I got a lot of comments about how I didn't mention orbital-refiling in this video, so I made the decision to make a sort-of follow-up video explaining my thoughts on orbital refilling: th-cam.com/video/rqz88a0NGN0/w-d-xo.html Not including it in this video was probably a mistake, but its absence does not change the conclusion reached, which may make more sense should you choose to watch the 'follow-up' video.
@@Kuba_K It is supposed to be fully reusable. In theory it could launch at like $1 Million. Even if it ends up being $40 Million or whatever, it would still be insanely cheap to launch two ships to put that kind of mass into orbit.
Starship is just a Starlink workhorse until orbital refueling becomes as common as booster landings are now. Based on the current speed of progress, that won't be until ≈2029 or later. Unless regulations at the FAA have a major shakeup, and SpaceX can regularly launch as soon as the hardware is ready. That would only maybe change things to 2028. Even so, once cadnece is achieved, and refueling is common place....the limitations won't matter as much because being a Starlink, and LEO workhorse isn't a bad thing. I'm very curious to see how this storage & transfer works with cryogenic fluids. It could turn into a way bigger problem to solve than SpaceX seems to think. If they struggle to keep boil-off under control, Starship might be very inefficient past LEO.
@@PowerScissor oh my thanks for this reasonable clarification instead of going "but muh refuelling" as people above. Now lets consider also this: 1.Wear and tear of a vehicle, currently the most succesful falcon has flown around 25 times, and again its only booster, without reentry vehicle Full refuelling of starship would require 6 additional flights if i remember correctly meaning starship would be able to perform around 5 deep space flights per rocket built. 2.Maintenance and repairs, it is tricky to estimate, but it is reasonable to assume it will be twice of a falcon rocket minimum, (since you know 2 stages return). So with refuelling it would be 2*7 = 14 refurbished falcons per one flight. Im not even starting on heatshield and reentry damage. 3. Orbital refuelling especially of something as large as starship is still largely unreliable, testing and introducing it would again cost a lot. So no while i didnt do math i doubt it will be economical for a long time. We may see Starship refuel, but i bet that for period of around 10 years there will be special type of starship with 3rd expandable stage for deep space missions. Its simply cheaper and easier.
I believe the current estimates for starship is 15-20 launches to deliver the HLS to the moon (mind you SLS can throw the much heavier Orion and ESM in one launch). Now I know a lot of people will cherry pick the 1 Million dollars per launch estimate from the guy that thought we’d have 100 starships going to mars by 2020. If we assume that the stated 150 tons to low and it’s as cheap as flacon that’s 3.3 Billion to get the HLS to the moon. So looking at the actual stated data at the current time we can find yes Starship inability to throw mass beyond LOE is a very very big concern for everyone.
Can starship not just have bespoke tanker variants, not designed to re-enter and they just sit up in orbit, whilst refueling ships keep the tanker fueled.
Yes. And with small radiators you can reduce boiloff to 0. Even without radiators, it takes 400 days for it to lose all propellent, and such tanker could have dozen refuelings per day.
@@Demontoastslayer I don't think Elon ever mentioned it, because it's not even a problem. You can google all the numbers themselves, and size of Starship is public. When pointed at the sun, surface is π* 4.5 m squared, with about 600W/sqm it's 38kw, then about 25W/sqm on earth radiation, multiplied by 600 (half of starship side) that's 15kw, for total of 53kw of energy. Considering 1200 msq of surface area of the starship, you only need to emit 44w of energy per square meter, which is not too hard, since most of that heat can be radiated away using just the skin of starship, and you only need 173 kelvin to emit 44w per square meter.
So in other words, if they made starship a 3 stage design it would be able to deliver way more much farther, without dozens of refueling trips. Gee I wonder why Saturn 5 didn’t aim to land the 2nd stage on the moon.
Thank. You. There's a RESON things have been done like this, and some random person can't just walk in, violate the principles of spaceflight, and expect his rocket to be all-powerful. Second-stage reuse has never been done because it's too intensive. Two stages to the Moon have never been done because the Tsiolkovsky equation doesn't work out. You can't just say "making it bigger will fix everything". It won't Starship is fundamentally flawed.
It never made much sense for Shuttke either, it only had a few deep space missions. Orbital refueling is also something SpaceX wants to do to reach high energy orbits, but it also has problems (multiple launches, boil off, etc). Starship is designed to deploy Starlink satellites its not that great for anything beyond leo.
Money. Falcon 9 second stage costs ~$15m. It makes up the vast majority of the cost of refurbishing a F9. If you’re expending a massive kick stage every time you’re going to GTO you’re going to be losing a lot of money.
@@theevilcottonball Wrong. Even without any mitigating actions, like cooling propellent, Starship can hold it's propellent for 400 days with just different paint. With small solar panels and radiators, that boiloff can be reduced to 0. Multiple launches are also not a problem, SpaceX is already launching hundreds of times a year, and that is with them having to build every single 2nd stage as it's not being reused. With both stages reused, and rockets being made of cheap materials, there will be tens of thousands of launches per year.
There won't be tens of thousand if launches each year, because there is no demand for it. Satellites/Payloads frequently cost orders of magnitude more than the launch cost, so it will still be too expensive to launch that much stuff. We don't know whether full reuse will bring the cost down a lot. Shuttle spend a lot of money refurbishing the heat shield, and Starship will probably have to do that too. Reusability eats a lot of performance of the rocket (fuel has to be kept for the landing, heat shield and fins and flaps are weight that isn't payload) Whether reuse saves a ton of money is questionable, a non reusable F9 launch is not that much more expensive (given the performance) than a reusable one. I doubt that Starship will dramatically change launch costs, it is a giant rocket with expensive engines each one of them being tuned for high performance and high integration making the engines probably costly to reuse. Starship will not be the option to launch everything anyway, but it is designed to launch satellite superconstellations in LEO. For anything else other rockets are probably still better.
even though its a little rough, These are beautiful engineering points including the DeltaV and the math done to prove it. Of course in the future these problems will eventually iron themselves out especially with the steps space X is taking to further optimize their engines and weight. I look forward to seeing a video like this with all of the published/publicized numbers to really get into what starship can do. Hopefully SpaceX sees this video, lol
I like this new style, I'm a space fan and a KSP enjoyer, but the complicated calculations commonly get out of my understanding, this video and the last were cool because they showed some graphs and explained some maths but it was pretty understandable to someone like me
I mean, Starship doesn't need to be good at high orbits because the future is in space tugs. Starship cheaply lifts satellites and a bit of fuel to LEO, then a space tug refuels and reusably takes those satellites to their destination and returns for more. Trying to say Starship is somehow flawed by specializing in LEO reusability is just as silly as saying the Space Shuttle was flawed because it couldn't service geostationary satellites. This would probably actually make for a good video: space tugs vs expendable kick stages. When would you use each, and when are they coming?
