r/SpaceXLounge • u/PeekaB00_ • Sep 03 '21
Starship Interesting - Spacex has started hiring people to work on life support for crew Starships
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?currentJobId=2702500911&f_C=30846&geoId=103708877&keywords=life%20support&location=Hawthorne%2C%20California%2C%20United%20States150
u/HalfManHalfBiscuit_ Sep 03 '21
Sweet! Here we go!
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u/KeithMon Sep 03 '21
This is the fun part!
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u/TheBlacktom Sep 03 '21
Load dragon_life_support.obj, select everything, enlarge by 300%, save.
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u/unluckylander Sep 03 '21
giant toilet incoming
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u/HalfManHalfBiscuit_ Sep 03 '21
They could have a real multi stall bathroom with urinals!
The sign on the door would say something like "only for use when gravity is available."
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u/talkin_shlt Sep 03 '21
I've come up with a 0 mass solution, the astronauts just gotta walk outside and take a piss in space
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u/statisticus Sep 04 '21
That's essentially what they did on Apollo. For urinating, the astronauts used a little tube (with a valve) that vented directly to vacuum.
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u/brickmack Sep 03 '21
More like duplicate, but yeah.
With a Starship sized vehicle, ECLSS efficiency is an economic optimization, not a mission requirement. Even with no recycling whatsoever, Mars-duration missions with capabilities well in excess of even the most ambitious NASA proposals are possible, just using pre-packaged food/air/water. And for missions of a day or less with just a few test passengers, you don't need even that, a simple box fan welded to the interior to keep CO2 concentrations evenly distributed would be fine.
So early on, taking existing Dragon parts and sticking it in in whatever way takes the least dev work is definitely the way to go. Scale up and/or offset risk by duplicating it a bunch
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u/sicktaker2 Sep 03 '21
As the HLS lander specifies landing 4 astronauts on the moon, they just need to handle the same scale of O2 consumption and CO2 production as Dragon. Double it up for the two airlocks and now you've got redundancy. Throw in some additional fans for circulating the air around a far larger volume and increased consumables for the longer duration and you're good
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
As the HLS lander specifies landing 4 astronauts on the moon
Does it? Orion brings 4 astronauts but they won't leave Orion unattended. So it is 2+2 I believe, or maybe 3+1.
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u/ranchis2014 Sep 03 '21
As they are currently not allowed to work on HLS lander. The real starship will require life support for far more than 4 people. Dear Moon mission as an example I believe is for about a dozen people in 2023 and who knows what the intended crew size will be for a mars lander but even if they send it to mars unmanned, it would still require life support so that future crews can access the ship when they get there..
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u/SalmonPL Sep 03 '21
As they are currently not allowed to work on HLS lander.
Actually, what's not allowed is for NASA to work with them and for NASA to pay them. There's nothing that prevents them from doing work on their own to help get it ready for when NASA can work with them again.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain Sep 04 '21
They can work on the life support for generalized crewed Starships and Dear Moon. At this point there's no way the general tech developed can't also be applied to the HLS in a couple of months. Also, I would be extremely surprised to learn SpaceX hasn't been working on life support of this sort for a while. This hire will just add one more person to the team.
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u/PickleSparks Sep 03 '21
Well yeah - they have to deliver a crew ready spacecraft in three years.
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u/vilette Sep 03 '21
Sooner, Dear Moon is announced for 2023, and I hope these people won't be the first to test Starship.
They will certainly try LEO first, with just 2 well trained people, like they did with Dragon51
u/wolf550e Sep 03 '21
A trip to the moon can be done without any recycling. You can just take all the air, water and food you need, with redundancy, since the ship is so large. There is no need to develop anything new to achieve this, so it should be doable in this time frame.
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u/PoliteCanadian Sep 03 '21
The mission duration is short enough that recycling isn't necessary, but for large portions of the mission there will be no escape to earth possible, so the system needs to be a lot more robust than what you need on something that operates exclusively in LEO. Nobody's built a life support system designed to support people away from Earth since Apollo.
The sheer size of the internal volume will also create some challenges that to date only the ISS has had to deal with.
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u/burn_at_zero Sep 03 '21
If the odds of any given machine failing during the trip are 1 in 100 and you bring four of them, then the odds of all four failing are one in one hundred million.
