Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 421 posts

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#21

Post by chasd00 »

lapetitejort wrote: post #11
BitwiseFool wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be remembered that the unspoken rule of any agency or institution is to justify its own continued existence. For be bureaucracy that is the FAA, all the onerous requirements they place on spaceflight is a feature, not a bug.

The bureaucracy at the FAA has protected millions of airline passengers over the course of decades. Just look at how one minor discrepancy in an aircraft can lead to a total loss of the jet and hundreds of lives lost. Now combine that with a rocket loaded with a hundred thousand gallons of fuel and it's understandable that we should be careful. I don't want our space-faring expeditions to look like China's, where the…

If only the launch site was near, and launch trajectory over, a huge body of water where a crash would not endanger anyone or anything.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#22

Post by BitwiseFool »

chasd00 wrote: post #21
lapetitejort wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bureaucracy at the FAA has protected millions of airline passengers over the course of decades. Just look at how one minor discrepancy in an aircraft can lead to a total loss of the jet and hundreds of lives lost. Now combine that with a rocket loaded with a hundred thousand gallons of fuel and it's understandable that we should be careful. I don't want our space-faring expeditions to look like China's, where the…

If only the launch site was near, and launch trajectory over, a huge body of water where a crash would not endanger anyone or anything.

And they aren't sending passengers on these autonomous test flights. Nor are they risking multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded payloads. It makes total sense to me to allow SpaceX a faster launch cadence for their prototypes.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#23

Post by freeopinion »

CydeWeys wrote: post #8
Crunsher wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this project going to protect the environment?

Well it's moving human life outside the environment, so that even if something catastrophic happens to this one's there's backup humans.

If you have ever lived next to the incarnation of this philosophy, you might be able to see through its holes. It's the plot of any number of bad scifi movies. Evil aliens travel from solar system to solar system, using up a planet, then moving on. They've now reached Earth.

There are plenty of industrial/mining sites that argue they need to be able to create huge hazard dumps for the sake of the future of the human race. It tends to be a very poor argument for those left holding the bag when the owners have taken their money and skipped town.

If the danger is so great that we have to get off this planet in the next five years or we all die, well, then we might justify more urgency. If we've got 10 or 20 years to do it, let's take the time to protect the environment while we do it.

If you want to argue that none of this bureaucracy is protecting the environment, that's a different argument.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#24

Post by 908B64B197 »

hef19898 wrote: post #12
hirundo wrote: post #2

Elon appears to be building a large ground-locked monument to demonstrate his argument in this tweet: Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars. -- https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/13548625…

Strong statement after the 737 MAX debacle.

Can someone explain why the MAX was allowed to re-use the 737 type certificate?

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#25

Post by lapetitejort »

onion2k wrote: post #19
hirundo wrote: post #2

Elon appears to be building a large ground-locked monument to demonstrate his argument in this tweet: Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars. -- https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/13548625…

The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs into more than one basket. Perhaps that's true, but space launches are important enough that going "slowly"[1] is a good idea. One catastrophic accident with the destruction of a spacecraft leaving a large amount of orbital debris would make space launches much, much harder until we clean up. Rushing to space could slow us down a lot. [1] The space race ha…

Humans went ~11,900 years without flight, then ~60 years later we landed on the moon.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#26

Post by mulmen »

colordrops wrote: post #9
paxys wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction. There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that. I'm as much into spaceships as the next nerd, but people need to get real. The world isn't going to end because his next launch is a month late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever else. This effort is going to play out over many generati…

Instead of parroting what you read on social media, how about doing a bit of critical thinking on this. What about all the resources going into video games, sports, movies, music, amusements parks, television, weapons systems, desserts, travel and vacations, etc? They dwarf everything put into space exploration, and are arguably less useful. Do you make the same tired comments when those industries are brought up? An…

This whole "whatever I don't like and/or understand isn't worth doing" philosophy is just not interesting. Humanity is not a hivemind. We can do more than one thing. History has countless examples of innovation in one area leading to breakthroughs in another. Just make your own contribution to humanity where you can, we will be fine.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#27

Post by jhgb »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #20
milansuk wrote: post #14

In 2019, Elon tweeted[0] that the price of one Raptor engine is under $1M with the goal going under 250K for the next version. Any recent info where there are now? I'm still surprised they moved to this orbital fly so quickly without doing more tests. Going from 3 engines to almost 30 is crazy. Also, If I understand it right, both booster and starship will end up in the ocean. I hope they will be able to reuse at lea…

No further word on costs as far as I'm aware, other than that https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1420826978102435845

Considering that cost-wise, they're already putting the RS-25 to shame (https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-stag...), this seems more like an icing on the cake.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#28

Post by meepmorp »

colordrops wrote: post #9
paxys wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction. There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that. I'm as much into spaceships as the next nerd, but people need to get real. The world isn't going to end because his next launch is a month late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever else. This effort is going to play out over many generati…

Instead of parroting what you read on social media, how about doing a bit of critical thinking on this. What about all the resources going into video games, sports, movies, music, amusements parks, television, weapons systems, desserts, travel and vacations, etc? They dwarf everything put into space exploration, and are arguably less useful. Do you make the same tired comments when those industries are brought up? An…

GP: >> The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs into more than one basket.

OP: > The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction.

You're arguing with nobody's point.

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#29

Post by lutorm »

jhgb wrote: post #27
Ajedi32 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No further word on costs as far as I'm aware, other than that https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1420826978102435845

Considering that cost-wise, they're already putting the RS-25 to shame ( https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-will-pay-a-stag... ), this seems more like an icing on the cake.

Given that you could probably build a Merlin out of solid gold and it would come in cheaper than an RS-25, that's not exactly saying much...

Re: SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

#30

Post by paxys »

colordrops wrote: post #9
paxys wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction. There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that. I'm as much into spaceships as the next nerd, but people need to get real. The world isn't going to end because his next launch is a month late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever else. This effort is going to play out over many generati…

Instead of parroting what you read on social media, how about doing a bit of critical thinking on this. What about all the resources going into video games, sports, movies, music, amusements parks, television, weapons systems, desserts, travel and vacations, etc? They dwarf everything put into space exploration, and are arguably less useful. Do you make the same tired comments when those industries are brought up? An…

Yes we can do multiple things at once. In the thread you joined we are discussing the single most important thing. So what really is your point here?
Post reply on HN