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So when they vent before and after the flight are they venting methane? If they are then I'd love to know their carbon footprint...LOLOL.
SpaceX is in the initial phase of developing its Mars launch vehicle, Starship. It will be a gigantic stainless-steel spacecraft capable of transporting one hundred passengers on long-duration voyages. Today, September 3, SpaceX completed another low-altitude test flight of a Starship prototype in South Texas. The vehicle called Starship SN6 soared 150-meters above Boca Chica beach’s sunny sky, powered by a single Raptor engine; SN6 deployed a set of six legs to perform a controlled landing on a nearby pad. The incredible feat that demonstrated SpaceX’s engineering talent was captured on video by residents, shown below.This ‘hop’ test launch comes after a previous prototype SN5 conducted a similar flight less than a month ago. The company aims to make flying Starship test vehicles routine at Boca Chica. Every test flight will offer engineers insight about the Raptor engine power and spacecraft design. Every test takes SpaceX one step closer towards developing a space-ready Starship. The aerospace company aims to fly as many as twenty Starship prototypes in Texas, each will feature slight changes towards improving the craft. SpaceX already has multiple Starships under assembly at the rocket factory that is less than five miles down the launch pad’s road.Unlike the cylinder prototype that took flight this afternoon, the next prototype that will take flight, SN8, will be a fully assembled vehicle with a nose cone and a set of aerodynamic fins that resemble the company’s planned spacecraft design. Starship SN8 will be powered by a trio of Raptor engines to conduct a higher-altitude test flight of around 20-kilometers.More at link.
Mary@BocaChicaGalA peek at Starship SN6 on the landing pad at SpaceX Boca Chica. SN6 successfully completed a 150m hop on September 3rd. https://twitter.com/i/status/1302413476627873793?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email
Odd that the "grain silo" has such a lean to it on landing. I noticed in flight that it had this same lean.
Elon Musk has shared some details about future testing of Starship, the SpaceX launch vehicle currently being developed by the company at its Boca Chica, Texas facility. Recently, SpaceX has completed short, 150 meter (just under 500 feet) test flights of two earlier Starship prototypes, SN5 and SN6 – and SN8, which is currently set to be done construction “in about a week†according to Musk will have “flaps & nosecone†and ultimately is intended for a much higher altitude test launch.The prototypes that SpaceX has flown and landed for its so-called ‘short-hop’ tests over the past few weeks have been full-sized, but with a simulated weight installed on the top in place of the actual domed nosecone that will perch atop the final production Starship and protect any cargo on board. SN5 and SN6, which are often compared to grain silos, are also lacking the large control flaps on either side of the nosecone that will help control its flight. SN8 will have both, according to Musk.This version of the prototype will also undergo the same early testing and its precursors, including a static fire and other ground checkouts, followed by another static fire before ultimately attempting to fly to an altitude of 60,000 feet – and then returning back to the ground for a controlled landing.
But Astra wasn't expecting perfection.Astra's first orbital mission got off the ground, but it soon came back down again. The California-based spaceflight startup launched its first orbital test flight tonight (Sept. 11), sending its two-stage Rocket 3.1 skyward from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska at 11:19 p.m. EDT (7:19 p.m. local Alaska time and 0319 GMT on Sept. 12).The 38-foot-tall (12 meters) booster, which was carrying no payloads, didn't make it all the way to the final frontier."Successful lift off and fly out, but the flight ended during the first-stage burn. It does look like we got a good amount of nominal flight time. More updates to come!" Astra tweeted tonight.More at link.
