SpaceX has a fleet of three prototype Starships (SN5, SN6, and SN7). The SN5 and SN6 bodies are fully stacked. The SN7 has survived a 7.6 bar pressure test.
Elon indicates that the 304L steel alloy performs better than the 301 steel. A failure of the 304L led a lead instead of burst.
In 6 months, SpaceX will start using their internally developed new 30X steel alloy.
SpaceX will build Superheavy-class spaceports around the Earth, moon and Mars over the coming years.
Tank didn’t burst, but leaked at 7.6 bar. This is a good result & supports idea of 304L stainless being better than 301. We’re developing our own alloy to take this even further. Leak before burst is highly desirable.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2020
Probably 6 months or so. 301 is certainly fine for orbit, but SpaceX 30X will be better.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2020
SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth https://t.co/zLJjz43hKw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 16, 2020
SOURCES – SpacexCentric, Spacex, Elon Musk, Boca Chica Gal, Marcus House
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Political stability risk, yeah you could say Brazil is on a downward trend lately, but for a political/technical perspective, there were technology protection agreements specific to Alcantara between the US and Brazil that made it much more attractive recently.
Probably less political risk on an off shore platform, though.
If you’re CEO of a private company, you can say whatever you want. Where Elon got in trouble was making the same kind of statements wrt Tesla, which is public. However, with SpaceX, the private investors presumably knew what they were getting when they forked over the money.
I’ve noticed that the most fullblownbatshit crazy stuff that he says is usually after he’s been working non-stop on something for months at a time. The man is the master of the flat-out massive engineering effort, and the results are truly spectacular. But somebody needs to lock his Twitter account starting in about week 8 of one of these burns, and only give it back to him after he’s had a two-week vacation at the end.
I think the point-to-point stuff is nonsense for the immediate future, and will take a huge amount of time just to deal with all the international regulatory stuff that’ll be needed. But there are other uses for offshore launch sites.
They could probably use two platforms just offshore from Cape Canaveral. They’ll need at least two to get the refueling cadence needed for the HLS system to work reliably enough for NASA to trust it.
There are lots of equatorial land sites available. The problem with all of them is logistics. There just isn’t very much infrastructure available nearby. That’s an even worse problem for platforms out to sea.
I think the real reason behind the push to get offshore platforms up and running is that NASA isn’t going to let SpaceX launch SuperHeavy/Starship from the test pad at LC-39A, for fear of taking out the infrastructure necessary to operate Commercial Crew. But they desperately need an east coast launch site, because they can’t launch Starlinks to the 53.8º inclination from Boca Chica.
If they put the platform just offshore from Canaveral, then they can use most of the logistical infrastructure at the Cape for doing launch processing, and then move the SH and SS out to the platform once everything else is buttoned up.
Eh, Brazil is practically begging US newspace startups to launch from Alcantara, and that’s a decent equatorial launch site all things considered.
Scrith.
“Charlatan” is a bit harsh, but Elon tends to make public statements with the degree of no fact checking and over-confident glibness that really should be reserved for lunchtime banter with your friends, or perhaps an anonymous internet discussion forum.
As CEO/ major figure of major corporations you don’t get to do that. That’s part of why they get the big bucks: because they are ALWAYS on duty.
He’s gotten into big trouble before now for doing just this, but most of the time he gets away with it. Because he really has delivered the goods a lot of the time (if not quite as, or when, originally promised).
As long as everyone allows for his over-confidence. And adjusts all his timelines to Mars years, it’s all good. But a lot of people do not, and legally they have a point.
You could also make comparison to certain politicians who also speak as if they were bantering in private, but are actually making public statements that the more foolish might treat as official, checked, referenced, government position papers.
At the other end of the spectrum (in both senses of the word) we have those people who are working to ensure that everyone is always held responsible for private, off-the-cuff comments as though they were amendments to the constitution, with similar levels of detailed analysis of each word, taking into account the proto-indo-european origin of the linguistic roots, who said the word in 1796 while discussing war with the Ottomans, etc. etc.
The guy is a good seller, a bit exaggerated at times, but he’s no charlatan. He has delivered in a lot of his promises and others are just a bit different from what he promised originally.
Yes, rockets are mostly empty space (or rather, tank pressurization gas), once the fuel is spent.
Depends how soft the landing is. If the tanks survive, they should float.
Uh, Reardon metal?
Only slightly related, would SS float if had to “land” but in the water?
leak not lead
Why would they use the plural in that case ?, you only need a single equator spaceport for that.
No, he’s talking about building spaceports close to the big cities for commercial passenger flights, which everybody with any common sense knows that it’s not happening. I like the guy, Elon Musk dreams big, but I wish he didn’t had this huge penchant for lying (full self-drive is just a couple of months away, a million robotaxis before the end of the year, close to zero Covid19 cases by April’s end, 1,000 kilometers range for sure in 2017, … and now this city to city commercial passenger transport in less than 1 hour).
I think Elon wants to build sea spaceports, so he could lauch spaceships from equator. The difference is noticable(Von Braun did support that idea) and there won’t be any problems with nearby population(since there won’t be any) ,…
A future that looks like the future, not a repetition of the past millenia of drama and mostly staying on the ground.
Musk ‘s plan will transform our future in a far better direction – a future.