SpaceX Starship

JimC said:
I don't think we will ever fly to DISTANT stars.
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Einstein s theory of relativity there's the whole energy /infinite mass limitation . But some have suggested. it might possible to fly at speeds somewhat close to the speed light , but even with that it would takes decades to reach Alpha Centauri , Vega o, Barnards Star, Ellison Eridani and we not sure if there are any habitable worlds orbiting these stars.
 
Calculate the energy required to bring a reasonably large spaceship up to relativistic speeds and then bring it back down to orbital velocity at the target. We won't be doing that anytime soon.
 
JimC said:
I don't think we will ever fly to DISTANT stars.
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If we do, I don't think it will be by fast travelling rocket ship. One thing we've learnt is that everything is there in nature for a reason. The universe is there for a reason. And for every locked door there is a key, and simply trying to kick it open just won't work.
 
paranoid marvin said:
If we do, I don't think it will be by fast travelling rocket ship. One thing we've learnt is that everything is there in nature for a reason. The universe is there for a reason. And for every locked door there is a key, and simply trying to kick it open just won't work.
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Ships approaching close to speed of light might be a possibility.
 
BAYLOR said:
Ships approaching close to speed of light might be a possibility.
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The nearest galaxy to ours is approximately 5000 light years away. There could potentially be more than a trillion galaxies.

So even travelling at 1000 times the speed of light, attempting to get from the Milky Way to a galaxy at the other side of the Universe would take millions of years.

Either nature has no intention of allowing such travel to happen, or there's some really big clue that we are missing
 
paranoid marvin said:
The nearest galaxy to ours is approximately 5000 light years away. There could potentially be more than a trillion galaxies.

So even travelling at 1000 times the speed of light, attempting to get from the Milky Way to a galaxy at the other side of the Universe would take millions of years.

Either nature has no intention of allowing such travel to happen, or there's some really big clue that we are missing
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But thanks to time dilation, a 1G trip to Andromeda only takes 29 years of ship time.
 
I am a little puzzled why getting this right is so difficult. Sure, Starship is a very large vehicle - but that should make it more stable and less prone to internal vibrations and accelerations. It is just a rocket.
 
"The nearest galaxy to ours is approximately 5000 light years away".

Say what?
 
People are going to test equipment on the Moon before we go anywhere else with it.

I'm sure there is plenty of water on the Moon locked up as ice for initial use. It could very well get used up and then the problem of getting water can become an issue. One problem could be the sublimation factor. Too high a rate and it it would mean a minimal supply.

My google Ai is saying lunar water deposits that can be detected by satellites is "over 600 billion kilograms of water ice, which is enough to fill at least 240,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This is equivalent to about 8 billion gallons of water." Twice as much water under the North Pole than the South Pole. Different concentrations from trace to plentiful. In the Clavius crater, water exists in concentrations roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water within a cubic meter of soil.

When "they" start selling lunar properties, mud front property at the lunar poles will go for a big premium.

The universe is a big place. I often wonder what life is like in the center of congested star clusters. Traveling between stars might still be a problem but there might be some kind of communication possible.
 
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There is a lot of water on the moon. There is also a lot of gold dissolved in the ocean. Getting to both is an issue.
 
JimC said:
On a more serious note, I think Starship did great today.
I suspect the booster suffered from tank slosh during the turnback maneuver, and the second stage had an unexpected flash of light about midway through the burn that may have been the result of a fuel line or tank rupture. Seems like fuel or oxidizer loss shut the engines down about 15-20 seconds early.

Both of those should be easy fixes.
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I noticed the speed of the booster was dropping after it 'throttled' back to 3 engines. It should keep accelerating to prevent the liquid fuel from 'falling' to the ceiling of the tank in stead of down.
Starship has only 6 engines to accelerate away from the booster, so there doesn't seem to be much margin.
 
No payload, so I think three should be plenty of margin - but yeah, it should keep accelerating.
 
