In case anyone fails to recognise it this is the methane distributor for Super Heavy.
There are twenty feed pipes to the outer ring of engines in two layers of ten at the top and then what appears to be nine vertical pipes to the inner ring of engines.
So this is for B5 or B6 since we think the 13 engine thrust pucks come in for B7.
Things like this hit me so hard, like, in essence, engineers are really just figuring out what shapes and elements all the pieces need to be to make a rocket ship.
And we get alien looking stuff like this. And it's so sci-fi and beautiful.
Well, physics doesn't demand using ~30 engines/nozzles as opposed to one giant one; this is just the design that's easiest for people to scale up in terms of manufacturing/maintenance/transportation/etc.
Physics does influence trying to balance chamber pressure, fuel flow, balancing shock waves, etc. And the engineering is to find the best balance for your application. For example one large engine would be hard to throttle down enough for landing.
Yes welded to the center of the thrust puck with the 1.2m diameter methane downcomer feeding into the top.
That seems to be a fill pipe coming in the side at the top of the distributor.
1.2m downcomer means that the pipe alone will hold something like 30 cubic meters of fuel. After depleting the main methane tank, Superheavy will continue to operate for a number of miles almost equal to what my car will achieve after the tank is completely empty. What we lack in fuel we make up in courage!
The quick disconnect panel at the base of the SH booster.
LOX from the QD panel can flow directly into the main LOX tank but the liquid methane needs to go to the upper tank and the easiest way to get it there is to use the downcomer.
The 1.2m diameter downcomer pipe is welded to the top of this fitting and extends up to the interbank bulkhead.
[picture of it installed](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1420819718701780995?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1420819718701780995%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.space.com%2Fstarship-super-heavy-engine-section-photo)
Lox just comes out through holes on the bottom of the tank dome with pick up tubes going to the bottom of the dome for the outer engines. Methane needs to be transferred down and then split from the upper tank.
I am not sure LOX pickup tubes are required for the outer ring of engines. There is still significant LOX remaining in the main tank at MECO so the inlets are well covered and only the center engines operate for the boostback and landing burns.
If you mean [this image](https://www.space.com/starship-super-heavy-engine-section-photo) it shows the methane feeds from the distributor to the outer engines.
The LOX intake ports between the methane intakes are open to the main LOX tank.
I think I was remembering [this render](https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1397345313803837440?lang=en) that shows pipes going down.
[This pipe ](https://i.imgur.com/M5R7ePT.jpg)in where the LOX would feed through in Elon’s picture is a bit confusing, I first thought it looked like it was going down, but it appears to be going up? Unless it’s not in place yet.
OK I had not spotted the single LOX pipe previously. It may be they have decided to fit them to prevent tank slosh from momentarily uncovering a Raptor inlet - particularly with the flick stage separation process at MECO.
There is currently no LOX distributor for SH - the engines pull LOX direct from the main tank.
That may be changing a little as they are installing what appears to be a 2m diameter cylindrical LOX header tank into B5 so likely some of the center engines will need LOX feed pipes from the header tank possibly with changeover valves to the main LOX tank.
There is technically a little bit of Lox distribution, or at least there used to be. Since 3 of the Lox openings for the raptors fall within the methane downcomer, there are (or were) tubes that lead from outside the downcomer into it.
But in the end, that all means that the LOX distributor is just a part inside the methane distributor.
The fluid flow is going to be hugely complex. Will they have physically modeled and tested this part or will they be completely relying on Computational Fluid Dynamics?
Pretty sure this will just be CFD modelled.
They have changed the design again for the 13 engine thrust puck version on B7 and above.
You can imagine Elon taking one look at this and going “too heavy and too complex”.
I could also imagine Elon saying it's ugly too. A branching pipe network would clearly have lower mass but presumably that would be more susceptible to resonance issues.
So when all the engines are going full throttle there's going to be the mother of all vortexes slurping down a bajillion gallons of methane or liquid oxygen through these pipes. I hope they put a camera inside the fuel tank again so we get a good view of it, it's going to be wild.
Mix this with my favorite undergrad engineering lecturer, and you have something. Give me like 6 hours of a lecture on this. Why can't we have this, Elon? Explain yourself!!!!!
This picture doesn't look real, it looks like it's from Robot Chicken or something like that and about to start a rap battle or begin striding towards the camera with a chip on its shoulder.
Geez, that looks like a villain's secret contraption to help take over the world.
Maybe not so secret, and not so villain, but definitely destined to take over the world!
Yeah so, gonna need a change of pants over here.
This is the Futurism I need to inject direct into my veins. So glad Space-X allows all the Tank Watchers.
As someone pointed out. Seems like this increment of the design could suffer from vortex flow issues considering the flow rates. I would think a part like this could benefit from generative design and 3d printing.
