SpaceX could launch 1st Starship to orbit in January, Elon Musk says

[Admin]

SpaceX is targeting January or February for its first Starship orbital launch attempt. And that initial landmark leap will be followed by a number of others shortly thereafter, if all goes to plan.

SpaceX could launch 1st Starship to orbit in January, Elon Musk says : Read more

 

[newtons_laws]

Well three and a half years later Space X still hasn't launched a Starship to orbit - sub-orbital yes, but not into orbit yet. Sadly another one of Musk's many over optimistic predictions....

 

[contrarian]

Well three and a half years later Space X still hasn't launched a Starship to orbit - sub-orbital yes, but not into orbit yet. Sadly another one of Musk's many over optimistic predictions....

It seems the whole project is overly ambitious, or they are pushing it too fast. Knowing Musk, that may be the whole problem. Their other rocket, the Falcon 9, has a success rate of >99%. But it uses different fuel and is not nearly so complex.

Below is a link to a good overview of all the problems facing the design of this super heavy-lift rocket.

SpaceX May Be Failing to Get Starship Working at All

Last week, both stages of SpaceX's Starship exploded after returning from space. The Super Heavy booster flew apart as it attempted a landing burn over ground, and forty minutes later, the Starship vehicle itself was blown to smithereens somewhere over the Indian Ocean. It was the Elon...

www.yahoo.com

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Read the link - not impressed.

Some obviously silly errors, such as the 1st stage was not planned to come down in the "Pacific". It was planned to come down where it did in the Gulf of Mexico/America/Whatever, and the Ship upper stage was planned to come down in the Indian Ocean, where it did. Pacific target sites (for Ship) were taken off the table a while back when there were objections about environmental sensitivities, there. And "retrorockets" - he means the main engines that are selected to fire during landing of the booster. Finally, for all practical purposes, the upper stage has already succeeded in making a controlled landing over water in the Indian Ocean, twice.

So, the rest of the doom-and-gloom talk seems like it is coming from a biased source without sufficient knowledge. Several of the tests were intentionally designed to see where limits were and things would break - so the breaks were not a surprise.

However, some failures were surprises and are worrisome because of repetition. Obviously the upper stage leaks that destroy the Ship were not planned and are turning out to be hard to stop. But, there were 3 previous successful tests where that did not happen, so it is more likely that SpaceX changed something to cause those leaks and needs to fix it, rather than the whole thing is doomed to leak to destruction on every launch.

The other worrying thing is the stability of the upper stage in coast flight in space. It apparently does not have an active attitude control system. Musk likes designs that are minimalist, so may still be trying to see if he can get away without one. But, that puzzles me because it seems certain that a attitude control system will be required for in-orbit refueling, and that is a big part of the plan.

The cargo door is another issue. It seems that they keep having problems with it. That can probably also play into the attitude control problems, as well as structural problems.

So, while I am not going to get on the "Musk-is-a-fool-and-it-will-never-succeed" bus, I am getting worried that it will not succeed on the schedule we are hoping for to get astronauts on the lunar surface again. And, in that sense, Congress slashing NASA's budget does not bode well for that, either.

 

[contrarian]

Some obviously silly errors, such as the 1st stage was not planned to come down in the "Pacific". It was planned to come down where it did in the Gulf of Mexico/America/Whatever, and the Ship upper stage was planned to come down in the Indian Ocean, where it did

The first stage did not come down as planned - which was "a controlled landing burn and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico". Instead, it experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly". It blew up. And while the second stage did end up where it was supposed to, it also experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly", due, once again, to a propellant leak. We do need to get these facts straight.

Actual plans for these or any space flight vs. results can be highly variable, and "Starship" has demonstrated this most dramatically.

But I could not help but notice the following comment from the above article that summed up a previous thread about the primary reason for these recent failures :

"The fact that it was yet another fuel leak that caused the rocket to fail heavily suggests they have a cascading stress issue," wrote Lockett. "They strengthened the fuel lines and the structure that supported the rocket engines after flights 7 and 8, but now a component further down the line has failed, suggesting that the stress is being transferred to other, weaker components."

