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

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 420 posts

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

#301

Post by bumby »

panick21_ wrote: post #276
rootusrootus wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

>But on the other hand we also no that leadership is incredibly important.

I was with you until this part. The general common sense and MBA consensus is that leadership is important. And I suspect that it is more so with smaller companies. But the data seems mixed with large companies and some research seems to point out that high level leaders don’t have an appreciable impact.

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

#302

Post by 1970-01-01 »

pjscott wrote: post #295
1970-01-01 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do, and SpaceX is literally building an entire city around their launchpad:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boca_Chica_(Texas)#Plans_for_a...

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

#303

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Sanzig wrote: post #50
misiti3780 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, wont it theoretically speed up and decrease international shipping + travel. We should be able to go from the US to Japan in an hour or two in the future.

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…

sub-orbital military applications would be risky as they'd look like an ICBM launch to other nuclear powers. Commercial rockets depend on advance public disclosure of launch dates to stave off WW3 from itchy trigger fingers.

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

#304

Post by ethbr1 »

Sabinus wrote: post #296
panick21_ wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the value in space resources would seem to be that their mass is already up Earth's gravity well, and less so preciousness.

If you need 1 kg of something in space, the cost is {extraction} + {getting it there}.

For anything raw or low tech, it'd seem way easier not to have to bulk lift it off Earth.

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

#307

Post by khokhol »

panick21_ wrote: post #282
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't hate him, I simply find his views on most (?) topics reprehensible, naive and/or delusional. I think he's doing great harm to his businesses by oversharing them. I particularly despise his pathetic bothsidesing of the war in which fascists are invading and murdering my relatives in my country of birth.

Name any private individual who has done more for the defense of Ukraine then Musk. Suggesting that a civil war will end in a cease fire along battle lines is a very common way for civil wars to end. Even if during those wars both sides absolutely are convinced that they will have total victory.

Name any private individual who has done more for the defense of Ukraine then Musk.

Irrelevant to the fact he went on to also blatantly dick the Ukrainians over in late 2023.

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

#308

Post by khokhol »

bumby wrote: post #286
panick21_ wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name any private individual who has done more for the defense of Ukraine then Musk. Suggesting that a civil war will end in a cease fire along battle lines is a very common way for civil wars to end. Even if during those wars both sides absolutely are convinced that they will have total victory.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that it is a good thing. Some strategists like Peter Zeihan think if Ukraine “wins” it will prompt a defensive nuclear exchange from Russia. In that case, history might look at Musk differently.

While others think that if Ukraine makes "peace" with Russia it will simply set the stage for another invasion attempt and/or a nuclear exchange later.

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

#309

Post by ajkjk »

bumby wrote: post #209
coryfklein wrote: post #205

Metaculus shows a 74% chance Starship reaches orbit in 2024, and a projected date of March 26 for the next launch. That seems pretty bullish to me! Next year (2025) will probably see the beginnings of practical customer usage of Starship. [0] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?status=open&has_group=f...

How does Metaculus make such predictions? I assume it can't be in the reliability engineering fashion used in industry.

They make it up.

But everyone assumes it means something because it's an average of a bunch of people making it up.

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

#310

Post by jltsiren »

panick21_ wrote: post #282
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't hate him, I simply find his views on most (?) topics reprehensible, naive and/or delusional. I think he's doing great harm to his businesses by oversharing them. I particularly despise his pathetic bothsidesing of the war in which fascists are invading and murdering my relatives in my country of birth.

Name any private individual who has done more for the defense of Ukraine then Musk. Suggesting that a civil war will end in a cease fire along battle lines is a very common way for civil wars to end. Even if during those wars both sides absolutely are convinced that they will have total victory.

Except that this is not a civil war but an old-school war of conquest. If the war ends in a way that doesn't include Russia withdrawing behind the 1991 borders, it goes a long way towards restoring the pre-WW2 world order, where conquest is a legitimate reason to start a war.
Post reply on HN