Weekly Space Report: Starship V3 Changes?

SCANALYZER The Happening World
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Highlights:

  • Pad West/Pad B progress.

  • Chopsticks lifting/lowering/opening/closing tests.

  • Flame trench ramp concrete.

  • Sidewall frames placed.

  • Big controls bunker delivered in one piece.

  • Tank farm work, too.

  • Production site upgrades, demolition for future Gigabay. Long schedule for that.

  • Future ship and booster piece reports, with speculation on reduced goals for future Starship V3

  • Vanguard program military deliveries via Starship for rapid deployment. Johnston Island announcement in federal register to make landing test sites. (Near Hawaii.)

  • Vast Commercial space station Haven-1 news. Planned to launch on Falcon 9.

  • Falcon 9: NROL-69 with odd inclination & return to launch site, Starlink 11-7 with 27 satellites

  • Upcoming private Crew Dragon mission Fram 2

  • Rocket Lab Electron “Finding Hot Wildfires Near You”

  • Rocket Lab Neutron qualified to compete for US Space Force contracts

  • Artemis II update on core and Orion

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There’s stage zero and then there’s stage zero.

Buried somewhere in the aerospace literature is an article I wrote about commercializing the MX missile. It’s stage zero was real. It propelled the entire vehicle giving it velocity before the engines lit. We were going to maximize that velocity so that additional payload would make it to orbit.

How much additional payload?

The same weight as the fuel that would have been required to get it to that velocity without stage zero assist.

For those who are wondering how much that would actually turn out to be let’s just say it’s a lot of payload.

So something Musk obviously must have given thought to is beefing up his stage zero’s chopsticks structural strength and height so that during launch…

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It would have to be substantial. IIUC, they can barely catch the booster with the little bit of propellant left.

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Perhaps my experience with the MX missiles steam canister launch enhancement of payload capacity led me to understate the substantial gains in payload.

Do some preliminary calculations on the capacity increase resulting from using the Earth as reaction mass in the earliest stages of launch.

Bear in mind that chemical bonds are near the limit of what can provide launch from Earth’s gravity well.

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This Mathematica script seems to indicate that a 1 m/s assist by the launch tower results in a 380 tonne increase in payload capacity.

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This seems ridiculous even to me based on my experience with the MX missile’s steam canister assist but just to keep things in perspective, the projected payload of a much improved Starship+Superheavy booster tops out, according to Musk, at about 300 tonnes.

So let’s say you added 80tonne mass (wet+dry) to the Superheavy to beef it up along with the tower and you’re still doubling the payload.

Please check my arithmetic.

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{My Bold} Snort!

I don’t have Mathematica, anyways. I’ll let someone who’s not rusty do that.

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