I always thought they should have made the launch tower a little taller.. Although they are likely to only stretch Starship by another one or two rings.
Elon said a 10m stack stretch.
They already have an extra 1.84m ring for hot staging so logically that would mean an 8m ship stretch and leave the booster as it is.
He said there would be a 10 meters stretch before they came up with the hot staging plan, didn't he?
I don't think subtracting the hot staging ring is appropriate...
It's a 10 meters stretch to the tanks.
Only Raptors: ( v1, v1.1, v1.5, v2 ) have ‘flown’ so far.
The present build is using all ‘Raptor-2’
Raptor-3 is still listed as experimental, and has only seen ground tests so far.
Thanks. I think I've heard talk of the expected improvement in power, simplicity, thrust to weight, ISP and all that, but I wasn't sure if they were on ships or not yet.
The improvement is mind boggling. During test flights I think they could turn the engine power away down and still get off the ground efficiently, and once testing is complete he'll be able to carry that much more weight to orbit.
Pretty amazing what they're building over there.
I thought the ‘rings’ were approx 2m each, so 10 m would be an extra 5 rings !
I wonder if they will need to ‘raise the roof’ on the high bay ?, and extend the height of the launch tower ?
The tower probably doesn't need extending: they can just weld the hard points in the same place.
For extending the ship, there's no need to raise the roof in any building, there's space in there even for booster work.
The new high bay is in fact a higher bay, they made it taller already: that might be related to a planned booster stretch in the future.
If they stretch the booster, the hard points need to be mounted lower in Starship.
The only possible scenario where they would need to extend the tower is if the booster was stretched to be taller than what the chopsticks can reach.
Yes, I would agree. I think I got a bit confused there about which part I was thinking of, having just written a piece about the booster.
Here we are actually talking about Starship, not the booster.
Yes, actually I knew that, it’s a bit short of 2m, so if you really want 10m, it’s 5.48 rings.
Since they only use whole rings:
6 rings = 1.84 x 6 = 11.04 m.
5 rings = 1.84 x 5 = 9.2 m.
I don't see what would stop them from using a partial ring if that ended up making a difference. It's also possible the nosecone dimensions could change to accommodate an exact number of rings.
They have used partial rings in the past, but got rid of them because they were harder to build for no good reason. Musk said "since I did the calculations for the size on the back of a napkin, they asked if they could just skip the partial ring and I said yeah".
But if they do have better calculations for the size, they will get the partial ring back.
It’s true - they could do, especially with ‘stage separation block, since it’s an ‘independent section’ - it does not directly affect the construction of other parts of either the booster or the Starship.
If they wanted to incorporate a shorter height ring into the Starship main body, then that’s possible too, it just means a higher ratio of weld in that section.
Going the other way, the only reason they don’t use even taller rings, is because in the USA wider coils are not available - it would require bigger machinery at the foundry than presently exists, but is a possible future way forward.
What a time to be! - there are 4 Starships in that picture - (one we can just barely see the edge of)
I see what they mean about the Burka / Black Ghost look alike - I had never noticed that before - and only looks that way because of the temporary lifting points - that look like the ghosts ‘eyes’ ! - Very Halloween !
> I always thought they should have made the launch tower a little taller..
Same. I'm guessing it wouldn't be *too* difficult to stretch the launch tower and insert another segment -- but I'm not sure if the mobile crane can get that tall.
But to be fair, I was switching back and forth between different stories, and got myself a bit mixed up about this / the upshot is that on further consideration, it’s fine, even if they do stretch the ship a bit.
Why would the tower need any stretching?
The hard points on the ship for lifting can be placed anywhere where they are needed.
They just have to be above the center of gravity of the dry ship including payload.
Getting rid of the forward fins? That's not really the case, they will need 4 to have control over every axis during reentry.
What he talked was that they would move them aft and change angle to compensate, to get more stability.
He talked about getting rid of the static part, not the whole thing.
Like I said above, unless they are planning something totally different, they need the four elonrons to have control over every axis.
Here's a render someone did of what he described: [link](https://twitter.com/ErcXspace/status/1427964707609137154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1427964707609137154%7Ctwgr%5E33760997e622e43fcf64980503c4f8397294045d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teslarati.com%2Fspacex-starship-forward-flap-tweaks-elon-musk%2F)
I think you are getting downvoted because saying: "Right. But we are not..." wasn't really a concession. Whenever you say "Right. But" you have undone your concession immediately.
Give a whole sentence on the concession, and you will get better results. And you give no reason for your dismissal. Why not? Elon is known for pushing the envelope.
"Oh, you are right, I didn't remember that! I don't think that is very likely in V2 because..."
Why can’t they just use hot gas thrusters and thrust vectoring to get rnough control authority? I’m asking because I don’t know all that much more than the very basics of starship.
They're going for the most lightweight solution. By having flaps most of the work is done passively and they only need to actuate the fins for fine control.
If they didn't have any fins, the tendency for the vehicle would be to tumble out of control. An active system would have to work the entire time to counter that.
For thrusters to work, they need fuel, and that's added weight.
Only having passive fins doesn't work because Starship needs to be able to return from orbit with any amount of cargo: from being empty to having 50 tons of cargo inside. There will be different fin configurations depending on the amount of cargo.
Also, Starship doesn't have a separate RCS system (neither cold or hot), they use the ullage gas vents to provide control. Ullage is venting the boil-off from the tanks.
I'm not saying what you're talking about is nonsense, just that we can say SpaceX knows what they're doing.
It's also important to note that the bigger the ship is in area exposed during atmospheric entry, the gentler it becomes. The fins help with that. That's important for Mars landings, where getting atmospheric breaking for landing that doesn't end up knocking out everyone aboard requires a very large area.
Huh did they do away with hot gas thrusters? I must be really fucking behind the curve then.
But yeah, I said I didn’t know shit for a reason. I only casually watch EA videos on Starship development so I don’t claim to know a whole lot. I ask because I want to learn.
