'Crazy things can come true': Elon Musk discusses Falcon Heavy launch: Full presser

What people said

Cites Adam Davis · 2018-02 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Did the fairings from the Falcon Heavy test flight get recovered?”

The fairing recovery boat was just noticed in mid December last year [LINK] . So it's possible, but the way he discussed fairing recovery during the news conference [LINK] , hours after the fairing would have splashed down, suggests that the fairing was not caught this time: The black-T-shirt-wearing exec also described a new, unusual type of drone ship SpaceX is building that could be used to help recover Dragon and fairings (the nose cone that covers the payload on cargo unmanned flights). "We've got a special boat to catch the fairing... it's like a giant catcher's mitt in boat form... I think it might be able to do the same thing with Dragon." Looks like this, taken on the Pacific coast:

Cites kim holder · 2018-02 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “What aspects of reentry heating 'scale as the 8th power'?”

Elon Musk just commented in the post Falcon Heavy Test Flight press conference that reentering at interplanetary velocities means dealing with 'some of the heating things that scale to the 8th power'. He says this at 22:00 of the video below (it should start playing a few seconds before - to show the context of the comment). What forces was he referring to?

Cites Boris Deletic · 2018-02 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Starman's Tesla prelaunch preparation”

Elon Musk gave a press conference where he talks about a lot of things, this being one of them. According to him the car has not been modified in any way. The full press conference can be seen here [this video] , and the question where Elon talks about this is asked at around 4:50 in the video. If the Tesla did re-enter Earth's atmosphere it would certainly burn up completely before reaching the surface, almost everything does so.

Cites called2voyage · 2018-02 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Can we expect shots from Starman that include the Earth and Moon together?”

I believe the battery is already dead. Elon Musk estimated that it would die in 12 hours. The live feed stopped after four hours. Even if the battery is not dead, it would certainly be dead by the time the Roadster would be far enough to make this shot. The 12 hour battery life expectancy comes from here in the press conference:

Cites Boris Deletic · 2018-02 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “What data is coming back from Space-X's Starman and his ride?”

Elon Musk gave a press conference where he mentioned that it isn't returning any data. You can see the full press conference here [this video] , and the question where he answers what data the car is collecting occurs at around 15:00

Cites PearsonArtPhoto · 2018-03 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Why is SpaceX building the Big Falcon Ship before the Big Falcon Rocket?”

Elon Musk stated in a news conference after the Falcon Heavy launch that the BFS will be the focus because they think they understand designing booster rockets pretty well, and thus they decided to focus on the more difficult piece first. He answers this in response to a question that starts at 20 minutes 52 seconds here, and speaks specifically to starting with the BFS at 22 minutes 18 seconds. The full response has been transcribed here to provide the full comprehensive context of his statement. Q: So... the potential to go to the moon or mars, what's your timeline there? Elon: There are a lot of uncertainties on this program, but it is going to be our focus now that we're almost done with

Cites Speedphoenix · 2019-06 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “How much of the recovery system does Spacex remove from a Falcon 9 when using it in an expended manner?”

Falcon 9s have a limit to how many times they can be reused, and, for the last flight of a booster they don't make it land (in one piece), and instead use all the fuel to help the payload. That way they can put much bigger payloads to orbit. Wikipedia [LINK] gives the payload for both partially reusable and expended full thrust Out of the 23 falcon 9 launches in 2018, 8 had no attempt at recovery [LINK] When launching an expendable falcon 9, how much of the recovery system does Spacex remove? I'm assuming they probably remove the titanium grid fins since they are very expensive [this video] and hard to manufacture, but what about: The landing legs? The fluid used to power the hydraulics to deploy

Cites phil1008 · 2024-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Would Starship do a direct descent into the atmosphere and aerobrake or do a capture burn before aero braking”

According to a chart in a report from NASA [LINK] , a reusable Thermal Protection System (TPS) is suitable for returning from LEO, but insufficient for protecting a vehicle returning from the moon or another planet in the solar system. [LINK] I also learned that roughly 15% of the Space Shuttle orbiter's empty weight was TPS [LINK] . Whereas, in Starship's case, the mass of the TPS is 5-8 tons ( ref [LINK] ), and its mass at reentry will likely be closer to ~150 tons, so the TPS mass percentage is only around 3-5%. Percentage-wise, that's a lot less thermal mass than the Shuttle had. So, presumably, with less thermal mass per kg of reentry mass, Starship's tiles will heat up quite a bit more

Cites phil1008 · 2024-09 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “What other marketable uses are there for Starship if Mars colonization falls through?”

This post could be improved by better defining what is meant by "Starship". Without a clear definition, its capabilities range from "Can't get to orbit with zero payload" to "Capable of single-stage to orbit" ( ref [this video] ).