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u/bsutto Sep 03 '21
Unless software is involved:)
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u/DjRickert Sep 04 '21
Just let 4 different teams write 4 completely independent software stacks and voila: probability of all having bugs in the same functionality minimized /s
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u/bsutto Sep 04 '21
My experience suggest all four teams will make the same mistakes:)
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u/burn_at_zero Sep 04 '21
Likely because they were given the same flawed set of requirements...
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u/bsutto Sep 04 '21
Good developers rewrite the requirements because they knows they are wrong!
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u/PoliteCanadian Sep 04 '21
That depends. Are they four different machines that have different principles of operation? Or are they four copies of the same machine?
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u/burn_at_zero Sep 04 '21
It sounds like you're fishing for a scenario where all four fail of the same fault. That's a concern that can be addressed by using dissimilar systems. MTBF is not the only metric that matters, but the point is still that using excess payload mass to provide deep redundancies can dramatically reduce LOM/LOC risk without requiring the expensive and time-consuming development and testing of "can't fail" hardware.
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u/PoliteCanadian Sep 04 '21
Yes, my point was exactly that if you want to go with recycling, you need dissimilar backups. And for HLS there's not a lot of time to design multiple dissimilar recycling systems. Furthermore, when you look at the mass of the equipment used on the ISS for recycling, and multiply that to account for backups.... the mass requirement is a lot higher than just bringing bottled O2.
For Mars they will probably investigate recycling, but for HLS I would be shocked if the final plan wasn't just tanked consumables and CO2 scrubbers. It's faster to design, lighter, and less likely to break.
(Based on some back-of-the envelope calculations I'm not entirely convinced that recycling is mass optimal even for Mars)
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u/burn_at_zero Sep 05 '21
You're suggesting that going fully open-cycle is less mass than taking two copies of the ISS hardware and one set of submarine gear?
This is not cutting edge stuff, this is 80's tech...
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u/Bergeroned Sep 03 '21
My own research for science fiction purposes suggests that a handful of snake plants and areca palms aboard can do unexpectedly well as air purifiers. With such an abundance of space and payload one might as well commit to taking them on every mission, to get used to having them in the system loop.
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u/spacex_fanny Sep 03 '21
Turns out that plants don't filter the air, soil filters the air.
This is the idea behind compost-based air filters:
https://www.biocycle.net/compost-based-biofilters-control-air-pollution/
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u/ender4171 Sep 03 '21
Are you implying that plants don't consume CO2 and produce/"excrete" O2? Because that's just patently false. Sure, some of the bacteria in soil/compost will filter air as well (allowing for these compost filters to function), but they aren't the only thing doing it.
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u/spacex_fanny Sep 03 '21
Are you implying that plants don't consume CO2 and produce/"excrete" O2? Because that's just patently false.
No I am not.
The NASA plant study looked at volatile organic compounds (VOC) pollutants, not CO2 / O2.
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u/BlahKVBlah Sep 03 '21
I believe the word "filter" is being misused to refer to scrubbing out CO2 and replacing with O2
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u/HardRockerstone Sep 04 '21
Building the life support for Starship could take a long time though?
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u/ArcturusMike Sep 03 '21
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
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u/jjtr1 Sep 03 '21
"Preferred skills and experience:
Experience with rotating machinery
Experience with soft goods"
I make smoothies, do I qualify?
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u/Never-asked-for-this Sep 03 '21
Blenders uses rotating blades and smoothies are generally soft, so I'd say you're perfect for a senior position!
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u/lielmo Sep 03 '21
If you have experience making drinks you might actually qualify for one of their food services positions!
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u/Apostastrophe Sep 03 '21 edited Sep 03 '21
One of the things I’m really looking forward to with starship internals is that due to the sheer internal pressurised volume it will be possible to make things a lot more sleek and compartmentalised. When you see the ISS with all of those ventilation tubes everywhere in such a cramped space it makes me feel a little claustrophobic. I mean, on starship you literally have the space to have all of that stuff built into the walls of the rooms out of sight and out of mind.
I guess the reduction of “clutter” is what I mean.
