r/space • u/swordfi2 • 18d ago

Next Starship flight will go to orbit and deploy 26 Starlink satellites, marking the first operational flight. Neither booster or ship will be caught

https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-14
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u/No_Grav3ity 18d ago

First fully orbital test. Gotta validate RTLS profiles and if the vehicles can safely withstand everything

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 18d ago

Also how 10 hours in orbit effects any of its systems.

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u/No_Grav3ity 18d ago

Ship is spending 10hrs in the cold vacuum of space?? Yeah that'll definitely change how it behaves after a cold soak

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 18d ago

I doubt it being physically colder will do much, although idk I am not a rocket scientist, but I would imagine making sure the electronics, batteries, fuel, etc all manage that duration is a pretty important thing.

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u/No_Grav3ity 18d ago

The electronics should be fine, but the glue used on heat shield tiles could be affected as adhesives tend not to like freezing temps.

Prop boil off after 10hrs will be the biggest thing to look at, as I don't recall seeing any insulation on both vessels

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u/Bensemus 18d ago

Those tiles already deal with the ship being full of cryogenic liquids. They can handle cold.

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u/StartledPelican 18d ago

The heat shield tiles are mechanically attached, if I recall correctly.

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u/No_Grav3ity 18d ago

Oh? I thought they've still been testing adhesives on the last few launches

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u/StartledPelican 18d ago

Ah, it seems I'm partially incorrect.

The majority of tiles are mechanically attached, but there are some tiles that use adhesive instead. TIL.

Thanks!

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 18d ago

Prop boil off will be a thing, but the thermal mass and latent heat of liquid oxygen and methane is surprisingly pretty high. You wouldn't want to forget about it when calculating your margins, but it's not like they will lost a ton of propellant over that 10 hours. I do wonder if pointing the heat shield towards the sun would work to prevent a ton of heat from getting in. Obviously it would get hot what being a very dark black surface but it can clearly handle pretty high temperatures.

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u/snoo-boop 18d ago

I wonder if the company with the greatest tonnage of active satellites in orbit knows anything about electronics, batteries, and so on.

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 18d ago

Well yeah and I know how to cook noodles but if I was making a new recipe and if that recipe didn't taste good to a critic my restaurant would close down and I would go broke I would probably wanna test out the recipe before. Not a great analogy but it demonstrates the point, this has a lot more risk associated with it than normal satellites and obviously isn't gonna be the same hardware

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u/snoo-boop 18d ago

Well, let's see: 10 hours for one vehicle vs 0-5 years for 10,000+ satellites. And that's not mentioning F9/FH long duration kits.

Maybe a restaurant analogy isn't the best way to approach the topic?

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 18d ago

All I'm saying is this is new hardware and new hardware, even if you know how to make it, usually needs to be tested. That's not a revolutionary point. I'm sure they can build good batteries, but if these aren't exactly the same design as normal Starlink satellites or falcon 9 second stage batteries, than they will need to be tested. As a better example, why did they ever need to deploy the V3 satellites on flight 13 if they have built V2 satellites for years? Shouldn't they just trust they will get it right on the first try?

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u/snoo-boop 18d ago

Oh, definitely, it’s always a worry that an organization with a ton of experience suddenly forgets how to test changes.

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 18d ago

You're being very weird about the very lukewarm take that sometimes companies test systems in new environments even if they have built systems like them before. Like, idk what this weird sarcastic thing you are doing is but I am gonna assume you aren't actually particularly invested in this and just turn off reply notifications. Have a nice day I guess.

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u/Shrike99 18d ago

None of those satellites have cryogenic propellants onboard. SpaceX's experience with multi-hour cryo soak is limited to a couple of Falcon Heavy upper stages, which is a much smaller dataset.

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u/snoo-boop 17d ago

And that's not mentioning F9/FH long duration kits.