921–930 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The test was a massive success. So happy to see starship clear the towers. The largest rocket ever built, larger than the Saturn V. Are you kidding me?
Serious question, but why is bigger better? Is there a pending need to launch something huge in one go?
Also, yes: larger space telescopes. And eventually,manned missions to Mars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
a few seconds after liftoff a hydraulic unit on the bottom of the booster blew off. That could have had all kinds of ramifications for further events down the road like stage separation and MECO. I'm actually surprised it maintained as good of control is it did given i'm sure that controlled at least some of the gymbaling too. The cartwheel is on purpose. They're using the angular momentum of the flip for boost back…
I have seen that analysis too, the twitter thread suggested that both HPUs on the booster eventually failed before second stage separation. That could be quite significant. Also the lack of gimballing capability could presumably have the booster continuing to thrust as it attempted to maintain attitude control even as it reached the MECO point. I wonder how much of this learning can be applied to the next launch as t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was not an expected possibility. Interestingly, this post predicting exactly this kind of damage was flagged on HN just days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 I think it's unlikely that SpaceX wasn't aware of the damage that would be caused. They have a pretty good engineering team, and that aspect didn't involve an anomaly,…
Seems like the author was closer to the truth that HN gave him credit for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thA8jlgcJ-8
Go through that article to find every specific prediction you can (e.g. broken glass & damaged foundations in the town 8.5km away). Then compare these to what happened.
When I tried it, I found that they were more incorrect than they were correct and the biggest harms predicted were the things they were the most wrong about.
People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. Compare the SLS to Starship. SLS has had a 100% success rate. One launch, one success. But it costs $2B per launch (and climbing) and has taken 12 years to get here. Plus, it's stealing pieces of the Space Shuttle, which was developed in the 70s over a long period of time. Starship will launch a half a dozen "failures" before they achieve…
That is not always a bad thing. I mean you typed this on a computer running an ISA that started in the 70's or 80's. Maybe 90's if you are on PowerPC ;)
Initially posted this as a reply, but going top-level, cause the hot takes are too spicy for my liking. So the plan was to test x, y, and z. Launch sequence and takeoff, stage separation and Starship engine light, and the post-launch stuff like booster wet landing, reentry, and heat tiles. The booster by itself is not aerodynamic, so the only way to test x is with a starship on top. And if you have starship, you migh…
Uh, yeah, about that...these commercial space flight companies are less than awesome about correct flight plans. Virgin Galactic, for example, wildly blew their flight plan on the flight with His Sirness aboard...and suffered zero repercussions for it, I might add.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, they were hoping to possibly get a chance at soft-landing the Super Heavy Booster in the ocean, which might have allowed them to recover some stuff from it, but that was always viewed as a potential bonus, never a guarantee or even a primary goal.
The recovery teams goal was to sink the booster even if it touched down safely. Their plan was to quite literally shoot it with small-arms until it took on enough water to sink. This is a documented best-case outcome for the launch. There were no plans to recover anything other than data
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still don’t understand why that post was flagged so quickly.
> SpaceX's Texas Rocket Is Going to Cause a Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks It might be the over-the-top title didn't do it any favors. It's in a gray zone between truth and click bait.
Sort of implies the article was hyperbole, which it was.
I continue to think that this is cool stuff, while being very, very dismayed by what he's doing with Twitter. I don't understand what the attraction of the latter is for someone with the wherewithal to work on spaceships.
He has released a lot of "Twitter files" data regarding highly questionable FBI interference and things like Twitter Trends manipulation in the past. And he has released large parts of the recommendation algorithm. And there is now a tab "following" which only shows you the tweets of the people you follow. And most importantly, free speech seems to be upheld much better than in the past, where people got blocked for…
He's stumbling around rudderless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my part time work as an artist this has been my experience as well: my best work always seems to happen after a “mistake”, then the pressure is off and I just start playing and experimenting. In the rare case where I execute a planned design with no mistakes, the outcome is generally stale and doesn’t live up to how I imagined it.
That doesn’t apply here because they have no opportunity to change anything after the mistake, right?