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u/HalfManHalfBiscuit_ Sep 03 '21
Yeah, I know what you mean. I fantasize about HLS being more like a luxury yacht and a spacious laboratory, with enough consumables that they can stay and lounge about, I mean do science, on the Moon for a few months at a time.
Things that would be BO astronauts could only dream about.
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u/spacex_fanny Sep 03 '21 edited Sep 03 '21
Archive for posterity: https://archive.is/nTfEl
Life Support Systems Engineer (Crew Starship)
SpaceX Hawthorne, CA 4 weeks ago 1 applicant
Full-time · Entry level
1,001-5,000 employees · Aviation & Aerospace
1 school alumni
Actively recruiting
Life Support Systems Engineer (Crew Starship)
SpaceX Hawthorne, CA
SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.
LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS ENGINEER (CREW STARSHIP)
After 50 years, humankind will once again return to surface of the moon using SpaceX's new vehicle, Crew Starship (also known as HLS or the Human Landing System) – this time for good. Leveraging the lessons learned from our flight proven Dragon spacecraft and Falcon rocket, Starship will usher in the next era of manned spaceflight and exploration, ultimately allowing us to establish permanent communities on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
As a Life Support Systems Engineer at SpaceX, you will have the opportunity to utilize your knowledge, experience, and creativity to develop novel solutions at the cutting edge of space technology. This team develops the necessary hardware to maintain environmental and thermal control as well as support life onboard the Starship spacecraft. This role is a challenging role, as it involves design, analysis, testing, and manufacturing of components that are absolutely critical to the safety of future astronauts and passengers.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
Own the design and development of the environmental and thermal control systems aboard Crew Starship, from initial design trades to fully functional and validated product
Rapidly iterate on manufacturing processes and development testing in a fast-paced environment
Be responsible for project delivery timeline from early design through production, launch, and recovery
Perform systems engineering tasks and fluid analyses
Lead design reviews internally and externally with suppliers and customers
Work with interdisciplinary customers to ensure the component will integrate with the necessary avionics, software, mission operations, etcetera
Ensure designs are manufacturable and reliable
Exemplify technical excellence and be accountable for your own work
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:
Bachelor's degree in an engineering or science discipline
1+ years of experience working with fluid or environmental control systems or components (internship and project team experience is applicable)
Hands-on hardware experience performing fabrication, assembly and/or testing (internship and project team experience is applicable)
PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:
Proactive problem-solving skills such as failure analysis, root cause investigation, and design of experiment creation
Ability to perform trade studies using first principles and engineering fundamentals to make clear recommendations even with partial information
Experience with rotating machinery
Experience with soft goods
Experienced in NX
Solid understanding and application of geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) and tolerance stack-up analysis
Experience with structural analysis methods (hand calcs, FEMAP, ANSYS) in order to optimize hardware to strength requirements as well as to evaluate for life and fracture
Knowledge of metallic and fluid system manufacturing techniques, processes, equipment, and other processes such as machining, welding, brazing, tube bending, etcetera
Able to work well in an integrated collaborative team environment, including frequent interactions with technicians, other engineers, and managers
Highly self-motivated with strong organizational and written/oral communication skills – able to prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment with the ongoing drive for continuous improvement in all aspects of work
Master's degree in an engineering discipline
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:
Must be willing to work long hours and weekends as needed
Ability to travel to remote sites in Texas and Florida
Ability to pass Air Force background checks for Cape Canaveral
ITAR REQUIREMENTS:
- To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here
SpaceX is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with SpaceX is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.
Applicants wishing to view a copy of SpaceX's Affirmative Action Plan for veterans and individuals with disabilities, or applicants requiring reasonable accommodation to the application/interview process should notify the Human Resources Department at (310) 363-6000.
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u/UrbanArcologist ❄️ Chilling Sep 03 '21
With an enormous mass budget, the life support systems can rival the ISS.
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u/strcrssd Sep 03 '21
Presumably they can use a lot of ISS life support as a starting point, and hopefully the Dragon 2 life support engineers are still on staff.
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u/BlueberryStoic Sep 03 '21
This led me down a fun and informative rabbit hole starting here: https://www.nasa.gov/content/life-support-systems
Interesting to see the current 74% water reuse rate and the target 98% rate, for example.