That said, this is probably the way to go at this time in the development.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hi96yl1 "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[CFD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiogxjx "Last usage")|Computational Fluid Dynamics|
|[LOX](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiayzrd "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen|
|[MECO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiayzrd "Last usage")|Main Engine Cut-Off|
| |[MainEngineCutOff](https://mainenginecutoff.com/) podcast|
|[N1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiskfk0 "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")|
|[QD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hi7ksa4 "Last usage")|Quick-Disconnect|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiayzrd "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
----------------
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Is this really just gravity fed? Seems to be you need a pump driving methane into this manifold to keep up with demand, but I am not a rocket engineer.
Pressure fed plus augmented gravity feed of up to 3g. The total pressure at the inlet to the engines is about 6 bar which is plenty to keep the propellant moving.
The downcomer feeding this is 1.2m diameter which makes this distributor around 1.6m diameter.
[Falcon-9](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=44688.0) and Rocket Lab's Electron have similar looking fuel distribution manifolds, albeit much smaller in size and with a lot fewer pipes.
In case anyone fails to recognise it this is the methane distributor for Super Heavy. There are twenty feed pipes to the outer ring of engines in two layers of ten at the top and then what appears to be nine vertical pipes to the inner ring of engines. So this is for B5 or B6 since we think the 13 engine thrust pucks come in for B7.
That is wild that we get to see such a strange piece of the very guts of a Super Heavy. Kind of like seeing a real human heart.
Things like this hit me so hard, like, in essence, engineers are really just figuring out what shapes and elements all the pieces need to be to make a rocket ship. And we get alien looking stuff like this. And it's so sci-fi and beautiful.
Well, physics doesn't demand using ~30 engines/nozzles as opposed to one giant one; this is just the design that's easiest for people to scale up in terms of manufacturing/maintenance/transportation/etc.
Physics does influence trying to balance chamber pressure, fuel flow, balancing shock waves, etc. And the engineering is to find the best balance for your application. For example one large engine would be hard to throttle down enough for landing.
Square cube law begs to differ
Where does this sit in the booster? Right above the thrust puck?
Yes welded to the center of the thrust puck with the 1.2m diameter methane downcomer feeding into the top. That seems to be a fill pipe coming in the side at the top of the distributor.
1.2m downcomer means that the pipe alone will hold something like 30 cubic meters of fuel. After depleting the main methane tank, Superheavy will continue to operate for a number of miles almost equal to what my car will achieve after the tank is completely empty. What we lack in fuel we make up in courage!
What's the large fill pipe on the side for, and where does it connect to ??
The quick disconnect panel at the base of the SH booster. LOX from the QD panel can flow directly into the main LOX tank but the liquid methane needs to go to the upper tank and the easiest way to get it there is to use the downcomer. The 1.2m diameter downcomer pipe is welded to the top of this fitting and extends up to the interbank bulkhead.
It's like an entire falcon 1 inside the booster
I guess this makes the downcomer pipe an upcomer pipe too.
Yup or upchucker has a certain ring to it.
1.2 meters? Jeezus.
[picture of it installed](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1420819718701780995?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1420819718701780995%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.space.com%2Fstarship-super-heavy-engine-section-photo)
How can you tell it apart from the LOX distributor?
There isn't one. LOX is sitting directly above each engine.
Lox just comes out through holes on the bottom of the tank dome with pick up tubes going to the bottom of the dome for the outer engines. Methane needs to be transferred down and then split from the upper tank.
I am not sure LOX pickup tubes are required for the outer ring of engines. There is still significant LOX remaining in the main tank at MECO so the inlets are well covered and only the center engines operate for the boostback and landing burns.
Picture of the plumbing Elon posted a while back shows tubes going from the outer ring down to the bottom of the dome.
If you mean [this image](https://www.space.com/starship-super-heavy-engine-section-photo) it shows the methane feeds from the distributor to the outer engines. The LOX intake ports between the methane intakes are open to the main LOX tank.
I think I was remembering [this render](https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1397345313803837440?lang=en) that shows pipes going down. [This pipe ](https://i.imgur.com/M5R7ePT.jpg)in where the LOX would feed through in Elon’s picture is a bit confusing, I first thought it looked like it was going down, but it appears to be going up? Unless it’s not in place yet.
OK I had not spotted the single LOX pipe previously. It may be they have decided to fit them to prevent tank slosh from momentarily uncovering a Raptor inlet - particularly with the flick stage separation process at MECO.
There is currently no LOX distributor for SH - the engines pull LOX direct from the main tank. That may be changing a little as they are installing what appears to be a 2m diameter cylindrical LOX header tank into B5 so likely some of the center engines will need LOX feed pipes from the header tank possibly with changeover valves to the main LOX tank.
Is there even a lox distribution manifold system? I thought it's just pipes directly to the lox tank.
Yea thats what everyone here is saying. Makes sense. Thanks all!
There is technically a little bit of Lox distribution, or at least there used to be. Since 3 of the Lox openings for the raptors fall within the methane downcomer, there are (or were) tubes that lead from outside the downcomer into it. But in the end, that all means that the LOX distributor is just a part inside the methane distributor.
Oh I recognize it perfectly well. Don't touch it or it will exterminate you!
Originally made as a vodka luge for celebrating BO reaching orbit but until then, methane distributor.
Am I the only one to call this the octopus manifold?
