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

Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 144 posts

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#111

Post by pclmulqdq »

tekla wrote: post #105
pclmulqdq wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an in-orbit relight in the IFT3 flight plan, which failed to happen. IFT4 is somewhat more conservative - just get to orbit (happened), pseudo-land the booster (happened), and get back out of orbit (remains to be seen). The amount of disinformation that SpaceX and Musk create around failed tests is really annoying and honestly somewhat problematic. It would be nice if SpaceX could just honestly say "this wo…

I'm always amazed at how wrong people on HN are. The orbital relight test was not a factor in the fact that Starship was not intended to reach orbital velocity. You may have noticed that the flight plan indicated that Starship was to land somewhere in the Indian ocean and usually reaching orbital velocity vastly increases the difficulty of doing a planned reentry. The flight plans had them turning off the engines bef…

The original IFT-3 flight plan had them reaching orbit and then doing the in-orbit relight as a de-orbit burn. At that altitude, there's enough drag that you will de-orbit pretty quickly if you are in orbit and your de-orbit burn fails, so there was no risk of a big piece of space junk.

The disinformation I mentioned is why everyone keeps being "wrong" about SpaceX. It's incredibly difficult to be right.

Here's the original graphic that SpaceX put out before the flight happened: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi...

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#112

Post by s1k3s »

dhedberg wrote: post #104
s1k3s wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it keep exploding? Don't they already have the knowledge and tech to achieve this?

Why does your software keep failing during development? Don't you have the knowledge to make it work? It's the old, non-iterative everything-up-front method to rocket development that's weird. At least as a developer it seems obvious that a more hardware-rich approach with a high iteration rate will lead to a better outcome in the end, _especially_ when you're trying to push hard on the technological boundaries.

Generally speaking it doesn't cost me billions to fix a bug. Hence the question...

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#113

Post by verticalscaler »

rvnx wrote: post #110
verticalscaler wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

V4 demonstrating steady confident progress. The hard bit coming up in 25 minutes. Going forward getting to this point in the flight plan is now basically table stakes. What a marked difference from V1. Love to see it.

I don't understand one stuff, did the booster land on a drone ship or it just crashed into water ? At the end of the video feed for the booster, it looks like there is a huge fire and everything is destroyed, but the crowd is cheering

It slowed down sufficiently and hovered for a moment before splashing down. That was the point of the test.

In the future they'll try catching it.

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#114

Post by kirksidlo »

rvnx wrote: post #110
verticalscaler wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

V4 demonstrating steady confident progress. The hard bit coming up in 25 minutes. Going forward getting to this point in the flight plan is now basically table stakes. What a marked difference from V1. Love to see it.

I don't understand one stuff, did the booster land on a drone ship or it just crashed into water ? At the end of the video feed for the booster, it looks like there is a huge fire and everything is destroyed, but the crowd is cheering

Drone ship was never the plan for this launch. They simulated a soft landing over the Indian ocean, which appeared to go relatively well.

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#115

Post by [deleted] »

rvnx wrote: post #110
verticalscaler wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

V4 demonstrating steady confident progress. The hard bit coming up in 25 minutes. Going forward getting to this point in the flight plan is now basically table stakes. What a marked difference from V1. Love to see it.

I don't understand one stuff, did the booster land on a drone ship or it just crashed into water ? At the end of the video feed for the booster, it looks like there is a huge fire and everything is destroyed, but the crowd is cheering

[deleted]

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#116

Post by ordu »

s1k3s wrote: post #38
ordu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be better if one could vote for the first and the second stage separately. I believe that the booster has a good chance for a soft splashdown, while the Starship itself will probably explode on reentry.

Why does it keep exploding? Don't they already have the knowledge and tech to achieve this?

IT DIDN'T! Both pieces had not exploded!

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#117

Post by pclmulqdq »

josephwegner wrote: post #89

Curious - I was watching the live stream, and noticed as the ship's rockets were on, there were a bunch of these "floaters" in the view. https://imgur.com/a/OrZTYxP I know nearly nothing about rocketry, so ELI5 (or give me a wikipedia link!)... anyone know what those floaters are? Is it some byproduct of the fuel? An artifact of the cameras? An illusion coming through the haze of the burning rocket?

I'm sort of surprised nobody has mentioned this. The ice is all gone at this altitude, and nothing seems to have started falling apart yet.

Those might be satellites reflecting the light from the engines.

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#118

Post by dhedberg »

s1k3s wrote: post #112
dhedberg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does your software keep failing during development? Don't you have the knowledge to make it work? It's the old, non-iterative everything-up-front method to rocket development that's weird. At least as a developer it seems obvious that a more hardware-rich approach with a high iteration rate will lead to a better outcome in the end, _especially_ when you're trying to push hard on the technological boundaries.

Generally speaking it doesn't cost me billions to fix a bug. Hence the question...

That's part of the innovation; don't just build a single reaaally expensive ship that has to be perfect. Instead, build a _ship factory_ and crank them out (relatively) cheaply and fast.

Re: Starship's Fourth Flight Test [video]

#119

Post by TiredOfLife »

sva_ wrote: post #70
skilled wrote: post #2

As per Elon Musk, > Streaming live exclusively on this platform! Broadcast link, https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OwxWYzDXjWGQ --- edit: It looks like there is a YouTube link available (see comment below mine), and what Elon meant is that SpaceX themselves would be streaming exclusively on Twitter. Apologies for confusion.

Looks like official SpaceX account is streaming though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlBuabzbqX4 Edit: nvm, it is fake

The account hijack -> rename to spacex -> push crypto scam livestream thing has been going on for years. I wonder how much money Google gets from those because I see no other reason Youtube doesn't have some "if account with x subscribers changes name to spacex and starts live streaming" alert.
Post reply on HN