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from the they-might-need-a-duvet-with-all-theose-sheets dept.
Nikkei Asian Review reports that SpaceX is establishing a business relationship with Japanese material manufacturer Toray Industries. They're supposedly working on a $1.99 billion to $2.98 billion USD deal in which Toray will supply SpaceX with sheets of carbon fiber.
The two sides are aiming to finalize the agreement this fall after hammering out prices, time frames and other terms.
[...]
The likely plan is to supply carbon fiber sheets from a Toray production center in Alabama, with SpaceX to further process the material into end products. Adding dedicated production lines at a South Carolina plant will be considered if SpaceX's demand for carbon fiber grows as expected.
In Ars Technica's regurgitation of this story, one delicious chunk of information is brought to the surface (albeit coated in the putrid vile of a misused "irony"):
In a bit of irony, Toray is likely to produce carbon fibers for SpaceX at its Decatur, Alabama-based factory, which is located in the same city where SpaceX competitor United Launch Alliance manufactures its rockets.
One angle the Nekkei Asian Review article touches on is that per-rocket cost should matter less now that SpaceX is successfully landing rockets.
SpaceX aims to hold down expenses by re-using rockets and spacecraft. Originally, the company made rockets mostly out of aluminum to keep costs low, using carbon fiber only for a few parts, such as connecting joints.
Another angle mentioned is SpaceX's ambitions for Mars.
SpaceX is switching to carbon fibers from aluminum as it develops heavy rockets for carrying people and large quantities of material. A lighter body would allow more cargo to be loaded, which would cut transport costs.
The Falcon Heavy rocket, currently under development, would carry more than three times the payload that the Falcon 9, the current model in service, is capable of handling. The rocket is slated for a test launch as early as the end of the year. SpaceX will start launching satellites next year and carry out a joint unmanned mission to Mars with NASA in May 2018.
Do Soylentils think that this move towards carbon fiber has more to do with reusable rocket advances, or the requirements of Mars missions? Are those issues even separable? What other angles should we be discussing?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:29PM
For heat nothing handles high temps like a nice sheet of niobium. And yes the falcon 9 engine nozzles are made of niobium alloy.
I thought beryllium was the standard material for this kind of thing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:36PM
Well, it has great stiffness so you could size a nozzle for vacuum expansion and fire it at sea level somewhat cheaper than most other things without it buckling or at least being less likely. Maybe stiffness would help with acoustic resonance too. Or maybe make it worse?
You got two strategies for stopping maneuvering thrusters from melting down, run that sucker hot, niobium style, and rely on radiative cooling, or run that sucker cold and rely on essentially a monster heat sink to keep the thing cool. Be is pretty good metal for storing heat, very high specific heat capacity. So you can run your thruster twice as long with Be before it melts than with Al or steel (made up number, but its a pretty large factor like maybe two or so...)
Be corrodes terrible, especially chlorides, so one landing on the sea barge and they'd have to scrap it unless they went to crazy effort. Also the oxide coating is only stable up to red hot or so. That's the problem with using it as a nozzle, if you overheat it in the atmosphere it'll burn like magnesium. Oh and the smoke/oxide from the burned Be causes cancer or whatever it kills you real good unlike MgO. Still in space it would probably make a decent nozzle.
It would make a good beam or arm to mount a maneuvering thruster upon because of its stiffness.
If you can be certain your fuel combustion products are neutral to reducing I bet it would be an OK nozzle material, at least used in space not sea level, especially not used by the sea. Maybe a nice low temperature low Isp propellent nozzle... I bet something like a geosynch satellite station keeping thruster would be a good application for a Be nozzle.