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Re:Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test by cameronh90 on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:24PM (#26006924)
What would they replace it with?
Re:Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test by le-mark on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:31PM (#26007024)
Seems like there are two different things here; launching passengers and freight, and returning passengers in comfort and without neck injuries. One could easily envision a passenger only winged glider similar to the space shuttle to serve the passenger return role. Indeed, although spacex has nothing like that planned, these BFRs enable damn near anything.
Re:Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test by bostonsre on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:40PM (#26007176)
Maybe some gyroscopic passenger seats that stay in one position relative to the ground so that they only feel g's going in one direction instead of being rag dolls.
Re:Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test by natch on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @05:32PM (#26007907)
The atmosphere on Mars is not as thick as ours so there might be an issue with that winged glider vision. And then there is the moon...
Re:Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test by m4rtink on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @07:49PM (#26009240)
Both have much weaker gravity though.
Re:Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test by natch on Thursday February 04, 2021 @03:33AM (#26023752)
But that doesn’t help when you have zero atmosphere. Zero times anything is still zero. And doesn’t help enough when the atmosphere is too thin.
Re:Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test by Ajedi32 on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @04:46PM (#26007265)
I'd advocate for doing the flip on three engines for the added redundancy, then hovering for a second or so before landing; at least for passenger flights.
Re:Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test by handol on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @03:43PM (#26018849)
I think the idea is that two is redundant for the final design, but these test articles don't have the high power maneuvering thrusters. Without those they need to use the backup engine to manage the rotation.