You are really the only one talking about the elephant in the room. Reusable Space Tugs are the only viable option, why land a kickstage at all? It can stay in orbit till its service life has ended after 5 to 10 years, being refueled on a weekly basis. It would be even viable to use hall-thrusters for such a vehicle like Starlink already does. I can also imagine a repair station for these space tugs in low earth orbit to swap engines or other critical components of the tug. I cannot understand how people come to the idea that a kickstage has to be landed using Starship, just to be refuled an sent up again, what a massive waste of energy. Refueling a Starship is also insane, it will take 11 tanker flight to refuel just one starship V3 if you do the math. It's not made for efficient orbit maneuvers since it has the wrong engines for this task. Thanks for this most underrated comment
Except for the over 3 billion NASA gave them is for the rocket to send the lander to the moon. It is a sever problem that puts Artemis and all the contacts and extra funding they’ve been giving everyone including spacex in jeopardy.
Here is an idea i had while stoned the other day which i haven't seen mentioned: what if they add another stage between super heavy and starship instead of making the ship comically large? now before you yell at me, i am aware that stage would most likely not be reusable but i would still be interested if this could be possible or if it's just a dumb idea.
That is basically what they did on the Saturn V for Apollo 😊 It had 4 stages (or 3 with the spacecraft on top - I’m not sure if the 4th spacecraft stage technically counts as a stage or not 😝) 😊
Dumb idea unfortunately Reuse won’t be possible without major performance losses Carrying a ship all the way beyond leo is inefficient because of its high dry mass
Is an interesting thought, but... prolly dumb sorry lol. Reusing a stage like that is prolly possible but rapidly reusing it likely isn't. The also already has the 3 sea-level raptors for the landing burn so it makes sense to optimize it for thrust, whereas doing that would be almost counterproductive with a middle stage
I think you addressed some of these, but not sure about your analysis Raptor 3 - weight reduction & increase specific impulse Raptor 3 - 9 total engines Raptor 3 - also increasing efficiency of Booster and reducing weight hugely Refueling - system is designed to refuel Honestly, I Spacex has your concerns covered
The solution seems to be quantity. Shipowners make money because they have huge container ships transporting thousands of containers all around the world. Airline companies make money because there are hundreds of seats in each plane. Therefore, it will be difficult for a space company to make money by launching just 4 people at once, as shown in your video. Even the theoretical maximum of Dragon, 7 seats, is not much. To get the price per seat down, you must send more people to orbit in one launch and that can be achieved by building a 'space shuttle'. The closest thing we have today is Starship, although such a version doesn't exist yet and Starship itself isn't even crew-rated. Peter Hague did an analysis on that topic and according to him, the passenger variant of the original Shuttle got the price per seat to just $5.1 million. He also estimated that Starship could take 248 passengers, bringing the price to $40 thousands. Here, I see one issue, we don't have a destination for 248 people, nor 100, not even 50. Normally, there are only 7 people on ISS. If there's no hotel for those people in orbit, then Starship could become the hotel/amusement park/research station itself for 2 weeks and then come back to Earth. But that's just a speculation. I may be wrong and the market for private space stations could be much better, because a company like Axiom is still going forward with their plans, they are actually building hardware, and new ones are emerging, completely unrelated to CLD. However, we don't know how CLD will go and without Axiom there is a risk of a space station gap for NASA. There may be a period when only China (I don't know about progress of ROSS) will have a station in orbit. Such situation would surely hurt the international reputation.
Interesting points, what interests me most about high-capacity LEO destinations is what people would do there. As you said the ISS doesn't have room for a ton of ppl, nor would I expect it to be something dedicated mostly to science; only so much science you can do (and only so many qualified people to do it). Beyond science, I'm not quite sure what purpose hundreds of ppl in LEO at a time would serve. Tourism maybe, but turning LEO into a glorified theme park is probably not the best use of our resources in my view.
@@Piolet1549 Going back to your video, if SpaceX wanted to maximize payload to orbit, they could make an expandable 2nd stage of Starship. Aluminium instead of steel, carbon fibre fairing, no aft skirt, only vacuum Raptor and other stuff, this is a lot of mass saving, but it looks like reusability is stilt their top priority so the points you bring up in the video are mostly correct. However, kick stage is that one part which could (maybe even should) be expendable. The forces during ascent and reentry are totally different. To keep it short, just imagine what could happen to the kick stage during the burn and flip manoeuvre if it was connected only via some docking port. It would have to be very tightly secured to come back in one piece, which is extra dry mass. Is it worth it? Probably not, but perhap SpaceX doesn't even need to develop that kick stage, a product of another commercial company could be used, which is Impulse Space and their space tugs. Theoretically, we could ignore that discussion and say that they're going to refuel Starship before going further from LEO to GEO, but I have no idea if it's worth it for just one satellite, and we still don't know its launch price.
It would be good for increasing cargo, but spending both stages just for refueling flights will quickly get super expensive per one payload. Good for one off missions like Europa Clipper or JWST, but not good for the current GEO missions.
@@theredstonehive well centaur V has the benefit of not having dedicated tankers. Instead their plan is to use Centaurs from other missions, to slowly build up propellant in the depot, so that each tanker is profitable on its own. The downside is, this can only be done for missions that go to similiar orbits, so probably GTO.
It still has not demonstrated it can take anything into orbit, it cant even get into orbit with nothing, it should have already done this refuelling demonstration last year.
@@SpottedHares I'm talking about flight 3, 4 and 5 in which all starships reached orbital velocities and proved they could put payload into LEO. How's that parasocial obsessive hatred for a guy who will never know who are treating you?
