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SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

wired.com

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Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#41

Post by ridgeguy »

nynx wrote: post #12
hpoe wrote: post #3

I remember watching the Tesla going into space and the rockets landing on the platform. I remember thinking "Wow this man has restarted the space race for my generation." It was a hopeful and wonderful feeling, I figured with the budget cuts, the politics, and the general "been there done that" attitude that was prominent for much of my life space was closed. To see it opened again, gives me some sort of hope, some i…

As a young person (21), I feel the same way. Space exploration and a beautiful future suddenly seems achievable with hard work and a lot of engineering instead of just feeling impossible.

As an old guy, I feel the same way.

I was in JPL’s SFOF building watching Armstrong and Aldrin step out onto the moon. Today’s SN8 mission gave me reasonable hope I’ll live to see somebody set foot on Mars.

It’s been a good day.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#42

Post by chiph »

conroy wrote: post #24

Does anyone know if the engines cutting out one by one was planned? Or was something going wrong with the engines?

(not a rocket scientist) They didn't need the thrust once they lightened the rocket by burning most of the fuel.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#44

Post by sneak »

hpoe wrote: post #3

I remember watching the Tesla going into space and the rockets landing on the platform. I remember thinking "Wow this man has restarted the space race for my generation." It was a hopeful and wonderful feeling, I figured with the budget cuts, the politics, and the general "been there done that" attitude that was prominent for much of my life space was closed. To see it opened again, gives me some sort of hope, some i…

Ms Shotwell is no man.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#46

Post by Ancapistani »

ibraheemdev wrote: post #29
ansible wrote: post #4

Great flight! Elon tweeted that the header tank pressure was low: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1336809767574982658 There was also a substantial green flame coming from the raptor engine used for landing. Group consensus over on /r/SpaceX is that it was copper burning. We're amazed the engine didn't explode sooner.

For those who don't want to click the tweet: > Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!

> RUD

“Rapid Unplanned Disassembly”?

I love reading Musk’s tweets :)

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#47

Post by skedaddle »

amanzi wrote: post #6
obilgic wrote: post #2

HN: "SpaceX Launches and Nearly Lands Starship on Its First Suborbital Flight" vs Article: "SpaceX Launches—and Crashes—Its Starship Mars Rocket"

For whatever reason, Wired preferred the clickbait title, but the opening sentence of the article is: "On Wednesday afternoon, SpaceX successfully launched—and nearly landed—a fully-assembled prototype of its next generation Starship rocket on a suborbital flight from its facility in south Texas."

No, it's not click bait if it's what happened. And what happened is that it crashed. :P

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#48

Post by dnautics »

Ancapistani wrote: post #46
ibraheemdev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who don't want to click the tweet: > Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!

> RUD “Rapid Unplanned Disassembly”? I love reading Musk’s tweets :)

RUD is very much a euphemism that has I guess drifted a bit from it's initialism; I'm pretty sure in this case the disassembly was planned and the survival case would have been unplanned.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#49

Post by lmm »

mLuby wrote: post #25
as-j wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing" b) "Any landing where you can re-use the equipment again is a great landing" Old aviation sayings. :) Oh well. ;)

Also "you can only ever tie the altitude record for lowest flight."

That one's not actually true though, e.g. the lowest-altitude formation-flight record currently stands at -422m (over the dead sea).
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