Here's a list from Wikipedia and notice that the first galaxy which is not a "satellite of the Milky Way" is 701,000 light years.

  1. Milky Way – home galaxy of Earth
  2. Canis Major dwarf – 25,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  3. Segue 1 – 75,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  4. Sag DEG – 70,000 ly (satellite or part of Milky Way)
  5. Large Magellanic Cloud – 160,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  6. Small Magellanic Cloud – 190,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  7. Ursa Minor dwarf – 205,500 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  8. Draco dwarf – 248,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  9. Sculptor dwarf – 254,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  10. Sextans dwarf – 257,500 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  11. Carina dwarf – 283,500 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  12. Fornax dwarf – 427,000 ly (satellite of Milky Way)
  13. Leo II – 701,000 ly
  14. Leo I – 890,000 ly
  15. Phoenix dwarf – 1,271,000 ly
  16. Barnard's galaxy (NGC 6822) – 1,760,000 ly
  17. NGC185 – 2,021,000 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
  18. NGC147 – 2,152,000 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
  19. Andromeda galaxy (M31) – 2,363,000 ly
  20. Messier 32 (NGS 221) – 2,650,000 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
  21. M110 (NGC 205) – 2,363,500 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
  22. Andromeda I – 2,363,500 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
  23. Andromeda II – 2,363,500 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
  24. Andromeda III – 2,363,500 ly (satellite of Andromeda)
  25. LGS 3 – 2,477,500 ly (satellite of Triangulum)
  26. IC 1613 – 2,494,000 ly
  27. Triangulum galaxy (M33) – 2,592,000 ly
  28. Aquarius dwarf – 2,608,000 ly
  29. Tucana dwarf – 2,836,000 ly
  30. Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte (WLM) – 3,064,500 ly
 
They seem to be doing marginally better than the Japanese Space One private enterprise launcher...

 
Here's something I hadn't thought about, "To leave Earth’s orbit, Starship must have its propellant tanks refilled with liquid methane and liquid oxygen. That will require a complex choreography of additional Starship launches to take the propellants to orbit." NASA is looking for a way to haul a huge amount of rocket fuel up into space so the space tug boat that brings the space station down will have enough fuel to do this. It doesn't look like the tanker ship idea is making much headway. Once refueled the rocket would need a lot less fuel to get around, eventually that might indicate that once launched some of the ships would be staying in Earth orbit, not coming back down again. What are the costs of maintaining a ship in space vs subjecting it to the stress of re-entry and repeated escapes from Earth's gravity.
 
Robert Zwilling said:
Here's something I hadn't thought about, "To leave Earth’s orbit, Starship must have its propellant tanks refilled with liquid methane and liquid oxygen. That will require a complex choreography of additional Starship launches to take the propellants to orbit." NASA is looking for a way to haul a huge amount of rocket fuel up into space so the space tug boat that brings the space station down will have enough fuel to do this. It doesn't look like the tanker ship idea is making much headway. Once refueled the rocket would need a lot less fuel to get around, eventually that might indicate that once launched some of the ships would be staying in Earth orbit, not coming back down again. What are the costs of maintaining a ship in space vs subjecting it to the stress of re-entry and repeated escapes from Earth's gravity.
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I caught this conversation yesterday and my first thought was "at last." Until there is some way to launch missions from at least earth orbit we are fated to have multiple year missions to almost everywhere. Hauling propellant up from earth is at best a short term stop gap for this problem. My own solution, barring some radical new drive technology, would be to fit an interplanetary spaceship with an ion drive. It's not powerful enough to climb out of earth's gravity well, but it's ability to boost for long periods on relatively little fuel would make it a first generation interplanetary spacecraft.

I would hope that the costs of maintaining a ship in space vs. subjecting it to the stress of re-entry and escapes would be considerable less. But I've never seen anyone try to estimate the costs of such an endeavor.
 
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