"Structure is expensive. Fuel is cheap." - Jerry Pournelle Not mentioned here - orbital refueling. This changes the delta V available from LEO by quite a bit.
hey, coullld you explain ISP for me? I never understood it, i know it meassures efficiency but how? also i think starship would refuel to get more tons of mass into geo. anyway, epik video!
ISP is basically a measure of how long a certain engine could a certain amount of propellant at a certain thrust. If you have two 100t fuel tanks, and two engines that produce 10t of thrust. The engine that is able to drain the tank slower has the higher ISP
Eventually. But full rapid reusability might also require adding mass in other ways, so it's better not to make plans based on a much lighter ship before iterating more.
I am far from an expert in material science, so can't comment too much on how good of an idea it would be, but in my opinion everything can always (at least a little) be made thinner and lighter
Great video, earned a sub Could you maybe do one on how SpaceX plans to pull off the Mars Sample Return using Starship, or how they plan to do any mars mission at all. From everything I’ve seen they don’t have the DeltaV to return from the red plane
Difficult part of doing anything Starship Mars related is how little info we have on what a mars ship would even look like... so a lot of it would just be guessing. Not ruling it out tho. Thanks for the sub!
Вы можете использовать межорбитальные буксиры, и поэтому доставлять лишь топливо для них. Например межорбитальные буксиры с магнитоплазменными двигателями высокой тяги с переменным удельным импульсом, типа VASIMR или же двигатель со спиральной гофрировкой магнитного поля А.Д. Беклемишева (институт ядерной физики имени Будкера, Новосибирск, СО РАН). Идеальной формой была бы передача энергии на приёмные панели таких межорбитальных буксиров с Земли или с орбитальных солнечных электростанций, так в пределе можно получить плотность энергии выше чем у ядерных энергетических установок, без недостатков этих самых ядерных энергетических установок.
If the Google translate function worked correctly, then I see what you mean with that first half/that first paragraph! A reusable orbital tug that just stays in orbit could save a lot of mass. I might just have to use/steal that idéa for my KSP RO/RSS career game
The real problem with nuclear is getting governments to be ok with ppl launching reactors on rockets. Honestly a nuclear video would be super boring because its just obviously so much better than any other option lol
@@Piolet1549the KIWI had some 840 isp which is good for what is a block of Uranium with some holes in it. But the issue with nuclear rockets is why not just skip to electric engines with a nuclear rocket providing power? And so far the answers have been rather vague on picking one over the other.
While making videos like that must be fun, any thought of using Starship without full reusability and without refueling should be automatically discarded. Entire rocket have been designed around those two concepts, and not reusing or not refueling when on mission beyond LEO, is like thinking of ways to use rockets without engines. This is actually such a big problem I consider this video an information hazard, actively hurting the perception of space missions and spreading misinformation. Starship payload to LEO is 200t+, and Starship payload to GEO is 200t+ and Starship payload to Mars is 200t+. Its nothing else, no calculations needed or efficiency improvements or kick stages or anything like that. Refueling is how it will be done, it will be as natural as filling up on a gas station. You don't take your bike on your car, so you can finish 2nd half of your trip using a bike, because bike uses less fuel. Anyone talking about missions beyond LEO not utilizing refueling is fantasy and it should not even be entertained.
Mission to mars be like 💀 impossible using your logic. btw "You don't take your bike on your car" moving distances of over 100km moving ur bike on ur car save energy and is more time efficient
Have there been any proposed use cases for Starship to launch a heavy payload into GEO? In other words, assuming we embrace refueling in LEO as Starship was designed, would it actually be more efficient to use Starships for heavy GEO launches compared to e.g. Falcon Heavy?
@@nastykerb34 Huh? Why would it be impossible? Just refuel. And with your example you do what, just buy new car every time you want to go somewhere? Just refuel like a normal person.
@@aspzx Yeah, anything that can be put into GEO can be done on Starship, but problem is that GEO is a shit orbit anyway, and with cheaper flights, LEO constellations would be way better anyway. With Starships, It's unlikely we are going to see much GEO satellites at all, launched by any rocket at all, as with Starship you can just send few thousands satellites for cheaper than what it would take you to send a GEO satellite. Instead of each country having their own GEO satellite, there is going to be few LEO constellations, like Starlink, Starshield, and maybe two more.
Starship Is a rocker for Leo, and that's about it. The only reason it sucks for high orbits is because the heat tiles are and will not be strong enough for it to safely reenter the atmosphere. It could deliver the payload, but the ultimate goal of reusability is sacrificed.
Great video. The kickstage idea is something I hadn't heard before. It sounds promising, although I wonder if it's practical to make routine docking with such massive objects. Heck, why even bother developing anything new? Just stick a few Falcon 9 upper stages inside the Starship whenever you want to go to GEO. It's still cheaper than all the other rockets.
He is going through his 'KSP is dead' phase. Thats part of the reason, but I've also been able to make this style of video a lot quicker than I thought so I've been able to turn these out pretty fast and they've been getting good views
I didn’t watch the whole video, just skimmed through. It seems extremely misleading and extremely poorly researched. Throughout my skimming through, I didn’t see any references to orbital refilling. True, they haven’t demoed it, but this video is supposed to be about orbital refilling. That’s the only way to do this type of video. Analyze the design, not a part of the design.
Вы можете использовать межорбитальные буксиры, и поэтому доставлять лишь топливо для них. Например межорбитальные буксиры с магнитоплазменными двигателями высокой тяги с переменным удельным импульсом, типа VASIMR или же двигатель со спиральной гофрировкой магнитного поля А.Д. Беклемишева (институт ядерной физики имени Будкера, Новосибирск, СО РАН). Идеальной формой была бы передача энергии на приёмные панели таких межорбитальных буксиров с Земли или с орбитальных солнечных электростанций, так в пределе можно получить плотность энергии выше чем у ядерных энергетических установок, без недостатков этих самых ядерных энергетических установок!
As an engineer I don’t get why people don’t Understand that refueling is essential part of starship . Anyone disregarding it doesn’t get the starship and stay quiet !
@@alvaroribeiro4222 I’m an engineer graduated from Virginia Tech in 2011 . What are you ? A security guard at the mall ? Not everyone you interact with online is your level dude .
