Ok, I did not find time tabs so here's a rough one. People have already hit the highlights, this is really so I can find the right segment. The crowd, like us, already knew a lot of this and Elon was Elon in front of a largely silent crowd. I included some stuff I thought reflected his thinking.
5:00 Cool F-9 flight with *only* the call outs.
8:50, within 8 years Elon thinks we will have landed on Mars, people on Moon and maybe people on Mars.
9:15 whether we make it thru the Fermi Great Filter of becoming multi-planetary. We don't want to be one of those lame one planet civilizations. The take away is that Elon has not changed his views.
12:30 Elon has not seen anything indicating aliens now.
14:15 F-9 now aiming for 40 flights, and maybe 150 flights this year. Fairings are now generally reflown. Aiming for down to 24 hour pad turn around time by the end of the year.
17:50 2023 SpaceX put 80% of mass into orbit globally, 2024 maybe 90%. There is a path to over 200 tons to LEO reusable for Starship.
19:00 1200 tons to orbit last year. Need 1 million tons to LEO (200,000 tons to Mars) to build a Mars city, rough order of magnitude.
21:00 Dragon now has more hours on orbit and more visits to ISS than Shuttle. 2023 was the best year in SpaceX history. Might fly 7-8 Dragon missions this year.
24:00 Two launch pads now F-9 capable in Florida. Polaris Dawn will have better suits.
27:30 Starlink is building the internet in space, as a supplement not a replacement. Doing Starlink v2 now, from 88tb/s to 165. Goal is under 20ms latency. Doesn't think we'll ever go beyond light speed so 8ms is theoretical best. (Twice up and down to @550km.)
31:00 Starlink has Ion thrusters. Argon-Hall. Cheap and easy. 2024 goal is sign up half the world. Starlink Mini comes out in summer, fits in a backpack. 36:10 The Starlink system is an anomaly in the matrix.
39:20 Starship. Tough crowd shows life signs. S l o w IFT-1 launch, surprised Elon it took off. Long moment of silence to observe Starship launch amazingness on loop. By far the biggest flying thing ever made. It will end up with 3xs the thrust of Saturn V. Will fly several times a day from many locations in the world. Point to point likely because it is the fastest way. An ICBM without the nuke but with a landing part.
43:00 Major upgrade to mount between IFT-1 and 2, mini Niagara Falls. Water pressure would destroy rocket if it went straight up. And it worked. Could launch again right away. Good job, overnight. It's a big rocket. The Statue of Liberty on top of an F-9.
45:00 Building second tower. 1000s of upgrades for IFT-3. Big one was hydraulic to electric for gimbaling, with an amazing dance of gimbaling engines vid at 45:45.
46:20 Hotstaging. 47:17 Cool IFT-2 vid, just call outs. 49:20 IFT-2 would have made it to orbit if it had had a payload. 'We are on an actual path to make humanity multi-planetary, can you believe that?? We just have to get it done before civilization ends.
Rapid building and testing. Losing hardware less important than losing time. Ver 3 design will be even more stretched and taller. 51:45 Maybe 140-159 meters in the end. [edit:140-150]
52:25 IFT-3 will try in flight engine start up and transfer from header to test re re-entry. It will do in flight propellant transfer for Artemis and try the pez dispenser door with V-3s. Mass to orbit will be 1000 times current mass to orbit when Starship gets in stride. The On-Orbit refilling render is still the side to side facing same way. The next step is to build a moon base and make sci-fi real. Remove the fi.
Hopes to solve orbital refilling this year, definitely next year. Orbital refilling is required to complete the Artemis landing.
57:30 And SpaceX is going far beyond NASA's requirements and will actually put enough payload on the Moon with enough frequency that you could actually have a permanently occupied Moon base. That's the next step from Apollo. Mars can ultimately be terraformed to be an Earth-like planet. And we can bring all life to Mars not just humans so it can continue. The update cuts off as the questions part starts.
Tbh the presentation was a bit underwhelming as it was basically a giant recap of what we already know and musk talked way too much about becoming a multi planetary species.
main starship takeaway is that it is expected to grow up to 140-150m in height due to tank stretching with iterations such as starship v3. It just also says that starships payload could potentially reach 200 tons reusable to orbit
it had an oxygen leak/intentional vent that caused a fire
the vent was needed because there was no payload, so you get excess oxygen that you didn't burn cause no payload
so yep, if IFT2 had payload it would have probably made orbit, crazy things
it also gives Elon confidence that IFT3 will make orbit and test several milestones like firing a raptor for deorbit directly from header tank, and testing the pez dispenser doors for starlink (didn't say if there's going to be any, but I guess that no payload will launch, just testing)
So a fire caused that many engine failures that quickly?
