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SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

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Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#271

Post by wolverine876 »

soperj wrote: post #233
wolverine876 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rovers and helicopters on Mars, leaving the solar system, close-ups of Pluto, asteroid material brought back to Earth, etc. etc. Those weren't exciting, but reaching orbit real cheap is?

I was excited about a number of those things, but the production values on some of them (leaving the solar system, helicopter on mars) was pretty bad.

> the production values on some of them (leaving the solar system, helicopter on mars) was pretty bad

What does that mean? The videos aren't slick enough? Personally, my excitement isn't based on hucksterism. The worst sophists (and megalomaniacs) will have the best self-promotion and slickest videos.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#272

Post by gbear605 »

samatman wrote: post #224
johnsimer wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but also skin in the game and supply/demand Should be much more accurate than a simple poll, because people with the belief that the odds are undervalued will put money in the game to hopefully profit off their belief It's more like the Efficient Market Hypothesis

There's no skin in the game with Metaculus, it's a prediction aggregator, not a prediction market. Nothing is at stake. This is why you see a somewhat absurd skew on AI doom/safety questions, using Metaculus is a hobby of the cult^H^H^H^H movement, and no one's swooping in to steal their money because there isn't any.

It’s somewhat more complex than that because Metaculus weights its aggregates by how accurate predictors have been in the past. Definitely not perfect though, and the efficient market hypothesis isn’t relevant at all.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#273

Post by The28thDuck »

How do investigators find leaks in a craft that has exploded? I imagine it’s difficult to determine (though evidently possible) whether a defect is in the design, or if it has been introduced by a defect in manufacturing/installation of parts like with Boeing.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#275

Post by DinaCoder99 »

Xirgil wrote: post #76
DinaCoder99 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Excitement about space What does this even mean if we can't scrape together funding for NASA

It means that private industry is doing a better job of allocating funding and meeting demand.

This is hardly surprising in a society that prefers to dole money to contractors rather than invest in any practical technology. What value has SpaceForce demonstrated to justify its investment? That's just graft.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#276

Post by panick21_ »

rootusrootus wrote: post #151
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time Elon says or does something cringey nowadays, I just keep repeating the same mantra to myself: "There's no way he can fuck up SpaceX with his antics now, it's too far advanced for his ego to ruin it all and plunge us back into another space exploration winter, stay calm".

> Every time Elon says or does something I remind myself that the real genius at the head of SpaceX is Gwynne, and hope that Elon continues to let her be awesome.

This is what Musk haters have to tell themselves I guess. Of course Shotwell was the sales person during the Falcon 1 days and only later took over more of a leadership roll.

And even if she is 'the genius' then Musk is the guy who recruited her, promoted her multiple times and put her in the position she is in now.

But its also just the reality that Shotwell job is made 10x easier because she has a reusable rocket to build, sell and launch, while the others do not.

Shotwell is awesome, no question. But the Musk hater story line of 'she is the real hero while Musk hits himself in the head with a hammer' is just nonsense.

SpaceX has many super smart super talented people, and of course in any company the leader can only do so much, by definition most of the work is not done by the leaders, Musk or Shotwell.

But on the other hand we also no that leadership is incredibly important. And there is no question who is leading and has lead SpaceX since Day 1.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#277

Post by adolph »

TMWNN wrote: post #236
somenameforme wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atlas 5 is already completely obsoleted by the Falcon Heavy which costs about half as much, for a reusable launch, and carries about 3x as much. But for Starship, most people don't seem to realize what a potential game changer this is. The goal for Starship is to get costs down to about 15x less than Falcon Heavy. When you can start sending stuff to space for a few dollars per pound, we're not talking about just prob…

>Atlas 5 is already completely obsoleted by the Falcon Heavy which costs about half as much, for a reusable launch, and carries about 3x as much. Which is why the rocket has been discontinued. This is also why Boeing Starliner is dead man walking. Starliner is only certified for Atlas 5, and there are enough spare boosters for the launches NASA contracted with Boeing for, no more. The consensus is that Boeing will fu…

> Starliner is only certified for Atlas 5

I'm not certain what is meant by "certified" because it still hasn't made a human flight test yet.

Notwithstanding the retirement of Atlas and Delta, Starliner was intended to be compatible with multiple launch vehicles, including the ULA Atlas V and Delta IV, and the SpaceX Falcon 9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Starliner

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#278

Post by 1970-01-01 »

wmf wrote: post #247
1970-01-01 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the lawyers are not yet involved. If SpaceX blows up over a major city, these terms will be banned.

Rockets don't pass over cities for that reason.

FAA says they must avoid populated areas, but the laws of physics don't stop rockets from rapidly disassembling into a boat or any area where people may be living. At this point the lexicon will revert, and it will be a "crashed into" event.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#279

Post by panick21_ »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #170
neverrroot wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is correct, but there is much more success than failure if you look into it unbiased, they delivered all commit tasks and then some stretch ones too. Based on your response I won’t go any deeper, it would be time wasting, you appear to have made up your mind already.

How many launches did SLS need?

Such a ridiculous comparison. SLS started 5 years earlier and had 10-20x the budget, and it uses mostly legacy components. SLS uses existing mature engines. Existing production facilities. And so on.

If SpaceX had ask themselves, can we make a Super-Heavy of SLS class and launch it the first time, SpaceX could have almost certainty have done that.

But that not the goal or the ambition of the project.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#280

Post by tedmcory77 »

somenameforme wrote: post #33
baq wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are customers from three letter agencies who could find a use for this payload capacity, for sure. OTOH imagine if a reusable launch of this costs approximately the same as an expendable Atlas 5 in it's most performant configuration and reliability is proven - NASA could launch a Pluto probe like New Horizons, except it'd be able actually make orbit over there.

Atlas 5 is already completely obsoleted by the Falcon Heavy which costs about half as much, for a reusable launch, and carries about 3x as much. But for Starship, most people don't seem to realize what a potential game changer this is. The goal for Starship is to get costs down to about 15x less than Falcon Heavy. When you can start sending stuff to space for a few dollars per pound, we're not talking about just prob…

"for a few dollars per pound" - Thank you. I hadn't realized their goals were that ambitious.
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