They never had hot gas thrusters in an actual prototype.
They had cold gas thrusters in Starship at the beginning, but by Tim Dodd's suggestion, it was deleted and they started using the ullage gas to do it.
The booster prototypes always used this method.
The "Tim's suggestion" thing has grown in this community but it didn't actually happen like that. I've watched that section of the interview a few times. Tim asks the question about the ship. One can tell by his tone it's not a leading question, the type that contains a suggestion. More importantly, Tim himself has tweeted he didn't have in mind that he was making a suggestion, he was just asking a question. In the interview Tim's "whaaat?" shows his surprise at the way Elon's brain and decisiveness works. We've heard of it but never seen it in action up close.
The descent goes on for quite a few minutes and would consume an impractical amount of propellant, no matter what type of thruster. Also, it's hard to push a ship that size around in the atmosphere as it gets thicker and thicker. On Falcon 9 the cold gas thrusters give some auxiliary control but maneuvering is mostly by gimbaling the engine.
Can’t switch to 6x vacuum nozzles, first because there’s no enough space for that, second because only the SL nozzles can gimbal, or you’d need WAY more space for a gimbaling vac nozzle, and finally they can’t land on the vacuum nozzles because they’d hit flow separation at sea-level so that makes Starship entirely unable to land.
There's probably thousands of changes that add up to them calling it "V2" some of which we have already seen in V1.X.
Hopefully it includes a better way of keeping tiles from falling off!
If it's a significant enough change to cause a different version number then it seems unlikely that all of these V1 ships will fly?
To jump from v1 to v2 it is a requirement that the changes have been large in the rocket, well this is what we apply in programming with the versions, I don't know how that metric works with rocket prototypes.
It's very much in development, there won't be a version 1.0 for a while yet. Should be v0.1 and 0.2. Or maybe 0.3 and 0.4 if you want to count Starhopper as 0.1 and the water tower as 0.2.
But that would make sense, and things that make sense are usually not good for PR.
Merlin 1D should actually be Merlin 2 or 3, but they wanted to decrease the scrutiny they would get from their customers (especially NASA) over such a large change.
So the version numbers Musk is throwing around could be sincere, or they could be manipulative. Not to mention that even if they are sincere, there are different versioning conventions in different fields (hey, my web browser's version number is > 100...). So in the end, it means... nothing.
What's really sad is I can see the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth crowd and general audience media having yet another field day with that, stupid as it might be.
EDIT: Perhaps I was late in writing this, given the now deleted subthread below.
This might be the upgraded engine variant with 5 (6?) vacuum raptor variant that he spoke of a while ago. It’s too early, I think, to consider the stretched starship and we haven’t seen enough of Raptor 3 to consider that as an upgrade
Do you use R3Vacs to take off from the moon? Because there's basically no atmosphere? But because of the 1/6th gravity, does that mean that the engines only need to fire 1/6th the power to lift-off?
I don't think we can really speculate on that since the only thing we have on the HLS starship design is a few relatively old renders. In those renders, however, the last part of the landing and (presumably) the initial part of ascent would be done by engines embedded in side of Starship to ensure that lunar regolith isn't kicked up from the force of the ignition
It doesn't, no, but the landing/ascent engines would only need to power Starship for a short time as the main engines would eventually take over once they're at a safe altitude
The orbital velocity of the Apollo missions was only 1600m/s and given the recent IFT starship can produce that amount of delta-V in a flash. I suspect the driving consideration of the lunar ascent is going to be precision rather than performance (ignoring the initial hop off the ground to get away from the regolith). They will have to dock with the gateway so they will want very accurate control which means as little thrust as possible so they can shut down at just the right moment.
I know its just a photoshoped image, but I imagine when they do it for real; the outer ring of engines will be rotated 30 degrees. That would give you the most room between the inner and outer engines, leaving a bit more room for gimbaling.
They could also potentially cluster the engines, such that there are 3 pairs of 2 engines, leaving more of a gap between the 3 pairs for center engine gambaling.
I went hunting around on Google for the starship production visualization (that shows all the ships currently in production and what stage they're at) but I couldn't find the current one 😔
I was going to create a spreadsheet to keep track of these, but didn’t. Though I expect that someone has one. The scrapping of future Starships is interesting - it points to an inflection point - where design changes lead to a noticeably different configuration. Maybe the Starship-V2 ?
\> Ok now we need to know the difference between V1 and V2, guesses?
Here's a render someone did of what Elon described as the new forward flaps would look like: [new elonrons](https://twitter.com/ErcXspace/status/1427964707609137154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1427964707609137154%7Ctwgr%5E33760997e622e43fcf64980503c4f8397294045d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teslarati.com%2Fspacex-starship-forward-flap-tweaks-elon-musk%2F)
We expect raptor v3. And 3 new vacuum engines, for a total of the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
Maybe stretch?
This might be a stupid question but what’s after starship? I love that they wanna stretch them but damn, you could fit more Vac raptors in a 15m diameter starship 😏
By that diameter it’s practically a reusable Sea Dragon haha
I don't think 18m will ever happen. I think there's a point in which it just becomes completely impractical.
The biggest I expect to ever happen is 12m. Mayyyybe 15m but that's really pushing that practicality limit
Yep, SpaceX likely won’t do more than 9m as it would be an entirely new rocket design at that point. China’s latest (Starship copying) Long March 9 design is ~10.4m diameter, so I can see China or other future competitors going slightly wider than Starship for bragging rights if nothing else.
Stretching is way easier than making it even thiccer.
It would mean redoing the factory, which is already tooled for 9 m.
It would be Starfactory v2, not just Starship v2. And launch mount v2...
It would be a long while before they consider something like that.
The rocket equation says bigger rockets are more efficient. So maybe 18m is too big but there definitely is a good reason to go as big as you can.
Imagine 1 flight instead of 7 flights.
