Earlier quoted context omitted.
The final rocket is supposed to have 5 or 9 raptors if I’m not mistaken.
I think it’s more like 30
That's for the booster/Super Heavy right? This Starship is only the second stage of an even more ginormous rocket.
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
#162I 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…
Except he didn't restart the race itself: there are no opponents.
Uhh: Blue Origin, ULA, etc.
The race for gov contracts is definitely on. We’re on the cusp of seeing these companies fight it out over who can start exploiting space first. Sure might be years out still.
Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an incredible bit of footage. It's so cool to see the engines looking sideways like a chameleon. Raises a question: I suppose they fired 2/3 engines not because of a failure, but because 3 engines would produce too much thrust. That does mean that in a high stakes situation (landing) you can't afford to lose an engine. I wonder if there's any margin there for lighting the third engine in case of engine failur…
The final rocket is supposed to have 5 or 9 raptors if I’m not mistaken.
The starship (what we saw yesterday) should have 3 sea level and 3 vacuum Raptors. The booster is currently scheduled to have 28 Raptors (some of which are fixed and some which can gimbal) although these numbers are subject to change depending on what kind of performance they can achieve in the end.
Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
She is not the chief executive; she reports to musk who is the CEO.
In this context, "chief executive" clearly means "C-level executive" which includes the COO.
No, "the chief executive" refers to the CEO, and it's particularly likely to mislead people in this case since one of her titles is "president", which can be the top position at some companies.
Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Never heard of a test to destruction?
That's something entirely different, though. Test to destruction/failure is done to check or verify the limits of a systems. This test on the other hand was a test with a low change of complete success and thus failure was an expected and acceptable - but not the intended - outcome.
I take your point but if this flight had landed they would have probably kept test flying SN-8 until it did crash. There is really no other use for it.
Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
#166Earlier 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.
I'd really think a bit more about it. We have so many problems here and none are solved by leaving. Climate change, wealth inequality, hungry, poor. None of the billionaires (Musk/Bezos) building rockets treat their workers terribly well now, and their end game will just be exploiting workers around the solar system. Coming as a past fan of space exploration is was pretty devastating to realize...
Irrational optimism is far more likely to lead to irrationally optimistic outcomes. Today is a good example. Space exploration gives people hope for what is possible. That is very, very important.
Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps Elon is not the best example for climate change due to his battery research, solar panels, electric cars, etc...
Eh, I’d say he’s a fine example. Musk may be trying to help the environment but he’s not going to save it, that’s for sure, and his future dream doesn’t involve treating his workers any better than he is now.
Is this about the environment or about labor rights?
And if Elon "solar panels, electric cars and in-house batteries" Musk doesn't contribute enough to save the environment, what exactly are you hoping for instead?
Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
#168Does anyone know if the engines cutting out one by one was planned? Or was something going wrong with the engines?
Planned. They wanted to test restarting the engines as if it was reentering the atmosphere.
Definitely planned. If you look closely at the SpaceX stream, the first two engines that were shut down were the ones restarted during the landing flip maneuver.
Too bad about the loss of fuel pressure from the header tank. SN8 wasn't quite on the landing pad, but it was close.
We also didn't see the landing legs deploy, not sure why that didn't happen.
Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 t…
> Yusaku Maezawa's Dear Moon also provides $500 million in Starship funding Source?
In September 2018 Elon Musk estimated that the total cost of Starship will be $5 billion, and no more than $10 billion but no less than $2 billion. In that same presentation Yusaku Maezawa later seems to confirm that he is paying 5% of the Starship development costs [1], but it could be something lost in translation.
5% of $5 billion is $250 million (and of $10 billion is $500 million). Maezawa’s contributions are all going directly toward [developing Starship into an operational system] [2]
Given he's taking himself and 6-8 artists plus 1-2 crew members. It's hard to believe he's paid just $250 million. That would probably make NASA very angry given they're paying $400 million per launch for Crew Dragon to carry 4 people.
I know its not a direct source, but the above analysis suggests he's paying several hundred million dollars for the Dear Moon project. $500 million is a reasonable estimate. Though I suspect that's on the low side.
[1] https://youtu.be/0q2gUWTcLRI?t=4313 [2] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/yusaku-maezawa-zozo-ceo-r...
Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
#170Earlier 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…
This may be off topic and probably person specific, but what made you change your mind?
> This may be off topic and probably person specific, but what made you change your mind?
Too long to discuss here, but suffice it to say that my priorities are Earth based. I also realized that Mars is in good hands given what I've seen.