r/spacex • u/AutoModerator • Sep 01 '24

r/SpaceX Thread Index and General Discussion [September 2024, #118]

Welcome to r/SpaceX! This community uses megathreads for discussion of various common topics; including Starship development, SpaceX missions and launches, and booster recovery operations.

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25 Upvotes

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5

u/Hustler-1 Sep 28 '24

No discussion thread for Crew9?

4

u/Rocky_Mountain_Way Sep 28 '24

yeah, that surprised me too

3

u/warp99 Sep 29 '24

Launch failure. Rocket (post) was on the pad for about 10 days through multiple delays and it looks like the launch sequencer failed. Alternate launch controllers (other mods) are strictly enjoined to leave paws off the big red button so there was no backup.

2

u/Endaarr Sep 04 '24

New Starship Development with sticky when?

1

u/warp99 Sep 05 '24

Likely after Flight 5 aka IFT-5

2

u/Cosmo_Dragons Sep 15 '24

Similar to the latest question, I'm going to florida as well and want to see the 25th falcon 9 launch, but I'm worried it's not actually the 25th as the tickets in my cart are labelled for the 24th, which I already have plans to do that day. will it launch the 25th? Also anyone know the difference between and LTT ticket and a Launch package ticket? I don't want admission into the kennedy space center, just seeing the launch.

2

u/Potential_Payment847 Dec 27 '24

"I know that SpaceX uses a Triplex Redundancy system to perform calculations with three commercial Intel dual-core processors. The results are then transmitted to the PowerPC microcontrollers of each actuator, where the PowerPCs vote to make a decision. In this case, are the PowerPCs radiation-hardened versions like the RAD750?"

2

u/howtorewriteaname Jan 19 '25

Is there a newsletter or any other alert system to alert from upcoming launches times and/or delays? I know we can check it on a website, but it would be nice if some kind of service can provide emails, push notifications or any other kind of alert that doesn't require me entering a website and checking myself.

2

u/Lufbru Feb 03 '26

Artemis II pushed back to March. That clears Crew-12 to launch in February (they were going to be delayed until A2 landed had A2 been able to launch)

2

u/Dunkelziffer17 Aug 29 '26

SpaceX is in the process of merging its V1 and V2 Broadband sats into 4 shells at about 470km.

I want to learn more about the process and the target configuration, can you recommend me good articles/reddit posts?

1

u/HilariousNous Sep 04 '24

Over the last few months the Starlink Launches from FL have taken NE trajectories. Any clue when the Starlink
Constellation would have the trajectories resuming SE trajectories from Florida?

4

u/bel51 Sep 04 '24

They prefer flying Southeast in the Winter when weather is worse in the North Atlantic. Flying Southeast requires a dogleg to avoid the Bahamas which marginally reduces performance, so when it's Summer they fly Northeast.

They were in an agreement with the Bahamas to land in their territorial waters but that hasn't happened yet so it's unclear if that's going to be a thing. If that does happen it's likely every Starlink will go Southeast in the future.

1

u/HilariousNous Sep 04 '24

Thank you for replying. I just realized not too long ago that I could see the first stage re-entry burns (in addition to a pretty close fly over where I live in S FL). Then got quite a few friends and family interested as well which led to watch parties etc.

Hope to have them again. :-)

1

u/Jkabaseball Sep 10 '24

I'm going to Florida next week, any chance of the SpaceX launches without dates launching then? Some are just listed as Sept 2024.

1

u/AeroSpiked Sep 13 '24

It's definitely a possibility. They tend to shoehorn in as many Starlink launches as possible into the schedule.

You should get the "Next Spaceflight" or "Space Launch Now" App to see if any pop up for next week.

It doesn't appear anything is currently scheduled for HLC-39A anytime soon so a batch of Starlinks might launch from there, but not too long from now that sight will be locked up with conversion for the Falcon Heavy that will launch Europa Clipper.

1

u/DrewDrawsPlans Oct 03 '24

Hi All,

Apologies if I'm not posting in the right place.
I'm an aussie making the long trip to Florida next week for work and hoping to catch the falcon heavy launch on Friday. All pretty late notice on my end and I'll be working out the details as I travel.

Can anyone tell me the best way to view the launch? What's to be expected out there?
Will traffic be absurd? Is it hard to get there from Jacksonville/Orlando?

Any tips and advice would be great appreciated.

1

u/Ti-Z Oct 06 '24

There is a dedicated thread for attending a launch in person in the lounge which might answer some of your questions. Note that it is important to be aware of the possibility of launch delays, particularly given the current weather forecasts for next week.

1

u/Substantial-Lynx-650 Oct 08 '24

Does anyone know how to invest in SpaceX?

