Author Topic: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy  (Read 312912 times)

Online DanClemmensen

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #180 on: 11/24/2022 03:48 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?
Because it will fully reusable, Starship will be cheaper per mission than existing crew transport (e.g., Crew Dragon, Starliner, Soyuz). It will also be cheaper than proposed near-term competitors, I think. When/if Starship is fully crew qualified (certified, validated, authorized, whatever), it will be cheaper to fly than F9/D2 in every case, and SpaceX will want to retire Crew Dragon (by then the last remaining user of Falcon 9) so they can retire Falcon 9. It's a lot cheaper even for a crew of four. For larger crews, cost per seat is of course even cheaper.

Separately from crew transport, crewed Starship missions can perform almost all functions of a CLD, far better and for far less cost. For the few remaining CLD functions, a small permanent station for the permanent and long-term experiments, with a rotating set of crewed Starships on overlapping six-month missions for crew accommodations, would be more cost-effective than a crewed CLD.

Offline uhuznaa

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #181 on: 11/24/2022 04:45 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?
Because it will fully reusable, Starship will be cheaper per mission than existing crew transport (e.g., Crew Dragon, Starliner, Soyuz). It will also be cheaper than proposed near-term competitors, I think. When/if Starship is fully crew qualified (certified, validated, authorized, whatever), it will be cheaper to fly than F9/D2 in every case, and SpaceX will want to retire Crew Dragon (by then the last remaining user of Falcon 9) so they can retire Falcon 9. It's a lot cheaper even for a crew of four. For larger crews, cost per seat is of course even cheaper.

Separately from crew transport, crewed Starship missions can perform almost all functions of a CLD, far better and for far less cost. For the few remaining CLD functions, a small permanent station for the permanent and long-term experiments, with a rotating set of crewed Starships on overlapping six-month missions for crew accommodations, would be more cost-effective than a crewed CLD.

Not to forget about the fact that SpaceX already stopped producing Dragons and only a short while ago agreed to build another one. They do not seem to expect flying them for decades to come.

If SpaceX doesn't just want to use Starship for launching Starlink and the (quite limited) market for third-party satellite launches as well as whatever NASA wants to contract them for, LEO space stations should be a very obvious market. And Starship looks very much as if it could serve as an ideal base for what the good old Shuttle was meant to be. Add an escape pod, a mid-deck or two, a cargo bay (maybe with a grappling arm), an airlock, a docking port and you have a LEO shuttle that really deserves its name and should be both safer and more capable than the Shuttle ever was.

With some custom module in the cargo bay it even would make a great temporary space station for zero g R&D. Launch, stay in LEO for a few weeks or months with a small engineering crew, land again. Or do the same for space tourism, should be great for a three week LEO cruise...


Offline Lee Jay

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #182 on: 11/24/2022 05:07 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?

Space stations? Commercial/private space stations should be one of the things that Starship should make much more practical (and less costly). And these require both shuttling crews as well as maybe maintenance and construction work.

Also shuttling crews to outbounds ships that you don't want to launch with the crew.

F9/Dragon are limited (only very limited cargo, no airlock) and at some point it may make only little economic sense to keep them flying if you have a fleet of Starships and boosters anyway. Not in the next years necessarily.

So, nothing funded.

Offline Lee Jay

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #183 on: 11/24/2022 05:10 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?
Because it will fully reusable, Starship will be cheaper per mission than existing crew transport (e.g., Crew Dragon, Starliner, Soyuz).

I doubt it.

Quote
It will also be cheaper than proposed near-term competitors, I think. When/if Starship is fully crew qualified (certified, validated, authorized, whatever), it will be cheaper to fly than F9/D2 in every case, and SpaceX will want to retire Crew Dragon (by then the last remaining user of Falcon 9) so they can retire Falcon 9.

My guess is NASA won't let SS dock to ISS.  Too big and heavy.

Offline steveleach

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #184 on: 11/24/2022 05:11 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?

Space stations? Commercial/private space stations should be one of the things that Starship should make much more practical (and less costly). And these require both shuttling crews as well as maybe maintenance and construction work.

Also shuttling crews to outbounds ships that you don't want to launch with the crew.

F9/Dragon are limited (only very limited cargo, no airlock) and at some point it may make only little economic sense to keep them flying if you have a fleet of Starships and boosters anyway. Not in the next years necessarily.

So, nothing funded.
Is this thread only about funded missions? That would seem.... limiting.

Offline steveleach

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #185 on: 11/24/2022 05:12 pm »
My guess is NASA won't let SS dock to ISS.  Too big and heavy.
Wasn't this discussed in another thread recently, with a comparison between Starship and Shuttle? I can't remember the outcome.

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #186 on: 11/24/2022 05:22 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?

