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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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I take your point, but they're not planning for a launch failure even if they're pretty sure that's what's going to happen.

What happened when most of the mass of a Space Shuttle launch hits the ocean: that's an RPD.

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

#62

I make efforts to add to discussions instead of subtracting with negativity. Recently, I've broken my rule quite a few times, fretting over the future of general compute. I'd vowed to not break it again, but the discussion about Starship lacks a vital perspective. . I don't understand the hype behind Starship. It's confusing to me. It is touching and nice; it's great to see people excited about space. However, the ex…

I agree that we should be tempering our expectations, but it says "suborbital flight" and not "suborbital spaceflight" so the headline at least is correct.

My hope is that Starlink and Starship enable each other to succeed long enough for the technology to develop to the point where the flights and reuse are truly routine.

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure but "lithobraking" takes too much space in a tweet.

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

#64
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That is the goal for me, I'm not going to Mars and I knew that as soon as I went to the MDRS. I also made it an effort to make the director (commander on several mission) to realize how important it is motivate the younger generat…

Getting involved is a dream of mine, but it's been quite difficult for me to get my foot in the door, so to speak.

> Getting involved is a dream of mine, but it's been quite difficult for me to get my foot in the door, so to speak.

It is for all of us, it makes the journey that much better. I didn't get into to do any of that above until my mid 30s after starting late at ~26.

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

#65

I make efforts to add to discussions instead of subtracting with negativity. Recently, I've broken my rule quite a few times, fretting over the future of general compute. I'd vowed to not break it again, but the discussion about Starship lacks a vital perspective. . I don't understand the hype behind Starship. It's confusing to me. It is touching and nice; it's great to see people excited about space. However, the ex…

> It's at least half-a-decade to a decade away from initial reusable testflights, and perhaps more given the under funding of the Artemis program

SpaceX is not dependent on Artemis funding other than lunar Starship. Yusaku Maezawa's Dear Moon also provides $500 million in Starship funding (presumably tranches get released for successful milestones including this test). SpaceX are otherwise self-funding the Starship test program so far. It might become easier as Starlink satellite internet system comes out of beta and generates large cash flow.

Elon Musk estimated the entire Starship program to cost a mere $10 billion. Taxpayer money helps (especially for moon and Mars missions), but SpaceX needs to create a next generation rocket (both stages fully-and-rapidly re-usable) to stave off future competition (though Blue Origin is very far behind).

Even without government funding for Mars and the moon, low-earth orbit provides ample incentives: commercial, government (ISS etc) and military (reconnaissance sats) for SpaceX to slowly and steadly develop Starship. A few billion for Starship development for moon missions would definitely accelerate the otherwise self-funded schedule to land unmanned payloads on Mars from 12+ years to 5 years.

Also Starship is not 5 years away from orbital flight but less than 18 months away. Super Heavy is built on exactly technologies as Starship (mass-manufacturing stainless-steel rings then rapidly stacking them): the first test articles are already being assembled using the same equipment that Starship uses. The Starship re-entry heat shield tiles are the biggest unknown at the moment, but future test flights of SN9 and beyond will figure this out.

The bulk of Starship funding is not coming from NASA. Well maybe if you consider SpaceX re-investing the profits generated from the International Space Station crew and cargo resupply contracts as "NASA funding" (but I don't). SpaceX has received some development funding for the Raptor engine ("In January 2016, the US Air Force awarded a US$33.6 million development contract to SpaceX to develop a prototype version of its methane-fueled reusable Raptor engine for use on the upper stage of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, which required double-matching funding by SpaceX of at least US$67.3 million.").

EDIT: As far as funding goes, I believe the direct Starship funding is NASA's Human Landing System: Funding $135 million of DESIGN WORK as part of the Artemis program over (10-month period ends in Feb 2021) for the Lunar Starship variant. The Air Force did provide $40.7 million for developing the Raptor engine a few years ago though. It would appear that a significant amount of Starship investment so far as been re-invested profit, external investment and funding for the private "Dear Moon" mission.

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

#67

Swing and a miss.. but not by much! Congrats to the SpaceX team on the amazing and fast progress. What an incredible step forward.

Apparently they achieved all 3 main objectives. Landing was a secondary objective which was almost achieved! Very exciting stuff.

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

#68
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's clickbait because it implies test failure, which isn't true. The test was successful, as the primary objectives were all met.

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

#69

I make efforts to add to discussions instead of subtracting with negativity. Recently, I've broken my rule quite a few times, fretting over the future of general compute. I'd vowed to not break it again, but the discussion about Starship lacks a vital perspective. . I don't understand the hype behind Starship. It's confusing to me. It is touching and nice; it's great to see people excited about space. However, the ex…

This is a lot of words to basically project a motivation onto the reporting about a thing which actually happened that isn't there.

You're getting downvoted because this reads as "concern trolling". Let everyone else manage their own feelings.

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

#70
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting involved is a dream of mine, but it's been quite difficult for me to get my foot in the door, so to speak.

> Getting involved is a dream of mine, but it's been quite difficult for me to get my foot in the door, so to speak. It is for all of us, it makes the journey that much better. I didn't get into to do any of that above until my mid 30s after starting late at ~26.

Does the journey have to be difficult to make the destination worth it? I suppose it does. Doesn't feel that way when you're still on your way though.
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