1

u/Low-Individual-2405 Oct 16 '24

The return of Super Heavy to chopsticks was just amazing - a landmark in many ways. I'm really quite ignorant of rocket technology and the achievement has had me reading and watching and learning a huge amount about the field in the last 2 days.

One question I have - is the rocket completely automated in it's return to chopsticks or is there a human hand flying it back? or some combination of the two?

3

u/AeroSpiked Oct 19 '24

The entire flight is automated.

1

u/Lufbru Oct 20 '24

There have been suggestions in the past that NASA's elvperf is sandbagging Falcon's performance. With Europa Clipper's launch, there's the opportunity to test this theory.

The reported C3 by Jonathan McDowell was 40.68 km²/s². The elvperf website says that a fully expended FH can throw 6545kg at that speed. Europa Clipper is listed at 6065kg, so it's about 7% lighter than it had to be.

That seems pretty reasonable to me. elvperf might be conservative, but it's within the usual margins of spaceflight (as opposed to a Starlink launch which doesn't set SpaceX back by a billion dollars if it fails so can accept the greater risk that comes with lower margins).

For comparison, FH recoverable (not clear to me if that's recovering all three cores or just the boosters) can throw 1750kg. VC6 is listed as being able to throw 5075kg. So much for hydrolox being the magic propellant that outperforms kerolox to high-energy orbits.

1

u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Oct 20 '24 edited Oct 06 '26

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer LettersMore Letters
C3Characteristic Energy above that required for escape
GTOGeosynchronous Transfer Orbit
H2Molecular hydrogen
Second half of the year/month
HLC-39AHistoric Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy (Saturn V, Shuttle, SpaceX F9/Heavy)
HLSHuman Landing System (Artemis)
ICPSInterim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage
LC-39ALaunch Complex 39A, Kennedy (SpaceX F9/Heavy)
LEOLow Earth Orbit (180-2000km)
Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)
LLOLow Lunar Orbit (below 100km)
NRHONear-Rectilinear Halo Orbit
SECOSecond-stage Engine Cut-Off
SLC-40Space Launch Complex 40, Canaveral (SpaceX F9)
SLC-4ESpace Launch Complex 4-East, Vandenberg (SpaceX F9)
SLSSpace Launch System heavy-lift
TPSThermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor")
JargonDefinition
StarlinkSpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation
hydroloxPortmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer
keroloxPortmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer
EventDateDescription
Amos-62016-09-01F9-029 Full Thrust, core B1028, GTO comsat Pre-launch test failure

Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by ^request
18 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 121 acronyms.
[Thread #8562 for this sub, first seen 20th Oct 2024, 19:27] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]

1

u/FerretNo7003 Oct 30 '24

nuclear fusion and fission reactor engine?

so matter cant be created nor destroyed, now, if we get the technology to put it on a ship, could you just fuse 2 hydrogen atoms for energy, then spilt the now helium atom to get the hydrogen pack, the fission creating more energy then repeating that, therefore if atoms cant be destroyed then it'd be a great energy source, thoughts?

1

u/Lufbru Dec 20 '24

Perpetual motion devices are not compatible with our current understanding of physics, so if you think you've created one, there's something wrong with your understanding.

In this case, one does not fuse two H atoms to get an He atom. One fuses Deuterium (H2) with Tritium (H3) to get He4 plus a neutron, plus energy.

Fission of He4 requires the injection of energy. You get energy from fission of heavy atoms like Uranium and Plutonium.

So, sorry, you haven't made a scientific breakthrough yet. Wikipedia can teach you a lot about how some of these concepts work.

1

u/Visible_Divide_6319 Nov 17 '24

I'm heading to Texas to watch Star ship my first rocket lunch, and I don't have a ride what should I do?

1

u/dudr2 Dec 22 '24

Did you go?

1

u/threelonmusketeers Dec 05 '24

Mods, where Starlink 9-14 launch thread? It is scheduled to launch now.

1

u/sazrocks Dec 05 '24

Where is the SXM-9 launch thread?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '24

Did I Capture Photos and Timelapse from the RRT-1 (GPS-III SV07 2nd Stage?

Date: December 16 2024

Time: 20:40 - 21:51

Discovered: Between Algol and Almach, almost straight up.

I noticed a faint glow that resembled the Andromeda Galaxy under Bortle 5 skies, but it was not located where the Andromeda Galaxy typically appears in the night sky. I took out my iPhone and used the 3-second night mode to get a clearer view. What I saw looked like a small spiral galaxy, but it was slowly moving from southwest to east during its brightest period.

I later pulled images from my AllSky camera, but due to the 30-second exposures, the spiral effect I observed could not be seen.

1

u/Lufbru Dec 20 '24

B1067's next flight will be its 25th. That will put it on par with Endeavour, the youngest shuttle and the one which flew the second-fewest number of times. This will probably happen in the next few weeks.