Space stations? Commercial/private space stations should be one of the things that Starship should make much more practical (and less costly). And these require both shuttling crews as well as maybe maintenance and construction work.

Also shuttling crews to outbounds ships that you don't want to launch with the crew.

F9/Dragon are limited (only very limited cargo, no airlock) and at some point it may make only little economic sense to keep them flying if you have a fleet of Starships and boosters anyway. Not in the next years necessarily.

So, nothing funded.
Gravitics is funded and depends on Starship. Not to mention Polaris.
« Last Edit: 11/24/2022 05:32 pm by Robotbeat »
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

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Offline uhuznaa

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #187 on: 11/24/2022 05:27 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?

Space stations? Commercial/private space stations should be one of the things that Starship should make much more practical (and less costly). And these require both shuttling crews as well as maybe maintenance and construction work.

Also shuttling crews to outbounds ships that you don't want to launch with the crew.

F9/Dragon are limited (only very limited cargo, no airlock) and at some point it may make only little economic sense to keep them flying if you have a fleet of Starships and boosters anyway. Not in the next years necessarily.

So, nothing funded.

Right, but closer than any Mars mission at the least. But I didn't meant to argue, sorry.

Online edzieba

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #188 on: 11/24/2022 05:47 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?

Space stations? Commercial/private space stations should be one of the things that Starship should make much more practical (and less costly). And these require both shuttling crews as well as maybe maintenance and construction work.

Also shuttling crews to outbounds ships that you don't want to launch with the crew.

F9/Dragon are limited (only very limited cargo, no airlock) and at some point it may make only little economic sense to keep them flying if you have a fleet of Starships and boosters anyway. Not in the next years necessarily.

So, nothing funded.
Polaris mission 3.

Offline TheRadicalModerate

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #189 on: 11/24/2022 06:31 pm »
Having such a dedicated crew Starship for LEO missions ...

What LEO missions?

In addition to all the current applications for crewed LEO missions, a lot of this thread seems to be pointing to a Starship variant that's adequately safe for launching up to about 25 people at a time, but which would be severely handicapped if the same Starship had to go BEO.  There are weight, complexity, and propellant management problems taking a vanilla Starship to the lunar surface and back, and the necessarily limited crew space needed for some kind of abortable capsule make it unsuitable for missions lasting more than a few days.

So the new LEO application is in ferrying crews up to BEO-capable Starships, either LSSes or MarsShips, and also offloading those ships as they return to LEO.  If you assume that there are safety issues with direct EDL at translunar/interplanetary speeds, then deep aerocapture¹ seems like the way to go, with a separate variant that's crew-certifiable for launch/EDL getting everybody home.

__________
¹For purposes of argument, let's define "deep aerocapture" as the ability to use some kind if aerobraking to put a vehicle into a low, circular orbit in a few hours or days, rather than a few weeks or months.
« Last Edit: 11/24/2022 06:36 pm by TheRadicalModerate »

Offline TheRadicalModerate

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #190 on: 11/24/2022 06:45 pm »
Not to forget about the fact that SpaceX already stopped producing Dragons and only a short while ago agreed to build another one. They do not seem to expect flying them for decades to come.

I would love clarification on what the plan is here.  Are they leaving the line in place and just reassigning the staff?  Are they laying the staff off but leaving the line in place?  Are they dismantling the line?

All of these have restart costs, especially if the gap between any new builds is so long that institutional memory begins to decay.  But some are a lot more restartable than others.

That said, it does seem that SpaceX is betting big on Starship being crew-certifiable for launch/EDL.  Whether that's because they think they have a sufficiently robust conops to achieve certification or because Elon, Cortés-like, is burning his boats on the distant shore in order to drive his people toward finding a solution, I don't know.

PS:  Not building new D2's still requires refurbishing the old ones.  I'd guess that keeps most of the line open and certainly maintains institutional knowledge.
« Last Edit: 11/24/2022 07:07 pm by TheRadicalModerate »

Offline Lee Jay

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #191 on: 11/24/2022 06:49 pm »
Gravitics is funded and depends on Starship. Not to mention Polaris.

I never heard of Gravitics so I looked it up and the quote I found was, "StarMax’s family of modules is compatible to launch on any of the next-generation launch vehicles, including SpaceX’s Starship, ULA’s Vulcan, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn."

I never counted Polaris as "funded" beyond mission 1.

I could be wrong on both counts as I haven't followed either one of these.

Offline uhuznaa

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #192 on: 11/24/2022 07:02 pm »
Not to forget about the fact that SpaceX already stopped producing Dragons and only a short while ago agreed to build another one. They do not seem to expect flying them for decades to come.

I would love clarification on what the plan is here.  Are they leaving the line in place and just reassigning the staff?  Are they laying the staff off but leaving the line in place?  Are they dismantling the line?