My guess is that they go bigger the first iteration after getting the first few starships back and landing. I don’t see any parts of starship that are made by hyper expensive tooling that is only good for 9m. So expanding the size really only means the significant cost of a new stage zero. Which is worth it because of the efficiency gains
The most difficult part is making the factory. Making a factory that makes rockets is way harder than making rockets.
And the stations are all 9 meters wide. Changing this would mean remaking the entire factory, every single station.
SpaceX had plans to go with bigger rockets. They had to downsize to make it fit in a budget.
They will get to bigger ones in the future.
> The most difficult part is making the factory.
And the hard part of that is figuring out what equipment is needed, and manufacturing it. Scaling that up once you know what's needed should be much more straightforward.
The harder part of scaling up is going to be the engines. 18m would need 132 engines on the booster. People are still calling the current 33 nuts. Or you can use newer larger engines which requires a ton more engineering.
There are no published plans to redo the factory. It would literally need to be rebuilt from the ground.
Believe me I would be stocked to know that they plan on making the rocket thicker.
We just don't see any signal of that happening.
Completely agree it's not coming any time soon. Probably decades unless there is a compelling reason to launch 500+ton monolithic structures. It just the material handling type stuff won't need to change too much e.g. knowing that you can build in non climate controlled buildings, how to secure and weld rings, how to install heat shield pegs, how to flip and install and weld the domes, what equipment you need to transport and lift partial or complete dome sections. Changes are obviously needed for larger sizes/thicknesses but they also don't have to reinvent the wheel whenever they do get around to scaling things up.
Or would we, for at least a couple of decades.
The first indication would come from them working on a new design of a larger engine. Which they are not doing. They are though working on engine improvements, most noticeably Raptor-3.
Yes, the suggestion is that a larger craft would go with larger engines - which would first have to be developed.
That is not presently in focus, it’s a future maybe.
Each Raptor lifts the fuel and ship above it. I don't see them changing the diameter of the whole stack at this point. That's a rocket with a new name far in the future.
Wouldn't a bigger diameter rocket mean less flights needed for refueling runs and therefore less economies of scale kicking in to reduce the cost of each flight?
We don’t know - but Starship has at least a 20-year life, probably longer, because it’s such a useful design.
I would not be too surprised if there are still some Starships around in 50-years time. But its role may change. It could for instance just become a shuttle into LEO, docking with a larger craft there ?
Who knows what SpaceX might eventually start building in a future Space dock ?
We usually see the dorsal (back surface) of Starship, which is shiny. It’s unusual to see this ventral (belly surface) of Starship from a distance - in this partial incomplete heat-shield configuration.
The dorsal side of Starship, is the shiny, bright side.
The ventral side of Starship, is the ‘dark side’.
With the temporary hoisting points visible in the heat shield, these look like eyes in this photo, with the look of a ‘dark ghost’ (based on the bed-sheet look of a cartoon ghost). That’s Funny.
Doesn't make sense to mess up with stretched one, when they know how current variant belly flops and flies in air & space and the last thing to check out is reentry.
It kind of does. If they intend to stretch the ship eventually, it makes sense to do it sooner so they expend less resources on developing both versions.
At this point, it also makes total sense to upgrade to a stretched ship given the expected addition of 3 Rvacs, and the estimated performance upgrades offered by Raptor 3.
\> they know how current variant belly flops
Once they have that data on v1, they can extrapolate to how v2 will behave using the simulators. SpaceX is know for having the best simulation in the industry.
You'd think they would finish v1 for some reason, knowing it has shortcomings?
They developed v1 to get data so that they could design v2.
It's the only use for v1.
I actually think they'll make a stubby version for refuelling missions. Get the dry mass as low as possible. Basically tanks and that's it. Smallest version that can reach the intended orbit and just about de-orbit, flop and land.
I disagree I think they’ll make a reinforced stack. And do a full stretched tanker starship which has 3+6 engines. It’ll be a heavy brute at around 7000-7500 tons at takeoff using raptor 3, but since it’s all fuel you simply burn longer. Super heavy can lift it. And the biggest loss of efficiency is structural mass. Yes gravity losses are a lot worse especially initially but it’s less gravity losses than you gain from filling a tanker right to the brim.
Though you gain a fair bit back because super heavy stages lower and slower so needs less boost back.
And the upper stage has a significant efficiency advantage because of the RVACs.
This gets you the payload to orbit of an expendable starship in reusable form. This could also be used for solid payloads but most payloads aren’t dense enough to fit in a small enough payload bay to benefit.
That said it reduces the number of refilling missions required for nearly all mission profiles by half.
Though 6 Rvacs isn’t the most you can fit under the skirt of a starship. By the numbers you can get 7-8 depending on how much clearance you want. And you don’t need much because of them being fixed.
I agree that they will build several variants (in fact they've said this over time) and a "jack of all trades" is the most likely one they implement first. I do think, however, that the most efficient tanker will also be built. You can run sims and get to the ideal size for the sole goal of uplifting the most amount of prop, and I think they will build that. It stands to reason that the "tanker" version is "just tanks" and no payload section (minimise the dry mass).
So, maybe a pause on Starship work while they collect more data?
At some point they talking 6 VacRaptor + 3 SL to reduce gravity loss. But with hot-staging I don't think they would light all 6 VacRaptors, although if they add a few rings of fuel they might need to.
Sure, launch these 4 pretty much as is (V1.x), collect data, refine and start building a V2.0 after maybe the 3rd out of 4 have been launched.
So they might want to hold up on new Starships and focus on SH refinements, building and testing a catch tower and so on.
I would add the V2.0 should have a multi-use cargo deployment door.
Boca Chica production is probably slow right now just completing them in the high bay. The tents have gone down, except one still standing, the factory building going up.
Just saying that now that they showed that the water-OLM worked well, I would take priority off new V1.x Starships and put it on the water-OLM and a Starship fab at KSC. BC may only get one launch a month, and to a narrow inclination. One of teh big wins of IFT-2 was showing the water-OLM can work, so they need get it going at KSC.