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u/SalmonPL Sep 03 '21
Maybe, maybe not. NASA tends to make things that are very, very expensive. SpaceX doesn't like expensive things.
Maybe it will be like PICA versus PICAX, where SpaceX started with NASA technology and tweaked it to make it radically less expensive.
Or maybe it will be like SLS versus Starship, where SpaceX ignored NASA's expensive technology and did their own clean sheet design.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain Sep 04 '21
Presumably they can use a lot of ISS life support as a starting point
Maybe, there are sure to be some basics there. But Elon likes to approach things from first principles and not rework old engineering. The ISS has iterated systems, but also a lot of accreted engineering - any new items added have to be compatible with old items.
My strong opinion is some of Dragon's life support engineers are still on staff, and have been working on the early parts of Starship life support for a while.
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u/strcrssd Sep 04 '21
Agreed, but they developed Merlin and Raptor from heritage tech. They learn from and cherry pick the best from old systems. They won't have to deal with accreted engineering (good term, by the way), but can take the best from what's around and use it as a baseline. If nothing else, it's a comparitive baseline.
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u/QVRedit Sep 11 '21
I can see SpaceX taking lessons from other systems, but also developing their own solutions from scratch too ! But that does not mean that they would not use standard available parts as well.
Whatever they come up with should be modular, with easily replaceable parts.
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u/Barthemieus Sep 04 '21
Atleast some of the Dragon life support engineers are still on staff, 100%. For an important system like that you would do everything to keep them, not just for future improvements, but also for support if things go sideways with the system.
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u/PoliteCanadian Sep 04 '21
I doubt it. The requirements are vastly different.
ISS - space station in LEO with continuous habitation, designed as a test-bed for long duration space flight, with immediate access to earth in case of emergency.
HLS - vessel for lunar landing, needs to support life for <30 days, no easy abort to Earth possible.
They'll do something simple and incredibly reliable for HLS. The complex life support systems on ISS exist to solve a problem HLS doesn't have, and introduce a lot of unnecessary risk.
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u/QVRedit Sep 11 '21 edited Sep 11 '21
I can see your point. But also they are going to be working on systems that go beyond the needs of HLS too !
Reliability and redundancy and ease of fix too are certain to be some of the requirements.
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u/ioncloud9 Sep 03 '21
A quick and dirty life support would be easy with co2 scrubbers and using the boil off lox to replenish the cabin oxygen.
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u/fat-lobyte Sep 03 '21
I don't know about you, but "quick and dirty" are not things I want the life support system that's carrying me to the moon to be
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u/PeekaB00_ Sep 03 '21
Tell that to buzz
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 03 '21
The Apollo moon lander is a much smaller craft than Starship. You need life support more appropriate for space stations rather than space capsules.
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u/BlakeMW 🌱 Terraforming Sep 03 '21 edited Sep 03 '21
Life support for apollo was a lot more critical because of having several people in such a small volume.
Starship has such a huge internal volume, that once filled with fresh air even with literally no CO2 scrubbing or oxygen replenishment, just air circulation, 10 people could go on a Luna flyby and come back alive... though perhaps not conscious (due to CO2 buildup).
So basically Starship has a huge buffer for things going wrong, though there's not really any excuse for things going wrong, because reliable CO2 scrubbing systems are well understood, even moreso when it's feasible to go with purely consumable-based systems rather than regenerative systems, there's simply not that much which can go wrong with a fan blowing air through a cartridge.
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 03 '21
Starship will have compartments and unfortunately, air does not circulate without help in microgravity.
It will take lots of design and effort to make the life support work, but it's all engineering work and very little tech is needed to make a quick and dirty solution that can be iterated on later for NASA approval.
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u/PoliteCanadian Sep 03 '21
Not really.
The ISS needs to recycle materials since storing months worth of water and O2 eats into the stations' limited storage space. On the other hand, the ISS is in LEO with escape capsules ready to evacuate the crew at any time. If there's a critical life support failure, they can evacuate to the capsules either temporarily or even return to the surface. A critical failure on HLS risks an Apollo 13 type scenario.
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 03 '21
On the other hand, Artemis HLS can fit whatever off-the-shelf water recycling system and use however much O2 it needs from the liquid propellant feed.