@@TheHeavenman88 LOL if you are really an engineer, I would say you are a mediocre one for using an argument from authority. I would be impressed if you knew what a differential equation is.
discussing payload issues about Starship without mentionning orbital refilling ? the system has been designed around it and cant funcion without it, why leave it ?
This is inferring starship will deploy its payload a geo. One of the perks of such a large payload capacity to leo is the payload can be another stage to carry itself where it needs to go. A payload starting in leo with 250-300 tons is huge.
I don't understand why people overlook starships faults. It don't matter which company makes the rockets, or who owns the company. When it comes to space flight, you scrutinize everything, including anything that's successful. Especially since it's all being re-used. Anything that could go wrong should be made redundant beyond all acceptable conditions. This test and then patch what went wrong method works for falcon rockets but isn't feasible for something as unproven as starship. 🚀
There is no need for any breakthrough in materials science to reduce Starship's terrible dry mass. The use of aluminum alloys on the first stage alone would diminish the rocket's dry mass substantially.
there's always one guy screaming about using aluminium on Starship. 1. It's not as easy to amke modifications on aluminum 2. Aluminum forms fatigue cracks, steel almost does not fatigue at all There is no three
If anything a special stage might be designed. The design requirements are different, more specifically the Falcon 9 upper stage is too long. A wider but shorter stage should be used.
@@kipkipper-lg9vl They already tested it. It's not that big of a deal. The pressure just equalizes and you can create pressure difference if you unevenly cool the propellent. It's basically matter of time.
Starship is not a legacy system, trying to fit it into a legacy launch paradigm is silly. Payloads today are designed for the old paradigm, these are the ones that need to change if they want to remain competitive in the starship era.
@@alvaroribeiro4222 Calling Starship, that's real and flying right now, hype and thinking BEP which is in the sci-fi category with other pipe dreams like SSTOs and space elevators, is pretty silly.
@@SpottedHares Designing small, super lightweight and super expensive payloads will become inefficient and counter productive as capability rises and costs fall dramatically. It's like having ocean going enormous container ships vs tiny sailboats.
I probably should have acknowledged orbital refueling in the video based on the number of comments I got, but including it does not fundamentally change the math because a kick stage is still better (in my opinion). I am working on a follow-up video to address refilling just because of how many people asked about it
@@SpottedHares those don’t work They take YEARS to move payloads the starship would laugh at An orbitally refueled starship can overtake voyager if it wanted
This is because Starship is designed for low cost per mass unit to orbit, not for "high energy" orbits. Hydrogen is a terrible choice for first stages. It's also a terrible choice for reusable hardware (hydrogen embrittlement). Even with the "low" GEO tonnage, GEO launches will cost far less with Starship than with other launchers.
Starship is reusable. Even if Starship can carry only 100 kilogram (300-pounds, for muggles) to the moon it is still cheaper than any other launch system. All it costs is fuel and maintenance. Damn, you can even deliver hot pizzas to a future Moon base and still be on profits.
In an ideal world yes, but I'd say 100kg is pretty extreme. Never gonna totally eliminate other costs, but if ~95% can be deleted, than a couple ton capacity could be feasible, in my opinion
in one way Starship is cheaper to construct by stainless-steel construction, but then it does the opposite by adding reusable features. I wonder if barebone Starship is cheaper than reusable Starship?
I got a lot of comments about how I didn't mention orbital-refiling in this video, so I made the decision to make a sort-of follow-up video explaining my thoughts on orbital refilling: th-cam.com/video/rqz88a0NGN0/w-d-xo.html
Not including it in this video was probably a mistake, but its absence does not change the conclusion reached, which may make more sense should you choose to watch the 'follow-up' video.
Why not mentions about orbital refuelling??
Because its still really unreliable and requires minimum 1 additional flight per mission essentially doubling the costs
@@Kuba_K Doubling the cost of something that will be ten times cheaper than others makes it still 5 times cheaper
@@Kuba_K It is supposed to be fully reusable. In theory it could launch at like $1 Million. Even if it ends up being $40 Million or whatever, it would still be insanely cheap to launch two ships to put that kind of mass into orbit.
Starship is just a Starlink workhorse until orbital refueling becomes as common as booster landings are now.
Based on the current speed of progress, that won't be until ≈2029 or later.
Unless regulations at the FAA have a major shakeup, and SpaceX can regularly launch as soon as the hardware is ready. That would only maybe change things to 2028.
Even so, once cadnece is achieved, and refueling is common place....the limitations won't matter as much because being a Starlink, and LEO workhorse isn't a bad thing.
I'm very curious to see how this storage & transfer works with cryogenic fluids. It could turn into a way bigger problem to solve than SpaceX seems to think.
If they struggle to keep boil-off under control, Starship might be very inefficient past LEO.
@@PowerScissor oh my thanks for this reasonable clarification instead of going "but muh refuelling" as people above.
Now lets consider also this:
1.Wear and tear of a vehicle, currently the most succesful falcon has flown around 25 times, and again its only booster, without reentry vehicle
Full refuelling of starship would require 6 additional flights if i remember correctly meaning starship would be able to perform around 5 deep space flights per rocket built.
2.Maintenance and repairs, it is tricky to estimate, but it is reasonable to assume it will be twice of a falcon rocket minimum, (since you know 2 stages return). So with refuelling it would be 2*7 = 14 refurbished falcons per one flight.
Im not even starting on heatshield and reentry damage.
3. Orbital refuelling especially of something as large as starship is still largely unreliable, testing and introducing it would again cost a lot.
So no while i didnt do math i doubt it will be economical for a long time. We may see Starship refuel, but i bet that for period of around 10 years there will be special type of starship with 3rd expandable stage for deep space missions. Its simply cheaper and easier.
I believe the current estimates for starship is 15-20 launches to deliver the HLS to the moon (mind you SLS can throw the much heavier Orion and ESM in one launch). Now I know a lot of people will cherry pick the 1 Million dollars per launch estimate from the guy that thought we’d have 100 starships going to mars by 2020. If we assume that the stated 150 tons to low and it’s as cheap as flacon that’s 3.3 Billion to get the HLS to the moon.
