bought the idea.  Just like early F9 vs current F9s, the payload was low initially and grew up to (above?), it's aspirational goal through constant improvements.  I was surprised to see any confirmation of this.  Nice transparency on the part of SpaceX....

Agree that these are exciting times.

The flight tumbling of IFT-1 showed a pretty robust structure.  But how much of that structure is needed for the flight loads and durability for launch and landing envelop.

For sure they will optimize relentlessly once it's flying more often and they gain experience.  But they see something here and are stretching.  (I suspect they are making a quick change to V2 for Starlink)

[c4fusion]

Grid fins now again 90deg apart? Also looks like they are very low and actuators are inside the tank...

They look bigger as well.

Honestly it just looks like a rendering mistake. Nothing about the new grid fin locations makes any sense.

It's not even reverting back to the old "X-Wing" configuration, which had the grid fins all at 45 degrees (45, 135, 225, and 315).  Instead, this is notably a cruciform arrangement (0, 90, 180, and 270), but there's no logical reason to put a grid fin smack dab in the leeward side of the body where it's totally useless.   

Insight appreciated. Can anyone figure out what's "delightfully counterintuitive" about this?

Because for when the booster coming back there is no difference between (0, 90, 180, and 270) and (45, 135, 225, and 315) since they are all just 90 degrees apart (they can just roll over 45 degrees to get the x wing design).  But the advantage is that you now can hide 2 of the grid fins behind the wake of the Starship flaps.

[Twark_Main]

when the booster coming back there is no difference between (0, 90, 180, and 270) and (45, 135, 225, and 315) since they are all just 90 degrees apart (they can just roll over 45 degrees to get the x wing design)

It's not the same, because the flight direction is determined by the chines.  They aim the chines face-on to the wind to increase body frontal area, which maximizes pitch-up authority and "free" aerobraking.

[c4fusion]

It seems like the center engines are popping out for v2 and v3.  It seems like they are going to change the thrust structure to just follow the curve of the thrust puck since the new engines don't need the shielding and therefore don't need to be on the same plane.  Seems like a pretty big weight savings there, but then again this rendering seems a bit incomplete like Twark_Main said above.

And if anyone cares, the heights are as follows:

Starship 1: 121 meters as known - 870 pixels
Starship 2: ~127 meters - 912 pixels
Starship 3: ~147.5 meters - 1060 pixels

when the booster coming back there is no difference between (0, 90, 180, and 270) and (45, 135, 225, and 315) since they are all just 90 degrees apart (they can just roll over 45 degrees to get the x wing design)

It's not the same, because the flight direction is determined by the chines.  They aim the chines face-on to the wind to increase body frontal area, which maximizes pitch-up authority and "free" aerobraking.

D'oh, forgot about the chines, yeah have no idea then.