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Why is starship so late
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- Опубликовано: 5 авг 2024
- A new perspective on the how technically hard Starship is and why it took so long to see orbital flights...
00:00 What is Up with Starship?
01:49 Why is starship taking so long?
02:11 Space is hard, Starship is super-hard
03:40 The Rocket Equation
05:33 Why Falcon 9 is so great
08:27 Why Starship is so different
09:40 The graph that tells us everything
10:55 Why hot staging matters for starship and not for Falcon 9
12:50 Raptor - the key to starship
15:40 A Raptor game SpaceX might play
17:20 Why IFT-1 was great.
18:32 The plan to fix Starship Performance
18:52 Raptor changes
19:33 Rocket changes for higher payload
20:29 Gravity loss reduction through quicker launches
21:32 Four things I learned about starship
23:00 If you enjoyed this video...
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Maybe Im crazy but in the grand scheme of things starship has had a very fast development compared to every other ever developed.
You’re not crazy. It’s been blazingly fast. And it’s the most advanced rocket ever built by an order of magnitude. Even remotely complaining or criticizing its schedule is so laughably arrogant it isn’t even funny.
It's far from over ? The whole thing is mostly about the engine and there's still a long way to go considering how many engine fail at each flight, this is not good thoses thing have to work perfectly, otherwise... Also i do think many X planes project had a development time reasonable, i don't think that the developpement of Starship was that fast for what it is now at least, we're far from seeing an habited ship that can fly safely.
It unpresidented. People don't realize that 5 years ago, Starship and Starbase was practically nothing. It the worlds largest flying object and by a bit. People hate Elon, and hate his company. At current time, he is the most under-rated man on earth. Love or hate him for what ever other reason, he is single handingly advancing humanity to something bigger than we have ever thought
@@user-vo8zx2uj1p The engines are mostly failing because of ice buildup in the fuel lines. In IFT 4 I believe they lost one engine on initial launch, which isn't a problem as there is more than enough thrust to compensate, and two more during the flight. Those latter two were due to ice buildup, something they're actively working on improving.
Raptor 3 is imminently starting its test campaign and will change the game in terms of overall engine performance.
The Starship factory is also coming online in a few months time and is designed to deliver a new second stage every 3 days. Booster recovery and reuse in a reasonable timeframe will quickly lead to new launches every few days. it's taken a while to get this far, but the rate of iteration and testing is going to ramp up massively over the next couple of years.
@@droningonandon5589 Every 3 really do sound like they gonna throw one citern ship after the other without any care in the world, that smell very bad for musk right now, well we'll see, however i think i'ts not possible to accomplish what it's suppoed to accomplish... The whole thinkg should be nuclear instead.
At SpaceX we specialized in turning impossible into late.
This is such a good fucking quote.
And you as you simply 'don't' worse yet 'can't'
I don’t think you could do better
@@amateurwizard SpaceX is developing the most powerful rocket AND making it reusable, give them a break Chinese bot
@@amateurwizard in english?
SpaceX playing on UltraNightmare difficulty
Fully reusable AND rapid reusable AND return to launch site AND 200t to LEO AND orbital refilling for Moon and Mars, this is insane, and they closer to closer with each iteration and test
This is absolute edge of laws of physics, no other company will achive this in the next 20 years
It cant deliver anything to LEO as it is . Stop believing the musk BS.
Seems like a recipe for failure
@@ahhmm5381well the standard procedure doesn’t look so great lately. Cough star liner cough
@@russellg1473 Built by Boeing. That company isn't remotely competent any more.
Failure is just one of the outcomes on the decision tree for spacex. They believe that if success is a possible outcome then they have something they can work with. @@ahhmm5381
It's also worth pointing out that the only rocket engineering project of this entire century that has been more or less on time, or even arguably "close" to on time, is Falcon 9. So while it isn't _unfair_ to question Starship's schedule, doing so with zero context is disingenuous because it ignores how the same problem occurred with: *Japan's H3, Blue Origin's New Glenn, ULA's Vulcan Centaur, Relativity Space's Terran-1, ISRO's SSLV, Russia's Angara A5, China's Long March 5, Long March 7, Long March 8, ESA's Ariane 6, NASA's SLS...* and that what this means, _incontrovertibly,_ is that rockets being late is the norm and Falcon 9 is an anomaly.
Technically Starship is purely aspirational.
SpaceX is so far ahead they are lapping the so-called competition.
Starship isn't late until it isn't first.
Falcon 5 & 9 were announced in 2003 for a 2005 f5 launch, which in 2005 became a 2007 f9 launch which happened in 2010. So depending on how you want to slice that +3-5 years and +150-250%
H3 was announced in 2013, with a 2015 announcement of a 2020 launch and an eventual 2024 launch. +4 years +80%
New Glenn was announced in 2016 for a 2020 launch and will probably launch this year. +4 years +100%
Vulcan Centaur was announced in 2015 for a 2019 launch and went in 2024 +5 years + 125%
I couldn't find the terran 1 proposed launch date very easily and have already spent enough effort.
Long March 5 was announced in 2007 for a 2014 launch and flew in 2016 +2 years + 28%
@@opcn18 Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 were not the same rocket. SpaceX abandoned F5 to shift focus. Let's not be disingenuous. Your math is also off-2007 to 2010 makes +75%. However, since this isn't specifically a contest of ratios, the final delay of a modest 3 years should also be noted.
Long March 5 was scheduled to launch in 2008. +114%.
@@Asterra2 They were the same rocket when the Falcon 5 was announced and the Falcon 9 was a future variant of it. Falcon 9 v1.1 and Falcon 9 block 5 are different in a lot of ways but I'll bet you would never "correct" anyone who said that Falcon 9 had had 349 launches.
In 2003 nothing was announced about 2007. It would be dishonest to do the numbers the way you want to. Either we can take the 2003 announcement f5 as the starting line and use the goal from 2003 as the basis or we can take the 2007 f9 deadline as the goal and use the 2005 starting line. No one else got a reset for making major design changes. I did note the number of years of delay.
I didn't find the 2008 announcement mentioned anywhere. Can you point me to where is was stated?
Also keep in mind that the public always assumes that a company is lying about the timeline thus being honest makes them look worse up until they actually get something working. If you think that all house builders are always behind schedule and you have the choice between 2 different companies, you'll end up rewarding the one that lies the most since you'll assume the other one is just as dishonest.
A starship is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.
And fails just at the right time.......