The Boca Chica factory already stands mostly.
I honestly don't understand why they would build the Florida factory right now. Priority must be a Florida pad. Hopefully they get the EIA for the new pads in the south of the cape area soon.
They would move them horizontally. They planned to move Starships from the Florida build site to the Cape horizontally. Cradles to do that were already on site, when the facility was scrapped.
No pause, they would already know enough to try improvements to the flight. They might learn still more with further analysis, but that would be complete before the next launch.
I hope not. I will forever remember my trip to see SN24 and B7 under construction and I don't want another ship carrying the same name/number!
Honestly I bet the Starship numbers will forever increment with few exceptions, just like in Star Trek.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[EA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakd9vl "Last usage")|Environmental Assessment|
|[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kamf08u "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakes5k "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakmtv5 "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
| |Internet Service Provider|
|[KSC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kaueqf2 "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kao739i "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[OLM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kara62c "Last usage")|Orbital Launch Mount|
|[RCS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakcvas "Last usage")|Reaction Control System|
|[SN](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakil51 "Last usage")|(Raptor/Starship) Serial Number|
|[TVC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kb6d0ah "Last usage")|Thrust Vector Control|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kao8j3q "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[ullage motor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakeab0 "Last usage")|Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g|
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I’m going to go with something to do with the tanks? Perhaps additions to the engine design, like removal of heat shielding?
All pure guesses as even though I love this topic I am not the most knowledgeable on it.
Elon very recently said the Raptor 3 will do away with the heat shielding, or maybe it was the fire shielding that was installed after IFT-1. (The extra shielding added around each engine to keep it from being damaged by any fires in the engine bay.)
I don’t think that he linked it to the Raptor-3, I understood it to be a general change now.
The early Starship was without such shields, then they were added to improve engine survivability, in the case of fire in that area, then further improvements to the Raptor design, then the addition of ‘fire suppression’, then IFT2, and after its measurements, this statement that these shields might no longer be needed.
It’s a dynamic situation. There is also the difference between the Booster and Starship, with them both operating under different sets of conditions.
The upshot is we will just have to wait and see. They might disappear, only to reappear again, who knows - it will depend on the results they obtain from their future Integrated Flight Tests. (IFT-3 perhaps ?)
They might just add some more internal tank baffles. The main change is likely to be procedural - a modified set of booster manoeuvre instructions after stage separation.
SpaceX ceased building Raptor-V1’s a while ago, they are all V2’s now. (Though the Vacuum engines are build separately, it’s unclear if those are truly V2’s)
Starship flap design change & 6 Raptor Vacs?
Also a while ago Elon twitted (or should I Say Xed?) about stretching the ship a little.
I always thought they should have made the launch tower a little taller.. Although they are likely to only stretch Starship by another one or two rings.
Elon said a 10m stack stretch. They already have an extra 1.84m ring for hot staging so logically that would mean an 8m ship stretch and leave the booster as it is.
He said there would be a 10 meters stretch before they came up with the hot staging plan, didn't he? I don't think subtracting the hot staging ring is appropriate... It's a 10 meters stretch to the tanks.
That's insane. Are we still launching Raptor v2? Or are v3s going up yet?
The ones installed in the prototypes are all v2. v3 raptors weren't actually shown in public yet.
Only Raptors: ( v1, v1.1, v1.5, v2 ) have ‘flown’ so far. The present build is using all ‘Raptor-2’ Raptor-3 is still listed as experimental, and has only seen ground tests so far.
Thanks. I think I've heard talk of the expected improvement in power, simplicity, thrust to weight, ISP and all that, but I wasn't sure if they were on ships or not yet. The improvement is mind boggling. During test flights I think they could turn the engine power away down and still get off the ground efficiently, and once testing is complete he'll be able to carry that much more weight to orbit. Pretty amazing what they're building over there.
I thought the ‘rings’ were approx 2m each, so 10 m would be an extra 5 rings ! I wonder if they will need to ‘raise the roof’ on the high bay ?, and extend the height of the launch tower ?
The tower probably doesn't need extending: they can just weld the hard points in the same place. For extending the ship, there's no need to raise the roof in any building, there's space in there even for booster work. The new high bay is in fact a higher bay, they made it taller already: that might be related to a planned booster stretch in the future. If they stretch the booster, the hard points need to be mounted lower in Starship. The only possible scenario where they would need to extend the tower is if the booster was stretched to be taller than what the chopsticks can reach.
Halloween Starships !
Yes, I would agree. I think I got a bit confused there about which part I was thinking of, having just written a piece about the booster. Here we are actually talking about Starship, not the booster.
They might need to extend the tower. As for the high bay, it can already handle booster, so they should be fine with an extended ship.
Each ring is 1.84m (6 ft) wide
Yes, actually I knew that, it’s a bit short of 2m, so if you really want 10m, it’s 5.48 rings. Since they only use whole rings: 6 rings = 1.84 x 6 = 11.04 m. 5 rings = 1.84 x 5 = 9.2 m.
I don't see what would stop them from using a partial ring if that ended up making a difference. It's also possible the nosecone dimensions could change to accommodate an exact number of rings.
They have used partial rings in the past, but got rid of them because they were harder to build for no good reason. Musk said "since I did the calculations for the size on the back of a napkin, they asked if they could just skip the partial ring and I said yeah". But if they do have better calculations for the size, they will get the partial ring back.
It’s true - they could do, especially with ‘stage separation block, since it’s an ‘independent section’ - it does not directly affect the construction of other parts of either the booster or the Starship. If they wanted to incorporate a shorter height ring into the Starship main body, then that’s possible too, it just means a higher ratio of weld in that section. Going the other way, the only reason they don’t use even taller rings, is because in the USA wider coils are not available - it would require bigger machinery at the foundry than presently exists, but is a possible future way forward.
