| ▲ | john_minsk an hour ago |
| question: what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit? |
|
| ▲ | tristanj 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| All Starship test launches are suborbital so if anything goes wrong, it falls back to Earth. |
|
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit? No. What is the mechanism through which you suspected this could happen? |
| |
| ▲ | bragr an hour ago | parent [-] | | Kessler syndrome presumably? | | |
| ▲ | hgoel 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Keeping the orbits low enough, and/or intentionally going suborbital after docking/before starting the fuel transfer, will make the chances of that being possible very low. It's also worth considering that they have demonstrated cryo propellant pumping between two tanks within a ship, so, AFAIK, transfer between two ships is more about testing the docking systems, than it is about the pumps. They could probably rig the system to first pump some inert gas to verify the quality of the docking, then try to pump propellants. | |
| ▲ | margalabargala 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | ...caused by what? |
|
|
|
| ▲ | Lerc 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Presumably the effect of any explosion would decrease proportional to the volume as it expands. Is there much volume in space? |
|
| ▲ | bediger4000 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Liquid handling in microgravity has always been weird. Big gas bubbles in the fluid, surface tension effects causing liquid to float in balls in the ullage, stuff like that. Turbopumps break if they ingest a larger bubble. There could be some odd failure modes I would think. Failure to pump the liquid, broken pumps, who really knows? My guess would be that a failure mode would be a big spill, a failure to pump, only partially refilling, or broken turbopumps before an explosion. |
| |
| ▲ | MadnessASAP 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | For something like a transfer between Starships you can resolve a lot of those problems by (very) gently spinning the 2 craft. It won't take much force for the liquids to settle at the bottom of their respective tanks where you would presumably put the intakes. | |
| ▲ | pmontra 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A probably very naive question: why not pistons? | | |
| ▲ | labcomputer 22 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Because there’s a much, much simpler and easier way: 1. Connect the two ships 2. Connect the liquid valves from both cryo tanks together. 3. Spin the ships about the short axis 4. Open the vent valve for the cryo tank to receive liquid. 5. Lock closed the vent valve for the cryo tank to supple liquid. Steps 2, 4 and 5 are how you normally transfer cryo fluids between dewars on earth. You just to create pseudo gravity / acceleration in the body frame of the ships to make it work in space. |
| |
| ▲ | idiotsecant an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Seems like you could use peristaltic pumps | | |
|