So looking at the actual stated data at the current time we can find yes Starship inability to throw mass beyond LOE is a very very big concern for everyone.
Can starship not just have bespoke tanker variants, not designed to re-enter and they just sit up in orbit, whilst refueling ships keep the tanker fueled.
Yes. And with small radiators you can reduce boiloff to 0. Even without radiators, it takes 400 days for it to lose all propellent, and such tanker could have dozen refuelings per day.
@@Ormusn2o 400 days and 0 losses seems like elon numbers. I'll give it 280 days and a 2% loss
@@Demontoastslayer I don't think Elon ever mentioned it, because it's not even a problem. You can google all the numbers themselves, and size of Starship is public. When pointed at the sun, surface is π* 4.5 m squared, with about 600W/sqm it's 38kw, then about 25W/sqm on earth radiation, multiplied by 600 (half of starship side) that's 15kw, for total of 53kw of energy.
Considering 1200 msq of surface area of the starship, you only need to emit 44w of energy per square meter, which is not too hard, since most of that heat can be radiated away using just the skin of starship, and you only need 173 kelvin to emit 44w per square meter.
An orbital depot is an integral part of the Starship HLS architecture.
you mean a propellant depot?
So in other words, if they made starship a 3 stage design it would be able to deliver way more much farther, without dozens of refueling trips. Gee I wonder why Saturn 5 didn’t aim to land the 2nd stage on the moon.
Thank. You. There's a RESON things have been done like this, and some random person can't just walk in, violate the principles of spaceflight, and expect his rocket to be all-powerful. Second-stage reuse has never been done because it's too intensive. Two stages to the Moon have never been done because the Tsiolkovsky equation doesn't work out. You can't just say "making it bigger will fix everything". It won't Starship is fundamentally flawed.
Great video - informative, objective, no hype. Bonus points for Princess Bride references. lol
Thanks ;)
Agreed. Very, very high quality channel.
I see no reason why they wouldn't just expend the kick stage.
It never made much sense for Shuttke either, it only had a few deep space missions. Orbital refueling is also something SpaceX wants to do to reach high energy orbits, but it also has problems (multiple launches, boil off, etc). Starship is designed to deploy Starlink satellites its not that great for anything beyond leo.
Money. Falcon 9 second stage costs ~$15m. It makes up the vast majority of the cost of refurbishing a F9. If you’re expending a massive kick stage every time you’re going to GTO you’re going to be losing a lot of money.
@@theevilcottonball Wrong. Even without any mitigating actions, like cooling propellent, Starship can hold it's propellent for 400 days with just different paint. With small solar panels and radiators, that boiloff can be reduced to 0. Multiple launches are also not a problem, SpaceX is already launching hundreds of times a year, and that is with them having to build every single 2nd stage as it's not being reused. With both stages reused, and rockets being made of cheap materials, there will be tens of thousands of launches per year.
There won't be tens of thousand if launches each year, because there is no demand for it. Satellites/Payloads frequently cost orders of magnitude more than the launch cost, so it will still be too expensive to launch that much stuff.
We don't know whether full reuse will bring the cost down a lot. Shuttle spend a lot of money refurbishing the heat shield, and Starship will probably have to do that too. Reusability eats a lot of performance of the rocket (fuel has to be kept for the landing, heat shield and fins and flaps are weight that isn't payload) Whether reuse saves a ton of money is questionable, a non reusable F9 launch is not that much more expensive (given the performance) than a reusable one. I doubt that Starship will dramatically change launch costs, it is a giant rocket with expensive engines each one of them being tuned for high performance and high integration making the engines probably costly to reuse. Starship will not be the option to launch everything anyway, but it is designed to launch satellite superconstellations in LEO. For anything else other rockets are probably still better.
Because then it wouldn’t be fully reusable anymore and you lose the entire cost benefit of Starship
even though its a little rough, These are beautiful engineering points including the DeltaV and the math done to prove it. Of course in the future these problems will eventually iron themselves out especially with the steps space X is taking to further optimize their engines and weight. I look forward to seeing a video like this with all of the published/publicized numbers to really get into what starship can do.
Hopefully SpaceX sees this video, lol
With x100 cheaper payloads to LEO we will build whole orbital economy.
I like this new style, I'm a space fan and a KSP enjoyer, but the complicated calculations commonly get out of my understanding, this video and the last were cool because they showed some graphs and explained some maths but it was pretty understandable to someone like me
I mean, Starship doesn't need to be good at high orbits because the future is in space tugs.
Starship cheaply lifts satellites and a bit of fuel to LEO, then a space tug refuels and reusably takes those satellites to their destination and returns for more.
Trying to say Starship is somehow flawed by specializing in LEO reusability is just as silly as saying the Space Shuttle was flawed because it couldn't service geostationary satellites.
This would probably actually make for a good video: space tugs vs expendable kick stages. When would you use each, and when are they coming?
You are really the only one talking about the elephant in the room. Reusable Space Tugs are the only viable option, why land a kickstage at all? It can stay in orbit till its service life has ended after 5 to 10 years, being refueled on a weekly basis. It would be even viable to use hall-thrusters for such a vehicle like Starlink already does. I can also imagine a repair station for these space tugs in low earth orbit to swap engines or other critical components of the tug. I cannot understand how people come to the idea that a kickstage has to be landed using Starship, just to be refuled an sent up again, what a massive waste of energy. Refueling a Starship is also insane, it will take 11 tanker flight to refuel just one starship V3 if you do the math. It's not made for efficient orbit maneuvers since it has the wrong engines for this task. Thanks for this most underrated comment
Except for the over 3 billion NASA gave them is for the rocket to send the lander to the moon. It is a sever problem that puts Artemis and all the contacts and extra funding they’ve been giving everyone including spacex in jeopardy.
The starship's wet mass is at least 1,300 tons right now, not 250 T
Im not sure if that was the intention, but i think he assumed wetmass following orbital insertion, which by then will be much lower than 1300t
Kick stages and space tugs for the win
How about orbital refueling ???
Here is an idea i had while stoned the other day which i haven't seen mentioned: what if they add another stage between super heavy and starship instead of making the ship comically large? now before you yell at me, i am aware that stage would most likely not be reusable but i would still be interested if this could be possible or if it's just a dumb idea.