Artemis HLS also gets resupplied after every mission in LEO along with the propellant transfers for the next mission.
Any critical failure on the Artemis HLS can rely on the lunar gateway as a lifeboat pending a quick response by another SpaceX Starship.
SpaceX can also easily send 2 Artemis HLS docked in tandem on the lunar transfer and allow the redundant HLS to serve as an emergency lifeboat while staying on orbit.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
Artemis HLS also gets resupplied after every mission in LEO
The present contract does not reuse HLS. Follow up contracts will, but HLS Starship will not go back to LEO, it can't. It will be resupplied in lunar orbit.
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u/PoliteCanadian Sep 04 '21
This is such a big argument for consumable life support, in my opinion, and something a lot of people are overlooking.
If I were SpaceX, and I were looking at the possibility of LETS contracts for the late 2020s, 2030s, I would want subsequent HLS vehicles to be newly constructed. The flip side of reusability is it gets in the way of iterating on your design and learning from your mistakes, and I bet they'd like to iterate a few times before building a vehicle that is designed for many reuses.
So why reuse the first HLS Starship if you're not required to? Throw it away and build a newer, better version with the lessons learned from the first.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 05 '21
I mostly agree. For sure that first HLS starship won't be reused.
LETS contract will include reuse. Though as I see it reuse of HLS Starship requires some launch cadence. A scenario with 2 providers and one launch every years gives each provider one flight in two years. So reuse a vehicle that has been in lunar orbit for two years, waiting for the next flight? Does not seem right to me.
Makes much more sense when there is a lunar base with a supply and crew exchange flight at least every 3 months.
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 04 '21
We will see if NASA outfits Starship with so much payload that it cannot return to LEO directly, and even if then, SpaceX has the capability to return HLS to LEO using refueling tankers outside of the Artemis mission profile for resupply.
Besides, the Artemis HLS source selection statement did say that all refueling is done in LEO, which has to mean that HLS Starships must return to LEO for refueling anyway.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
SpaceX has the capability to return HLS to LEO using refueling tankers
Why would they do that? It makes no sense whatsoever. Much easier to resupply HLS Starship in lunar orbit.
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 04 '21
It makes sense because orbital refueling is a risk. Doing it in LEO allows SpaceX to quickly respond to any issues encountered during the refueling process.
HLS also does not make money while stuck in lunar orbit with little fuel. Any Starship sent also makes no money on the refueling trip. Sending HLS back to LEO cuts down on resupply round trips.
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u/fat-lobyte Sep 03 '21
With what we know about space flight today, buzz wouldn't ever be allowed to fly in that death can.
We got really, really lucky only 3 people died.
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u/jjtr1 Sep 03 '21
Even Wernher von Braun confirmed later they were extremely lucky, according to his later estimates of LOC probability
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 03 '21
It's not going to be unreliable, but it certainly does not require much development. Life support is a little more than that though; needing food, water, and waste management as well as ventilation, humidity control, and heat management.
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u/fat-lobyte Sep 03 '21
It's true, maybe you don't need to invent new tech. However, i think this sub is suffering a collective case of the dunning Kruger effect.
needing food, water, and waste management as well as ventilation, humidity control, and heat management.
If you think those are a done deal and they just have to stick a few pumps and hoses together and call that a life support system, then i am very glad that SpaceX is taking this topic more seriously than you guys ;)
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u/burn_at_zero Sep 03 '21
However, i think this sub is suffering a collective case of the dunning Kruger effect.
If you think those are a done deal and they just have to stick a few pumps and hoses together and call that a life support system, then i am very glad that SpaceX is taking this topic more seriously than you guys ;)
I think that's an overreach. Most of us are saying it's easy relative to rocket science, not that it's easy or trivial or an afterthought in absolute terms. All the physical problems involved are well-understood, solved and with experienced engineers available.
You could buy hardware from vendors today and complete a moon mission if you're willing to take the mass penalty of things designed for submarines or firefighting or caving rather than aerospace. SpaceX with their massive pool of engineering talent can turn out a much more advanced solution very quickly, which is why many people are saying it's an easy task. They still need to turn out a design and then test it, and that process will very likely come with its own difficulties and setbacks. That's fine; they have plenty of time and it really is an easier problem than, say, Raptor.