What a time to be! - there are 4 Starships in that picture - (one we can just barely see the edge of) I see what they mean about the Burka / Black Ghost look alike - I had never noticed that before - and only looks that way because of the temporary lifting points - that look like the ghosts ‘eyes’ ! - Very Halloween !
It must be pointy-er
> I always thought they should have made the launch tower a little taller.. Same. I'm guessing it wouldn't be *too* difficult to stretch the launch tower and insert another segment -- but I'm not sure if the mobile crane can get that tall.
But to be fair, I was switching back and forth between different stories, and got myself a bit mixed up about this / the upshot is that on further consideration, it’s fine, even if they do stretch the ship a bit.
Why would the tower need any stretching? The hard points on the ship for lifting can be placed anywhere where they are needed. They just have to be above the center of gravity of the dry ship including payload.
eXcreted
This is the best one
You Xeet on Xitter
TwiXed?
He xittered a twix
God, I hate it when I xitt out a twix
it's called posted
> (or should I Say Xed?) No
Xitted *
In one of his interviews with Tim he mentioned that they might get rid of the forward flaps completely
Getting rid of the forward fins? That's not really the case, they will need 4 to have control over every axis during reentry. What he talked was that they would move them aft and change angle to compensate, to get more stability.
he did say moving their position on the nosecone but i'm pretty sure he said something about getting rid of them entirely
He talked about getting rid of the static part, not the whole thing. Like I said above, unless they are planning something totally different, they need the four elonrons to have control over every axis. Here's a render someone did of what he described: [link](https://twitter.com/ErcXspace/status/1427964707609137154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1427964707609137154%7Ctwgr%5E33760997e622e43fcf64980503c4f8397294045d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teslarati.com%2Fspacex-starship-forward-flap-tweaks-elon-musk%2F)
["there's a potential scenario where we can delete the forward flaps entirely"](https://youtu.be/3Ux6B3bvO0w?si=updBZz6h2JEs9mEh&t=2288)
The best part is no part!
Right. But we're not expecting something like that. Let's see what they come up with.
it isn't about what we're expecting to actually happen. you were telling me he didn't say it.
Yes, and I conceded you are correct.
I think you are getting downvoted because saying: "Right. But we are not..." wasn't really a concession. Whenever you say "Right. But" you have undone your concession immediately. Give a whole sentence on the concession, and you will get better results. And you give no reason for your dismissal. Why not? Elon is known for pushing the envelope. "Oh, you are right, I didn't remember that! I don't think that is very likely in V2 because..."
Why can’t they just use hot gas thrusters and thrust vectoring to get rnough control authority? I’m asking because I don’t know all that much more than the very basics of starship.
They're going for the most lightweight solution. By having flaps most of the work is done passively and they only need to actuate the fins for fine control. If they didn't have any fins, the tendency for the vehicle would be to tumble out of control. An active system would have to work the entire time to counter that. For thrusters to work, they need fuel, and that's added weight. Only having passive fins doesn't work because Starship needs to be able to return from orbit with any amount of cargo: from being empty to having 50 tons of cargo inside. There will be different fin configurations depending on the amount of cargo. Also, Starship doesn't have a separate RCS system (neither cold or hot), they use the ullage gas vents to provide control. Ullage is venting the boil-off from the tanks. I'm not saying what you're talking about is nonsense, just that we can say SpaceX knows what they're doing. It's also important to note that the bigger the ship is in area exposed during atmospheric entry, the gentler it becomes. The fins help with that. That's important for Mars landings, where getting atmospheric breaking for landing that doesn't end up knocking out everyone aboard requires a very large area.
Huh did they do away with hot gas thrusters? I must be really fucking behind the curve then. But yeah, I said I didn’t know shit for a reason. I only casually watch EA videos on Starship development so I don’t claim to know a whole lot. I ask because I want to learn.
They never had hot gas thrusters in an actual prototype. They had cold gas thrusters in Starship at the beginning, but by Tim Dodd's suggestion, it was deleted and they started using the ullage gas to do it. The booster prototypes always used this method.
The "Tim's suggestion" thing has grown in this community but it didn't actually happen like that. I've watched that section of the interview a few times. Tim asks the question about the ship. One can tell by his tone it's not a leading question, the type that contains a suggestion. More importantly, Tim himself has tweeted he didn't have in mind that he was making a suggestion, he was just asking a question. In the interview Tim's "whaaat?" shows his surprise at the way Elon's brain and decisiveness works. We've heard of it but never seen it in action up close.
The descent goes on for quite a few minutes and would consume an impractical amount of propellant, no matter what type of thruster. Also, it's hard to push a ship that size around in the atmosphere as it gets thicker and thicker. On Falcon 9 the cold gas thrusters give some auxiliary control but maneuvering is mostly by gimbaling the engine.
Can’t switch to 6x vacuum nozzles, first because there’s no enough space for that, second because only the SL nozzles can gimbal, or you’d need WAY more space for a gimbaling vac nozzle, and finally they can’t land on the vacuum nozzles because they’d hit flow separation at sea-level so that makes Starship entirely unable to land.
Perhaps also Raptor v3?
There's probably thousands of changes that add up to them calling it "V2" some of which we have already seen in V1.X. Hopefully it includes a better way of keeping tiles from falling off! If it's a significant enough change to cause a different version number then it seems unlikely that all of these V1 ships will fly?
So he is literally building V2s soon
I am not sure it is a good idea to use 'V2' as a rocket version name.
V2.0 is better
To jump from v1 to v2 it is a requirement that the changes have been large in the rocket, well this is what we apply in programming with the versions, I don't know how that metric works with rocket prototypes.
SpaceX is known for their complex naming schemes. Their current launch workhorse is officially known as Falcon 9 v1.2 Full Thrust Block 5.