@@tonywood3660Saying starship fails is a cope, getting it right the first time is and never has been an option. Would you laugh at appollo missions because of the insane amount of blown up prototypes and astronauts burned alive by a pure oxygen fire?
So far starship has gone further and further, achieving new milestones every time. The raptor engines have become much more reliable, they pump them out faster than any engine ever have. Just look at their statistics, it's unheared of in terms of efficiency and power.
I don't even know why i'm saying all this, saying starship is a failure is just plain bad faith.
@@jeanladoire4141 Those Apollo era failures (and even before that), lead to the Saturn V getting boots on the moon before the Soviets rocket even lifted off (were it then also exploded). Failure is the best teacher yes, however you can lead a horse to water you can't make it drink said water.
@@ViperPilot16 starship is getting there, each failure is being fixed, up until there are no more failures to fix. While the early stages indeed took a few years, the booster/starship structure is being tested every few months, and it's getting faster now that the FAA doesn't contantly block everything. And starship hasn't killed anyone yet.
LOL, in the meanwhile, China will be the first to land on the moon in the history of human kind, and then on Mars.
Seriously, 2030 is what they are counting on.
It never occurred to me that Starship was a little late. :)
But then I follow the work of BO, Boeing and NASA too so.......
🤣🤣🤣
they're still trying to compete with the Falcon 9 ...
@@HH-xf9il
lol. ESA isn’t even doing that. Their new rocket is a generation behind F9.
Nobody really tries to do that, except of china and Bezos. Because there is no political incentive for others. Just use available services.
It would have been far FAR worse. Starship started out as a gigantic carbon fiber tube with a 13 meter diameter.
Looking back, I'm amazed that that was the plan. Build the tanks up in the pacific northwest, build the rockets in LA, then ship them through the canal to Texas and then launch them. It would have been so bad...
To be fair, if they'd kept the 13 m diameter and went with steel construction their propellant to inert mass ratio would be much improved.
It wouldn't surprise in 10 years or so if we see a much fatter starship being touted and designed.
@@Codysdab Once this iteration of Starship is delivering payloads and returning from orbit I fully expect them to shift to a 12-15m variant. They'd be reusing most of the same construction techniques and would have solved the vast majority of the problems derisking the project.
@@EagerSpace its a good thing they have competent teams of engineers fabricators builders it supplychain etc347
@@CodysdabHow do you figure that? Remember that the tanks are pressure vessels so larger diameter needs thicker walls which cancel out the shorter length.
I can say the video was made before IFT-4. It didn't age because of it, which is good. The improvement of each flight is so visible. They are getting better at this.
i dont think you watched the video lol
the undeniable thing in all this is that if spacex has this much difficulty making a fully reusable rocket imagine how much of an advantage they'll have against anyone else trying to do the same, in an era where they can't even replicate falcon 9 performance
One of the Chinese state owned companies did a test today equivalent to Falcon back in 2012 I think news said. So others are following.
@@stevepirie8130 So only 5 to 10 years behind Falcon 9 and SpaceX is well past developing Falcon 9. Let me know when they actualy launch an orbital rocket and land the booster. Even once.
@@stevepirie8130 Grasshopper equivalent, not yet orbital, just vertical landing test so it's not even Falcon 1. That part is working though, even if it is just copying spaceX's homework.
On the contrary. It will never be harder than it is for SpaceX. Other people can simply copy any successes, steal IP or poach talent etc.
Of course, this is all moot as we don't know if it will safely get to the moon before funding runs out.
@@NScherdin Chinese landed a booster, they're well on their way. I just wish it had been Blue Origin or Stoke to get that 2nd place milestone. China is going to be a serious competitor very very soon. We need to up our game across the entire Western spaceflight industry and that includes Europe.
Great summary, thanks.
Aside from the rocket science angle, SpaceX isn't just building a fully reusable super-heavy rocket. They're building a factory to produce fully reusable super-heavy rockets at industrial scales and the accompanying launch/recovery sites. They are aiming at higher production runs than probably any other orbital rocket in history. All of that while the final product is not yet finalized, so a lot of work is invested not into launching the vehicle ASAP, but to establishing the processes and logistic chains to support the production at scale.
I agree that they're doing a ton of work there. I didn't think that's a reason for any delays.
I’ve seen a lot of trolls slate the starship for not getting to orbit or anything negative they can latch onto but I remind myself the ship only has to get to LEO. The refuelling after that will get it wherever it’s required. Your video on orbital refuelling answered a lot of my questions on boil off, etc.
I’m still feeling sorry for the poor souls onboard after two years of Mars gravity and journey there and back in zero before that 5G+ flip getting home.
They will get a taste of that already during the mars landing
But payload to orbit is critical, no? The less it can take up, the more launches it will take to refuel in orbit due to boil off...?
This could very quickly get ridiculously expensive, considering it may already take up to 20 launches to refuel....
Also, don't bring up Mars. The idea is total insanity
@@ahhmm5381 The more you launch a reusable rocket, the more trivial the cost of the vehicle becomes. At a certain point you're really only paying for propellant and ground operations. Starship once fully realized will be the cheapest launch platform on the market.
I should say that Air Forces' fighter pilots can experience up to 9G of acceleration, and it is also considered the most that a pilot CAN BE ALLOWED to take. Most astronauts do have backgrounds of Air Force training or comes from being pilots themselves, so you do not need to doubt it.
@@ahhmm5381 I saw something(I forget where) that the mars mission actually require less delta V than the HLS missions. Cause for mars you only need escape burn and landing burn(orbital velocity scrubbed by atmosphere), while Moon requires an orbit burn, deorbit burn, landing burn, and take off burn
18:21 To add to the observation about IFT1 being a worthwhile test: The reality is that the very next thing SpaceX was going to do after the test, no matter what happened, was overhaul Stage 0 and install the deluge plate. _This was already going to engender a half-year delay while the FAA reviewed these monumental changes._ In the end, the destruction of the pad added only a comparatively trivial amount of delay for cleanup. But for that entire half-year wait, _SpaceX had the all-important flight data they were hoping to get,_ which they obviously would not have had without the launch. This data was used to inform decisions such as hot staging, which we obviously _immediately_ saw in use on the very next prototype stack.
What if the rocket swiped the tower? Hmm? I doubt the risk was worth it
@@ahhmm5381 SpaceX was in the best position to know whether that was a possibility.
@@ahhmm5381 What is their goal? Do you think that SpaceX is trying to learn how to, and eventually build the very best LEO launch system in the world, or build launch towers that look pretty?
Hint: They've already announced that for IFT5 they are going to launch and attempt to recover the booster with their only functional Stage 0.
