SpaceX Starship : First Flight : Starbase, TX : 20 April 2023 - DISCUSSION

[kevinof]

But do they? Were they fixed platforms or station keeping and if the latter, do they still have all the gear to sit active in one spot?

Last I heard their "oil rigs" were still getting taken apart and a long way from being ready for sea.

Doubt it. Nowhere near finished and also needs propulsion, control and positioning. Think they are at least 8/12 months from having anything near that.

Would they have one of the platforms ready to put out in the Gulf for the SH landing?

The platforms in question already have propulsion, control and positioning, that comes standard with free floating oil platforms. All they need to do is remove all the stuff so there's a clear, level deck.

Like this:

https://twitter.com/Herbo/status/1392556639434256390

[RocketLover0119]

My thoughts on all this.

There is still a lot of things to be done enforce this happens. Table needs to be brought over to the launch site, some more GSE tanks need to be rolled out (not completely sure if ALL the GSE tanks are needed for the first flight), tower needs to be ready, stacking (which can go pretty quickly once it starts) needs to happen. Obviously, not a small list, however, this is SpaceX, and I’m confident July is a month they can meet.

As far as recovery ops are concerned, everything makes sense. Don’t want to risk the pad or anything nearby, so offshore landings are smart.

I think once this flight happens, the cadence will sky rocket.

Also, seeing this thread in the “missions” section makes it seem a lot more real! 

[kevinstout]

are there FCC filings for the droneships when they are used?  I seem to remember something like that.  But perhpas my brain made it up.

[Tommyboy]

It surprises me that nobody has mentioned that an other launch is also scheduled for NET July 20th. I wonder which one will get more media attention should they both occur on that day.

[Alvian@IDN]

It surprises me that nobody has mentioned that an other launch is also scheduled for NET July 20th. I wonder which one will get more media attention should they both occur on that day.

Where can I find it in the filings?

[steveleach]

Doubt it. Nowhere near finished and also needs propulsion, control and positioning. Think they are at least 8/12 months from having anything near that.

Would they have one of the platforms ready to put out in the Gulf for the SH landing?

If it's ready (by any definition of "ready"), they'll probably land on it; if it's not, they'll soft land on the water. No need to stick rigidly to a pre-defined plan.

All IMHO, of course.

[su27k]

It surprises me that nobody has mentioned that an other launch is also scheduled for NET July 20th. I wonder which one will get more media attention should they both occur on that day.

July who? 

I think it's safe to say there's very little chance Starship will actually launch in July, so Blue Origin is pretty safe from being overshadowed.

[cdebuhr]

It surprises me that nobody has mentioned that an other launch is also scheduled for NET July 20th. I wonder which one will get more media attention should they both occur on that day.

A humble suggestion .... instead of "that other launch", please just specify which launch you're talking about (ideally with a reference).  The latter would make you seem helpful and informative, the former conjures an image of "Nah nah nah nah!  I know something you don't know!!" from the lips of a bratty child.

Please note that I am unequivocally not saying that is how you intended this to come across, it's just the first thing that came to mind as I wondered what mission you were talking about.  Id really appreciate it if you could enlighten me!

[Robotbeat]

It surprises me that nobody has mentioned that an other launch is also scheduled for NET July 20th. I wonder which one will get more media attention should they both occur on that day.

July who? 

I think it's safe to say there's very little chance Starship will actually launch in July, so Blue Origin is pretty safe from being overshadowed.

Even odds that Blue also is delayed. Blue has been promising “crewed launch next year” for a long time.

I would say it’s an even race at this point.

[chief]

But do they? Were they fixed platforms or station keeping and if the latter, do they still have all the gear to sit active in one spot?

They are semi-subs not fixed platforms, and they were photographed (see Jack Beyer's twitter feed in January) with their thrusters stowed on board to allow them to be towed into port. Perhaps they will still be far from ready for any function in July.

Deimos & Phobos thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52841

[chopsticks]

It surprises me that nobody has mentioned that an other launch is also scheduled for NET July 20th. I wonder which one will get more media attention should they both occur on that day.

A humble suggestion .... instead of "that other launch", please just specify which launch you're talking about (ideally with a reference).  The latter would make you seem helpful and informative, the former conjures an image of "Nah nah nah nah!  I know something you don't know!!" from the lips of a bratty child.

