[German] "Raumzeit" Podcast with Hans Koenigsmann

Mars

does Elon want to got to Mars personally? Yes, Hans thinks so
why steel?
-> steel becomes stronger when cold
-> steel can handle high temperatures during reentry
Starship & Super-Heavy
-> hight of Starship 68m, Super-Heavy ~100m
-> development cannot compared to - say - SLS where there is billions of $$$, which SpaceX does not have (Starship is self-financed); thus scrappy
Hans is sure that when Starship flies to Mars, there will be scientific payload on board
plan is to prove the concept now; once that is done, search for customers
refilling at orbit makes the architecture cheap (due to reuseability)
manned mission to Mars "will take a while", there will certainly be a cargo flight first
preparation for Mars missions
-> there is active work at SpaceX regarding radiation protection, etc.
-> likewise, work is being done to develop propellant production and Mars logistics
-> main focus is building Starship, since in other areas partners can help
~10 Raptors built so far [podcast was recorded 18.11.2019]
-> transition period from development engines to production engines
-> has been 2 years of raptor development
-> less soot should help with reuseabilty compared to Merlin
first manned mission
-> propellant production has to be prepared by cargo mission
-> navigation might be a challenge, manned mission needs to land near previous cargo mission
Hans expects delays in the program
-> SpaceX needs to find partners in the final stages (nations, agencies, e.g. NASA, ...)

SpaceX vs other organisations ("SpaceX diplomacy")

SpaceX is a close partner of NASA
-> NASA helped SpaceX at a critical point for the company (F9 development)
-> SpaceX helpes NASA to return human launch capability to the US
-> 2020-21 SpaceX wants to approach NASA regarding Mars missions and coordinate with them
-> SpaceX wants to participate in Artemis programme
NASA and USAF contracts were helpful, but also much own development by SpaceX (e.g. FH)
other organisations/agencies
-> mainly competition
-> there is a trend by nations to use their rockets for their payloads

dragon

dragon-1 is reusable (so far up to three times)
dragon-2 improvements
-> electronics & avionics
-> solar panels on trunk sufficient
-> docking instead of berthing (Hans jokes: what happens if CanadaArm breaks?)

Starlink

Hans does not know whether the first two Starlink satellites are still in orbit
maximal size of constellation 30k satellites
-> want to make sure that the upper bound is high enough to never encounter problems with it
-> first 700 satellites should be sufficient for basic coverage at certain latitudes
Hans is not really involved in Starlink and claims to have no detailed knowledge
Starlink is a new kind of project due to having millions of customers
-> want to learn from Tesla & SolarCity
upper stages rotates for Starlink satellite deployment making use of centrifugal force to make sure that satellites separate
few weeks for the satellites to reach final orbit
can reuse dragon ground stations for Starlink
if Starlink were to use higher frequencies in the future, receiver might become smaller
Hans does not think that Starlink satellites will cause trouble for astronomy
-> solar panel faces the sun thus most of the surface of the satellites reflects light back to the sun and hence causes no trouble
-> initial Starlink train is misleadingly well visible and thus not representative
-> there should only be half a dozen satellites visible at any time

>>5013

>Неофициальный разговор Мускония с прессой после конференции

Elon Musk: When we started out, I thought the whole company just had a ten percent chance of success of surviving at all. So I find it quite [inaudible] and a great honor to be working with NASA to restore spaceflight, orbital spaceflight to America.

Q1: Did you pitch to the Air Force Starship, and do you plan on pitching it out to NASA for the lunar lander system?

Elon Musk: At this point we're basically just keeping NASA and the Air Force informed regarding Starship. But the goals of Starship aren't necessarily, really, so they're pretty off-scale. They're on a different level. And so I think we need to make more progress with Starship in order to establish credibility with potential customers like NASA and the Air Force. In fact, I'm headed to Boca after this. So it's the first thing that I'm going to go work on is Starship production later today.

Q2: Elon, does the press deserve a dance today? [room laughs, groans]

Elon Musk: I can't take these expectations of dancing constantly. I'm not that good of a dancer. I haven't ever worked on my skills.

Q3: Dance!