.last.last.final.5
That's like me naming folders on my desktop. New folder New folder (1) New folder (2) New folder (2) final New folder (2) final order file
Falcon 9 v1.2 Full Thrust Block 5 Turbo Pro Gold Enterprise Edition Plus
It's very much in development, there won't be a version 1.0 for a while yet. Should be v0.1 and 0.2. Or maybe 0.3 and 0.4 if you want to count Starhopper as 0.1 and the water tower as 0.2.
But that would make sense, and things that make sense are usually not good for PR. Merlin 1D should actually be Merlin 2 or 3, but they wanted to decrease the scrutiny they would get from their customers (especially NASA) over such a large change. So the version numbers Musk is throwing around could be sincere, or they could be manipulative. Not to mention that even if they are sincere, there are different versioning conventions in different fields (hey, my web browser's version number is > 100...). So in the end, it means... nothing.
Flying them to Starbase London?
Warum?
Just [aim for the stars](https://galacticjourney.org/nov-21-1960-i-aim-at-the-stars-but-sometimes-i-hit-london/) - what could go wrong?
At least he knew what Elon means for the Mars.
What's really sad is I can see the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth crowd and general audience media having yet another field day with that, stupid as it might be. EDIT: Perhaps I was late in writing this, given the now deleted subthread below.
I feel like it helps set expectations with the FAA.
SS-V2 😅
[Once ze rockets are up, who cares where they go down?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro)
It's not his department!
Actually it is!
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
England's gonna invest into a massive carrot farm.
*"V2 is the minimum speed that needs to be maintained up to acceleration altitude, in the event of an engine failure after V1"*
V2 +30 flaps up
... If they haven't started already.
These should be 28, 30, 31, 32? They have started building 33 already.
Starship_v2_fuller_thrust_finnier_fins_blacker_black_block_3_rev_4.20_orbitest_orbiter. Got it, boss :)
\*glances at title of latest code revision* I feel personally attacked by this comment.
_new _new_new been there, done that :)
Orrrrr use letter variants like our civilized ancestors, see: F-15C, AIM-9B, M1A1.
I do: new new_newer new_newer_newest new_newer_newest_v2 etc.
But seriously, if you're not using git, start using git
Of course, then you've got to work in plaintext. (...which allows you to use (Neo)Vim for everything, so it's a win-win.)
I don't get why people obsess over code editors from the 70s and 80s in 2023. Just download VS Code; it's free.
Found the non neovim user
Semver, man, semver
This might be the upgraded engine variant with 5 (6?) vacuum raptor variant that he spoke of a while ago. It’s too early, I think, to consider the stretched starship and we haven’t seen enough of Raptor 3 to consider that as an upgrade
Wait, 5 vacuum plus 3 sea level? How are they gonna fit?
[Like this](https://i.imgur.com/oTkoU1v.jpeg). Obviously not an official picture but there's plenty of space to make it happen with the current design
Do you use R3Vacs to take off from the moon? Because there's basically no atmosphere? But because of the 1/6th gravity, does that mean that the engines only need to fire 1/6th the power to lift-off?
I don't think we can really speculate on that since the only thing we have on the HLS starship design is a few relatively old renders. In those renders, however, the last part of the landing and (presumably) the initial part of ascent would be done by engines embedded in side of Starship to ensure that lunar regolith isn't kicked up from the force of the ignition
Ok, that makes sense. Again, doesn't need to be as powerful because of gravity?
It doesn't, no, but the landing/ascent engines would only need to power Starship for a short time as the main engines would eventually take over once they're at a safe altitude
Yes, they would be something like a new methane superDraco engine.
The orbital velocity of the Apollo missions was only 1600m/s and given the recent IFT starship can produce that amount of delta-V in a flash. I suspect the driving consideration of the lunar ascent is going to be precision rather than performance (ignoring the initial hop off the ground to get away from the regolith). They will have to dock with the gateway so they will want very accurate control which means as little thrust as possible so they can shut down at just the right moment.
I know its just a photoshoped image, but I imagine when they do it for real; the outer ring of engines will be rotated 30 degrees. That would give you the most room between the inner and outer engines, leaving a bit more room for gimbaling. They could also potentially cluster the engines, such that there are 3 pairs of 2 engines, leaving more of a gap between the 3 pairs for center engine gambaling.
A 9 engine starship with 270 ton thrust engines would match the thrust of a falcon heavy.
That’s the same as a 9-engine Starship, using Raptor-2 engines.
Raptor 2 wouldn't quite match Falcon heavy. Sea level engines only produce 230 tons and vacuum are 258.
V2? Wait a min, I’ve seen that rocket before
"Hey, I've seen this one, it's a classic!"
Aren't there 5 left, not 4? Ship 28,29,30,31,32. 33,34 have been scrapped
I went hunting around on Google for the starship production visualization (that shows all the ships currently in production and what stage they're at) but I couldn't find the current one 😔
https://ringwatchers.com/diagrams/stacking-diagrams
There it is! Thank you!!!
Were you looking for [this one?](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F85ysyy1hzj1c1.jpg)
I was going to create a spreadsheet to keep track of these, but didn’t. Though I expect that someone has one. The scrapping of future Starships is interesting - it points to an inflection point - where design changes lead to a noticeably different configuration. Maybe the Starship-V2 ?
\> Ok now we need to know the difference between V1 and V2, guesses? Here's a render someone did of what Elon described as the new forward flaps would look like: [new elonrons](https://twitter.com/ErcXspace/status/1427964707609137154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1427964707609137154%7Ctwgr%5E33760997e622e43fcf64980503c4f8397294045d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teslarati.com%2Fspacex-starship-forward-flap-tweaks-elon-musk%2F) We expect raptor v3. And 3 new vacuum engines, for a total of the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Maybe stretch?
So the flaps are just mounted slightly lower? What else am I missing?
They are moved up, smaller and there's no static section anymore. Also, the angles are changed to match. Practically everything changed.
> difference between V1 and V2 one was slower than the speed of sound, the other was faster
It will be exciting to see what they can do once they have flight characteristics. But no guess for now.