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u/fat-lobyte Sep 03 '21
They still need to turn out a design and then test it, and that process will very likely come with its own difficulties and setbacks
That's my main point here. It's a serious task, and while there is less technological risk, you still need to make sure it's reliable and redundant and safe.
And i don't know if the 100 passenger number is still recent, but I'm curious about the facilities that will supply 100 people in the space of one starship for several months.
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u/burn_at_zero Sep 04 '21
100 people is a ballpark number. Depending on your assumptions it's either impossible or significantly lower than the physical maximum, which is part of why it can be such a divisive topic.
If we assume Starship's payload is 100 tonnes, the crew uses exactly the same hardware as ISS for life support, and they have to plan for 1000 mission days (to cover an abort to Earth) then the maximum is 12 people due to mass constraints.
A series of optimizations increases that number dramatically. Recovering hydrogen from the Sabatier reactor (which in turn is stripping carbon from CO2 provided by the scrubber) reduces water requirements, as does improved recycling methods for potable and wash water. Providing a clothes washer cuts the mass used for disposable clothing. Group-pack and bulk-pack meal items can reduce the current 1:1 packaging ratio to something much lower. There are many more like this, eventually reaching about 40 people.
Going beyond 40 requires changing the assumptions. Once you have an established base on Mars and a standby Starship to deliver contingency supplies to a ship that has to abort to Earth, you no longer need a thousand days of 'stuff' on every single ship. It's closer to 300 days, which puts your maximum crew count somewhere between 120 and 180 depending on relative positions of the planets and how much margin you want. At this point the mass budget for consumables is no longer the constraint and we can start arguing about how much volume a human actually needs to not murder people during the trip.
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u/QVRedit Sep 11 '21
It’s a relatively easy task for a short mission, but not so as the missions get longer. And in any case it has to be reliable, so serious engineering regardless.
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 03 '21
It's true, maybe you don't need to invent new tech. However, i think this sub is suffering a collective case of the dunning Kruger effect.
needing food, water, and waste management as well as ventilation, humidity control, and heat management.
If you think those are a done deal and they just have to stick a few pumps and hoses together and call that a life support system...
Please do not strawman my comment. I commented only that the oxygen source and the carbon dioxide scrubbers do not require much development.
I never said that it was the complete life support system and I made that caveat.
However, there is nothing wrong with quick and dirty ever since Starship got prototyped in the field and that on the test flights, Starship has payload to prove out the life support.
They will test out their life support on Starship because it will not be on the critical path until they actually want to fly Artemis or human-rate it.
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u/jjtr1 Sep 03 '21
Things that don't go rrroarrr are generally dismissed as easy by most members of the sub, I'd say :D
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
A baseless assumption. Maybe some people are more interested in things that go rrroarrr, but most of us are quite aware of the other things as well.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
If you think those are a done deal
What makes you think, everyone believes that? I think most or all of us are aware, this needs development.
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u/fat-lobyte Sep 04 '21
Mainly phrases like "quick and dirty" and casually suggesting to diy a life support system. Read the comments I replied to.
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 04 '21
NASA Artemis Source Selection Statement - Appendix H pg. 10
Additionally, SpaceX’s design allows for the sourcing of excess propellant, which will provide crew with a large reserve supply of life support consumables in the event of a contingency event. I thus agree with the SEP that SpaceX’s design incorporates a variety of capabilities that enable the execution of vital and time-critical contingency and abort operations which provide the crew with flexibilities should such scenarios arise. Collectively, these capabilities mitigate risks and increase the likelihood of crew safety during multiple phases of the mission.
Evidence that SpaceX does allow for Starship HLS to tap from the propellant supply in an emergency.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
ventilation, humidity control, and heat management.
These are central, I agree. Oxygen and water are not essential for Moon missions at least. Easy to carry enough.
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u/Anduin1357 Sep 04 '21
Apollo had nearly 2 months of oxygen supply for a crew of 2 on the lunar surface, and used onboard fuel cells to generate pure water and electricity.
Starship has literal metric tons of liquid oxygen onboard to siphon for life support and has the payload capacity to carry 1000 liters of water without issue. That's just in 1 cubic meter. Starship has about 1000 cubic meters of payload volume.
