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SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

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

#81
post #75

Lmao at all the people hating on a test launch. If this was even 10 years ago, you wouldn't even get a live stream of the launch and attempted landing. Perhaps Elon shouldn't even live stream this, so negative trolls wouldn't be able to assert and express their chair philosopher opinions. The fact that there are another 8-9 SN vehicles being readied at this time for testing tells you exactly what is happening. Slow p…

Except that the progress is not at all slow. It's the opposite, particularly when compared to the usual development speeds the worlds space program and aerospace contractors.

Someone asked a question on one of the live feeds. Would SpaceX learn more from a successful landing or from a failure. I can't answer that, but it seems they proved the concept.

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Nearly lands" means crash anyway so any implication of the latter is still there.

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

#83
post #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.

This scenario has played out before, with Faster, Better, Cheaper from the 90s, and kind-of/loosely with STS.

> Missions marked with an asterisk were considered failures (5 spacecraft failed in space; 1 project was canceled), putting the overall FBC success rate at a paltry 63%. This low success rate—and the fact that 4 of them occurred in one year, 1999—are what linger in the space community’s memory.

> For example, an examination of the timeline reveals an often-missed observation: the first 9 of 10 missions were successful, a 90% success rate. The FBC approach broke when proposed missions began getting more ambitious without a change in schedule and cost cap. The early successes made everyone overconfident and the missions became too aggressive for their constraints, leading to failures (Launius and McCurdy 2005):

>

> “In hindsight, it becomes apparent that [NASA’s] success in the nineties had led the review and selection committees to accept very ambitious and complex proposals with a very high science return on budgets and schedules that were quite optimistic.”

http://www.elizabethafrank.com/colliding-worlds/fbc

Pathfinder and Sojourner demonstrated new technologies and were done on a budget smaller than one of Viking's experiments. The failures soured the public memory, lead to congressional hearings, and funding cuts.

The public is a fickle master.

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

#84
post #75

Lmao at all the people hating on a test launch. If this was even 10 years ago, you wouldn't even get a live stream of the launch and attempted landing. Perhaps Elon shouldn't even live stream this, so negative trolls wouldn't be able to assert and express their chair philosopher opinions. The fact that there are another 8-9 SN vehicles being readied at this time for testing tells you exactly what is happening. Slow p…

I, for one, can’t wait until Musk leaves Earth.

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

#85
post #75

Lmao at all the people hating on a test launch. If this was even 10 years ago, you wouldn't even get a live stream of the launch and attempted landing. Perhaps Elon shouldn't even live stream this, so negative trolls wouldn't be able to assert and express their chair philosopher opinions. The fact that there are another 8-9 SN vehicles being readied at this time for testing tells you exactly what is happening. Slow p…

> Perhaps Elon shouldn't even live stream this, so negative trolls wouldn't be able to assert and express their chair philosopher opinions.

I'm sure the engineers are crying in their sleep?

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says something about what they have done for rocketry when crashes on landing are note worthy. No one else even tries what they do normally without issue.

> It says something about what they have done for rocketry when crashes on landing are note worthy. Err...??? Crashes of rockets always seem to be noteworthy. That's not anything specific to SpaceX.

I think they're saying we've come to expect SpaceX rockets to successfully land, so much so that one not doing so is noteworthy. Something nigh unfathomable 10yrs ago

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

#87
post #44
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.

The fact that SpaceX's President and COO is a woman seems to get surprisingly little publicity, especially given that she seems like the more qualified engineer out of Musk and herself as well.

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

#90
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It says something about what they have done for rocketry when crashes on landing are note worthy. Err...??? Crashes of rockets always seem to be noteworthy. That's not anything specific to SpaceX.

I think they're saying we've come to expect SpaceX rockets to successfully land, so much so that one not doing so is noteworthy. Something nigh unfathomable 10yrs ago

Ahhh, thanks. That makes more sense to me. :)
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