@@Asterra2 You MUST know that isn't an argument....
@@Logan4661 Isn't starship supposed to go to the moon?
my friend, if you really increase your production quality this channel would genuinely be one of if not the biggest channel in the space community. You are really reminding me of scott manley, I wish you the best of luck on this platform and thanks for this amazing content.
First of all, the current Starship isn't anything but a test bed for ideas, it is hugely over engineered and therefore heavy. As they get more experience determining how this test bed performs they understand better how it can be redesigned to be lighter and more capable. Over the initial 4 flights we saw it go from IFT1 which didn't even make it to staging to IFT4 which saw both ship and booster complete their flight profiles with the booster landing exactly as predicted and the Starship surviving re-entry for a soft landing about 6km off target due to control surfaces getting toasted. Even hot staging wasn't a consideration until IFT2 so this is still essentially a very early prototype. Also the technical challenge of landing a Falcon9 orbital booster is way higher than you give credit. For it's time, it was a crazy idea especially landing it on a floating platform out at sea but is now perfected with Falcon heavy landing 3 boosters from a single rocket. Essentially all the concepts for Starship are now proved and now it's a case of getting it reliable and accurate enough to land, with the booster it looks like they may actually try a catch next flight which is mind blowing when you think about it, that thing is the size of an office block.
I think this creator, unlike others who have shit on SpaceX, made this video in good faith. Brought up some good points, but wasn’t attacking starship
@@bradleydevoir6289 Fair point but the premise of this video fails to take account of the experimental nature of the current platform. People who have never worked on rapid iteration engineering projects don't really seem to understand the nature of an early version like the current Starship/SuperHeavy. It is currently a testbed validating the concepts for a fully reusable design. With each iteration it moves on hugely in capability and is a very fluid design test platform. All the experience gained with this will ultimately be fed into a refined version which is the first actual Starship design that will be used for payloads and advanced testing, call this block 2. There will then be some refinements of this initial block 2 design leading to an eventual block 3 design which will be what Starship V2 and V3 will be based on. Highly iterative and agile design like this is very different to what happened previously in the aerospace industry with project like the Shuttle and SLS. It uses multiple test and failure to rapidly advance the project rather than spending years designing something that works first time but is normally a suboptimal, over engineered and expensive solution. In fact with rapid iteration you want it to fail more often than not because you are constantly pushing boundaries. SpaceX will already be well aware of many of the issues being seen on each flight, they will also be aware of the shortcomings of the current design and be working on engineering a block 2 that addresses the issues that can't be easily incorporated into the current design like moving the front flaps onto the leeward side to prevent overheating the hinges on re-entry.
Problem with Falcon Heavy is that it’s a real example of SpaceX being forced to backtrack on reuse. The performance hit of triple booster reuse combined with the risk and unreliability of center core recovery proved that hybrid reuse would be superior.
I think the design of Falcon Heavy was ultimately unsuited for reusability.
Starship is better, but it also faces issues. Reusing an F9 booster knocks out about 20% of the LEO payload capability, worth it. Reusing the Starship knocks out 75+% of the payload capability, still worth it? I mean, maybe that can be worked on, but it will always be a pretty severe issue.
It’s pretty clear that even in the best case scenario, fully reusable Starship doesn’t belong past LEO. Which means to do everything it’s supposed to do, it will need void dweller siblings that are stripped out and good to ferry stuff around in space endlessly (will need enduring hardware, though).
People questioning me on the practicality of that idea, read about aerobraking. It makes the delta-v requirements of space ferries reasonable.
@@J7Handle It depends on the relative costs of reusability vs expendability. In the case of SpaceX they have a launch platform that can be used expendable if needed stripping away weight of landing legs grid fins etc to launch payloads to much higher orbits but at significantly higher cost. You have to remember that SpaceX is launching Falcon9s for less than $30 million cost price in reusable configuration. That is a small fraction of the cost of launching competing platforms. Falcon Heavy booster reuse is now perfected with all three boosters recovered when needed. A few launches have required the centre booster to be expended but that is by design and still makes it cheaper than the competition.
I came back to this video after 4 days. It needs more exposure. This is the only video on RUclips that offers an explanation as to the challenges being faced behind the scenes with Starship development.
130t dry mass and 40t to LEO. I've worried for a long time that the mass of Starship is going up to an alarming level. They've kept adding more and more and more stringers and other reinforcement. 130t is still a shock.
I think the reason they had tiles falling off and were late to add the white insulation is they've tried to keep the heat shield mass down. But they had to add the white insulation and are now instead adding the black insulation - and that stuff appears to be heavy just looking at it.
Eric, thanks once again for clearing up some stubborn mysteries about Starship.
Once the major design questions are answered Starship and Super heavy will be put on a diet. There just isn't a point to mass optimization until they start putting payloads into orbit and not even initially since it will launch starlink SATs and be in space for numerous orbits. Test test test everything.
@@coreygraybzYep, hopefully that’s the case. They need to keep flying further and pushing their test targets forward at all costs. Both to push the concept forward and for public perception, I think. Looks like they’re not in a hurry to start launching Starlink v3 sats this year, which was a bit of a surprise for me. I remember Elon saying earlier they were critical for the business viability of the project. Perhaps the v2 minis are enough of a substitute for now. Or the competition is so far behind they can afford the delay. Anyhow, I hope they continue to do both… testing the new designs while also deploying some payload along the way. That’s always been the SpaceX way. They never wasted an F9 launch for testing only. They were able to use regular launches to test all landing and reuse attempts. Except the Crew Dragon in-flight abort test 😅
@@coreygraybzthey can barely get it completely empty into leo. Forget about this 100 ton nonsense.
@@jebes909090 What should they do, then? Make a brand new rocket design?
@@fauzin3338 yes
Absolutely fantastic video and info. Thanks a jillion!! Great job, i look forward to more
This video can be considered a great follow up of your previous “Is Elon right?”. The point is fully reusable 2-stage rocket is on the edge of physically feasible. Space shuttle is another example of how hard it is to build a mostly reusable rocket. Actually, ITF-3/4 configured starship has a similar payload ratio to the space shuttle while being fully reusable, it’s already an very amazing achievement
This video came directly out of that; I was doing the gravity one and I saw the chart and I literally sat up straight and said, "okay, now I understand starship"...
NASA decided very early that the shuttle was going to be hydrolox, and that's such a terrible choice for a reusable second stage. If you think of how big shuttle would have been if it had to encompass the whole external tank, it's pretty clear it would have had a negative payload. Of course, at that point, nobody was thinking about methalox so it would have been RP-1 and NASA believed that RP-1 staged combustion wasn't possible.