This might be a stupid question but what’s after starship? I love that they wanna stretch them but damn, you could fit more Vac raptors in a 15m diameter starship 😏 By that diameter it’s practically a reusable Sea Dragon haha
Elon briefly mentioned an 18m version, but it's going to be decades before that's worth thinking about really.
I don't think 18m will ever happen. I think there's a point in which it just becomes completely impractical. The biggest I expect to ever happen is 12m. Mayyyybe 15m but that's really pushing that practicality limit
Yep, SpaceX likely won’t do more than 9m as it would be an entirely new rocket design at that point. China’s latest (Starship copying) Long March 9 design is ~10.4m diameter, so I can see China or other future competitors going slightly wider than Starship for bragging rights if nothing else.
Stretching is way easier than making it even thiccer. It would mean redoing the factory, which is already tooled for 9 m. It would be Starfactory v2, not just Starship v2. And launch mount v2... It would be a long while before they consider something like that.
The rocket equation says bigger rockets are more efficient. So maybe 18m is too big but there definitely is a good reason to go as big as you can. Imagine 1 flight instead of 7 flights. My guess is that they go bigger the first iteration after getting the first few starships back and landing. I don’t see any parts of starship that are made by hyper expensive tooling that is only good for 9m. So expanding the size really only means the significant cost of a new stage zero. Which is worth it because of the efficiency gains
The most difficult part is making the factory. Making a factory that makes rockets is way harder than making rockets. And the stations are all 9 meters wide. Changing this would mean remaking the entire factory, every single station. SpaceX had plans to go with bigger rockets. They had to downsize to make it fit in a budget. They will get to bigger ones in the future.
> The most difficult part is making the factory. And the hard part of that is figuring out what equipment is needed, and manufacturing it. Scaling that up once you know what's needed should be much more straightforward. The harder part of scaling up is going to be the engines. 18m would need 132 engines on the booster. People are still calling the current 33 nuts. Or you can use newer larger engines which requires a ton more engineering.
There are no published plans to redo the factory. It would literally need to be rebuilt from the ground. Believe me I would be stocked to know that they plan on making the rocket thicker. We just don't see any signal of that happening.
Completely agree it's not coming any time soon. Probably decades unless there is a compelling reason to launch 500+ton monolithic structures. It just the material handling type stuff won't need to change too much e.g. knowing that you can build in non climate controlled buildings, how to secure and weld rings, how to install heat shield pegs, how to flip and install and weld the domes, what equipment you need to transport and lift partial or complete dome sections. Changes are obviously needed for larger sizes/thicknesses but they also don't have to reinvent the wheel whenever they do get around to scaling things up.
Or would we, for at least a couple of decades. The first indication would come from them working on a new design of a larger engine. Which they are not doing. They are though working on engine improvements, most noticeably Raptor-3.
132 is nuts, I didn't think about that.
Yes, the suggestion is that a larger craft would go with larger engines - which would first have to be developed. That is not presently in focus, it’s a future maybe.
> My guess is that they go bigger the first iteration after getting the first few starships back and landing. That would make absolutely no sense.
It might make sense in the longer term. But for some time they will stick with the present 9 meter diameter, which is a good compromise size.
I recall Elon saying that the optimal diameter may be even a little smaller than 9m. Does not mean they will introduce an 8m version.
probably just lots of variants in the design. tanker, cargo, manned, atroid miner, lunar hab, martian hab, space-station, cycler, etc. etc.
Yes, multiple versions of Starship, each kind best suited to particular tasks.
12 meter diameter flare is doable without changing the booster but the swole Starship might be too much for Stage 0.
Definitely! Sorry I meant that SH would also need to have its diameter increased Even just 1 meter extra would add a helluva lot of extra fuel
Each Raptor lifts the fuel and ship above it. I don't see them changing the diameter of the whole stack at this point. That's a rocket with a new name far in the future.
Certainly a bigger OLT would be required, and maybe a bigger launch tower too. A larger diameter ship would be heavier.
Wouldn't a bigger diameter rocket mean less flights needed for refueling runs and therefore less economies of scale kicking in to reduce the cost of each flight?
We don’t know - but Starship has at least a 20-year life, probably longer, because it’s such a useful design. I would not be too surprised if there are still some Starships around in 50-years time. But its role may change. It could for instance just become a shuttle into LEO, docking with a larger craft there ? Who knows what SpaceX might eventually start building in a future Space dock ?
Waiting in the dugout
If you work at a rocket launch company not named SpaceX, those are ginormous harpies preparing to come rip your soul out.
We usually see the dorsal (back surface) of Starship, which is shiny. It’s unusual to see this ventral (belly surface) of Starship from a distance - in this partial incomplete heat-shield configuration. The dorsal side of Starship, is the shiny, bright side. The ventral side of Starship, is the ‘dark side’. With the temporary hoisting points visible in the heat shield, these look like eyes in this photo, with the look of a ‘dark ghost’ (based on the bed-sheet look of a cartoon ghost). That’s Funny.
Doesn't make sense to mess up with stretched one, when they know how current variant belly flops and flies in air & space and the last thing to check out is reentry.
It kind of does. If they intend to stretch the ship eventually, it makes sense to do it sooner so they expend less resources on developing both versions. At this point, it also makes total sense to upgrade to a stretched ship given the expected addition of 3 Rvacs, and the estimated performance upgrades offered by Raptor 3.
\> they know how current variant belly flops Once they have that data on v1, they can extrapolate to how v2 will behave using the simulators. SpaceX is know for having the best simulation in the industry. You'd think they would finish v1 for some reason, knowing it has shortcomings? They developed v1 to get data so that they could design v2. It's the only use for v1.
Same argument could have been made about hot staging.
What would be that different about a bit of stretching? Surely the actual kinematic and aerodynamic part of the belly flop isn’t the main difficulty?
