251–260 of 413 posts
The test is essentially a success at this point. Starship can take payload to orbit and open/close the payload doors. The remaining things are icing on the cake. They can refine re-usability while flying payloads.
I'm not sure the payload doors successfully opened and closed. Anyone have more details?
So FAA cleared SpaceX and then within a few days they completed their launch pretty successfully by all accounts. So does that mean SpaceX could have launched a while back with no issues and were just waiting on the FAA? Did the FAA literally just slow down progress? Not a good look on the FAA, they should just let SpaceX do what it does at the speed they want. If they cannot add any value to this engagement, the lea…
For example, here they waited ~1 week between Starship being ready and done with a wet-dress rehearsal. If they knew that the FAA would be finishing earlier, they'd try to get through the WDR earlier. But since there's plenty of other development and testing to do on the ground, they just do that in the meantime.
The FAA delays were more of an issue around IFT-1 because they really couldn't proceed on much without knowing how all the big systems they built would perform, they would've been working blind (and considering how the launch infrastructure needed further strengthening, doing too much more without that data would've probably been a waste of money). That isn't really the case now, while they wait on the FAA they can focus on the payload bays, refining the control systems, building the second launch tower etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not quite: the apogee burn they had planned didn't happen (no word as to why yet), so the ship didn't technically demonstrate the capability reach orbit. It came back down in the Indian ocean on its original suborbital trajectory, essentially like an ICBM.
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We're all wrong sometimes and it would be fine to add an "Edit:" after the original text followed by an explanation or retraction or whatever you want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn’t classify the re-entry survival problem as icing. But otherwise, I agree with you.
If their cost per kg to orbit, with total loss of both Booster and Starship, is substantially lower than any of their competitors - then it is success, and recovery is just icing on their profit margins. Er, cake. (And would be very cool marketing and PR, obviously. Not that SpaceX has much need for either of those.)
What SpaceX is doing with Starlink reminds of the situation with early versions of Windows, when, as Bill Gates described, the industry wasn't keen to produce applications for it. So Microsoft started writing Word and Excel in house. Similarly, SpaceX created Starlink which needs lots of launches, and which couldn't exist with previous level of launch prices, but is able to make profits if the prices are as low as SpaceX can provide.
FR24 shows a Dassault Falcon 900EX doing circles around the expected Starship re-entry location (Perth to Perth flight plan): https://www.flightradar24.com/MXJ/345b8f09
Maybe the flight was an attempt to get close enough for a stored telemetry downlink post-rentry blackout but pre-splashdown?
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Starship is huge and heavy and made of steel, it will not burn up on reentry, if it falls on a populated area it will kill people. They will not be allowed orbital trajectories until they demonstrate they can control the deorbit burn.
An empty Starship has a very low ballistic coefficient, it will be torn apart by the atmosphere if not carefully controlled. Add to that the FTS and there is no real danger to population on the ground.
It's made of 4mm thick steel sheets, and the FAA disagrees with you.
The test is essentially a success at this point. Starship can take payload to orbit and open/close the payload doors. The remaining things are icing on the cake. They can refine re-usability while flying payloads.
The test is essentially a success at this point. Starship can take payload to orbit and open/close the payload doors. The remaining things are icing on the cake. They can refine re-usability while flying payloads.
Here's a fun thought, how many Starship launches would it take to put the equivalent mass of the ISS up in the same orbit?
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It's at 26000 km/h which sufficient for orbital velocity. It looks like it's in an elliptical orbit. I guess we'll see soon if they need to do a de-orbit burn, or if the orbit just intersects the atmosphere and they use atmospheric braking?
I did the math. So, the minimal orbit at 180 km, the one that grazes the earth's surface at its perigee, is about 7.75 km/s or 27,900 kph. The other commenters are right: it was never technically orbital. edit: (let* ((μ 398600.0) ;; km^3/s^2 (r 6371.0) ;; km (peri (+ r 0.0)) (apo (+ r 180.0)) (a (* 0.5 (+ peri apo)))) (sqrt (* μ (- (/ 2.0 apo) (/ 1.0 a))))) ;; 7.745844595118488