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Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

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Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#161

Post by zpeti »

me_me_me wrote: post #156
kemotep wrote: post #36

I am one of the people skeptical about Elon’s specific claims of Starships abilities specifically about his Mars ambitions. Today’s test, if the Starship reentry is as successful as the booster soft landing will be absolutely a great achievement and a 100% mission success. This demonstration keeps SpaceX on schedule for their part of the Artemis 3 mission. Keeping the mission parameters simpler (no “refueuling” or do…

Anything Mars is pure BS. Just anything and everything. The one way trip to mars is orders of magnitude more complicated than moon. Keeping people from being riddled with cancer in 6months trip is not trivial. Landing and then what you plan a flag and die?

> Landing and then what you plan a flag and die?

Pretty much, why do you think columbus set off? And he didn't even know if he'd actually find anything.

I don't understand your attitude and people like you, human beings have been explorers forever, and seem to value exploring even over survival potentially. I'd say it's pretty obviously evolutionarily coded into us. Maybe not you, but into many people.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#162

Post by throwthrowuknow »

cletus wrote: post #133
lazysheepherd wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payloads are designed according to available spacecraft capabilities. When this thing flies, market will form around it in no time.

I'm skeptical because satellites, like pretty much any technology, tend to get smaller over time. I remember reading about how it was profitable for someone to buy up 4 geostationary slots and replace 4 satellites with 1 that was probably smaller than any of the 4 (because geostationary slots can be incredibly valuable). There are large bespoke payloads (eg JWST) but these are inherently so expensive anyway the launc…

They’re expensive (and often delayed and over budget) in part due to the ridiculous demands of fitting everything in a small faring and reducing weight e.g. needing it to fold up and using expensive high strength low weight materials. Lessen those constraints and things get cheaper and easier to build with standard methods and materials.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#164

Post by krapp »

madaxe_again wrote: post #153
krapp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know? It's entirely feasible someone other than Elon Musk could have founded a similar company with similar goals, the same or equivalent competent staff, and had the same success. There is no unique magic sauce that Elon brings to the table here, other than money.

It’s feasible - but nobody did, and nobody has. I get the dislike - his politics are pretty reprehensible - but it’s hard to argue with the results his businesses generally achieve. What he brings to the table apart from money is an absolutely bull-headed madcap drive to make the infeasible into reality in the face of a chorus of naysayers, and that, I respect.

I'm not arguing against the results his businesses achieve, I'm arguing against the incessant drive for hero worship which ascribes those successes to him and him alone.

>What he brings to the table apart from money is an absolutely bull-headed madcap drive to make the infeasible into reality in the face of a chorus of naysayers, and that, I respect.

This is exactly my point. Elon didn't make the infeasible into reality, other people did, and could have done without him. And if his behavior at Twitter and Tesla are any indication, his "absolutely bull-headed madcap drive" has to be managed and worked around lest it do more harm than good.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#165

Post by throwthrowuknow »

simiones wrote: post #157
mavhc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has to be large to be reusable due to scaling factors. We can finally start sending useful amounts of things into space, millions of solar panels for one

How is putting solar in space more useful than putting it on Earth? You still have the problem of a capricious atmosphere between the source of the beams and the place where you need the electricity. Sure, you can slightly modulate and do a few things, but the extra energy is extraordinarily unlikely to make up the extra costs even if the transport costs were 0.

It means you can have abundant power in space to run all kinds of hardware.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#166

Post by [deleted] »

api wrote: post #120
delichon wrote: post #81

Watching pieces of the ship melt off, but then seeing it make a relatively controlled landing, is perversely confidence building. If it can survive that kind of damage on a control surface maybe it's a quite robust craft.

I’ve said for a while that we won’t be ready for the real space age until you can have a rusty pickup in space. What I mean by that is that we have it down well enough that the tech exceeds tolerances and can degrade gracefully. You see this in some sci-fi where there are rust bucket old ships that work.

[deleted]

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#167

Post by ceejayoz »

seydor wrote: post #67
multimoon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s lots of things that are just too big and heavy and need launch vehicles like that. It might be overkill for satellites, but space stations and habitats need the payload capacity of something like this to become anything resembling economical.

how many of those things are there?

This is such an odd argument; it's like asking how many airports there were in 1904.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#168

Post by tekla »

simiones wrote: post #151
qsi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vision is that the cost per unit of mass to orbit will come down massively with Starship, once it's launching like the Falcon. That will open up hitherto unimaginable missions and markets. And customers. It's all about the the cost!

Like? What industry really needs things floating in space that are only constrained by cost to launch? I can see lots of science mission perhaps, but even that seems somewhat limited.

Internet

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#169

Post by ceejayoz »

simiones wrote: post #152
mjh2539 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually it will get cheap enough to where people can be buried on the (shot at the) moon.

I believe that is illegal in every country, putting human remains on foreign bodies.

It's not, and there've already been (failed) attempts. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/08/peregrine-moon-lander-launc...

> In addition to the NASA science experiments on board the Peregrine lander are cremated human remains and DNA collected by two private companies, Celestis and Elysium Space.

> People hoping to memorialize their loved ones or colleagues pay the companies thousands to send a few grams of cremated ashes to the moon in metal capsules.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#170

Post by ceejayoz »

datameta wrote: post #122
mjh2539 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually it will get cheap enough to where people can be buried on the (shot at the) moon.

Talked about this with my partner this week. Somebody is going to yeet their ashes into the regolith some day.

It has already been attempted. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/08/peregrine-moon-lander-launc...
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