That is basically what they did on the Saturn V for Apollo 😊 It had 4 stages (or 3 with the spacecraft on top - I’m not sure if the 4th spacecraft stage technically counts as a stage or not 😝) 😊
Dumb idea unfortunately
Reuse won’t be possible without major performance losses
Carrying a ship all the way beyond leo is inefficient because of its high dry mass
Is an interesting thought, but... prolly dumb sorry lol. Reusing a stage like that is prolly possible but rapidly reusing it likely isn't. The also already has the 3 sea-level raptors for the landing burn so it makes sense to optimize it for thrust, whereas doing that would be almost counterproductive with a middle stage
I think you addressed some of these, but not sure about your analysis
Raptor 3 - weight reduction & increase specific impulse
Raptor 3 - 9 total engines
Raptor 3 - also increasing efficiency of Booster and reducing weight hugely
Refueling - system is designed to refuel
Honestly, I Spacex has your concerns covered
The solution seems to be quantity. Shipowners make money because they have huge container ships transporting thousands of containers all around the world. Airline companies make money because there are hundreds of seats in each plane. Therefore, it will be difficult for a space company to make money by launching just 4 people at once, as shown in your video. Even the theoretical maximum of Dragon, 7 seats, is not much. To get the price per seat down, you must send more people to orbit in one launch and that can be achieved by building a 'space shuttle'. The closest thing we have today is Starship, although such a version doesn't exist yet and Starship itself isn't even crew-rated. Peter Hague did an analysis on that topic and according to him, the passenger variant of the original Shuttle got the price per seat to just $5.1 million. He also estimated that Starship could take 248 passengers, bringing the price to $40 thousands. Here, I see one issue, we don't have a destination for 248 people, nor 100, not even 50. Normally, there are only 7 people on ISS. If there's no hotel for those people in orbit, then Starship could become the hotel/amusement park/research station itself for 2 weeks and then come back to Earth.
But that's just a speculation. I may be wrong and the market for private space stations could be much better, because a company like Axiom is still going forward with their plans, they are actually building hardware, and new ones are emerging, completely unrelated to CLD. However, we don't know how CLD will go and without Axiom there is a risk of a space station gap for NASA. There may be a period when only China (I don't know about progress of ROSS) will have a station in orbit. Such situation would surely hurt the international reputation.
Interesting points, what interests me most about high-capacity LEO destinations is what people would do there. As you said the ISS doesn't have room for a ton of ppl, nor would I expect it to be something dedicated mostly to science; only so much science you can do (and only so many qualified people to do it). Beyond science, I'm not quite sure what purpose hundreds of ppl in LEO at a time would serve. Tourism maybe, but turning LEO into a glorified theme park is probably not the best use of our resources in my view.
@@Piolet1549 Oh wait, sorry for confusion, I thought I was writing this comment under Eager's latest video😂
@@Piolet1549 Going back to your video, if SpaceX wanted to maximize payload to orbit, they could make an expandable 2nd stage of Starship. Aluminium instead of steel, carbon fibre fairing, no aft skirt, only vacuum Raptor and other stuff, this is a lot of mass saving, but it looks like reusability is stilt their top priority so the points you bring up in the video are mostly correct. However, kick stage is that one part which could (maybe even should) be expendable. The forces during ascent and reentry are totally different. To keep it short, just imagine what could happen to the kick stage during the burn and flip manoeuvre if it was connected only via some docking port. It would have to be very tightly secured to come back in one piece, which is extra dry mass. Is it worth it? Probably not, but perhap SpaceX doesn't even need to develop that kick stage, a product of another commercial company could be used, which is Impulse Space and their space tugs.
Theoretically, we could ignore that discussion and say that they're going to refuel Starship before going further from LEO to GEO, but I have no idea if it's worth it for just one satellite, and we still don't know its launch price.
we are so back
Who? SpaceX? USA? This channel?
This channel @@KCJbomberFTW
I wonder how this trades against refilling Centaur Vs in orbit like ULA wants to do.
It would be good for increasing cargo, but spending both stages just for refueling flights will quickly get super expensive per one payload. Good for one off missions like Europa Clipper or JWST, but not good for the current GEO missions.
Not reusable so not practical
@@theredstonehive well centaur V has the benefit of not having dedicated tankers. Instead their plan is to use Centaurs from other missions, to slowly build up propellant in the depot, so that each tanker is profitable on its own.
The downside is, this can only be done for missions that go to similiar orbits, so probably GTO.
It still has not demonstrated it can take anything into orbit, it cant even get into orbit with nothing, it should have already done this refuelling demonstration last year.
It has already demonstrated that it can get into orbit. Don't be disingenuous. I can smell the EDS.
@@VG_164you mean the attempts where it failed and either melted or had to be blown up?
@@SpottedHares I'm talking about flight 3, 4 and 5 in which all starships reached orbital velocities and proved they could put payload into LEO.
How's that parasocial obsessive hatred for a guy who will never know who are treating you?
@@SpottedHaresyou're about 3 flights outdated
Woudn't more thrust from 6 RVacs and Raptor 3 also help since you lose less delta-v from gravity loss?
love this new style of videos!
Thanks!
Please what’s kick stage,someone reply me pls.
"Structure is expensive. Fuel is cheap." - Jerry Pournelle
Not mentioned here - orbital refueling. This changes the delta V available from LEO by quite a bit.
hey, coullld you explain ISP for me? I never understood it, i know it meassures efficiency but how? also i think starship would refuel to get more tons of mass into geo. anyway, epik video!
ISP is basically a measure of how long a certain engine could a certain amount of propellant at a certain thrust. If you have two 100t fuel tanks, and two engines that produce 10t of thrust. The engine that is able to drain the tank slower has the higher ISP
@@Piolet1549 yo i finnaly get it! awseome videos! keep it up!
It's a space semi-tractor.
For weight savings, wouldn‘t slightly thinner sheet metal work? It cuts into safety margins but should be feasible.
Eventually. But full rapid reusability might also require adding mass in other ways, so it's better not to make plans based on a much lighter ship before iterating more.