Elon Musk says Starship SN8 prototype will have a nosecone and attempt a 60,000-foot return flightTech Crunch by Darrell Etherington 9/12/2020https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/12/elon-musk-says-starship-sn8-prototype-will-have-a-nosecone-and-attempt-a-60000-foot-return-flight/
SpaceX strapped a camera to a Falcon 9 rocket. Watch what happenedCNN 9/11/2020https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/09/11/spacex-falcon-9-polar-orbit-launch-orig.cnn-business/video/playlists/stories-worth-watching/
SpaceX’s newest Starship test tank has survived the first two nights of stress testing, pushing the steel tank one step closer to a destructive finale.Known as Starship SN7.1, the new tank – aside from one critical difference – is similar to Starship SN2 (pictured above), a full-scale prototype SpaceX repurposed into a test tank in March 2020. SN2 served to test improvements made to the design of Starship’s “thrust puck,†a dense steel cone that must transmit the thrust of three Raptor engines through the rest of the rocket. Much like SN2, SN7.1 is a test tank with a focus on the behavior of Starship’s engine section under extreme loads at cryogenic temperatures.Unlike SN2, however, SN7.1 is built almost entirely out of a new steel alloy – closer to 304L than the 301 stainless used on all previous prototypes. SpaceX is conducting testing with the Starship SN7.1 test tank tonight in Boca Chica, Texas. The exact details of the test have not been confirmed, but probably not much to see. The press to failure test will likely occur towards the end of the week.https://t.co/CISBVb9XeH
SpaceX Starship test tank survives first two nights of stress testingTESLARATI by Eric Ralph 9/16/2020https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-sn7-1-test-tank-survives-stress-tests/
SpaceX Boca Chica - SN7.1 Burst Test Attempt - SN5 and 6 Moved Into High Bay NASASpaceflightSN7.1's burst test that failed to end in failure of the test tank and so it gets to live a bit longer. SN5 and 6 were moved into the High Bay, potentially due to high winds, new legs and a new downcomer were delivered. Work on the High Bay continues and a common dome section was prepared for flipping.Error 404 (Not Found)!!1
LIVE: Starship SN7.1 Press to Failure•Streamed live 9 hours agoNASASpaceflightSpaceX is set to intentionally destroy the Starship SN7.1 prototype in a pressurize to failure test. The test will help SpaceX understand the limits of the current design.Pop around 6:57Error 404 (Not Found)!!1
SpaceX has successfully destroyed a Starship ‘test tank’ for the fourth time, opening the door for the first high-altitude prototype to roll to the launch pad as soon as tomorrow.The culmination of three nights and more than 20 hours of concerted effort, SpaceX was finally able to fill Starship test tank SN7.1 with several hundred tons of liquid nitrogen before dawn on September 23rd. With just an hour left in the day’s test window, SpaceX closed the tank’s vents, allowing its cryogenic contents to boil into gas and expand with no outlet. At 4:57 am CDT, SN7.1 burst, bringing its lengthy test campaign to a decisive end.A handful of hours later, new road closure notices revealed SpaceX’s plan to roll Starship SN8 – the first full-size prototype and first ship meant for high-altitude testing – from its Boca Chica factory to the launch site.Update: All road closures planned for Starship SN8’s roll to the launch pad (Sept 24) and first test campaign (Sept 27-29) have been canceled. Stay tuned for updates on the high-altitude prototype’s test schedule.
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-first-orbital-starship-raptor-vacuum-test/Less than three weeks after shipping to Texas, SpaceX says that Starship’s first Raptor Vacuum engine has completed a “full duration test fire†on the march towards orbital test flights.Known as Raptor Vacuum or RVac, the engine is almost entirely based off of its sea level-optimized cousin, taking all of the complex turbomachinery and combustion chambers that represent the bulk of a rocket engine. Things start to diverge below the throat of the combustion chamber (the narrow part of the central hourglass-like curve), where SpaceX has expanded Raptor’s existing bell nozzle by a factor of five or more.SpaceX’s reusable Starship spacecraft will use a mix of three sea level Raptors and three Raptor Vacuum engines to give it the thrust it needs to reach orbit and ensure efficient operations both in atmosphere and vacuum. Completed a full duration test fire of the Raptor Vacuum engine at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas pic.twitter.com/0GPSdSifnnIn simple terms, a rocket engine can benefit from a vacuum-optimized nozzle because the added surface area (more or less) gives the extremely high-pressure gases exiting its combustion chamber even more footholds to push against. Rocket nozzles are at their most efficient when the engine’s exhaust gas finishes expanding to match ambient pressure at the exact moment it exits the bell. Logically, at sea level on Earth, the ambient air pressure is quite high, meaning that rocket exhaust doesn’t have to expand as much to equalize.In the vacuum of space, however, exhaust gases must expand far more to reach the same pressure as its surroundings. For rocket propulsion, that extra expansion can be exploited to make a more efficient engine, squeezing extra energy out of the same propellant and in a perfect vacuum, the most efficient nozzle would technically be infinite. Engineering and physical infinities don’t exactly get along, unfortunately, so vacuum rocket engineers are forced to settle on a nozzle size at a scale that humans can feasibly manufacture.In theory, Starship doesn’t need Raptor Vacuum engines to be a functioning orbital spacecraft and CEO Elon Musk himself floated a design with seven sea-level engines just two years ago. Since then, the SpaceX CEO revealed that Raptor was making such good progress that the company undid the removal of vacuum-optimized engines from Starship’s baseline design.
SpaceX’s first orbital Starship engine just breathed fireTESLARATI by Eric Ralph 9/24/2020