Elon Musk: No! I am not your dancing puppet! [room laughs] I'll tell you what. After crew launch, one hundred percent. [room laughs] Okay guys, good to see everyone. Now, I'm personally super fired up and excited, and I think it feels like you guys are too, the public. It's just going to be wonderful to get astronauts back into orbit from American soil after almost a decade of not being able to do so. I think that's just super exciting. And like I said, with some technology advances. You know, like with respect to the abort system and a few other things. It'll be on a booster that's reusable and a spacecraft that's reusable. So the only part that isn't reusable for Falcon/Dragon is the upper stage and the trunk. So that's still a very big percentage of reusability. And I keep saying reusability, reusability, but really this reusability is extremely fundamental to revolutionizing space. As it would be of course in aircraft, or cars, or bicycles, or horses. Everything. You really want them to be reusable and get the costs all the way down to simply reload propellant and fly again. Just like an aircraft. And that's really what's going to open up space for the average person.

Q4: Are you in talks with NASA to make Crew Dragon reusable for humans?

Elon Musk: We have been in discussions with NASA about this for quite some time, and my understanding is NASA is very open to this, subject of course to a lot of additional testing and verification.

Q5: What does it take to make it reusable for humans to fly again?

Elon Musk: Well Crew Dragon especially, even more than Dragon 1, the Cargo Dragon, is really designed with reusability in mind. So it has a much more, like, the propulsion section is essentially waterproof. It even has bilge pumps in the propulsion section, which rings the pressurized section like a doughnut at the bottom. So we've already taken great steps to improve the reusability of Crew Dragon over Cargo Dragon, and so I think it's way easier to reuse. But reusability is of course contingent on support from NASA. But obviously the Space Shuttle orbiter was reusable. And so NASA is familiar with the notion of reusability. But Crew Dragon is designed to be easily reusable. So with minimal refurbishment and with essentially, it's designed to be rapidly and almost completely reusable in the case of Crew Dragon, which would be great for lowering costs and improving launch rate. And then the booster, we've proved many times that the booster is reusable. The only thing that's vexing is the upper stage of Falcon, which is not reusable. But unfortunately we just don't have the payload capability to reuse the upper stage with Falcon. We will with Starship. We've got an integrated upper stage and nosecone or fairing that is designed to be fully reusable from the beginning. And it has, it's also quite a big vehicle. Uh, very big vehicle. Obviously. So I'm hopeful there's going to be progress with Starship, and that NASA, DoD, and others will consider using that vehicle. But there will be significant overlap between Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Crew Dragon, and Starship, to make sure Starship is really ready and been accepted by our customers before we retire the existing fleet of vehicles.

Q6: Do you have an updated timeline for hops on Starship and when we could expect it go to orbit for the first time?

Elon Musk: Ahh [inaudible]. [room laughs] I think we'll do a more comprehensive update on Starship in the future, but I think we're making very good progress on the Raptor engine. We're at serial number 20 of the Raptor engine. We've completed production on that. And the production rate of Raptors is improving significantly. As well as we're making a number of design improvements to the Raptor engine. So each serial number has some design improvements. All the way up through, I think, probably serial number 50. And so I think that Raptor is going extremely well. Primary structure is slower. And that's actually part of the reason I'm going to head over Boca later today, to just work on some of the primary structure engineering issues. Especially the domes. [laughs] Yeah, when you are engaged in designing and building rockets, these things that seem perhaps trivial, or not that important to the public or the uninitiated, are actually incredibly difficult. Getting the domes right on the propellant tanks is one of the most difficult things. It's just a dome, like, how hard could it be? [room laughs] But it's hard. And then getting the interfaces between the tank and the interstage or skirt that connects it to the booster. And then the interface from the tanks to the nosecone or fairing. The body flap control surfaces. The landing gear. Landing legs. The heat shield. Just general operations. And then of course, for Starship, being able to successfully achieve on orbit refilling is extremely important. But that's actually an example of where our work with docking with the Space Station is actually incredibly helpful. You see, one of the fundamental technologies needed to go to Mars, orbital refilling, is extremely important. That means you need to be able to do precision docking in orbit. And our work with the Space Station, precision docking with the Space Station, actually has helped us solve that very difficult problem, of docking in orbit with precision, reliably every time. But now we need to do it with two giant spaceships. It's like a space station docking to a space station. But I'm very excited about the potential of Starship, and I think it's going to be something that can really have a profound step-change effect on humanity's ability to go beyond Earth. Thank you.