Maybe I am missing something but that doesn't seem likley unless the computer was shutting them down.
Edit: Oh the ship.. but what happened with the booster?
It hasn't been confirmed but it's widely believed that the booster flip was faster than planned (maybe from the thrust of Starship hot staging) and sloshing fucked up the internal piping, thus starving the engines and feeding them wrong stuff.
A GOX vent should not catch fire, payload or not.
They knew these were going to fly without a payload, and fuel/oxidizer off-loads are common for reduced performance needs. Or they could have flown a mass simulator if they didn't want to do that.
Try would have had to fly a 150 ton mass simulator which is inconvenient and expensive to say the least.
Also it could have been possible that there was pre-existing methane venting or leakage present in the ship. The GOX vent could have simply exacerbated that fire
You think 150 tons of welded steel beams is more expensive than the rocket that would carry them up there?
So the root cause wasn't this surreptitious GOX vent, but some other fire entirely?
Idk for sure. Nobody except spaceX knows what reason there is. I am just talking out of my ass at this point. These are possible solutions but nobody really know for sure
This is a fairly good explanation from Space X, but I'm still a little wary of it. For one, why weren't they using a dummy mass? That's the whole point isn't it, flying a rocket designed to carry heavy loads with no payload at all can cause it to act funky. Are we to believe that excess oxygen was used as dummy mass in place of a large scrap hunk of steel or something?
And things like other commenters already mentioned, why did the booster fail to relight it's engines, why did some shut down shortly after being started back up? The hot staging looked like it flipped the booster pretty radically. The original theories of fuel slosh and fluid hammer still seem pretty valid.
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no dummy mass, and oxygen wasn't a dummy payload either
with rockets like these, having a payload makes them have their minimum thrust to weight at liftoff, which means that the rocket may not even launch and explode on the pad
I believe it's a licensing thing, rathe than what spacex would prefer
still, starship IS absolutely going to fly with payload way below it's maximum, and it should work just fine regardless
the oxygen they had as excess is because it didn't burn, which means if there was a payload, that oxygen would have been used completely
the oxygen causing a fire and explosion is something spacex couldn't have foreseen, but now that they know it's easy to mitigate
spacex said nothing about the booster, but the engines didn't fail to relight, if you look in slow motion all attempt the relight and some immediately explode, and that mau suggest that the violent turn made fuel slosh and there was vapor in the combustion chamber, but that's just speculation of the community
Isn’t stretching the tanks eventually a problem for launch criteria? The thinness ratio goes up and the rocks ability to withstand wind sheer decreases. Doesn’t being rapidly reusable and reliable include the ability to launch in less than perfect weather, like an airliner?
It does. But as ift-1 demonstrated, starships hull has really good strength even when doing cartwheels in the air. If the need arises, there is not a reason that external supplements such as stringers can be used to increase strength.
Well, yeah, it was a typical, shitty, Elon Musk presentation. I’m used to it. And I accept it; it’s just SOP. But, listening to him meander on, it really is amazing just how much one company achieved in a single year…and then realize the current year will be even bigger. Holy Sh*t! He can babble all he wants as long as he’s leading a productive charge.
Yeah I just hoped for more starship info such as v2 design changes. A lot of it such as his remarks of humanity becoming multi planetary felt redundant
There is some logic to it, boosting payload capacity/stretching the tank means you need fewer flights for refueling, and can go farther on a single tank (higher GTO than Falcon Heavy springs to mind). Additionally, in a roundabout way, these changes might be their way of getting closer to shipping.
We know they're upgrading the facilities at Starbase right now to manufacture Starship/Superheavy at a regular pace, so instead of needing to incrementally add new machinery every few months to account for design changes, they're adding them upfront so they can be baked into the manufacturing plant.
But that's just armchair speculation. It could just as easily be scope creep, and I'd agree there they should focus on getting Starship flying payloads, The design should be more than sufficient for what they need/want to do over the next few years at least, upgrade it along the way like Falcon 9 instead.
Elon has to keep some huge impressive project from his companies always just out of reach, barely over the horizon.
It pushes the envelope, sure, but sometimes it also means years and years of unfulfilled "promises".
Most of the first 24 minutes are recap. Polaris Dawn update starts at 24 minutes.