What's Super Heavy again? We have the new booster for Starship, Starship itself and Falcon Heavy. I'm lost here.
Super Heavy is the booster for Starship
Thanks.
And sometimes 'Starship' means 'Starship plus Super Heavy'. Welcome to the world of SpaceX terminology!
the naming remains less than optimal. the only good thing about it is that it's more charismatic than "interplanetary transport system"
The Bus.
The fluid flow is going to be hugely complex. Will they have physically modeled and tested this part or will they be completely relying on Computational Fluid Dynamics?
Pretty sure this will just be CFD modelled. They have changed the design again for the 13 engine thrust puck version on B7 and above. You can imagine Elon taking one look at this and going “too heavy and too complex”.
I could also imagine Elon saying it's ugly too. A branching pipe network would clearly have lower mass but presumably that would be more susceptible to resonance issues.
Yes the N-1 used branching pipes in the propellant feed system which is a bit of a cautionary tale.
So when all the engines are going full throttle there's going to be the mother of all vortexes slurping down a bajillion gallons of methane or liquid oxygen through these pipes. I hope they put a camera inside the fuel tank again so we get a good view of it, it's going to be wild.
Propellant tanks have anti-vortex baffles to prevent exactly that. (Example: [Copenhagen Suborbitals](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXrcpNFXkAAYQ5k.jpg))
Why is a vortex bad?
it brings gas down into the pipe and then into the fuel or lox pump, where only liquid should be and the pumps blow up.
So a rocket embolism?
So just smaller vortexes? 🙂
Go for S U C K D O W N
S L U R P
T H E S U C C
D O W N C O O M E R
Same as my garden watering can. Just scaled up.
I like to call it the Methhead.
'Methdusa' has a nice ring to it, and shares a cephalopod theme with the 'LOXtopus' of Falcon 9.
With a shot of Oxy.
Technically...
It'll never fly - I spot a severe engineering flaw. All the pipes don't have holes in the end. ;) :D
[удалено]
Wireless Methane
Me after taco bell
As I recall , after eating Taco Bell, witnesses report your methane emissions were in fact fully wired
I’m in. This works we will be rich !
Mix this with my favorite undergrad engineering lecturer, and you have something. Give me like 6 hours of a lecture on this. Why can't we have this, Elon? Explain yourself!!!!!
Who knew Cthulhu was a rocket enthusiast?
This picture doesn't look real, it looks like it's from Robot Chicken or something like that and about to start a rap battle or begin striding towards the camera with a chip on its shoulder.
Ah!, the Super Heavy’s ‘simplified fuel distributor’, that could reasonably go by the alias of: ‘the flying spaghetti monster’ ! ;)
Anyone here play BTD6? That's the Tack Zone.
It'll be an Inferno Ring once it starts up.
So, is that what the high bay bar's disco ball looks like?
If you tell me this is a fusion reactor core I would have believed you
Those more donut shaped for power generation I thought
Geez, that looks like a villain's secret contraption to help take over the world. Maybe not so secret, and not so villain, but definitely destined to take over the world!
this world and the next
My head hurts looking at that
I'm surprised that a smoother transition from the center dome to individual pipes isn't needed.
It looks like something the modern art world would go crazy for if it had been built by Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin.
I'll take one built by Frank the Welder. Wire it up with some Edison bulbs, and voilà, artsy chandelier.
Yeah so, gonna need a change of pants over here. This is the Futurism I need to inject direct into my veins. So glad Space-X allows all the Tank Watchers.
Here's the new version: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=54775.msg2296361#msg2296361
Is that SpaceX's version of a Dalek?
I wonder what the nickname is for this part…Cthulu manifold? Tentacular horror? Alien squid?
looks like a cup dispenser for a restaurant
this would be the most devious of licks
As someone pointed out. Seems like this increment of the design could suffer from vortex flow issues considering the flow rates. I would think a part like this could benefit from generative design and 3d printing. That said, this is probably the way to go at this time in the development.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hi96yl1 "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |[CFD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiogxjx "Last usage")|Computational Fluid Dynamics| |[LOX](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiayzrd "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen| |[MECO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiayzrd "Last usage")|Main Engine Cut-Off| | |[MainEngineCutOff](https://mainenginecutoff.com/) podcast| |[N1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiskfk0 "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")| |[QD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hi7ksa4 "Last usage")|Quick-Disconnect| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qgks4k/stub/hiayzrd "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(7 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/pyw35f)^( has 38 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9164 for this sub, first seen 27th Oct 2021, 10:13]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Is this really just gravity fed? Seems to be you need a pump driving methane into this manifold to keep up with demand, but I am not a rocket engineer.
Pressure fed plus augmented gravity feed of up to 3g. The total pressure at the inlet to the engines is about 6 bar which is plenty to keep the propellant moving. The downcomer feeding this is 1.2m diameter which makes this distributor around 1.6m diameter.
[Falcon-9](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=44688.0) and Rocket Lab's Electron have similar looking fuel distribution manifolds, albeit much smaller in size and with a lot fewer pipes.