All of these have restart costs, especially if the gap between any new builds is so long that institutional memory begins to decay.  But some are a lot more restartable than others.

That said, it does seem that SpaceX is betting big on Starship being crew-certifiable for launch/EDL.  Whether that's because they think they have a sufficiently robust conops to achieve certification or because Elon, Cortés-like, is burning his boats on the distant shore in order to drive his people toward finding a solution, I don't know.

It will be hard but not impossible if they build and launch and land enough of them over time and iron out the bugs. And I think with Starlink and HLS tankers they will fly a whole lot of them. At least it looks as if this the plan, how realistic this is needs to be seen.

With the F9 they seem to have had quite some success with this approach. Launch and land enough of them and sooner or later they will run out of new failure modes.

Of course all of this is the typical "success must be a possible outcome" approach of Elon Musk and this has shown some ugly cracks in the last month or two.

Offline TheRadicalModerate

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #193 on: 11/24/2022 07:03 pm »
In my view, Starship with landing legs is a very capable machine, also when it comes to emergency aborts and landings. Unlike the Shuttle it can land anywhere reasonably flat. I can well see it landing in an unprepared field or parking lot somewhere.

Since the assumption is that you've had a nav error, picking a flat piece of dry land isn't always going to be possible.  Rough-surface legs may be worse than useless, and they're exactly useless for water landings.

Or maybe rapidly inflatable airbags in the legs that keep Starship upright while they let the prop tanks fill with seawater, getting it to a half-submerged configuration.

I don't know about the inflatable airbags (they'd just make the center of mass even higher, increasing the chances of tipping over), but rapid flooding of the LOX tank is an interesting idea.  I have a model (which I don't particularly trust) that indicates that, if you could fill the LOX tank completely with water, the center of mass would be below the waterline.

Interesting problem, though:  water + LOX --> explosive GOX vaporization + lots of ice.  You'd need to get the tank fully flooded before thrusters could no longer keep it upright--probably not more than a few seconds.

I don't think letting a Starship fall over on its side in the water is viable, because there will always be wave conditions that will break it open.

Offline InterestedEngineer

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #194 on: 11/24/2022 07:46 pm »
I don't think letting a Starship fall over on its side in the water is viable, because there will always be wave conditions that will break it open.

Why would a pressurized Starship break open falling over its side into the water?

Offline TheRadicalModerate

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #195 on: 11/24/2022 07:49 pm »
I don't think letting a Starship fall over on its side in the water is viable, because there will always be wave conditions that will break it open.

Why would a pressurized Starship break open falling over its side into the water?

It's not so much the falling over as huge swells with huge chop on top of them.  That's an extremely structurally uncertain environment.  It's a rocket, not small cargo ship.

Offline Lee Jay

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #196 on: 11/24/2022 07:58 pm »
I don't think letting a Starship fall over on its side in the water is viable, because there will always be wave conditions that will break it open.

Why would a pressurized Starship break open falling over its side into the water?

SN10 didn't even survive a hard landing on its bottom.  You really think you can tip over a 16 story building into the turbulent sea and expect it to survive?

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #197 on: 11/24/2022 08:05 pm »
I don't think letting a Starship fall over on its side in the water is viable, because there will always be wave conditions that will break it open.

Why would a pressurized Starship break open falling over its side into the water?

SN10 didn't even survive a hard landing on its bottom.  You really think you can tip over a 16 story building into the turbulent sea and expect it to survive?
Because it can be engineered (and tested) to do so.
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To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline Lee Jay

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #198 on: 11/24/2022 08:29 pm »
I don't think letting a Starship fall over on its side in the water is viable, because there will always be wave conditions that will break it open.

Why would a pressurized Starship break open falling over its side into the water?

SN10 didn't even survive a hard landing on its bottom.  You really think you can tip over a 16 story building into the turbulent sea and expect it to survive?
Because it can be engineered (and tested) to do so.

At what mass penalty?

There's a reason ship hulls are 3-10 times (or more) thicker than SS's tanks.

Online HMXHMX

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Re: Abort options for Starship and Starship/SuperHeavy
« Reply #199 on: 11/24/2022 08:36 pm »
Gravitics is funded and depends on Starship. Not to mention Polaris.

I never heard of Gravitics so I looked it up and the quote I found was, "StarMax’s family of modules is compatible to launch on any of the next-generation launch vehicles, including SpaceX’s Starship, ULA’s Vulcan, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn."

I never counted Polaris as "funded" beyond mission 1.

I could be wrong on both counts as I haven't followed either one of these.

As Gravitics' Chief Architect, I can confirm that while our "family" of modules can be sized for pretty much all larger launch vehicles, the first one being built is Starship-specific (hence the name).

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