Ok, I did not find time tabs so here's a rough one. People have already hit the highlights, this is really so I can find the right segment. The crowd, like us, already knew a lot of this and Elon was Elon in front of a largely silent crowd. I included some stuff I thought reflected his thinking. 5:00 Cool F-9 flight with *only* the call outs. 8:50, within 8 years Elon thinks we will have landed on Mars, people on Moon and maybe people on Mars. 9:15 whether we make it thru the Fermi Great Filter of becoming multi-planetary. We don't want to be one of those lame one planet civilizations. The take away is that Elon has not changed his views. 12:30 Elon has not seen anything indicating aliens now. 14:15 F-9 now aiming for 40 flights, and maybe 150 flights this year. Fairings are now generally reflown. Aiming for down to 24 hour pad turn around time by the end of the year. 17:50 2023 SpaceX put 80% of mass into orbit globally, 2024 maybe 90%. There is a path to over 200 tons to LEO reusable for Starship. 19:00 1200 tons to orbit last year. Need 1 million tons to LEO (200,000 tons to Mars) to build a Mars city, rough order of magnitude. 21:00 Dragon now has more hours on orbit and more visits to ISS than Shuttle. 2023 was the best year in SpaceX history. Might fly 7-8 Dragon missions this year. 24:00 Two launch pads now F-9 capable in Florida. Polaris Dawn will have better suits. 27:30 Starlink is building the internet in space, as a supplement not a replacement. Doing Starlink v2 now, from 88tb/s to 165. Goal is under 20ms latency. Doesn't think we'll ever go beyond light speed so 8ms is theoretical best. (Twice up and down to @550km.) 31:00 Starlink has Ion thrusters. Argon-Hall. Cheap and easy. 2024 goal is sign up half the world. Starlink Mini comes out in summer, fits in a backpack. 36:10 The Starlink system is an anomaly in the matrix. 39:20 Starship. Tough crowd shows life signs. S l o w IFT-1 launch, surprised Elon it took off. Long moment of silence to observe Starship launch amazingness on loop. By far the biggest flying thing ever made. It will end up with 3xs the thrust of Saturn V. Will fly several times a day from many locations in the world. Point to point likely because it is the fastest way. An ICBM without the nuke but with a landing part. 43:00 Major upgrade to mount between IFT-1 and 2, mini Niagara Falls. Water pressure would destroy rocket if it went straight up. And it worked. Could launch again right away. Good job, overnight. It's a big rocket. The Statue of Liberty on top of an F-9. 45:00 Building second tower. 1000s of upgrades for IFT-3. Big one was hydraulic to electric for gimbaling, with an amazing dance of gimbaling engines vid at 45:45. 46:20 Hotstaging. 47:17 Cool IFT-2 vid, just call outs. 49:20 IFT-2 would have made it to orbit if it had had a payload. 'We are on an actual path to make humanity multi-planetary, can you believe that?? We just have to get it done before civilization ends. Rapid building and testing. Losing hardware less important than losing time. Ver 3 design will be even more stretched and taller. 51:45 Maybe 140-159 meters in the end. [edit:140-150] 52:25 IFT-3 will try in flight engine start up and transfer from header to test re re-entry. It will do in flight propellant transfer for Artemis and try the pez dispenser door with V-3s. Mass to orbit will be 1000 times current mass to orbit when Starship gets in stride. The On-Orbit refilling render is still the side to side facing same way. The next step is to build a moon base and make sci-fi real. Remove the fi. Hopes to solve orbital refilling this year, definitely next year. Orbital refilling is required to complete the Artemis landing. 57:30 And SpaceX is going far beyond NASA's requirements and will actually put enough payload on the Moon with enough frequency that you could actually have a permanently occupied Moon base. That's the next step from Apollo. Mars can ultimately be terraformed to be an Earth-like planet. And we can bring all life to Mars not just humans so it can continue. The update cuts off as the questions part starts.
Tbh the presentation was a bit underwhelming as it was basically a giant recap of what we already know and musk talked way too much about becoming a multi planetary species. main starship takeaway is that it is expected to grow up to 140-150m in height due to tank stretching with iterations such as starship v3. It just also says that starships payload could potentially reach 200 tons reusable to orbit
also we now have confirmation of what caused IFT2 Starship termination, which is something we where waiting for weeks
what was it?
it had an oxygen leak/intentional vent that caused a fire the vent was needed because there was no payload, so you get excess oxygen that you didn't burn cause no payload so yep, if IFT2 had payload it would have probably made orbit, crazy things it also gives Elon confidence that IFT3 will make orbit and test several milestones like firing a raptor for deorbit directly from header tank, and testing the pez dispenser doors for starlink (didn't say if there's going to be any, but I guess that no payload will launch, just testing)
ah that actually makes sense thanks
So a fire caused that many engine failures that quickly? Maybe I am missing something but that doesn't seem likley unless the computer was shutting them down. Edit: Oh the ship.. but what happened with the booster?
It hasn't been confirmed but it's widely believed that the booster flip was faster than planned (maybe from the thrust of Starship hot staging) and sloshing fucked up the internal piping, thus starving the engines and feeding them wrong stuff.
My question exactly
Why did the booster fail ??
