Live data from Hacker News

Starship's Sixth Flight Test

spacex.com

61–70 of 455 posts

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To his credit he didn’t kill Artemis, as everyone had expected.

To his detriment, he didn’t kill Artemis and replace it with something workable.

Artemis' unworkable design is because of the limitations of Starship. I was all-in on "cool, huge rocket go brr" until I realized that it's going to take between 5 and 20 Starship launches per mission just to get to the moon. That's a clear regression from the Saturn V.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#62

Last times catch was incredible, anything groundbreaking being attempted this time?

They're working off the same license they used for test 5, so they basically have to exactly the same thing they did for test 5. They did manage to add this: "An additional objective for this flight will be attempting an in-space burn using a single Raptor engine, further demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn prior to orbital missions."

I think that's the last thing they need to do before they can actually launch satellites. I'm surprised there was no attempt on the last launch. Glad to see it this time. The improved Starlink constellation that Starship will enable is going to be awesome.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#67

SpaceX just posted this video of the last test. It's one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI9HQfCAw64

Not into space things and while this is cool i wonder what the great significance of this is? I see lots signaling how great this is and it's lost on me.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX did get government contracts, but not subsidies, and saved NASA and US Taxpayers lots of money.

SpaceX's contracts were absolutely subsidies - the contracted Falcon 1 tests and the resulting Falcon 9 contracts were an expensive moonshot for the USG at first - but even if you discount them, Tesla absolutely hoovered up subsidies like the EV tax credits. They even have a page about them: https://www.tesla.com/support/incentives

From Wiki [1]: SpaceX spent its own capital to develop and fly its previous launcher, Falcon 1, with no pre-arranged sales of launch services. SpaceX developed Falcon 9 with private capital as well, but did have pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights once specific capabilities were demonstrated.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

Post reply on HN