I am far from an expert in material science, so can't comment too much on how good of an idea it would be, but in my opinion everything can always (at least a little) be made thinner and lighter
Great video, earned a sub
Could you maybe do one on how SpaceX plans to pull off the Mars Sample Return using Starship, or how they plan to do any mars mission at all. From everything I’ve seen they don’t have the DeltaV to return from the red plane
Difficult part of doing anything Starship Mars related is how little info we have on what a mars ship would even look like... so a lot of it would just be guessing. Not ruling it out tho. Thanks for the sub!
great video!
it's to heavy, it is made primarily to deploy starlink from the look of it
Very interesting. Thanks!
Kickstage + Orbital refueling for trips to pluto?
The Princess Bride is one of my greatest movies.
Fantastic video
Вы можете использовать межорбитальные буксиры, и поэтому доставлять лишь топливо для них. Например межорбитальные буксиры с магнитоплазменными двигателями высокой тяги с переменным удельным импульсом, типа VASIMR или же двигатель со спиральной гофрировкой магнитного поля А.Д. Беклемишева (институт ядерной физики имени Будкера, Новосибирск, СО РАН).
Идеальной формой была бы передача энергии на приёмные панели таких межорбитальных буксиров с Земли или с орбитальных солнечных электростанций, так в пределе можно получить плотность энергии выше чем у ядерных энергетических установок, без недостатков этих самых ядерных энергетических установок.
If the Google translate function worked correctly, then I see what you mean with that first half/that first paragraph! A reusable orbital tug that just stays in orbit could save a lot of mass. I might just have to use/steal that idéa for my KSP RO/RSS career game
What about using the mass to LEO to bring a Nuclear thermal engine + 75tons of H2 + payload ?
The real problem with nuclear is getting governments to be ok with ppl launching reactors on rockets. Honestly a nuclear video would be super boring because its just obviously so much better than any other option lol
@@Piolet1549the KIWI had some 840 isp which is good for what is a block of Uranium with some holes in it. But the issue with nuclear rockets is why not just skip to electric engines with a nuclear rocket providing power? And so far the answers have been rather vague on picking one over the other.
Kick stages + refilling solved many ills
u talking about block1 starship or block2 starship?
swag straight from the bag
There is a reason a lot of rockets are 3 stage! A hydrogen 3rd stage on starship is the answer.
i really enjoy this new content
Or… orbital refilling.
Getting a few comments about this... I have some opinions, prolly gonna do a follow up vid about it
Stashipt
Make more video like these, it’s awesome!
Will do!
this is pretty much Vulcan + New Glenn's strategy to stay competitive
exploit the thing starship cannot do
Lmao love the princess bride references
Two Princess Bride references!? :O Great movie. Subbing. p.s. Interesting analysis. :)
Thanks! Always need to be sure your avoiding the classic blunders
@@Piolet1549 :)
While making videos like that must be fun, any thought of using Starship without full reusability and without refueling should be automatically discarded. Entire rocket have been designed around those two concepts, and not reusing or not refueling when on mission beyond LEO, is like thinking of ways to use rockets without engines. This is actually such a big problem I consider this video an information hazard, actively hurting the perception of space missions and spreading misinformation. Starship payload to LEO is 200t+, and Starship payload to GEO is 200t+ and Starship payload to Mars is 200t+. Its nothing else, no calculations needed or efficiency improvements or kick stages or anything like that. Refueling is how it will be done, it will be as natural as filling up on a gas station. You don't take your bike on your car, so you can finish 2nd half of your trip using a bike, because bike uses less fuel. Anyone talking about missions beyond LEO not utilizing refueling is fantasy and it should not even be entertained.
Mission to mars be like 💀 impossible using your logic. btw "You don't take your bike on your car" moving distances of over 100km moving ur bike on ur car save energy and is more time efficient
Have there been any proposed use cases for Starship to launch a heavy payload into GEO? In other words, assuming we embrace refueling in LEO as Starship was designed, would it actually be more efficient to use Starships for heavy GEO launches compared to e.g. Falcon Heavy?
@@nastykerb34 Huh? Why would it be impossible? Just refuel. And with your example you do what, just buy new car every time you want to go somewhere? Just refuel like a normal person.
@@aspzx Yeah, anything that can be put into GEO can be done on Starship, but problem is that GEO is a shit orbit anyway, and with cheaper flights, LEO constellations would be way better anyway. With Starships, It's unlikely we are going to see much GEO satellites at all, launched by any rocket at all, as with Starship you can just send few thousands satellites for cheaper than what it would take you to send a GEO satellite. Instead of each country having their own GEO satellite, there is going to be few LEO constellations, like Starlink, Starshield, and maybe two more.
Starship Is a rocker for Leo, and that's about it. The only reason it sucks for high orbits is because the heat tiles are and will not be strong enough for it to safely reenter the atmosphere. It could deliver the payload, but the ultimate goal of reusability is sacrificed.
great starship content
Oh, oh, I know this one.
Is it because these are TEST launches?
Is that the answer to your video title?
Awesomes homie
Great video. The kickstage idea is something I hadn't heard before. It sounds promising, although I wonder if it's practical to make routine docking with such massive objects.
Heck, why even bother developing anything new? Just stick a few Falcon 9 upper stages inside the Starship whenever you want to go to GEO. It's still cheaper than all the other rockets.
Isn't this exactly what Tom Mueller's new company is doing? Kick stages for starship
I'm not super familiar with Tom's new company, will look into it more
@@Piolet1549 someone had a really good tour/interview with him
Nice Princess Bride reference
Can we get much higher
We are back
Is piolet1549 going through his physics & math phase?
He is going through his 'KSP is dead' phase. Thats part of the reason, but I've also been able to make this style of video a lot quicker than I thought so I've been able to turn these out pretty fast and they've been getting good views
I didn’t watch the whole video, just skimmed through. It seems extremely misleading and extremely poorly researched. Throughout my skimming through, I didn’t see any references to orbital refilling. True, they haven’t demoed it, but this video is supposed to be about orbital refilling. That’s the only way to do this type of video. Analyze the design, not a part of the design.
My next video is going to be about orbital refilling
6:57 Elon musk be like "I HAVe ConCEptS of A Plan" WHY HASN'T HE DONE IT
Also, breakthroughs in material science = not using dense steel.