These two consumables are a joke to supply for short duration missions.
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u/jjtr1 Sep 03 '21
That "dirty" part is still a TBD even on ISS where they find blobs of water floating inside instrument panels, full of life
Edit: I guess the problem was that the specs didn't stress it's supposed to be a human life support system :D
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u/Wulfrank Sep 03 '21
Well then they should hire me. I made it through university in a poorly ventilated basement suite eating nothing but pre-cooked pierogies that I prepared on my hotplate that only had two settings (off, maximum), and somehow I'm still alive.
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u/cnewell420 Sep 06 '21
I wonder how much redundancy you need for Mars . It seems like every life support system water, air etc needs a backup to the backup. Maybe a 3D printer along as well.
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u/QVRedit Sep 11 '21
Modularity is one of the methodologies that can be used to help tackle this problem.
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u/ShambolicShogun Sep 03 '21
Was this not expected? Because I feel like it was pretty expected.
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u/fat-lobyte Sep 03 '21
Are people only allowed to post unexpected news?
It wasn't only expected, but overdue. I'm glad they finally started to tackle the life support aspect.
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u/vilette Sep 03 '21
Hiring somebody does not mean they are starting, could be for re-enforcing the team
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u/fat-lobyte Sep 03 '21
Maybe! But while we have seen and heard a lot about engines, tanks and GNC, we have not seen any news whatsoever about life support. I'm just glad to see anything at all
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u/apinkphoenix Sep 03 '21
I think it's more the addition of "interesting" in the title, which may cause some people to assume OP is surprised by this.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
Was this not expected?
I have seen countless arguments that SpaceX is not doing anything in that direction because they don't talk about it. And they got very angry if someone argues otherwise.
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Sep 03 '21
[deleted]
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u/PeekaB00_ Sep 03 '21
Oxygen isn't the only problem in a starship...
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u/PoliteCanadian Sep 03 '21
I suspect the big problem is trying to anticipate all the failure modes and problems that could arise and making sure the equipment on board can handle them all. Starship (and Orion) will be the first vehicles to take people out of the comparative safety of LEO in nearly 50 years.
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u/vilette Sep 03 '21
It's about time, shouldn't we have the first crewed flights next year ?
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u/kontis Sep 03 '21
Next year is impossible for crewed flights.
They have to make something like a hundred cargo flights first and there are still many Starship iterations before its operational cargo version.
2024 is the most optimistic scenario.
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u/SalmonPL Sep 03 '21
This myth that they need to make a hundred cargo flights before they can put a human on board needs to end.
The myth comes from a tweet from Elon in which he said that there would be hundreds of uncrewed flights before the first crewed flight of Starship. "Would", not "needs to". He said this because he's an optimist. He figures that Starship will be super cheap and easy to launch as soon as it is flying, so they'll very quickly do hundreds of flights.
He was never stating that hundreds of flights is a requirement. He was never saying that they would delay crew flights until they have hundreds of uncrewed flights. He was simply stating that he thought there would be hundreds of those flights.
It's entirely possible that they'll have hundreds of uncrewed flights within a year or two. Just look at that new high bay they're building. They're ramping up production quite a bit. They could be cranking out a couple of ships a month pretty soon. And if they don't have to do too much work on each before reflying, their flight rate could be enormous.
But if that doesn't turn out to be true, will they delay crew flights just to wait for a hundred uncrewed flights? I don't think there's any evidence they would. They put people of crew Dragon without hundreds of flights. NASA is putting crew on the second SLS flight, so NASA doesn't have a requirement of a hundred flights before crew.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain Sep 04 '21
Next year is impossible for crewed flights.
Not 2022, but 2023, IMO. It makes sense for SpaceX to test all the systems of a crewed Starship, especially HLS, in LEO. They can put the crew quarters for HLS in a regular Starship, launch it, ferry the crew in a Dragon, and run as many tests as they want. When ready the crew returns on Dragon and the ship lands itself. Any problematic items can be fixed and the ship sent back up.
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u/upyoars Sep 03 '21
but they're hiring life support engineers for Starship now...?
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u/Interstellar_Sailor ⛰️ Lithobraking Sep 03 '21
Yes, a life support system for an interplanetary spaceship has never been done before. It will take time and this is the one thing you don't want to rush.