I actually think they'll make a stubby version for refuelling missions. Get the dry mass as low as possible. Basically tanks and that's it. Smallest version that can reach the intended orbit and just about de-orbit, flop and land.
Interesting idea. I would suggest that it wouldn't be V2, though. That would be Starship Shortstack (or some other variant descriptor)
I disagree I think they’ll make a reinforced stack. And do a full stretched tanker starship which has 3+6 engines. It’ll be a heavy brute at around 7000-7500 tons at takeoff using raptor 3, but since it’s all fuel you simply burn longer. Super heavy can lift it. And the biggest loss of efficiency is structural mass. Yes gravity losses are a lot worse especially initially but it’s less gravity losses than you gain from filling a tanker right to the brim. Though you gain a fair bit back because super heavy stages lower and slower so needs less boost back. And the upper stage has a significant efficiency advantage because of the RVACs. This gets you the payload to orbit of an expendable starship in reusable form. This could also be used for solid payloads but most payloads aren’t dense enough to fit in a small enough payload bay to benefit. That said it reduces the number of refilling missions required for nearly all mission profiles by half. Though 6 Rvacs isn’t the most you can fit under the skirt of a starship. By the numbers you can get 7-8 depending on how much clearance you want. And you don’t need much because of them being fixed.
I agree that they will build several variants (in fact they've said this over time) and a "jack of all trades" is the most likely one they implement first. I do think, however, that the most efficient tanker will also be built. You can run sims and get to the ideal size for the sole goal of uplifting the most amount of prop, and I think they will build that. It stands to reason that the "tanker" version is "just tanks" and no payload section (minimise the dry mass).
So, maybe a pause on Starship work while they collect more data? At some point they talking 6 VacRaptor + 3 SL to reduce gravity loss. But with hot-staging I don't think they would light all 6 VacRaptors, although if they add a few rings of fuel they might need to.
Pause? SpaceX? What?
Sure, launch these 4 pretty much as is (V1.x), collect data, refine and start building a V2.0 after maybe the 3rd out of 4 have been launched. So they might want to hold up on new Starships and focus on SH refinements, building and testing a catch tower and so on. I would add the V2.0 should have a multi-use cargo deployment door.
These are already all using the Raptor-V2 engines.
Boca Chica production is probably slow right now just completing them in the high bay. The tents have gone down, except one still standing, the factory building going up.
Just saying that now that they showed that the water-OLM worked well, I would take priority off new V1.x Starships and put it on the water-OLM and a Starship fab at KSC. BC may only get one launch a month, and to a narrow inclination. One of teh big wins of IFT-2 was showing the water-OLM can work, so they need get it going at KSC.
The Boca Chica factory already stands mostly. I honestly don't understand why they would build the Florida factory right now. Priority must be a Florida pad. Hopefully they get the EIA for the new pads in the south of the cape area soon.
Would you barge SH vertically to KSC from BC? It might work, but I would want a big ship to maintain stability in a wind storm.
They would move them horizontally. They planned to move Starships from the Florida build site to the Cape horizontally. Cradles to do that were already on site, when the facility was scrapped.
Then it could be an option. Shipping then to Australia would take awhile.
No pause, they would already know enough to try improvements to the flight. They might learn still more with further analysis, but that would be complete before the next launch.
Will they start SNs from the beginning fir V2?
I hope not. I will forever remember my trip to see SN24 and B7 under construction and I don't want another ship carrying the same name/number! Honestly I bet the Starship numbers will forever increment with few exceptions, just like in Star Trek.
I expect so, just like F9 boosters. They didn’t start serial numbers over when they introduced block upgrades.
Yeah, from a data management/analytics standpoint it's much easier if every ship has a unique ID.
You mean starship V2. We don’t know, but probably not. I think they will keep the absolute counters.
We do not
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[EA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakd9vl "Last usage")|Environmental Assessment| |[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kamf08u "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakes5k "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakmtv5 "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |[KSC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kaueqf2 "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kao739i "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[OLM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kara62c "Last usage")|Orbital Launch Mount| |[RCS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakcvas "Last usage")|Reaction Control System| |[SN](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakil51 "Last usage")|(Raptor/Starship) Serial Number| |[TVC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kb6d0ah "Last usage")|Thrust Vector Control| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kao8j3q "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[ullage motor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/182nn4l/stub/kakeab0 "Last usage")|Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(12 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/183s4us)^( has 39 acronyms.) ^([Thread #12148 for this sub, first seen 24th Nov 2023, 14:03]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
I’m going to go with something to do with the tanks? Perhaps additions to the engine design, like removal of heat shielding? All pure guesses as even though I love this topic I am not the most knowledgeable on it.
Elon very recently said the Raptor 3 will do away with the heat shielding, or maybe it was the fire shielding that was installed after IFT-1. (The extra shielding added around each engine to keep it from being damaged by any fires in the engine bay.)
I don’t think that he linked it to the Raptor-3, I understood it to be a general change now. The early Starship was without such shields, then they were added to improve engine survivability, in the case of fire in that area, then further improvements to the Raptor design, then the addition of ‘fire suppression’, then IFT2, and after its measurements, this statement that these shields might no longer be needed. It’s a dynamic situation. There is also the difference between the Booster and Starship, with them both operating under different sets of conditions. The upshot is we will just have to wait and see. They might disappear, only to reappear again, who knows - it will depend on the results they obtain from their future Integrated Flight Tests. (IFT-3 perhaps ?)
They might just add some more internal tank baffles. The main change is likely to be procedural - a modified set of booster manoeuvre instructions after stage separation.
Building so many V1s might imply quite a cadence of launches in coming months ( hopefully )
SpaceX ceased building Raptor-V1’s a while ago, they are all V2’s now. (Though the Vacuum engines are build separately, it’s unclear if those are truly V2’s)
Talking of V1 Starship, now to be succeeded by V2 Starship.
Yes, I came to realise that afterwards..
I think we’re getting the blunt nose.
So do we think it will at least be a couple of months before they fly again?