Calling this kludged together testbed a rocket is hilarious, but it is cool they aren’t wasting time and money gold plating the turd.

most of the brush fire seems to be out.

But seeing as I can still see some illuminated smoke billowing in the upper right corner of the stream... some of the fire is still going and just out of camera view.

this stream:

Click date for video

Engine cam pic.twitter.com/3cWHU50353

— e^\uD83D\uDC41\uD83E\uDD67 (@elonmusk) July 26, 2019

Click date for video

Drone cam pic.twitter.com/gVdMrMgUZq

— e^\uD83D\uDC41\uD83E\uDD67 (@elonmusk) July 26, 2019

But it flew. And not just flew, but demonstrated the first successful flight of the most advanced rocketry engine design in history.

The entire rest of the spaceflight industry is basically sitting a decade or two behind SpaceX, at best. Blue Origin and the Chinese are the only real competitors worth tracking in the medium to long term forecast right now - everyone else is just now starting to realize how fucked their business models have become in light of the market realities of the past several years.

Unless the tic tacs are some form of legit, scalable, orbit-capable inertialess drive, and the Pentagon suddenly dumps the plans onto Bittorrent next week, there's very little standing in the way of near-global market monopoly within the next several years...the only launch providers will be SX, BO, a handful of micro launchers, and a couple of annual state-subsidized governmental asset launches funding domestic programs for Europe, Russia, China, and India.

Very cool

So awesome. That blue flame is damn cool, can’t wait to see this go higher.

SpaceX has the same "get shit done" mindset that we had in the 60s before it became BoeingMartGrumman&co trying to milk the taxpayer for every possible dollar.

BoeingMartGrumman wouldn't even make a test article... They'd try to build a simulation and skip it, fail, and already be 5 years and $3 billion over budget. Somehow though they'd still win hundreds of millions of dollars in performance bonuses from their contract.

Exactly right.  Musk isn't doing it to milk the taxpayer.  He genuinely wants the human race to settle the galaxy.

I really wouldn't be surprised if the share of tonnage to orbit in 2026 looks something like this:

90% SpaceX
5% Blue Origin
5% Everyone else

One thing in common with all of the spacex tests is fire. Lots of fire.

Elon should trademark fire symbols for his rockets and cars.

they still have shit on fire , yo

Does Texas sand burn?

I would be careful underestimating Blue Origin. They're financially backed by the richest man in the world and are doing LOTS behind the scenes. Don't forget they were the first ones to launch a booster to space and land it, before SpaceX (although it wasn't orbital class).

SpaceX is currently enjoying its first-to-market status but BO is going to come out swinging when they go commercial. It's just too bad Bezos isn't as excited to share media of his tests the same way Musk does.

Pretty sure that honor goes to Virgin/Scaled and Burt Rutan.

That little tourist ship isn’t a “booster”. Of course they are both suborbital and thus completely irrelevant, so who gives a rip.

True we don't see much from them outside of New Shepard launches but their facility at KSC is anything but low-profile, and they're expanding it.

I believe they've also broken ground on their Alabama facility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin_facilities



Just adding I love what SpaceX is doing, I've been to 2 launches (1st Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon Demo flight), and I'm not trying to poo-poo them. I'm just trying to say that Blue Origin should not be underestimated.

Blue Origin wont have a Starship class fully reusable rocket for a while though. New Glenn probably won't fly until 2022 because they're having problems in BE-4 development, they still haven't had a full power or full duration test burn of it yet.

Don't underestimate how much of a step-function increase in capability this system will be. It would only take about 4-5 launches of Starship to equal the tonnage the entire world put up into orbit last year (of which SpaceX was 28% of the world total already)...SpaceX wants to launch it hundreds of times per year.

Scott Manley's video on the hop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCMpd7-Cp24

Bezos is protecting the reputation of Blue Origin.
They are striving to not have a single KABOOM, or lost life.

He wants to send millions of people to space, so having a single accident could "poison the waters".

Kludged?  You mean like Senate Launch System?  You're for comic relief, I see.

Makes a lot of sense.

THIS is kludged together.

People are really in this thread complaining about the first rocket test of a LCH4 powered ship? Really?