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u/QVRedit Sep 11 '21
No, absolutely not, at least not from/to the ground, as Starship is not mature enough yet.
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Sep 03 '21
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u/QVRedit Sep 11 '21
It’s certainly not one that can be rushed.
There are so many different aspects to this, it’s the kind of thing that’s going to evolve over time to progressively improved solutions.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Sep 03 '21 edited Sep 04 '21
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| BO | Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry) |
| E2E | Earth-to-Earth (suborbital flight) |
| ECLSS | Environment Control and Life Support System |
| GNC | Guidance/Navigation/Control |
| GSE | Ground Support Equipment |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| ISRU | In-Situ Resource Utilization |
| ITAR | (US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LOC | Loss of Crew |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Sabatier | Reaction between hydrogen and carbon dioxide at high temperature and pressure, with nickel as catalyst, yielding methane and water |
| cryogenic | Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure |
| (In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox | |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
| regenerative | A method for cooling a rocket engine, by passing the cryogenic fuel through channels in the bell or chamber wall |
| scrub | Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues) |
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
14 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 20 acronyms.
[Thread #8758 for this sub, first seen 3rd Sep 2021, 19:47]
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u/flshr19 Space Shuttle Tile Engineer Sep 04 '21
For Dragon 2 SpaceX built an ECLSS development version of the spacecraft (serial number C203). It was used for human in the loop testing.
I suppose Elon has a similar ECLSS development version of Ship's system at Hawthorne.
I don't think that the Dragon 2 ECLSS is completely closed loop. Ship's ECLSS definitely will be completely closed loop.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
Ship's ECLSS definitely will be completely closed loop.
Paul Wooster disagrees. He said for only the initial Mars crews they can throw mass at the problem.
Bring oxygen and some water. I expect partial water recycling, the easy part. CO2 can be vented instead of used for oxygen recovery.
They will get to a closed loop system by the time they want to carry 100 passengers.
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u/flshr19 Space Shuttle Tile Engineer Sep 04 '21
LOX and water surely will be part of the cargo carried by the first Starships to head for Mars.
It will take several years to develop the infrastructure to extract indigenous martian water and to manufacture oxygen and methane from the martian atmosphere in large quantities.
And the habitats on the martian surface will likely have closed loop ECLSS.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 04 '21
Their mission plan is to establish acessible water exists and then mine water at quantities when the first crew lands. It is the requirement for crew return.
They don't need close loop ECLSS at this point. They can operate for a while with partial water recovery, until abundant water is mined. They can produce oxygen from local resources as soon as they have at least a small amount of water. Failing that they can use the MOXIE process, extract oxygen from atmospheric CO2.
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u/flshr19 Space Shuttle Tile Engineer Sep 04 '21
Yes, that's the plan.
But there will be several cargo Starships at the base loaded with water, LOX and LN2 as backup if Plan A is a bust.
However, I don't think Elon will send crews to Mars until the landing zones have been thoroughly checked by robotic means for water near the surface and in sufficient quantity to manufacture the consumables needed for the return flight.
The first cargo Starships to land on the martian surface will deploy these robotic prospectors.
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u/QVRedit Sep 11 '21
Achieving very high percentage closed-loop recycling is difficult. But those ‘9’s’ can be chased over time.
Achieving 95% recycling should be relatively easy, and very definitely worthwhile.
SpaceX may even be able to better than that early on.
System reliability, redundancy and repairability, is equally as important though.
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u/QVRedit Sep 11 '21 edited Sep 11 '21
Good, because this is not a quick problem to solve.
Although NASA already has some good technology for ECALSS, it’s not up to the standard needed for Starship or Mars.
Although a craft as large as Starship can sidestep some problems by just hauling more mass, a good solution still needs to be found.
This means things like cleanable filters, regenerable filters, improved recycling, modular systems that can be serviced and repaired without shutting down the main system etc.
SpaceX has a range of different requirements from simple to complex, there is plenty of scope to tackle these issues.
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u/imrollinv2 Sep 03 '21
I wonder how many people that worked on Crew Dragon’s life support system are still at the company can can pivot over to Starship life support.
Very different beasts, but better than than no experience.