The shuttle was at best slowly refurbishable - far from reusable and even further from quickly reusable.
@@EagerSpace I would argue that given 1970/80s technology, a mostly(engine )reusable hydrolox second stage is the best NASA could do (the failure to fast reuse is more an organizational problem, not a technical one).
I don’t think a Kerolox or even methalox space shuttle would ever work. Your conclusion that a reusable second stage would have a very stiff payload-deltaV relation also works for space shuttle, replacing the ~450s hydrolox with ~360s kerolox will definitely make it unable to reach orbit, even dropping the ~30t external tank.
I think a propulsive landing liquid first stage is an absolute necessary for a fully reusable 2-stage rocket. It might be fun to imagine how would starship work with a space shuttle configuration(with solid state booster). Or how would super heavy work as a space shuttle booster.(I know it’s stupid, but might be fun)
@@juncenli9983hehe. KSP with mods (especially RSS) or Juno .
Not accurate, but indeed fun
My response to comments like this - and I'm not picking on you - is that you need to look at an actual stage and run the numbers to figure out what is actually going to happen, because the results are often not what you expect. If you're okay with me generalizing, hydrogen gives you great Isp but gives you crappy mass ratios, and I think that it worse for fully reusable because you need to carry much larger tankage around.
I'll talk about that a bit more in an upcoming video because lots of people have been asking about a hydrolox starship.
WRT engines, NASA went with hydrolox for shuttle because a) nobody was thinking about methane and b) US engine designers generally thought that oxygen-rich staged combustion was, if not impossible, very difficult, and they didn't know that the soviets had been flying those engines in the 1960s.
This is one of the best Starship videos I've ever seen. This video needs to go viral so the world understands how off the charts this really is.
The next question is after they succeed... how long will Starship be Peerless as a super heavy fully reusable rocket.
Teaser. There *might* be a video at some point talking about why there might be a ultra heavy (mega heavy?) son of starship at some point.
@@EagerSpace The Return to ITS (The 12m Diameter Interplanetary Transport System)
Would probably still be made of stainless steel but the propellant-mass fractions may improve because of the square-cube law.
Yes and yes.
14:02 IFT-1 used raptor 2
From what Elon said in his recent Tim Dodd interview, thinking of it strictly in terms of Raptor 1 vs 2 vs 3 isn't necessarily correct, think of it more in terms of Raptor 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 ect. Raptor 2 from ift-1 and Raptor 2 from ift-4 are different, mostly in terms of reliability.
@@jonathangibson4778 No there is a massive difference between Raptor 1 and Raptor 2. The first "orbit capable" pair of vehicles they made, S20 and B4, used Raptor 1. This stack had a TWR of something abysmal like 1.05. That thing wouldn't have cleared the pad and it's a good thing they never flew it.
Yup. IFT 1 was on R2, and issues were caused by underperforming purge system and hydraulic TVS. They added shielding around raptors for ift-2, 15 times increased capacity of purge tanks and also changed TVS to electric. But those were R2. Booster 4/ship20 were on raptor 1
@@jonathangibson4778 Yup, we could probably say that IFT-1 Raptor 2 were Raptor 2.0. The ones on IFT-4 are probably Raptor 2.5 at this point.
@@theredstonehive I agree that there is a massive difference between Raptor 1 @ 2, but Elon has also said there is a difference between the earlier Raptor 2's used on flight one, and the most recent Raptor 2's used on flight 4, thats what im saying.
Going by the title I wasn't really sure what this video will be about. I was expecting it to either mean "Why has nobody tried this before SpaceX came along" or "Why is the progress happening only in the last 5 years even though Mars was their goal way earlier".
Edit: I'd love to see a more videos answering those questions. Especially the first one.
[this edit was rescued from raw memory of that particular tab using grep and a janky shellscript]
Interesting question.
I'm going to drop an "ask a question" video soon, and if you could ask this question there I'll consider answering it there. Or it might show up as a separate video if the topic is big enough.
I think the very simple answer to the Mars question is: Marketing.
5 years ago Space X needed external investment. Now with Starlink Space X is basically able to find it's own development, so while Mars is their goal, they no longer need to sell that goal.
Wow, excellent video! I'm a big spacex nerd and new a lot of this already, but seeing the numbers and graphs that explain it really put this whole thing into perspective! Definitely didn't understand just how incredibly important raptor performance was.
Well done!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for another great insight. Another thing that might be a reason for the shorter first stage burn time in future Starships is that the first stage needs propellant to decrease it' s horizontal velocity, while the second stage can use the athmosphere to do the job so staging early means a larger percentage of the overall delta-v is removed passively using aerodynamic drag.
Yep -- I was thinking exactly the same thing. Also, a more lofted trajectory for the first stage would require a shorter boost back burn, and allow the second stage to fire closer to horizontal while coasting upwards to compensate for lower horizontal velocity from the first stage.
Musk said in the past that they would be pushing more delta-v to the ship and you can really see that in the Starship 3 design. Starship is going to get closer to an SSTO because super heavy pays less of a penalty the earlier it can stage.
@@EagerSpace Yep -- when I first heard this, it seemed counterintuitive for maximizing payload performance, but but after thinking about about it makes sense since Superheavy needs to return to the launch site and theerefore optimization trade-off is different compared to a conventional launcher (also why RTLS for high energy Vulcan first stage doesn't make any sense, and thus their planned "SMART" architecture for recovering only the engine section far down range).
@@joakimlindblom8256 a steeper ascent would mean more gravity loss during a staging coast phase, but with hot staging it doesn't seem to matter. more powerful engines also reduce the RTLS penalty because the boostback burn is shorter.
@@w0ttheh3ll Yes, it would a trade-off between gravity losses and total impulse (and therefore amount of fuel) needed for the RTLS. It would be interesting to do a trade study between the two. Speaking of gravity losses: Atlas V with a single engine on the Centaur second stage flies a lofted trajectory because the thrust of the second stage is so low -- they've clearly made the trade to accept more gravity loss as a trade for a lighter dry weight (and lower cost) of a single engine Centaur stage (note that main reason Starliner version of Atlas V/Centaur use to engines is for a less lofted trajectory and lower G-loading in the event of an abort).
Just discovered your channel . Excellent video, beautiful graphics, no BS, great commentary and well thought out opinion. Plus you make it easy to understand. I have just subscribed. Thanks for your effort. Now I have to check out all your past videos. 😊
FAA license is a huge hurdle. Notice that all IFTs so far have happened within a couple days of receiving the license.