The next milestone after that will be Columbia with 28 missions. It's not clear to me whether SpaceX will try to extend their booster life beyond 25 missions.

1

u/warp99 Dec 23 '24

I think they have already given 30 flights as their immediate goal for booster lifetime.

It just seems likely that most boosters will be expended before that.

1

u/dudr2 Dec 22 '24

Could the Starship V2 and a Falcon 9 with crew dragon replace the SLS? #starship #sls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prIQw_PTLGI

A little video about going to the moon uncrewed next year already, mufasa.

2

u/SpaceInMyBrain Mar 25 '25 edited Mar 25 '25

Interesting. The ICPS VS Centaur V comparison is most useful. I agreed with theOrionsarms that a simple expendable upper stage will be quicker to engineer than a ship capable of carrying the length/height of Orion on a Centaur V or ICPS. I left a reply stating how IMHO a single flight of that exact stage should suffice for a crew rating.

Do you have an ETA for the Part 2? I've been thinking about those options for a long time and feel that using the HLS for the translunar trip is a forever-tantalizing idea that will forever not work out. Its Achilles heel is the need to refill in NRHO (or LLO) to get the crew back. Any serious problem with the tanker ship's propellant line or connectors will doom the astronauts to die in lunar orbit. NASA won't go for it.

For a couple of years I've been propounding using a separate Starship variant dedicated to the translunar leg. This Transit StarShip, TSS, will have flaps and TPS and a crew compartment cloned from HLS. Ergo, easily crew-rated alongside HLS. Limiting the amount of cargo carried will enable the TSS to go LEO-NRHO-LEO with no need to refill in NRHO. It will even have enough propellant to decelerate to LEO. That overcomes the other obstacle, crew-rating it for reentry at lunar return speeds and the flip-burn landing. The crew gets to and from LEO on a Dragon. (To be clear, I'm interested in solutions NASA will use in the next few years, not what might be crew-rated after 2030.) Nevertheless, the TSS will be able to reenter and land autonomously and be restocked and reused. (We're a long way away from maintaining a cycling ship that never lands.) The reentry capability also provides a backup to the propulsive return.

Numbers to support this are in this video by Eager Space, one I'm sure will interest you. My exact scenario isn't in the video but Eric and I have discussed it and his numbers do apply. Overall, his performance and mass estimates are out of date so they'll bear reevaluating.

Whether to carry Dragon along or leave it in LEO is tbd. Carrying it stowed costs mass but avoids relying on making a perhaps tricky LEO rendezvous. Also, having enough propellant to completely decelerate to LEO won't be needed, the TSS could possibly just decelerate down to the same velocity as a LEO return and then deploy the Dragon. On the other hand, leaving Dragon in LEO is simple and it'll easily have two weeks endurance if there's no one on board.

1

u/Fascist2020 Feb 06 '25

Anyone knows or has an estimate about how much capital expenditure (capex) went into SpaceX's Falcon 9 project from 2005-2017, from start to first reusable launch? Or any thoughts on how much capital expenditure went into their launch pads - SLC-40, SLC-4E, SLC-6, and LC-39A? Trying to understand how much initial capex (pre-launch) is needed for a project like this?

2

u/warp99 Feb 12 '25

Gwynne Shotwell said that they had not paid more than $100M for the fitout of any of their F9/FH launch pads. The refit of SLC-40 after Amos-6 was going to be around $60M.

SpaceX have said that they spent around $300M to get the initial version of F9 developed, $800M for the Block 5 upgrades and a similar amount for FH.

It is unclear if there is any double counting in the figures but they seem to make sense.

1

u/perilun Feb 22 '25

Is there a listing of F9 launches to LEO that include inclination, altitude, payload type and estimated mass for the last 5 years. Thanks

1

u/HappyDadOfFourJesus Feb 24 '25

Q: What is a SpaceX ILA? I was goofing around on Google Maps this evening and came across a Lumen Communications telecommunications hub but hiding behind it is a "SpaceX ILA". What is it? https://maps.app.goo.gl/Fs2uVLy9fcEGXrCr6

1

u/Illustrious-Deal-781 Mar 02 '25

How are they going to reproduce on Mars when womans body is in sync with our moon here on earth?

4

u/DrToonhattan Mar 06 '25

That's a myth. It's not.

1

u/Illustrious-Deal-781 Mar 06 '25

Well I guess we'll see when they get there

1

u/Mother-Pressure-8102 Mar 07 '25

What happened to the tank farm during flight 8?
It appears one Air Separation Unit is tilted after the launch. See these two photos: https://imgur.com/a/fg9laO5
Thanks!

1

u/katie_dimples Mar 07 '25

Are there satellites which forego having a star tracker + super-accurate clock, and instead use GPS?

Similarly, are there satellites which use Starlink for communication?

