The hardest problem in the entire design had yet to be solved. Having a robust human rated tile system that can be rapidly turned around is a huge engineering challenge that kind of breaks the whole point of the design if it doesn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually give up and go back to a cheaper throw away second stage, or throw out the tile design completely and try for some evaporative cooling approach, again.
They’ve already shown they can replace all the tiles in a couple of days with removal and new install. No reason they couldn’t do even faster turn around with just re-install if that was needed.
And human rating is a NASA requirement they won’t have to worry about for a few years.
I really hope to see the evaporative cooling make a comeback but it seems unnecessary when it’s returning to earth right now.
It would also be interesting to see them do shallower dips into the atmosphere then pull back out and repeat. Like a skipping stone. Lots of expansion contraction, but might work better without tiles.
Bear in mind that a lot of what's happening to the tiles now is deliberate experiments to see how much weight they can shave off and how many failed tiles they can survive. Given that the vehicle is routinely surviving reentry at this point, it doesn't seem "hard" to make the tiles more robust by paying for it with added weight. The question is whether they'll have enough weight budget to pay for it? But at this point...probably? Not my area ofc.
Even if it landed perfectly how is it going to be rapidly reusable with all those tiles breaking and needing repair? Then if that problem was magically engineered-away through some sort of materials science breakthrough, it still makes more sense to me to keep your big ships in a space staging area and your smaller ones as atmospheric gophers.
All what tiles breaking and needing repair? There was remarkably little visible damage this time around compared with previous flights.
There's no materials science breakthrough needed -- the shuttle used ceramic tiles successfully its entire service life. What's needed is engineering work, and that's what SpaceX has been doing.
You know a whole the size of a quarter can wreck the entire spacecraft and make it effectively throw away? Also, you'd want to use this many times. Making a system robust while not requiring months of refurbishment is really really hard.
Weren't the tiles one of the worst obstacles to quick turnaround times for the shuttle? It was something like 18 months before one could be launched again, and that's if they were in a hurry.
Could you tell me more? I suppose a heavy two-stage rocket is not optimized from the point of view of the rocket equation, but I know nothing about this field.
The hardest problem in the entire design had yet to be solved. Having a robust human rated tile system that can be rapidly turned around is a huge engineering challenge that kind of breaks the whole point of the design if it doesn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually give up and go back to a cheaper throw away second stage, or throw out the tile design completely and try for some evaporative cooling approach, again.
They’ve already shown they can replace all the tiles in a couple of days with removal and new install. No reason they couldn’t do even faster turn around with just re-install if that was needed.
And human rating is a NASA requirement they won’t have to worry about for a few years.
I really hope to see the evaporative cooling make a comeback but it seems unnecessary when it’s returning to earth right now.
It would also be interesting to see them do shallower dips into the atmosphere then pull back out and repeat. Like a skipping stone. Lots of expansion contraction, but might work better without tiles.
They did that during the return of Ship on this test flight.
Bear in mind that a lot of what's happening to the tiles now is deliberate experiments to see how much weight they can shave off and how many failed tiles they can survive. Given that the vehicle is routinely surviving reentry at this point, it doesn't seem "hard" to make the tiles more robust by paying for it with added weight. The question is whether they'll have enough weight budget to pay for it? But at this point...probably? Not my area ofc.
"surviving reentry" and being reusable are two very different things, particularly if this is to become human rated.
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Well at least for one part of that, 90-something percent of the launches don't need to be human rated.
Even if it landed perfectly how is it going to be rapidly reusable with all those tiles breaking and needing repair? Then if that problem was magically engineered-away through some sort of materials science breakthrough, it still makes more sense to me to keep your big ships in a space staging area and your smaller ones as atmospheric gophers.
All what tiles breaking and needing repair? There was remarkably little visible damage this time around compared with previous flights.
There's no materials science breakthrough needed -- the shuttle used ceramic tiles successfully its entire service life. What's needed is engineering work, and that's what SpaceX has been doing.
You know a whole the size of a quarter can wreck the entire spacecraft and make it effectively throw away? Also, you'd want to use this many times. Making a system robust while not requiring months of refurbishment is really really hard.
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Weren't the tiles one of the worst obstacles to quick turnaround times for the shuttle? It was something like 18 months before one could be launched again, and that's if they were in a hurry.
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They’ve already demonstrated they can replace all the tiles in a couple of days - even if they continue to have some fall off it won’t be an issue.
Small ships are less efficient, especially leaving the gravity well. Thats the whole point
Could you tell me more? I suppose a heavy two-stage rocket is not optimized from the point of view of the rocket equation, but I know nothing about this field.
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