I don't think people really understand how important LCH4 is in the grand scheme of chemical rockets. The fact a private company did it is crazy and shows you how utterly useless NASA's launch service wing is.

I'm excited about it but it sounds like something I should be more excited for.

Care to explain just how important this is?

(if that sounds sarcastic it's not, genuinely looking for a reason to be more excited)

Methane isn't really what's special about the Raptor engine, it's that it's a full flow staged combustion engine with the highest chamber pressure in the world. There are a lot of superlatives about Raptor.

Whether or not it's methane-based doesn't matter much for launches from Earth, but being able to run on methane is going to be essential to any sustainable Mars base (since you can create methane on Mars via ISRU). So yes this is a double game changer - not just an amazingly powerful design, but also one that is an essential building block to making mankind a multi-planet species.

Yes, but from a standpoint of engineering, making a methane rocket is not hard... Making a full flow staged combustion engine is very hard. No one else has done more than a few runs on a test stand of one. SpaceX are the first to have a flying production FFSC engine now.

Methane is also good from a standpoint of reusability because it is cheaper than other fuels.

Chemical rocket technology hasn't really been improved upon since the 1970s, regardless of nationality. Additionally, there are massive tradeoffs for any of the main fuel types with advantages and drawbacks. The Raptor and its insanely advanced technology is more advantageous in essentially every way, or at least suffers radically less drawbacks than any other type of major engine.

First, lets go over the main engines and fuel types and their advantages/disadvantages:

RP-1/LOX (RD-180, Merlin-1D, F-1, ect) - The most widely used fuel in use currently. From the Saturn V to the Falcon 9 to the Atlas V, they all use RP-1 for first stage engines. They scale in size well, and fuel density is very high at 1.02 g/ml (more fuel in less space). The downside is that the isp is poor relative to other fuels like LH2. The Soviets/Russians figured out an advanced staged combustion system that improved the efficiency notably for 1st stage use (311 isp on the RD-180). The Falcon 9 has the best vacuum isp at 349, but is way lower on 1st stage at 282. Additionally, its useless as a long duration fuel for deep-space missions due to boil-off temperature.

LH2/LOX (Saturn J-2, RS-25, Vulcain, ect) - LH2 is a major reason we beat the Soviets to the moon. We developed LH2 as an upper-stage fuel, while the N-1 was using RP-1, making their vehicle grossly heavier which may have led to its failure. It's far more efficient in a vacuum as opposed to RP1, as Saturn V's J-2 engine had a vacuum isp of 420. Newer engines are even more efficient at an isp of 462. However, it has major drawbacks: Liquid hydrogen has to be stored at extremely low temperatures at -423*F, which is its boiling point. That makes it difficult to work with regarding engine design, tank insulation, and other such issues. Also, its dense, as liquid hydrogen weighs 70.85 g/L meaning its about 14 times less dense than RP-1, so the tank size has to be much, MUCH larger for the same amount of fuel. Its why the Space Shuttle fuel tank was so large. Also, due to the temperature, its abysmal for long-storage purposes in deep space due to it boiling off at -423*F. If I remember right, an LH2 tank loses something like 3% of its fuel per hour when its orbiting, or something extreme like that.

Hypergolic fuels such as Aerozine-50 (50:50 mix of hydrazine and UDMH), or N204/MMH auto-ignite when in close proximity to each other and can be stored in liquid forms at room temperature. It makes them easily usable in deep space where boil-off of cryogenic fuels inhibits the usage of other fuels like RP-1/LOX or LH2. They are very easy to work with in terms of engine creation, but also are extremely toxic. If a rocket blows up, you run major risks like what SpaceX saw with AMOS-6 which used hydrazine as an upper-stage fuel. Efficiency is poor depending on what fuels are used. Lunar missions (like the Apollo missions) had a fuel isp of 300-310, whereas extremely deep-space missions using pure hydrazine only achieve in the area of 260 isp.