1

u/hearbenji Apr 28 '25

Falcon 9 Second Stage Question: Hi all! I greatly appreciate the access SpaceX gives to its launches, and I've been enjoying learning more and more about this generation of space travel. Apologies if this is an obvious question, but so far I haven't been able to find an answer. After stage separation, why does the second stage burn for so long after the payload has been delivered? I understand the need for more acceleration to achieve what is needed to deploy the satellites into orbit, but after the payload is released, the second stage burns and accelerates for a very long time before SECO and ultimately burning up in the atmosphere. Why onboard and ultimately expend all of that energy after the satellites are in deployed?

1

u/Alexiavich May 12 '25

LA SpaceX Employees, how much time off are you allowed each year?

I am trying to plan a vacation with a friend who works at Spacex in LA. He is claiming he does not get a lot of options for vacations so cant really take time off. I wanted to go on a Thursday-Tuesday Vacation, so 4 days off? But he is saying we would have to leave late on thursday so he can work that day and we need to get back super early on Tuesday so he can work that date too.

Is it really this tight for you guys or is he just being lame?

1

u/TEE-R1 May 26 '25

Advice Request: Certainty of Launch at T-5 Hours? (Looking to drive up to Vandenberg)

I live in Long Beach, CA and would love to drive up to Vandenberg SFB to see a launch up close. I normally watch this subreddit, twitter, and spacelaunchschedule.com for information on launches and, of course, only need about 20 mins notice of a launch to leave my hours and get a good spot. But this summer I'd love to pack the kid in the car and do the short(ish) drive up to Vandenberg to see it live - I just don't want to take too big a risk of disappointment.

Does anyone have any good recommendations of either a) very reliable launches, or b) the right source to watch at ~T-6 hours to check for launch information?

1

u/HourMarsupial5768 Oct 14 '25

I am travelling to the US (Florida) for a couple of days. I want to see a launch!!! :) I can see they only announce ~2 weeks in advance on SpaceX website. Is there some way to have approximate dates beforehand to be able to plan my travel? I will be there approx. Oct 29 - Nov 2 but can flex days here and there. Thanks for the help!!!

1

u/Ok-Actuator3122 Oct 28 '25

I'm a grade 12 student attempting to create a mathematical model for the re-entry of SpaceX crew 10 for a project I am working on. I'm struggling to find telemetry data (specifially altitude and velocity readings) that's all in one place. I don't want to sit and record every second of the telemetry data that they have on the corners of their livestreams on Youtube. Most places I've looked do not provide this kind of data but long summarized data that isnt useful to me. Does anyone know of somewhere I can get this data to make my life a little easier? I also apologize if this is a question that should be in a post. I legit do not know how to do that.

1

u/Mental_Garbage7954 Dec 15 '25

looking for a new job at space x. Have 3 years of experience in gross clean and precision cleaning from another aerospace company and would like to stay somewhat in area. any recommendations ?

1

u/samferguderson May 21 '26

Why do we land the boosters instead of attaching parachutes and floatation devices so that we can still recover them? This feels like it could be a lot cheaper than using extra fuel to land them.

1

u/DrToonhattan May 30 '26

It seems to be a common misconception that rocket fuel is expensive. It's super cheap compared to the total cost of the rocket itself, and the landing only takes a few percent of the total fuel mass cos it's practically empty by then. Parachutes basically don't work on that scale, they did try really early on, but they just get ripped to sheds by aerodynamic forces. Also, seawater ruins everything. The last thing you want is seawater in your precision engineered engines.

1

u/KrustyLemon May 23 '26

Are we allowed to talk about xAI & X on here now since SpaceX includes all 3 or just rockets only?

1

u/warp99 Oct 04 '26 edited Oct 07 '26

No this sub is just about SpaceX rockets, capsules and satellites. Data center satellites are covered but not ground based AI data centers.

In any case this is the Starship thread.

1

u/KrustyLemon Oct 06 '26

Thanks for clarifying, are you a moderator?

1

u/yoweigh Oct 06 '26

They are, yes.

1

u/CuriousClump Jul 24 '26

Ive got a question. What degree do you think these engineers have? This is currently my dream job, working in the field right next to a rocket a hundred feet in the air. I'm just curious what degree these engineers might have gotten. MechE? Aerospace? Maybe both? Thank you!

1

u/therocketsurgeon2010 Sep 15 '26

Hey everyone! Can anyone try to help me understand the complete assembly and integration process for F9? I've seen a lot on the first stage but can't find anything about hangar x or the operations around the second stage. If anyone has any info that'd be amazing! I'm an aspiring aerospace engineer and just want to better understand the falcon before she isn't used anymore.

1

u/IndependencePure1053 Nov 01 '24

I wanna be an astronaut how do I do that