It certainly remains to be seen whether this design is going to be successful for all that is planned for it. More than a few rocket scientists have their doubts. And then there is the refueling stage in LEO, which is required for this design to go to the Moon. Never been done with this system before. More than a piece-of-cake, one must assume. These refueling issues present a whole new set of potential problems, especially considering that fuel leaks have caused so many difficulties so far. And it will require a number of launches to get all of that set up before they can even start to the Moon. The mission to Mars is even more problematic, by an order of magnitude.

NASA plans on getting to the Moon with this by mid-2027 - two years from now? With all the disarray at NASA, and problems with this rocket, they will be lucky if they make it by the end of the decade.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Still not impressed by the "It'll never work" crowd.

They keep neglecting the good points to dwell on the bad points.

For example: Yes, the flight 9 booster came apart on its way down when trying to flip to its deceleration burn. BUT that SAME booster had already successfully flow and returned to the chopsticks before that flight, and that flight intentionally used a more stressful return attitude to get data on the effects. Even SpaceX was not betting on success that time, as demonstrated by not planning to catch the booster again. This is an clear example of bias on the part of the nay sayers.

Similarly, the emphasis on the failures of the last 3 upper stages is being discussed as if all of the upper stages on previous flights had not successfully completed their flight plans, although as many of the last 6 have done so as have failed to do so. That is a pretty good clue that it is not impossible, but the nay sayers just don't mention the successes.

I have said all along that the upper stage leaks are of concern because they have become a trend. But, I have little doubt that they can be prevented eventually, as the cause(s) are determined and fixed.

And, as I have said before, I think the schedules for the Artemis Program and the SpaceX first launch to Mars are unrealistically ambitious at this point in time. But, so what? The Congress has forced NASA to reschedule Constellation/Artemis for decades at this point, already. We will get there when we can get there. If the Chinese get there first, blame Congress, not SpaceX. Congress has been cancelling and delaying the Moon return for much longer than SpaceX has even existed.

 

[contrarian]

Still not impressed by the "It'll never work" crowd.

They keep neglecting the good points to dwell on the bad points.

Rest assured I am not of this crowd. But with such things, it is the bad points that must be addressed before one can move on. And so far they are not moving on. Time will tell if they can make this work.

Reusing the same booster was a "good point", until it exploded. But if the system is ultimately not working, this is an irrelevant good point.

I have said all along that the upper stage leaks are of concern because they have become a trend. But, I have little doubt that they can be prevented eventually, as the cause(s) are determined and fixed.

It seems likely that these can be prevented. But there are many other hurdles for making this work. One of the biggest of these hurdles is consistently achieving a string of successful launches, since right now the whole "Starship" brand has reliability issues that have a lot of people nervous. He can't just continue to have a string of partial successes. This thing at some point must have a number of successful launches all of the time, without failures, before those that matter are convinced to proceed. A steep hill to climb, but certainly not impossible. After all, Musk has a lot of money, and unbound determination.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

While I agree that the public will expect to see "a number of successful launches all of the time, without failures", the real risk analysts will be looking at the causes of the failures even before a successful string of successes.

If the failures were intentional tests to see where failures will occur, then those are used, along with the probabilities that those conditions will occur during operational flights, to compute the probable failure probability for a real mission. In other words, that type of failure actually leads to being able to have confidence in the reliability of the system over the range of possible incidents. The tests of the flight 9 booster return also included doing it with one engine out for part of the process, if I remember correctly. Part of the benefit of having so many engines is that the mission can probably be successful with one or even more engine failures. But, it depends on which engine in which part of the mission. With 33 engines going full power for ascent, probably 3 out isn't a problem. But, for boost back, flip and landing, fewer engines are used and the useful ones are limited to those near the center of the vehicle with the ability to swivel. So, testing what happens when one of those goes out is important.

Similarly, the upper stage "Ship" thermal shield is being intentionally made imperfect, with tiles taken out in several places, to see what that does or does not do. If something burns through and causes Ship to fail its soft landing, it is still data in the bank.

For purposes of realiability calculation, those types of "failure tests" need to be treated separately from the types of totally unexpected failures like those due to the propellant leaks in the last 3 flights.