A brand new rocket that is the biggest in the world launch from a brand new launch site in the middle of a nature preserve and near population centers was never going to be a quick process.
Bigger issue were environmental assessment and all delays and re-assesments caused by NGOs that hate SpaceX and Musk. There are few NGO that are trying their best from area to get rid of SpaceX.
FAA unfortunately has to follow regulations that are sparked by "concerns from FWS", and those are sparked by fillings from those NGOs.
@@EagerSpace So why did Elon say it would be? He claimed Starship would be sending cargo to Mars in 2022.
@@Danuxsy They clearly stated those dates were aspirational. AKA "No way these dates will happen, but we are going to try to get as close to these dates as humanly possible."
It's better to aim for 2022 and be delayed six years than aim for 2028 and be delayed by two years. That's often how this can actually go.
@@DanuxsyMars 2022 was for the carbon fiber design assuming that they got big funding in 2016. They completely scrapped the fiber in 2019 and started from scratch.
Thanks for the interesting video!
5 back to back vids now. This channel is a gold mine of rocketry info.
Great video! You’ve just gained a new subscriber. :)
Very nice explanation, clarifying a lot of things.
Didn't release how hard full reuse is. Full rapid & reuse will be even harder.
Nice video. A good run-down for those not in the know. You also make me lol with the dry humour : )
I think SpaceX will sort the problems they will face and I'll be here, wine in hand, watching this crazy show unfold. Cheers for the vids *clink*!
Excellent overview of the physics and engineering trades required to make Starship work. The importance of empty weight fraction of the second stage cannot be overstated. Kudos.
very good video! never thought of this
With the revelation that tower 2 at boca chica will be taller to accommodate future ships and the replacement of the water plate with a flame trench, when do you think we can expect to see the tower at 39a being torn down and replaced? Additionally, do you think that the planned catch tower mentioned in the EIS documents will eventually become a second launch tower at 39a
Love the question...
I'll be dropping a video in the next couple of days where I ask for viewer questions, and if you ask that there I'll consider answering it.
There aren't additional segments, I think Elon was mistaken when he said that because the base structure is slightly taller
Terrific new video!
Nice job. I value your take on this, including the modest math-dive. Thank you.
Fantastic video. You got my sub.
Hey Eager, I've got a question. What do you think of the feasibility of creating a fully reusable system that's optimized for LEO, like shuttle, just far cheaper. Then using that to launch a system used only for in-space operations, and using that to go to the Moon, Mars, ect. It seems like the radical drop off of Starships payload capabilities wouldn't be an issue if you did it that way. Then the in-space vehicle could go to its destination, capture itself into orbit, and then vehicles like the LEO optimized one, just built for whatever planet/moon their on, can go into orbit, transport people and cargo down to the surface, refuel the ship and it can go on its merry way. I'm guessing a NTP engine of some kind would work best for it, as it would never have to worry about entering an atmosphere, and all of the issues (mostly regulatory) entering a nuclear reactor into the atmosphere would entail.
Interesting question.
I'm going to drop an "ask a question" video soon, and if you could ask this question there I'll consider answering it there.
@@EagerSpace Cool, Thanks!! As always, great video!
Awesome video as always!
18:29 "I don't think they counted on how much reaction the launch pad concrete issues would bring"
I was at IFT-1 and got to talk to an employee after the launch waiting at the Brownsville airport. Their expectation was it would be just good enough for 1 flight before getting replaced by the more permanent plate solution and damage was worse than expected.
2:00 I think I see one or two of my "guesses"/"explanations" in there, glad to have been of service :)
I guess this video was done before ift-4. What did you think of ift-4?
Man, lots of people here calling this a bad video for even remotely questioning Starship’s schedule. I suppose we can’t have any serious questions about projects as soon as it’s about SpaceX…
This is a great video and doesn’t throw out Starship at all. Maybe the fanboys want to believe in fairy tales, but the reality is that Starship has faced unexpected delays due to its inherent complexity, like a lot of projects do. Good on you to speak about them despite any criticism! Aerospace is hard and it’s important to be unbiased when looking at any project/company. Here’s to hoping Starship works and isn’t too complex!
The creator knows this is a click bait video title - and a premise that does not actually hold water. But, whatever. I'm not a fan of click bait. I might even call some click bait videos bad. But again, whatever... This is not even close to a bad video in and of itself, but click bait IS annoyingly bad. There are lots of great stats and analysis here. Some decent graphics as well... But, whatever... Did I mention I am not a fan of click bait?
Thank you! The video and information are excellent. I HATE CLICKBAIT TITLES! I wanted to call this video bad because of the horrible title, but I couldn't because the content was good. PLEASE don't use clickbait titles.
It's a development program, not a production program yet. Everyone has been watching it in real time, not like launching 1 Boeing rocket after 15 years, and now the boon doggle Starliner.
Because the title is obviously rage bait. It’s “late” if you just pick and choose qualifiers.
@@markhelme5732 It's not really clickbait, it is late. Yeah, it's not as bad as Boeing or ULA delays, but it is behind by a few years if we believe SpaceX announced timelines from ~2020, etc. Doesn't make it a failed or bad program by a longshot, but there's no denying it's behind its original schedule. In aerospace, late doesn't always equal bad, and late is typically to be expected. In aerospace, you'll just need to become used to hearing even the best projects being listed as late
What I find reassuring is that because the graph for starship is so steep, minor refinements to the vehicle and shaving off weight of the has large improvements on payload. I assume the inert mass of the vehicle is quite overbuilt right now. I don't doubt that this will be reduced greatly and the actual commercial version of Starship will reach its lofty payload goals.
Definitely true. SpaceX is right now focusing on what starship should be rather than how to make it as light as possible. I expect a fair bit of the improvement in Starship 2 and 3 to come from that work.
This is a great point and something that we have heard Elon say time and time again in interviews. The new factory will also allow the design to be more precise which will also save mass.
Slight error; at 14:00 it is stated that Raptor 1 powered IFT-1. Ship 24 and Booster 7, which flew on the flight, was raptor 2, albeit a early version of it.
Thanks for the video
4:12 honestly i think all new explanations of the rocket equation should use exhaust velocity. It's [current year], no need to divide it by gravity to accommodate the imperial system,
I tend towards metric but the problem is that specific impulse is so engrained in the community and that's what all the specs are written in.