Please note that I am unequivocally not saying that is how you intended this to come across, it's just the first thing that came to mind as I wondered what mission you were talking about.  Id really appreciate it if you could enlighten me!

I agree. Please don't be vague.

I believe this is the launch that is being referred to.

https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6779

1st crewed flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard.

[Robotbeat]

They could actually try landing on one of their regular droneships. They’re building a third one, and so they’ll have a bit of a spare (soonish).

Similar height as a Falcon 9 booster, so for the same stability, the landing footprint would be about the same. The weight of the booster shouldn’t be too much for the barge. Although it might be a bit of a hazard to have such a huge booster with crew on board trying to secure it. But 20 miles off the coast of Texas should have much calmer waters than the middle of the Atlantic, so that would help keep it safer.

It seems more Starshippy to try to sprint to get Phobos finished in time, but I’m not sure it’s really that feasible.

My real opinion is they haven’t actually decided yet to splash SH or land it on some droneship (ASDS or Phobos), and so they wrote the FCC document to keep open all those possibilities (to spur their crew to work more quickly if nothing else).

BTW, just as a complete shot in the dark, but has anyone checked if there’s an existing platform on the spot on the map where SH is shown to be landing? What’s the water depth there?

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1393209497716396034

SpaceX's FCC flight plan yesterday is one piece of the regulatory puzzle before Starship's orbital flight.

The FAA today notes "SpaceX must meet all licensing requirements before Starship/Super Heavy can launch," with an environmental review ongoing.
https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship/

[kaiser]

So the flight path should be pretty good.  They should have good coverage over the gulf.  The interesting part is that you're going to want telemetry probably a decent amount before Kauai as you start to orient for the burn, and do reentry.  I'm not positive that that'll be within view of Kauai.  You have Kwaj, but then there's the huge gap until Kauai, and I assume that there will be some critical events between the two locations.

At Kauai, they have PMRF and its big dishes on the ridge.  Those are good, but are still horizon limited.  You have KTF, ran by the DOE with it's dishes also.  Between the two you have more than enough antennas to bring down the TM while you're above the horizon to Kauai.

If you need to grab stuff form over-the-horizon, you have the MATSS barge, which can provide some TM and optics from over the horizon.  It can get fairly far off shore, but not too far.  I'm not sure that would be far enough for all the coverage, but could gap-fill some.  It also gets a lot of use, and scheduling can be tricky.

Then there's the Pacific Collector / Pacific Tracker that MDA has to put ships out in the ocean for collecting TM/radar.  Those should be able to be dotted along the trajectory if needed.  But they're MDA assets, and I assume scheduling them might be hard.  Similarly with the KMRSS, Cobra King/Ball, the support ship Trident uses, etc.  They'll all be hard to schedule for this, and make sure they're available for what's probably a moving-window test.

There's attempting to use Elon's plane again...but they never really got any decent sized antenna on it.

Commercially, there's not really many people.  These guys do both maritime and airborne TM as a service:

https://www.ravendefense.com/maritime-telemetry
https://www.ravendefense.com/airborne-telemetry

Looks like the airborne system is on a BT-67, which has the mounts for an optical turret.  So they could provide TM and optics from over the horizon, and even contract some boats to go out and get the coverage they want.  Edit:  The BT-67 also already has a FTS system onboard.  Might be useful, optics/TM/FTS/whatever else they want - https://www.dcmilitary.com/tester/news/local/ww-ii-aircraft-flies-again-for-nawcad/article_6476ae2e-de1d-547b-a93a-8c4b490962db.html

Would be interesting to see where SpaceX ends up here, whether they coordinate with the ranges, MDA, and all the stakeholders to try and get everything out there.  Whether they just pay a small commercial entity to go collect, or whether they just roll their own.  Last (and least likely in my opinion) is that they wait for it to be within the horizon for Kauai, and accept blackouts.  It seems for just a little scratch via a commercial entity they could get more comprehensive coverage, and even provide some angular diversity to the look-angles to mitigate any issues.  They could attempt to only user Starlink, but that seems to just add risk onto risk there.

[sebk]

Admittedly, I only have a KSP-level knowledge of orbital mechanics, so please gently educate me if I'm wrong here.

Can this actually complete a full orbit? Looking at the times (SECO @ 521, Ship Splashdown @ 5420) I'm having a hard time seeing how they launch from Boca Chica, orbit all the way around past Boca Chica, and then make it another 300 degrees around to Kauai.

