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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

#291

Post by nortirn »

panick21_ wrote: post #269
Animats wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The asteroid Psyche is expected to have a lot of gold content. NASA sent a probe last year, but it's a long trip and will take until 2029 to get there. Even then it just orbits.

That's nonsense. Sure Psyche has a lot of valuable materials on it, but so do mountains on earth, doesn't mean its great way to make money. There are things far closer to earth that are far easier to get to, and those things are also far smaller then Psyche and thus far easier to mine. The most serious space mining company right now is targeting near earth asteroids for platinum group metals.

[dead]

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

#292

Post by pfdietz »

thereisnospork wrote: post #195
pfdietz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ending stuff to space for a few dollars per pound That's about what it costs to fly freight across an ocean.

That begs an interesting comparison in fuel usage (kJ or $ basis): supplying dV for one pound to orbit vs. the energy required to perform the work needed to overcome ~8,000 miles of marginal drag from +1lb of cargo on a ship. Fuel usage being the limiter of terminal economics once launch systems are commodified to the degree ships are.

It's important to note that most of the propellant is not fuel, it's liquid oxygen. And LOX is the second cheapest industrial liquid (after water).

As for the fuel itself, natural gas is much cheaper than jet fuel per unit of combustion energy.

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

#293

Post by pfdietz »

TMWNN wrote: post #239
Sanzig wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty skeptical of Starship ever getting used for suborbital transportation, other than maybe for ultra-elite VIP transport or something like a rapid deployment system for military special forces. It seems highly unlikely they will ever get the price down to where it can compete with commercial airliners, and Concorde's commercial failure showed us that people will happily choose cheap subsonic flight over fast…

>Concorde's commercial failure I thought Concorde failed commercially because it couldn't get approval to fly over the US elsewhere over land because of sonic booms. I know reentering spacecraft cause sonic booms but thought that they occur high enough to not cause the same problems on the ground.

It failed because trading slightly shorter flight time for much higher cost was not worthwhile. Instead, airliners have been optimized for cost reduction and efficiency at high subsonic speeds.

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

#294

Post by [deleted] »

ggreer wrote: post #289
The28thDuck wrote: post #273

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.

Unlike a normal aircraft flight, rocket launches constantly broadcast telemetry data and are watched with tracking cameras. Large leaks would be visible in the video footage, and the type of leak (fuel or oxygen) can be determined by the change in flame color. Also, telemetry such as various tank pressures and propellant levels would indicate if (and where) leaks occurred. Determining whether it was a design defect o…

[deleted]

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

#295

Post by pjscott »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #278
wmf wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is why they don't launch over areas where people are living, and why rocket launches are occasionally scrubbed due to the presence of a wayward boat. They're actually being careful here.

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

#296

Post by Sabinus »

panick21_ wrote: post #269
Animats wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The asteroid Psyche is expected to have a lot of gold content. NASA sent a probe last year, but it's a long trip and will take until 2029 to get there. Even then it just orbits.

That's nonsense. Sure Psyche has a lot of valuable materials on it, but so do mountains on earth, doesn't mean its great way to make money. There are things far closer to earth that are far easier to get to, and those things are also far smaller then Psyche and thus far easier to mine. The most serious space mining company right now is targeting near earth asteroids for platinum group metals.

The composition and purity of asteroids can be vastly different than on Earth.

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

#297

Post by mkl »

everyone wrote: post #203

Question: Who is the actual brain at SpaceX?? They must have at least one mega-genius level engineer / project manager with a lot of authority to have progressed so far.

Why? Teams of non-mega-geniuses accomplish most successful engineering projects, including really hard ones. SpaceX have progressed so far because they've had a lot of funding and are willing to try stuff, fail, and try again.

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

#298

Post by ihumanable »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #61
dotnet00 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exploded is a loaded term that has been ruined by media to make it so that people interpret even development testing as a failure. RUD conveys the same idea of the vehicle losing structural integrity, serves as a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor for those who understand it, and limits the number of idiots screaming "look this project is obviously a scam" slightly.

in 10 years RUD will mean exploded, that's how language works. retarded used to be a medical term to replace loaded terms such as imbecile. You can see how successful that was. It turns out, dressing up an idea does absolutely nothing since it's the idea that has the negative connotation. And why shouldn't "exploded" be viewed in a negative light?

This process is called pejoration (sometimes pejorativization).

It is a fascinating linguistic phenomenon, but it makes sense if you think about it. People start using technical terms as a pejorative, so those technical terms over time become less professional, so professions introduce new terms, and the cycle continues.

Another fascinating thing is that pejoration can be cyclic, sometimes enough terms are introduced to replace a term that eventually the original pejorative term becomes innocuous or even becomes endearing.

"Dickens" went through a pejoration cycle when it was used to replace the word "devil." There was a time when saying "what the Dickens" would be quite rude, but now would be seen as old fashioned to the point of being charming in some circles.

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

#299

Post by dog_boxer72 »

floxy wrote: post #216
mjevans wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, send up the robot miners. Plow the results onto the moon a safe but close distance to a base. Manufacture parts in lower G and far easier vacuum (it's super useful for MANY industrial things). Possibly even use solar collector ovens to melt/cook. Returning bulk products to earth might not be viable in the short term, but this could really bootstrap what we do off planet and I'm hopeful it might eventually make s…

The biggest coup d'état was training an entire generation of children to be virtual mining operators.

Banning child labor was a mistake, clearly they yearn for the mines.

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

#300

Post by TMWNN »

pfdietz wrote: post #293
TMWNN wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Concorde's commercial failure I thought Concorde failed commercially because it couldn't get approval to fly over the US elsewhere over land because of sonic booms. I know reentering spacecraft cause sonic booms but thought that they occur high enough to not cause the same problems on the ground.

It failed because trading slightly shorter flight time for much higher cost was not worthwhile. Instead, airliners have been optimized for cost reduction and efficiency at high subsonic speeds.

I am aware that airlines today fly slower than 50 years ago, to improve fuel efficiency. That said, all orders except the British and French flag carriers' were canceled because of the overland bans, correspondingly greatly increasing the per-unit cost of those that were sold. I think the NYC-to-London/Paris routes were (slightly) profitable; were there no overland bans, are there really no other routes that Concorde could also have flown?
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