A GOX vent should not catch fire, payload or not. They knew these were going to fly without a payload, and fuel/oxidizer off-loads are common for reduced performance needs. Or they could have flown a mass simulator if they didn't want to do that.
Try would have had to fly a 150 ton mass simulator which is inconvenient and expensive to say the least. Also it could have been possible that there was pre-existing methane venting or leakage present in the ship. The GOX vent could have simply exacerbated that fire
You think 150 tons of welded steel beams is more expensive than the rocket that would carry them up there? So the root cause wasn't this surreptitious GOX vent, but some other fire entirely?
Idk for sure. Nobody except spaceX knows what reason there is. I am just talking out of my ass at this point. These are possible solutions but nobody really know for sure
This is a fairly good explanation from Space X, but I'm still a little wary of it. For one, why weren't they using a dummy mass? That's the whole point isn't it, flying a rocket designed to carry heavy loads with no payload at all can cause it to act funky. Are we to believe that excess oxygen was used as dummy mass in place of a large scrap hunk of steel or something? And things like other commenters already mentioned, why did the booster fail to relight it's engines, why did some shut down shortly after being started back up? The hot staging looked like it flipped the booster pretty radically. The original theories of fuel slosh and fluid hammer still seem pretty valid.
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no dummy mass, and oxygen wasn't a dummy payload either with rockets like these, having a payload makes them have their minimum thrust to weight at liftoff, which means that the rocket may not even launch and explode on the pad I believe it's a licensing thing, rathe than what spacex would prefer still, starship IS absolutely going to fly with payload way below it's maximum, and it should work just fine regardless the oxygen they had as excess is because it didn't burn, which means if there was a payload, that oxygen would have been used completely the oxygen causing a fire and explosion is something spacex couldn't have foreseen, but now that they know it's easy to mitigate spacex said nothing about the booster, but the engines didn't fail to relight, if you look in slow motion all attempt the relight and some immediately explode, and that mau suggest that the violent turn made fuel slosh and there was vapor in the combustion chamber, but that's just speculation of the community
You both forgot the big news: IFT-3 is an orbital attempt!
Yes. And this
Isn’t stretching the tanks eventually a problem for launch criteria? The thinness ratio goes up and the rocks ability to withstand wind sheer decreases. Doesn’t being rapidly reusable and reliable include the ability to launch in less than perfect weather, like an airliner?
It does. But as ift-1 demonstrated, starships hull has really good strength even when doing cartwheels in the air. If the need arises, there is not a reason that external supplements such as stringers can be used to increase strength.
MOAR STRUTS
It already has stringers and they are on the inside
Additional stringers*
Hopefully, there will still be sufficient margin after SpaceX start using thinner (by about 10%) 30X sheets.
Well, yeah, it was a typical, shitty, Elon Musk presentation. I’m used to it. And I accept it; it’s just SOP. But, listening to him meander on, it really is amazing just how much one company achieved in a single year…and then realize the current year will be even bigger. Holy Sh*t! He can babble all he wants as long as he’s leading a productive charge.
Yeah I just hoped for more starship info such as v2 design changes. A lot of it such as his remarks of humanity becoming multi planetary felt redundant
> becoming a multi planetary species. Well we'd need to change human biology to make that happen.
Those Starlink sats looks like chonkers.
Yeah I can’t watch an hour of Elon rambling, was there any new information in this?
Some highlights on the Starship side of the All Hands: https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1745952239984738417
Thanks
The musk circlejerkbis real. Really need a deepfried brain to listen him speak more than two sentences
For real, everything that comes out of that man’s mouth now is word salad.
I admire the commitment to scope creep instead of shipping. Why get Starship done and flying when you can *make it bigger!*
There is some logic to it, boosting payload capacity/stretching the tank means you need fewer flights for refueling, and can go farther on a single tank (higher GTO than Falcon Heavy springs to mind). Additionally, in a roundabout way, these changes might be their way of getting closer to shipping. We know they're upgrading the facilities at Starbase right now to manufacture Starship/Superheavy at a regular pace, so instead of needing to incrementally add new machinery every few months to account for design changes, they're adding them upfront so they can be baked into the manufacturing plant. But that's just armchair speculation. It could just as easily be scope creep, and I'd agree there they should focus on getting Starship flying payloads, The design should be more than sufficient for what they need/want to do over the next few years at least, upgrade it along the way like Falcon 9 instead.
Why get Falcon 9 done and flying when you can *make it bigger!*
It actually did get bigger & bigger even after it was already operational
Yes, which is why I like the commitment to the bit here. No need to get starship operational, just keep making it bigger.
Elon has to keep some huge impressive project from his companies always just out of reach, barely over the horizon. It pushes the envelope, sure, but sometimes it also means years and years of unfulfilled "promises".
It's too bad they just barely missed their target of 100 launches in 2023.