SpaceX said it loaded more than 10 million pounds of fuel onto the vehicle:
SpaceX on Tuesday confirmed that it fully fueled its Starship launch system during a critical test on Monday and is now preparing to take the next step toward launch.
The company shared images and video of its fully fueled Starship upper stage and Super Heavy first stage in South Texas. The shiny, stainless steel vehicles appeared frosty as they were loaded with super-cold liquid oxygen and methane propellants.
During this "wet-dress rehearsal" test, SpaceX said it loaded more than 10 million pounds (about 4.6 million kg) of propellant onboard the vehicle, which, when fully stacked, stands 120 meters tall. Essentially then, over the course of a little more than an hour, the company filled a skinny, 30-story skyscraper with combustible liquid propellants—and nothing blew up.
[...] Nevertheless, it is clear that SpaceX is making excellent progress toward the much-anticipated liftoff of Starship, which will be the heaviest, tallest, most capable, and most powerful rocket to ever take off from Earth.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, @03:52PM (4 children)
Rough order estimates--say that half the weight of fuel is in the liquid natural gas (LNG).
That means 5,000,000 lbs of LNG (feel free to update if you have better numbers).
Equivalent gasoline: from the nice chart at: https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/fuel_comparison_chart.pdf [energy.gov]
we see that 1 lb. LNG = 0.19 GGE (gallon gasoline equivalent), thus similar energy to 950,000 gallons of gasoline.
At 14,000 miles per year (average USA driver) and 20 mpg average, that takes 700 gallons of gasoline. 950,000/700 means one shot of this rocket could fuel 1300+ cars for a years worth of driving.
Or, at 230,000 miles earth to moon, about 80 one way moon trips (if you could drive there...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, @04:28PM
Oh, and not a chance of doing this with batteries. All* the LNG is consumed in minutes, and as it's consumed the rocket mass is reducing, so the acceleration increases as the fuel burns off.
*SpaceX might be saving ~10% of the fuel to soft land the booster?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snospar on Tuesday January 31, @04:28PM (1 child)
It does sound rather wasteful when you put it like that.
Let's hope it doesn't all go boom on the launchpad which would be even worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, @07:25PM
GP here, I wasn't making any judgements, just provided the car analogy to get some feel for what 5 million pounds of CNG can do.
Even with high fossil fuel "content" in the electricity used to charge Musk's Tesla cars, they still use some renewable-sourced electricity. This page https://www.energy.gov/eere/renewable-energy [energy.gov] suggests that the USA is about 20% renewable at this time.
Anyone want to run the numbers on the amount of CO2 saved by all the Teslas out there compared to comparable ICE luxury cars? Even with the rockets, Musk may be a net CO2 remover(??)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday January 31, @04:38PM
Sure, 1300+ sounds like a lot.
https://financesonline.com/number-of-cars-in-the-us/ [financesonline.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday January 31, @07:02PM (1 child)
I am so excited for the full engine static fire test. I wonder how far they will ramp the engines up.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, @07:16PM
obvious answer:
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