622
Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
622 points (92.0% liked)
Technology
59217 readers
3206 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Question: what the fuck is Starship trying to accomplish over Falcon or Falcon Heavy? It seems like the design is a major regression in every imaginable way and its shimmering body screams another rushed, ugly EM pet project that's an expensive boondoggle like his ketamine fueled AutoCAD nightmare on wheels.
It’s fueled by LOX which can be made from water, making it suitable for refueling anywhere we can find ice in the solar system.
LOX is liquid oxygen, which is not a fuel, but an oxidizer. Starship is fueled by liquid methane. Methane can not be made from just water, you need a source of carbon. On Mars for example methane could be produced from CO2 in the atmosphere and water from ice.
I thought the ship had been designed to be able to use water only as input to its fuel generation.
The only fuel you can make from water is hydrogen. The RS-25 engines used on the SLS core stage and the Space Shuttle used liquid hydrogen, as did the J-2 engines on the second and third stage of the Saturn V (but not the first stage, which used RP-1 (kerosene) burning F-1 engine)
Starship's Raptor engines use liquid methane however. There are a bunch of tradeoffs between the different fuels, but generally liquid hydrogen is more difficult and expensive to deal with. With low cost reusability being one of the primary objectives of Starship, liquid methane was chosen as the best option. The fact that it can also be manufactured on Mars was also considered, since CO2 is abundant in Martian atmosphere.