LCH4 is what SpaceX and Blue Origin are working towards - liquid/slush (e.g. solid slush) methane. Russia noodled with it in the 90s but didn't have the funds to create a next-generation RD-180 successor. LCH4 is in between RP-1 and LH2 in terms of efficiency, as the Raptor is slated to have a sea-level isp of 330 and vacuum nearing 380. It is also denser than LH2 at 422 g/L (about 6x as dense as LH2 in a liquid state). The fuel is cleaner than RP-1 for re-use according to SpaceX, so its more economical. The boiling point of LCH4 is also much better at -258*F. Boil-off is still an issue, but they believe with proper insulation, they can use it readily for deep space missions. It's also cheap to manufacture like RP-1, can be produced on Mars and other places where hydrocarbons exist, and the Raptor's thrust is incredibly high, allowing it to be used in an extremely large spacecraft.

Ultimately, its a reasonable leap beyond the fuels we've used previously. Its not game-changing, but any beneficial iteration on isp, tank size, and thrust to weight ratio is very, very important for space travel. To get an object to orbit, you have to take your fuel the whole journey, so a 10-15% improvement on isp or TWR yields huge improvements. Space'X Starship will weigh less than half of the Saturn V, but have slightly more payload capacity if all the estimates are correct. That is an exponential leap on any craft that's ever been produced, and a lot of that hedges on the Raptor.

Something that the US has too much of at the moment too

Density of the fuel alone isn't as important as density of the fuel and oxidizer combo. This is what it usually looks like plus or minus a few percentage points for different mix ratios:

1.50 Solids
1.22 Hypergols
1.10 Densified Kerolox
1.03 Kerolox
0.89 Densified Methalox
0.81 Methalox
0.35 Hydrolox

Impulse density is an important metric for first stages, it's basically ISP x density, and Raptor's densified methane + full flow combustion allows it to be roughly equal (or better!) to kerolox engines in spite of the less dense fuel. Generally speaking, the better your impulse density, the better your mass ratio.(While solids generally have the best impulse density, their mass ratio is limited by the fact that the entire stage is the combustion chamber... Solid stages rarely have a mass ratio better than 10)

It costs about $250k to fuel up a ~550 tonne Falcon 9 with RP-1/LOX, it should only cost about $600k to fill up a ~5,000 tonne starship+SH. The fuel cost would probably be $2-3 million if they were using hydrogen.

Fuel costs are a small part of the pie right now, but they will be larger and larger as reusability improves... best to start off from the gate with the cheapest fuel available.

Just put some pig farms around the Texas facility. BBQ, bacon, and cheap fuel.

Now that Hopper has flown, Starship update probably in two weeks or so.

— e^\uD83D\uDC41\uD83E\uDD67 (@elonmusk) July 28, 2019

Also, methane is second only to hydrogen for exhaust velocity, and is far denser (smaller tanks) and can be liquid at the same temp as LOX, so you don't need thermal barriers between the tanks, they can share a wall.

bulkhead is being lowered into the Orbital Prototype cylinder (source: LabPadre)

Video of Raptor delivery

https://youtu.be/dDfdMhP3Dds

Looks like we know when Hoppy is going to fly, roads are scheduled to close from August 12-14th. This is gonna be epic, I can’t wait to be out there and share history with you all!\uD83D\uDE80https://t.co/00XGqCM2VQ pic.twitter.com/63rJEDbkAa

— Austin Barnard\uD83D\uDE80 (@austinbarnard45) July 30, 2019

SpaceX has released a large environmental impact study on Starship

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/08/spacex-retesting-boosters-planning-starship-pad/

500 page pdf Draft Environmental Assessment

https://netspublic.grc.nasa.gov/main/20190801_Final_DRAFT_EA_SpaceX_Starship.pdf

August 24th, either at Cape Canaveral or Boca Chica

Elon Musk  (@elonmusk) August 3, 2019

BOCA CHICA TEXAS \uD83D\uDE80
Why:
?The first Starship Hopper was tested here!
?Starship Mk1 is looking good
? local supporters have been so excited documenting Starship's  progress since Jan 1, 2019
?Tacos are good down here!
?Gift small town dreamers inspiration for the future ?

Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo  (@JaneidyEve) August 4, 2019

Very convincing! Ok, Boca it is. We should have Starship Mk1 with 3 Raptors almost ready to fly by then.

Elon Musk  (@elonmusk) August 4, 2019