Amazing analysis, subscribed
Hell yeah new video
Eager Space is a gift that keep gifting
Small correction IFT-1 did not fly with raptor 1 engines, all full stack flights so far have used raptor 2. 350 bar chamber pressure also isn't the goal for raptor 3, it's for raptor 2 block 3.
WOW. I learned from this video more than from dozens of popular Starship videos. Interesting topics, great explaining and simple, understandable animations. Just 1 thing: in 14:02 You said that Raptor 1 powered IFT 1. It was Raptor 2. Maybe I just missunderstood and You meant IFT used much less advanced engines than IFT 2 (which is of course true). Generally, excellent video, I'll watch another yout videos for sure. You got new subscriber!
IFT1 was my favorite launch/test. Watching the most massive, powerful, and complex rocket ever built obliterate the OLM was crazy. Watching the monster throw multi-ton pieces of concrete hundreds of meters was wild.
Watching the engine rich exhaust, the supersonic flips, and the beasts absolute refusal to explode, was .......
Glorious 😢
The kaos of it all.
IFT4 has since taken the trophy for obvious reasons.
The funny thing about this is that SpaceX could get into the engine business selling these engines to other companies.
Definitely could. However, once Starship starts working, there's going to be a lot more supply than there is demand for shipping stuff to space. And SpaceX seems like it will be very capable of scaling up production to further increase supply once the market figures out how to make use of the cheap rocketry and demand catches up.
So, why would they sell away their secret sauce to competitors when everything launched on another rocket is one [tenth] less of a Starship payload?
I do find your conclusion interesting when it comes to Stoke. Is it by chance that Stoke is also going for a FFSC engine on their fully reuseable Nova rocket? I guess not.
What if they added a couple falcon 9 first stages as boosters? Would that even help? Obviously the vehicle isn’t designed for that, but would the napkin math work?
Adding more boosters is not a solution here. The superheavy booster is quite powerful enough as it is.
The booster is mostly limited by its requirement to stage early, in order to limit re-entry heating and make a rtls. This means the upper stage must do more work. Hence the videos focus on upper stages. :)
Great analysis as always o7
(Also high altitude hops were late 2020/early 21, in case anybody forgot/needed clarification)
What 'space' content. Thank you very much for this work.
Brilliant! Thank you!
Landing along the trajectory (rather than RTL) might allow for big gains.
Also, once Starship is no longer transported by road, they may be able to increase its radius. The allometric volume-to-surface-area ratio and improved plasma shielding due to the geometry could help with the mass ratio.
Yeah, it would, but it complicates the operational side so much that they will really try to avoid it. I haven't run any numbers but it the added complexity might make drone ship landings more expensive on a $/kg basis.
@EagerSpace, would it be possible for the starship booster to land downrange on some island in the Atlantic or the Caribbean, or land on converted oil rigs out at sea like SpaceX wanted to do but shelved for now?
That way space x can build a catch tower on land saving the extra weight needed for landing legs.
Doing this seems like it might save some delta v as it won't have to do a boost back burn to RTLS and since the deltaV/payload graph is steep for starship, it might provide significant gains.
That's definitely going to show up in my upcoming "viewer Q&A video"...
@@johnbenoy7532: Exactly what I was thinking. If it goes orbital, then it could even RTL.
Wow! Now I'm less confused too! Thanks for clearing many things up! As allways, though it's dumb, please tell people to subscribe.
Me listening to this video as if I know literally anything about the formulas you’re walking us through. I still can’t stop watching though 😅🎉
I try to make the math optional from terms of the overall message, but it's a bit critical here. Watch for flavor.
Pretty damn fast in my book. 2x the size of the Saturn V - and both stages return and land. Impressively fast.
This video is in your Starship playlist twice. There’s a bug or two in RUclips’s code for adding videos to playlists and this happens to me occasionally.
I don't know if Starship is "late" or how that can be defined in its case but I appreciate the elucidation in this video of the issues associated with having second stage reusability. That has never been achieved before by anybody, and the fact that there must be considerable structural mass added to the second stage will inevitably degrade its payload capability, much more so than adding mass to the first stage. The comparative payload curves of Starship and Falcon 9 are sobering.
One thing I've noticed on the Starship launches is that the first stage burns out with the vehicle moving at somewhat under 6,000 km/hr. In contrast the old expendable Saturn IB and Saturn V vehicles would have first stage burnout at around 10,000 km/hr. Every bit of impulse counts, and now it becomes clear why SpaceX is striving to increase the Super Heavy Booster performance.
I thought this was going to be another one of those clickbait videos. Boy was I wrong. This was very solid logical information. Well thought out and well presented. Thanks!
Definitely a clickbait title. Everybody says that they hate them but it's pretty clear that youtube rewards them over titles like "an new analysis of the factors behind the progress of SpaceX's Starship program".
An interesting analysis of the progress and difficulties of starship design. The RUclipsrs who present Starship are more often than not avid fans and offer little insight that is not overhyped to anything produced by SpaceX. However, I question the value of Starship's design for anything other than LEO. Especially considering that according to some experts it would be necessary more than 16 refuelings to reach the moon. How many years of development before going there considering that no development of transfer of criogenic propellant has been demonstrated yet. Not to mention several points having a single fault to place the astronauts in mortal danger without the possibility of returning to earth. Will starship really be rapidly reusable or will the same problem the shuttle experienced be an insurmountable challenge for starship with its 18,000 tiles? And so many more questions...
I really like your content.
Interesting questions...
16 refuelings sounds like a really poor architecture, but I don't think anybody has internalized what the world would be like if you could do that with 16 cheap launches over 16 days.
I do think tiles are going to be somewhat of an issue because the expansion/contraction of the tank makes it so hard to get them to fit right. But the fact that they made it down on their first real try was pretty impressive.
The most recent estimates I've seen have put the number of refueling flights at 16-20 given the initially advertised 100t payload capacity, and we know now that the actual payload capacity is AT MOST 50t. Elon said 40t-50t, but knowing him, and the fact that it has thus far yet to launch even with a dummy payload, the actual payload capacity is probably even lower.
Unless they can double or even triple the payload, depending on what the actual number is now, they're not going to hit that 16 flight number. It may take as many as 50+ refueling flights for the lunar landing and return, if they can only get 40t per launch.
ALSO, so far they are a VERY long way off from being able to launch a flight a day. I think the dream would be a one week refurbishment time, but so far they've only gotten as fast as a several week refurbishment time for the Falcon 9, and Starship is far more complex and has a far higher cost if lost.
