SpaceX Starship

bdkw1 said:
"Built with human-centric design"
WTF?
As opposed to designed for chimps?
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Gotta love designer lingo :lmao:

CDA 455 II said:
-
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This isn't the meme thread you should look at recent posts so you stop reposting things 3 posts later :flipoff2:


NASA published a pretty interesting guide to their moon base plans:
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/moon-base-architecture-users-guide.pdf

Rocket lab just announced their new electric propulsion setup for satellite constellations. They've been positioning themselves very well to be a 3rd competitor to Starlink and Amazon's Leo (previously named Kuiper)





And speaking of Leo, they've been positioning themselves pretty well too



 
Probably accurate lol.

Ship 39 just did the first 6 engine static fire of the new V3 ship (with Raptor V3 engines), and ran it for 60 seconds. Pretty cool. The booster for the flight was going for a static fire today as well, but it looks like they paused during fueling so probably still getting the new booster systems figured out.





And then, this is really REALLY interesting. As far as the community is saying, these are never before seen pictures of the Soviet N1 moon rocket development, which was in parallel to our Apollo program, but it failed its first few flights



Then this person added some color correction to the images:

 
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Sceep said:
how do they keep it anchored to the ground for these tests?
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toggle clamps

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Yep Carter nailed it, it's a crazy intricate support and clamping system in the launch mount itself. 20 engines around the outer perimeter, and 20 supports/clamps



SpaceX released the official views of the static fire, impressive. There's speculation they may go for one more longer static fire before pulling it off the pad and prepping for the next actual launch



Now some other spaceflight stuff - China has been working on their own innovative catching concept, using a big gantry like a 3d printer with cables strung across, and catching the booster on cables. It's interesting because it seems like it would be able to catch the booster within a pretty large area if it comes in not perfectly accurate, but comes with its own challenges. This one is just practice/simulation



They did a test flight where they landed the booster near their gantry ship, but it sounds like their next attempt might actually be for real



And I missed it initially, but Everyday Astronaut teamed up with Cosmic Perspective like usual to capture some incredible slow mo shots of the Artemis 2 flight (vid also includes some clips from NASA)

 
ApeEater said:
They weren’t close enough.
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Yep yep. At closest approach Artemis 2 was just over 4,000 miles away from the surface. The chandrayaan 2 vikram lander is around 6 feet in each dimension ballpark, not really feasible to see anything that small with a handheld camera through some small windows.

For reference our LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) orbits at a height of 31 miles above the surface of the moon, and this is what it saw of the chandrayaan 2 vikram landing site:

Vikram Lander Found - NASA

Laser Instrument on NASA’s LRO Successfully ‘Pings’ Indian Moon Lander - NASA Science

vikram_ejecta_1100px_scalebar.png


vikram_impact_blink.gif
 
The voyager missions are so cool. I can't believe they're still communicating after all this time and distance.

Blue Origin launched the New Glenn this morning, and fawkin nailed it. What a beast of a machine. The second stage has been in a coast phase and has one more burn to do to complete the mission, but all has been good so far







 
Ok I've got some pretty random updates for you guys tonight.

Reid Wiseman shared a vid from his iphone of the earth-set during the Artemis 2 mission. Pretty cool



SpaceX is retiring one of its east coast drone ships from Falcon 9 operations. It will now support Starship operations, the assumption is to barge complete stages from Texas to Florida while the Fl facilities are being built out, as the SLC 39 starship tower and pad seem like they may come online first.



SpaceX (which is merged with X and XAI afaik?) has entered an agreement with Cursor, the coding AI tool, to either pay them for their services or buy them outright. This should have some pretty interesting implications, Cursor is a pretty handy tool



Blue Origin came out with more details about their mission failure on the last launch (even though the booster landed)



Stoke is getting wiggly

 
AgitatedPancake said:
Ok this is rad, SpaceX just dropped a little 24 minute documentary on Starship. I'm watching it for the first time now, but looks pretty juicy

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That was great, thanks.

Love seeing the evolution of the V1-2-3. Theres a LOT going on there. Is there info on what they did to make the V3 so compact ? I'd imagine the took all the plumbing and made internal passages, the design and machining of those parts must be nuts. Not to mention the materials they've come up with

Makes me want to work there. lol
 
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rockmup said:
That was great, thanks.

Love seeing the evolution of the V1-2-3. Theres a LOT going on there. Is there info on what they did to make the V3 so compact ? I'd imagine the took all the plumbing and made internal passages, the design and machining of those parts must be nuts. Not to mention the materials they've come up with

Makes me want to work there. lol
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Heck yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at how much cool stuff they packed into that vid. I’m going to have to watch it again just to take it all in.

Raptor V3 and it’s simplicity is an absolute engineering marvel. Seriously absurd simplification, pushing it way further than anyone has before. The objective was to make the engines themselves be able to handle the scorching reentry heat (even at slow booster speeds) directly without needing a complete false floor of shielding to protect the sensitive bits. I’m pretty sure I saw a rough figure that the engine shielding they put on all the previous boosters ended up somewhere near like 10 tons of material they could save.

Making the engines that durable should also protect them pretty well when landing on unimproved surfaces like moon or mars before we start excavating.

As you mentioned there have to be so many protected internal passages in these things for integrated plumbing, sensor witing etc. the fact we see none of it is wild. And raptors are Full Flow Staged Combustion style rocket engines, which are already the most difficult architecture to pursue. But they’ve been making magic happen
 
AgitatedPancake said:
As you mentioned there have to be so many protected internal passages in these things for integrated plumbing, sensor witing etc. the fact we see none of it is wild. And raptors are Full Flow Staged Combustion style rocket engines, which are already the most difficult architecture to pursue. But they’ve been making magic happen
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Thats the part that tickles my brain. Understanding flow paths and everything that affects it, I need to know. Just the packaging in general
The materials are another one, can you imagine the stuff they've invented. Just the heat shields, look how different they are from the ones NASA used, not just smaller and shaped smarter, they are thinner. Also, are they mounted with adhesive or ?
 
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