Вы можете использовать межорбитальные буксиры, и поэтому доставлять лишь топливо для них. Например межорбитальные буксиры с магнитоплазменными двигателями высокой тяги с переменным удельным импульсом, типа VASIMR или же двигатель со спиральной гофрировкой магнитного поля А.Д. Беклемишева (институт ядерной физики имени Будкера, Новосибирск, СО РАН).
Идеальной формой была бы передача энергии на приёмные панели таких межорбитальных буксиров с Земли или с орбитальных солнечных электростанций, так в пределе можно получить плотность энергии выше чем у ядерных энергетических установок, без недостатков этих самых ядерных энергетических установок!
raptor v4 is locked and v5 is in the works r/d
As an engineer I don’t get why people don’t Understand that refueling is essential part of starship . Anyone disregarding it doesn’t get the starship and stay quiet !
will be discussing orbital refueling the next vid. A lot of comments about it
"As an engineer"
said the NON engineer.
@@alvaroribeiro4222 I’m an engineer graduated from Virginia Tech in 2011 . What are you ? A security guard at the mall ? Not everyone you interact with online is your level dude .
@@TheHeavenman88 LOL
if you are really an engineer, I would say you are a mediocre one for using an argument from authority.
I would be impressed if you knew what a differential equation is.
@@alvaroribeiro4222 spoken truly like someone who doesn’t even know what an engineer is or does . Go sit down over there 👉
discussing payload issues about Starship without mentionning orbital refilling ? the system has been designed around it and cant funcion without it, why leave it ?
I should've talked about orbital-refilling. Plan on making a follow-up exclusively about that, as I've gotten quite a few comments
This is inferring starship will deploy its payload a geo. One of the perks of such a large payload capacity to leo is the payload can be another stage to carry itself where it needs to go. A payload starting in leo with 250-300 tons is huge.
I don't understand why people overlook starships faults. It don't matter which company makes the rockets, or who owns the company. When it comes to space flight, you scrutinize everything, including anything that's successful. Especially since it's all being re-used. Anything that could go wrong should be made redundant beyond all acceptable conditions. This test and then patch what went wrong method works for falcon rockets but isn't feasible for something as unproven as starship. 🚀
"They have a concept of a plan" nice one 😅
Always appreciate it when notice my references :)
There is no need for any breakthrough in materials science to reduce Starship's terrible dry mass. The use of aluminum alloys on the first stage alone would diminish the rocket's dry mass substantially.
Yes, but if it was aluminum it would probably need an entry burn to survive reentry (like falcon 9) which hurts efficiency
there's always one guy screaming about using aluminium on Starship.
1. It's not as easy to amke modifications on aluminum
2. Aluminum forms fatigue cracks, steel almost does not fatigue at all
There is no three
@@dsdy1205 "steel almost does not fatigue at all"
LOL
there is always people like you who don't understand anything.
@@CHEESEBURGERRC a 200 tones steel dry mass ALSO hurts efficiency.
@@luigeribeiro help me understand then
nice video
Falcon 9 second stage as Starship kickstage?
If anything a special stage might be designed. The design requirements are different, more specifically the Falcon 9 upper stage is too long. A wider but shorter stage should be used.
pretty sure its awesome at high energy orbits, refill in leo and you can get to any orbit.
orbital refueling is going to take years and years to develop at this rate
@@kipkipper-lg9vl They already tested it. It's not that big of a deal. The pressure just equalizes and you can create pressure difference if you unevenly cool the propellent. It's basically matter of time.
@@Ormusn2o they have not tested it
Huh?
it's still a prototype
It will always be
lol
❤
They have Falcon 9 for Delivery Systems and Starship is for going to other planets. They refuel in low orbit.
Starship is not a legacy system, trying to fit it into a legacy launch paradigm is silly. Payloads today are designed for the old paradigm, these are the ones that need to change if they want to remain competitive in the starship era.
LOL
chemical launch vehicles will be overtaken by BEP rockets in the next decades. Starship is just hype.
@@alvaroribeiro4222 Calling Starship, that's real and flying right now, hype and thinking BEP which is in the sci-fi category with other pipe dreams like SSTOs and space elevators, is pretty silly.
@@admarsandbeyond BEP is in TRL-4
you know nothing
So all of our technology need to coddle starship?
@@SpottedHares Designing small, super lightweight and super expensive payloads will become inefficient and counter productive as capability rises and costs fall dramatically. It's like having ocean going enormous container ships vs tiny sailboats.
This is completely ignoring orbital refueling which changes the game completely and you suddenly have 300 tons to mars capacity
I probably should have acknowledged orbital refueling in the video based on the number of comments I got, but including it does not fundamentally change the math because a kick stage is still better (in my opinion). I am working on a follow-up video to address refilling just because of how many people asked about it
By your own argument we shouldn’t be ignoring all the ION and plasma thruster JPL is working on either.
@@SpottedHares those don’t work
They take YEARS to move payloads the starship would laugh at
An orbitally refueled starship can overtake voyager if it wanted
@@KCJbomberFTWwow you really don’t know anything about space programs other then brown nose spacex don’t you?
@@SpottedHares how long does the greatest ion thruster take to move 200 tons to Europa
This is because Starship is designed for low cost per mass unit to orbit, not for "high energy" orbits. Hydrogen is a terrible choice for first stages. It's also a terrible choice for reusable hardware (hydrogen embrittlement). Even with the "low" GEO tonnage, GEO launches will cost far less with Starship than with other launchers.
nah, according SpaceX starship payload can go to 150 tons, SpaceX deliver so far, so i trust them over this video :D
8th
Starship is reusable. Even if Starship can carry only 100 kilogram (300-pounds, for muggles) to the moon it is still cheaper than any other launch system.
All it costs is fuel and maintenance. Damn, you can even deliver hot pizzas to a future Moon base and still be on profits.
In an ideal world yes, but I'd say 100kg is pretty extreme. Never gonna totally eliminate other costs, but if ~95% can be deleted, than a couple ton capacity could be feasible, in my opinion
in one way Starship is cheaper to construct by stainless-steel construction, but then it does the opposite by adding reusable features. I wonder if barebone Starship is cheaper than reusable Starship?
First
70 views in 20 minues bro fell off
Amazing video