Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

apnews.com

141–150 of 1001 posts

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#141

Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. Suggesting that this test “failed” is at best a mischaracterisation.

Failure doesn’t have to have a negative connotation, we just match it as so in our culture. The full mission plan wasn’t achieved and the rocket did in fact fail. That said, it achieved precisely what they hoped it would achieve as failure was an expected and acceptable outcome.

Absolutely! Applies to everything too, including the project you bought a domain for and didn't do anything with!

You there, reading this comment, go and fail or go and turn autorenew off :P

Failure > inaction. You can learn from failure.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#142
post #110

One interesting observation here is how long it took the ship to get off the pad from the T-0 mark. This is undoubtedly because some of the raptors on it apparently failed to ignite. I thought they were about to make a mess on the launch pad! I'm also curious about what technically finally got it off the ground - was there a sufficient, but low, level of acceleration, was it a matter of reducing the rocket's mass (by…

More likely, holddowns on the pad until everything was stabilized. Probably takes a few seconds to vector/throttle the other engines to compensate for the lost ones. E: convery's reply below makes much more sense.

Clamps were released at T-10min. IIRC compensating for engines are pretty fast. But they hold the engines at just below lift/weight to run some more checks before fully powering up.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has many issues, but what is the point of bringing his grudge with Trans? The rocket is a great success and in the grand scale of things is worth the ego grandstanding. The man has done nothing illegal and has accomplished a lot amazing things. Congrats to SpaceX, Elon, the Americans and Humanity. What good is freedom of thought and speech if one cannot exercise it? I probably drank the old american koolaid and…

I think a lot of articles and tweets are focusing on the failure incorrectly. Their views are coloured by wanting to see Elon fail because they don't like his views. This was at least a muted success and not an outright failure and it is just a stepping stone. I was trying to say, yes, Elon has pretty bad views these days, but this is still at least a semi-success, not a set back or failure.

SpaceX is successful despite of Elon Musk, not because of Elon Musk. SpaceX spends a lot of energy keeping Musks's insanity and emotional outbursts at bay. Tesla has also learned how to manage Musk, though not quite as successfully as SpaceX. Twitter is still figuring it out, but I'm sure that they too will learn how to manage Musk.

I think it's useful to compare Musk with fire. Fire is useful, if controlled. Fire can be very damaging if not controlled. You have to control Musk while giving him the semblance that he's the one in control. Kudos to those who've successfully been able to pull that off.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#144
post #5

[flagged]

The article you posted doesn't really support calling him "outright anti-trans". From the article you used as support: Twitter’s modified policy is a step back for the platform, especially when Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube don’t even maintain the same protections for trans people that Twitter once had. Last year, GLAAD gave each of these platforms fairly low scores in regard to LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expressi…

The final paragraph makes clear that he is pull back specific things that Twitter used to offer to trans people:

> Twitter hasn’t completely pulled protections for trans users, however. Its Hateful Conduct Policy still explicitly prohibits attacking others based on “race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” but the choice to intentionally remove all mention of misgendering and deadnaming seems like a calculated jab at the trans community.

I am not an LGBT+ person, but I also do not support targeted harassment of various segments of society just because they are different.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#146
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking this as well... It spiraled seemingly forever without failing, while they hoovered telemetry off of it, until pressing the big red button. Massive fault tolerance at play. SpaceX is awesome in so many ways. Thanks Elon.

Perhaps you mean, "Thanks Gwynne Shotwell." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell I think HN understands the difference between a charismatic leader who is good at laying out a vision and generating a tremendous amount of hype around it (like Steve Jobs) and someone who is an expert at actually realizing a vision (Steve Wozniak, Tim Cook). They may both be necessary for success, but if you are praising the ro…

Shotwell is also awesome, that is certain. They all are. I personally think the first man down the ladder on mars should be a woman, and it would be great if it were her. However, Elon founded that company (and personally hired Shotwell) and has been a continual source of engineering inspiration, for several decades. His direction has pretty much forced the global automotive industry to go electric. People may not like some of the things he tweets, but at the end of the day, he is not going to be a historical footnote.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chief Twit said "anything other than blowing up the launch pad is a success."

Sounds like he moved the goalpost.

He's been saying this for literally years. That the pad is stage 0 and if they don't blow up the pad, they're happy.

I think he said the exact same thing about the first Falcon Heavy launch.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#150

Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. Suggesting that this test “failed” is at best a mischaracterisation.

Even if this is true, it's going to get more and more difficult to explain away rocket explosions as succeeding the more decades we put between us and the dawn of the Space Age. If SpaceX is still blowing up rockets in 2033, it's going to become a PR problem, especially as the MSM further turns its back on Musk.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN