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AZRedhawk44:
What are your thoughts on SN9 sticking the landing this time?
SN8 burned "engine rich" due to the CH4 header tank not providing enough pressure during the flip maneuver to maintain proper fuel flow. The supposed interim fix is to introduce a helium charged COPV to increase tank pressure, but the long term fix ideally should be further refinement of the Raptor combustion cycle to drive appropriate exhaust levels from the respective preburners into their source tanks.
I think they're going to end up landing it this time, but I'm not really going to consider it a victory, since the craft needs to be able to perform at least 2 landings (one on Mars outbound, and one back on Earth at the return) before it can receive a helium refill. No helium on Mars to speak of. The goal is to be able to operate it by refueling everything it needs on Mars.
I'm sure they'll get there, I think it's already a far more capable design than the DC-X.
Boomhauer:
SpaceX is proof we don’t need NASA.
cordex:
--- Quote from: AZRedhawk44 on January 08, 2021, 05:33:21 PM ---... I'm not really going to consider it a victory, since the craft needs to be able to perform at least 2 landings (one on Mars outbound, and one back on Earth at the return) before it can receive a helium refill. No helium on Mars to speak of. The goal is to be able to operate it by refueling everything it needs on Mars.
--- End quote ---
That's a pretty weird standard. There are a ton of things which this craft is not capable of that would be necessary for a round trip to Mars. SN9 isn't intended to have everything figured out to make a round trip, rather it is a small part of that design process.
The victory in my opinion is not in having a system fully developed but in continuous iterative development and improvement.
If SN9 sticks the landing I'll call it a win for sure.
AZRedhawk44:
--- Quote from: cordex on January 08, 2021, 05:41:15 PM ---That's a pretty weird standard. There are a ton of things which this craft is not capable of that would be necessary for a round trip to Mars. SN9 isn't intended to have everything figured out to make a round trip, rather it is a small part of that design process.
--- End quote ---
They're introducing a dependency for craft operation that isn't present in its intended operational environment. And a huge part of the design of Starship hinged upon autogeneous pressurization and the fully staged closed combustion cycle.
They've got a significant hiccup in that, that needs resolving, before any missions more demanding than Earth-to-Earth can happen.
The failure in fuel pressurization is rather damaging to their aspirations to sell a Human Landing System for Moon operations to NASA's Artemis program.
cordex:
The exact same thing could be said for needing a landing pad or concrete pad to take off from.
Not going to have that on the moon or mars.
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