@@scirrhia_kruden It would be around 15 propellant launches with 100 tons of payload capacity, around 30 with 50 tons. But even at 50 tons, that would work. 30 flights at a cost of lets say $50 million per flight would still be a lower cost than an SLS. Something like $1.5 billion vs $2+ billion.
This point is moot though. They are already building hardware for the version intended to fly 100 tons of payload. It's just a fact that SpaceX won't fly the current version for HLS.
You'll never ever be able to build any kind of infrastructure on the Moon with a single launch architecture, unless you're going to build an absolutely ludicrous rocket.
Consider that the Apollo architecture, while able to deliver landers in single launch increments, could only deliver ~1 ton of useful cargo (humans included) with each of those landers.
The Starship HLS, with its 16* refillings, is advertized to deliver 100 tons of cargo to the lunar surface every landing. Even if it only achieves 1/5 of that capability, it would still have significantly more efficient cargo per launch once you amortize it over all launches.
Worth noting that in the somewhat near future, the superheavy booster will also increase to 35 engines
A beginners question: would a Falcon Heavy with more boosters (4-5, instead of 2) make sense?
No. Falcon Heavy is already limited because the upper stage is the same as Falcon 9 and is limited to 18.8 tons of payload max. That limits it to launching heavy geosynchronous satellites and direct to geostationary missions for the DoD. More boosters wouldn't fix that.
"TwiX followers" is such a good throwaway line
On the 40-50 ton V1 payload i can answer this kinda simply.
V1 ships and boosters have had major upgrades/retrofits which they wasn't initially designed for. Engine shielding, Hot-Staging ring, extra stringers, slosh baffles, extra heatshield layers and general vehicle systems.
V2 is being designed to match/improve on the specs of V1 whilst lighter. The HSR weighs several tons and the V2 will feature a built in design similar to N1 which weighs substantially less is my prime example.
V2 and V3 will rapidly increase this payload capacity as mass savings grow. Its not that Starship can never do 100-150 tons, its that it can not do it right now.
Everything this vehicle is doing is a first. Largest flying object, largest vehicle to reenter earths atmosphere, most engines flown on a single vehicle. They're tryna launch a 120m+ behemoth and bring it back to where it took off from. It's gonna take time and we will see some spectacular failures, but every failure is prime learning material
That's really enlightening, I knew they need expandable 3rd stage and/or expandable Starship version to have any decent payload to GEO and further but I didn't realize it was this bad.
I wonder if putting modified Falcon 9 stage into Starship cargo bay would work for that, would be cool to see.
They could use a kick -stage yes, or just use orbital refueling as per the Starship design.... :)
I did a "what could you do with starship?" video before we knew the current payload was only 50 tons to GEO.
Right now I'd just go with one of the Impulse Space Helios kick stages which would be enough for reasonably sized payloads.
@@EagerSpace Make the booster out of aluminum and fuel the ship with LH2...
Being less confused is in general good
And for me everythung makes sense what you said.
Another thing hurting them is the lack of FoS tuning that's been done on Starship. They've got a lot of optimization to go to gain an incredible amount of efficiency. Just looking at it you can see the big, dumb shapes with big, dumb parts- but it works and that's the single most important thing right now. The fact that they can have a flap burn through almost completely and it stays not-only-attached, but working well is testament to this. That "130" is going to get shaved down as flight data and engineering test data is collected all the while they're pushing the thrust higher. I can't wait to see a mature Starship. The flight next month has me super excited.
They are low fidelity use once throw away test articles. Remember this is still in active development.
Realy good video i m just wondering why you didn t talk about refuling in space .And isn't Starship mass gonna go down with time as they trim it down
It’s good to hear a clear critical and fair review. Could they get off the launch pad quicker with a catapult or hydraulic lifting and or pushing this thing upward and clear of the ground sooner?
Excellent overview. This video really helps put the tradeoffs into perspective. It does make me wonder though, once they get Raptor performance up to the level that makes Starship workable, imagine if they then turned around and built a Raptor based booster with a non-reusable second stage. Imagine that they made a Falcon-ey type of configuration. It feels like that could be more like 250 tons to LEO at very low cost. It seems like the graph on that one could go back to being more like the level Falcon one instead of the steep slope of Starship graph
So, you would choose to spend - and I'm just making up numbers here - $50 million to put 250 tons into LEO when you could do it with two $5 million launches instead?
@@EagerSpace No. More like I was wondering if the steep slope on the Starship graph makes it more expensive to put mass into orbit than would a non-reusable upper stage that utilizes the same booster. The flat slope on the Falcon graph looks compelling is what I was thinking about.
While Starship will have significant advantages over Falcon, the video brought to my mind the possibility that they never exceed the efficiency of a non-reusable upper stage (using the same booster)
14:03, ift1 was using raptor 2. the last time raptor 1 flew was sn15.
I think over time they will be able to reduce the mass of the ship. That would help a lot. I also hope they build an expendable upper stage but I have my doubts.
if there will be a customer , they definitely will. but currently there is no demand for such big payloads. the superheavy booster would be good enough already for commercial flights with an expendable second stage.
slight correction, for future note, IFT 1 was powered by Raptor 2, just less mature versions of raptor 2
Could stage1 be built w lighter material? I get it stage2 needs stainless
There are things they can do to optimize mass, but that's at the lower end of the priority spectrum. Usually you get it working, then optimize. :)
Great video. It would be really interesting to get an idea of the possible benefits of using a lighter material than steel. Not practical for a reusable starship but what about an aluminium booster and an aluminium moon lander which does not need to be reusable.
How the heck will Blue Origin's New Glen rocket operate in a reusable mode?
To paraphrase Andy Laspa of Stoke Space, "A rapidly and fully reusable rocket has to be built from the ground up." Although SpaceX did intend for reuse with the Falcon 9 from the get go, as all Falcon 1 and the first two Falcon 9 launches included parachutes for booster recovery, it was more a case of 'building a working orbital rocket, and backing your way into reuse' than designing from the get go, as we've seen with Starship/Superheavy.
