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Elon Musk Explains Why He's Building 'Starship' Out of Stainless Steel (popularmechanics.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader darkwing_bmf writes: In an exclusive interview with Popular Mechanics, SpaceX founder Elon Musk explains why stainless steel is the best material to build rocket ships, beating carbon fiber in cost, durability and even weight.
"As far as we know, this marks the first time the material has been used in spacecraft construction since some early, ill-fated attempts during the Atlas program in the late 1950s," reports Popular Mechanics.
"It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction..." Musk tells them. But among the other benefits "It has a high melting point. Much higher than aluminum, and although carbon fiber doesn't melt, the resin gets destroyed at a certain temperature... But steel, you can do 1500, 1600 degrees Fahrenheit."
"As far as we know, this marks the first time the material has been used in spacecraft construction since some early, ill-fated attempts during the Atlas program in the late 1950s," reports Popular Mechanics.
"It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction..." Musk tells them. But among the other benefits "It has a high melting point. Much higher than aluminum, and although carbon fiber doesn't melt, the resin gets destroyed at a certain temperature... But steel, you can do 1500, 1600 degrees Fahrenheit."
Going by Mr. Musk's other fancy projects like the Hyperloop and his tunnels or even the flame thrower, the outlook for a stainless steel rocket is very dim.
Most of the time, Mr. Musk's cunning plans overlook some aspect and in the end they either fall very short on the original expectation or don't work at all. And if they work, liek the tunnels, they end up being about the same as those made by others.
In engineering there are very few overlooked secrets to revolutionise things like Mr. Musk always twitters. Fortunately most engineers aren't the fumbling dolts he thinks they are.
Probably this is just another case of dangerous half-knowledge - as usual.
They built something like 500 balloon-tank Atlas missiles at Atlas II and they were extremely successful, every single one of them was stainless steel. They launched the last one in the early 2000's , and the Atlas II has a perfect success record. Hardly "ill-fated attempts one the Atlas program in the late 50's".
Musk, of course, is not using the stainless in an ideal manner, mostly for show. That's because he is more PT Barnum than Werner Von Braun.
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