Assuming the answer is "No, it doesn't go all the way around"... Will this achieve orbital velocity and then do a de-orbit burn? Or will it just be a very long ballistic trajectory? (The lack of a second burn of the second stage would suggest it's the later.)

So , since it's getting real , What could be the final orbit of Starship after insertion. Will they keep it low to minimise TPS heating for the time being , also since the landing (or splashdown) is 90 minutes after liftoff , from Boca TX to Hawaii in eastward direction could mean the it will complete a single orbit before re-entering.

Also will they be testing the R-Vacs for the first time in Orbit?

I think the flight will be suborbital, but only just, like a shuttle eternal tank. Then you can target the landing zone even if the raptors fail to complete the deorbit burn.

Edit: Also starship landing occurs at T+90 minuets, so exactly like an ET

OK Orbit but one that is just barely such that it will rapidly decay to the point it will reenter around Kauji. If on the way up it is off target (this is just a few 10s of m/s) then it will either splash before or after Kuaji into the Pacific somewhere.

I can't reconcile "achieve orbit" with rapidly decaying around T+90mins.  That just doesn't compute for me.  Achieving Orbit necessarily means a full once-around.

"until performing a powered, targeted landing" suggests to me that they would achieve a meaningful orbit insertion and then perform a deorbit burn, or perhaps even a deorbit-acceleration burn to test EDL at a higher than orbital velocity.

Once you go beyond 180° around you're essentially orbital: In the sense that your semi-major axis is longer than the planet radius. This also means you have orbital velocity.

Ballistic trajectories end at 180° of the way around.

For example for such a flight an orbit like 270x30km would work well (with perigee around West coast of Mexico). But note that such an orbit has the same energy as 150x150km (I'm assuming spherical Earth for simplicity, real orbit would be a bit different).

And of course they can chose higher orbit and active deorbit.

[CMac]

wouldn't it be safer to plan for passive reentry not too far from the intended point and well short of US coast? If anything goes wrong, no danger to land areas.

[CMac]

how would it work to have a few high altitude blimps in position along track to monitor. Tow them out East from Hawaii and release. Have some station keeping ability. Fairly equatorial so maybe upper level winds not very strong?

[kaiser]

how would it work to have a few high altitude blimps in position along track to monitor. Tow them out East from Hawaii and release. Have some station keeping ability. Fairly equatorial so maybe upper level winds not very strong?

Good idea.  WorldView did stuff like that, but is struggling/laying off?  It seems that the high altitude balloon market enjoyed a renaissance, then is kinda fading away again.  Seems like logistics would be weird; how long can it loiter on station (able to take slip days), how many days before hand do you have to deploy it to get in position and verify it's working?  Might actually be cheaper to just pay for some flight hours.

These guys seem to be doing "Sky Range" via Reaper and Global Hawk drones, but not positive if it's operational or not, the press release is pretty recent so guessing not yet: https://i3-corps.com/technology-solutions/skyrange/

[Alberto-Girardi]

They could actually try landing on one of their regular droneships. They’re building a third one, and so they’ll have a bit of a spare (soonish).

Similar height as a Falcon 9 booster, so for the same stability, the landing footprint would be about the same. The weight of the booster shouldn’t be too much for the barge. Although it might be a bit of a hazard to have such a huge booster with crew on board trying to secure it. But 20 miles off the coast of Texas should have much calmer waters than the middle of the Atlantic, so that would help keep it safer.

It seems more Starshippy to try to sprint to get Phobos finished in time, but I’m not sure it’s really that feasible.

My real opinion is they haven’t actually decided yet to splash SH or land it on some droneship (ASDS or Phobos), and so they wrote the FCC document to keep open all those possibilities (to spur their crew to work more quickly if nothing else).

BTW, just as a complete shot in the dark, but has anyone checked if there’s an existing platform on the spot on the map where SH is shown to be landing? What’s the water depth there?

Great point.

IIUC how they land SH and SS doesn't change too much things for FCC. At the end, they bother about communications? Water landing or droneship should not make that much of a difference in this aspect.

WHy did they file a report to the FCC before one to the FAA? Is allowenc from the FCC more important than from FAA or they just take longer to say yes or no? (THis could be a dumb question, but I'm not an expert of USA federal agencies).

[Robotbeat]

Probably because they’re still waiting on the environmental review to finish.