There are many new rockets being designed and tested for first stage reuse and full reuse. [EDIT: Rutherford now an ox-ruch staged combustion] Peter Beck has stated that Rutherford Engine will use a gas generator cycle because of the more benign environments, something planned for use in Relativity Space's Terran R rocket, and already in use with SpaceX's Falcon 9. Blue Origin is planning on using their oxygen-rich staged combustion BE-4 in the 1st stage reusable New Glenn, and they too have stated that they're not pursuing full-flow staged combustion due to the adding complexity such a system would bring. The two rocket companies that I can think of right now that are seriously considering full reusability (as in they have something to show beyond power point slides) are SpaceX and Stoke Space. Both of them are developing/improving full-flow staged combustion metha-lox engines for their first stages. SpaceX is using a vacuum optimized version for their second stage, while Stoke Space is going for a more efficient hydro-lox fuel. (although they're using an open cycle, because it makes use of the aerospike effect, being open cycle isn't that much of a detriment)
Because of the large leap from first stage reuse to full reuse, I expect other future fully reusable rockets to also feature full-flow staged combustion, as the delta-v costs are so great that the added complexity is worth it.
Archimedes swapped to started combustion a while back.
@@EagerSpace thanks! Edited.
brilliant analysis we have to keep in mind that they didn't just build rockets too, they built the " stage 0 " and tested it to improve uppon it and they built a rocket factory to improve the quality and quantity of future rockets. They're bootstrapping while considering improvements in their iteration, it's called progress...
Looking probable that there will be 35 BFR engines from recent pictures of starbase.
Another excellent video. I now appreciate much more why Elon has been so focused on increasing Raptor chamber pressure and also the benefits of full flow staged combustion for flexibility in mixture ratio. I imagine the achieving full reusability would have been easier had they elected to use hydrogen for the second stage, but I understand the reasons for going with with methane instead.
Hydrogen is way worse because of the tank size.
@@EagerSpace You are probably correct, though the approx. 18% higher ISP of hydrogen gives a more favorable mass ratio, so it would be an interesting exercise to calculate if the larger tank needed increases the inert weight to fully cancel out the mass ratio improvement. Of course, there are several other things to consider such as likely lower thrust to mass ration of hydrolox engines compared to methalox engines, aerodynamic drag penalty of the larger tank, as well as TPS tradeoffs (lower heat loading per unit area, but larger area to cover with tiles). My quick and dirty back of the envelope calculation would suggest that you are correct on this for LEO fully reusable launch system, but that it would tip the other way for a GTO fully reusable launch system (assuming, of course, that one doesn't do on-orbit refueling, which would tip the balance back the other way). It's a fun and interesting exercise in trade-offs, and thanks for doing an excellent job highlighting/explaining these issues and getting me thinking about this!
The Isp of hydrogen gives you a better delta v but that's not because of the mass ratio - the mass ratio crashes because of the tank size increase and the low density of hydrogen even before you have to add on the reusable stuff.
As a bit of a spoiler for an upcoming video, a hydrolox starship is going to want something like a 13m diameter IIRC.
@@EagerSpace Yes, you are of course correct that mass ratio is significantly worse for hydrolox… my wording was rather clumsy: what I meant to say was that the mass ratio *allowance* was more favorable, i.e. that mass ratio requirement was less strict for the same delta v with hydrolox's higher ISP. Am really looking forward to your upcoming video on a hydrolox Starship! (I’m guessing that that the performance will be less favorable for LEO missions but more favorable for high energy missions if one doesn’t perform in-orbit LEO refueling. *With* in-orbit refueling, methalox will probably be superior for all missions except for those that require in-situ rocket fuel production and don’t have an available supply of carbon, e.g. the icy moons of the outer solar system, and possibly our own Moon in case we can’t find significant carbon there).
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14:00 ift-1 was powered by Raptor 2, not Raptor 1
I think we will never see Starship fly any payload to GEO. It really isn't suited for it. They will have to fly Falcon Heavy for a long time.
Some company will offer a kick-stage for Starship eventually, lower payload but more orbital options..... :)
Maybe some ex SpaceX guy will have the impulse to start a company to do that. Somebody like Tom Mueller...
If a paying customer needs a Starship to GEO, they'll just refill in LEO and send it. It'll eventually be cheaper to fly than expending a Heavy core and upper stage.
@@EveryoneWhoUsesThisTV The pedantic could argue, this then wouldn't qualify as fully reusable anymore. ;)
@@gembay Well the kick-stage is fixed to the payload, so reusing it would be counterproductive. :)
I'm not aware of anyone claiming to have fully reuseable GEO satellites yet.
ahhhhhhh you said IFT-1 flew with Raptor 1, it flew with Raptor 2 but the vehicles originally intended for IFT-1 did have Raptor 1
Starship may be late but im not. Not too early either though. Edit: 9.7km/s with 3 ton payload, my KSP RSS senses are telling me a ssto is possible.
Others already calculated, that f9 first stage is capable of ssto with a low payload. But the payload adapter and the fairing would cancel out the gain, so no point of developing such thing.
@@arielhartung4557 Plus you wouldn't be able to get it back, so higher price+less/no payload=waste of time
@@arielhartung4557 Does it mean putting a simple nosecone and flying the booster between launch sites could be a way of transporting them?
@@mskiptr I don’t think there would be a fuel margin for landing.
This and ExplainingComputers must be my fav channels as of today. Never seen a video of you and I am only 5min20 in. Pls stick to that unagitated and informative style.
IFT-1 was powered by Raptor 2 engines though
5 years since starhopper is incredibly fast what do you mean "late"?
A few of us noticed you said Raptor v1 was on Flight 1 (B7 S24). As far as we know, those were Raptor v2's, but since so many engines failed early on, it had less thrust, perhaps in a way similar to v1 would be if that were used.
I tried to check that and couldn't come up with anything definitive (though I'm sure somebody knew). Should have asked.
I do think they were early model raptor 2s.
I expect that SpaceX is going to follow their usual approach where we will have raptor 1, raptor 2, then it will morph to raptor full thrust, raptor block 8, and whatever.
Probably a re-useable single stage to orbit design is easier than reusing all stages because it might require more fuel to return. A SSTO can always make use of a rocket sled or similar cheat in mechanism. A nice cheat would be with hybrid engines where the solid fuel part including the rocket motor is dropped but the oxygen tank is kept. ((actually something kind of the Soyuz rocket does)) Even a soft splash down does not seem like bad option as the remaining rocket surely will float on the water. ((like an autonomous boat returning to the launch site?))
Honey, another Eager Space vid just dropped!!!
Another outstanding video. You didn’t ask for the original Beatles Abby Road master tapes at the end of the video if I liked the video….so I am not sending them.
no, cheap $/kg to LEO and in orbit refuelling is key, because then you get as much delta v as you want. higher initial payload is nice, but not critical.
You are right in the short term. However, once full reusabillity is solved, propelant will become the main cost factor. Minimising $/kg will then be a matter of minimising propelant usage, and thus the number of tanker flights.
Looks like fantastic performance in interplanetary flight