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Starship's Sixth Flight Test

spacex.com

181–190 of 455 posts

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#181
post #155

Thread devolved into petty politics quicker than expected.

I tried to search faq how to block people but couldn't find any info. How do I do that? If it's not possible, I'm pretty sure this site is breaking the EU social media laws.

The site doesn't need to follow the laws of every country on earth. If they had paid advertisers from EU it would be different.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#182
post #164
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of you who like dubstep, start the following video first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2eBMuL0C2o then 3 seconds later start to watch the (muted) SpaceX video from OP's post and thank me later. ;-) Especially the catch is awesome!

I think it's a cool achievement, but for some perspective NASA first did a vertical rocket ship landing without chopsticks decades ago. And the whole point of this thing was to do that on the moon, which is never going to happen at this rate.

Is the whole point of this thing to land the first stage on the moon, or just the Starship? My understanding is that it's just Starship, and the first stage will always return to Earth. I think one of us has a very confused understanding of the whole point of the thing.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#183
post #164
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of you who like dubstep, start the following video first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2eBMuL0C2o then 3 seconds later start to watch the (muted) SpaceX video from OP's post and thank me later. ;-) Especially the catch is awesome!

I think it's a cool achievement, but for some perspective NASA first did a vertical rocket ship landing without chopsticks decades ago. And the whole point of this thing was to do that on the moon, which is never going to happen at this rate.

NASA Landed on the moon in the 60s with an abacus. SpaceX can’t get out of low Earth orbit.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#184

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.

The big thing is that it dramatically reduces the cost of shipping things into space. Previously it was difficult to ship anything much larger than a compact car in to orbit. Now you can ship half of a basketball court into orbit, including all the vertical space.

Until very very recently the roughly bus sized ISS modules were the largest habitable spaces we could ship to orbit (although Skylab in the 70s were basically repurposed Saturn V fuel tanks and also big) so now it's possible/probable we can ship 20 people to space, and have moderately comfortable accommodations for them.

We can also ship mining equipment and substancially more supplies to the moon. Or mars. We went from using pack goats to 18 wheelers to ship stuff in space. The pack goat can ship a handful of hand made silk scarves and Faberge eggs over the Himalayas, but the 18 wheeler can deliver everything from socks and tshirts to cell phones and big screen tvs and trucks and lawn mowers. This really opens up space to more than the highest, most bleeding edge science and we might actually see more than 100 humans in space at the same time, in our lifetimes.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#185
post #168
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be joking

I find the starship news exciting, but given the incremental nature of starship development, it really isn't the most exciting stuff happening today with space exploration as there is all kinds of other cool stuff happening and being discovered. One example off the top of my head: https://earthsky.org/space/final-parker-solar-probe-flyby-of...

Starship is an enabling technology. We can easily imagine the things it will make possible.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#186

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.

I’m with you. As landing the thing means nothing if you can’t get payloads to the destination. To get this thing to the moon would need like 20 refuelling flights to meet it on the way.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shuttle boosters required rebuilding / refueling (which is solid rocket goop) and the fuel tank was completely lost and required rebuilding. The head shield tiles were extremely fragile on the shuttle. It was never a fully reusable design, just more reusable than before. SpaceX plans to have no parts that are lost each flight and is working to make the tiles mostly standardized and less sensitive to faults.

Are they going to replace all the tiles before it can relaunch? And what about the engine nozzles? They must be taking quite the beating. No doubt SpaceX has very smart people working on this and I'm not an expert in material science, but I just find it hard to believe that same day turnaround could be possible. If true, that would really make us a confirmed space faring civilization. We could actually start colonizi…

> what about the engine nozzles?

Falcon 9 has reflown in just over 4 hours [1]. (EDIT: Operational turnaround. Nozzles have been turned around allegedly without refurb in 3 weeks.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_...

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly looked fully intact when reaching ground. When they manage to do the intended landing it should be pretty unharmed, but I'm sure it will take a while before same-day reuse is attempted.

One of the flaps burned through again. Not as bad as the first time. The hinge area seems like the hardest challenge.

Is this a bit of over engineering? How much is drag reduced during liftoff by having the flaps folded?

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1#Launches Customers: DARPA, DARPA, DOD/NASA, mass simulator (instead of the intended payload after the first three launches), Malaysia (the intended payload of the fourth flight). "pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights" is a subsidy, as were the milestone payments along the way. I'm a huge SpaceX fan, but let's not pretend they could've done thi…

Would you call all options and futures subsidies? Are airlines subsidizing oil companies when they purchase oil futures in order to hedge their oil costs? There is no indication that these commitments were underpriced by the government, so to call them subsidies is at best baseless misinformation.

> Are airlines subsidizing oil companies when they purchase oil futures in order to hedge their oil costs?

No; both parties in the deal have successfully accomplished their respective roles repeatedly before. The airline isn't doing anything new; the oil company isn't doing anything new.

(And they both absolutely get subsidized!)

> There is no indication that these commitments were underpriced by the government...

They got paid for a launch of an untested platform and a student-built payload, regardless of success, in hopes it would result in a good tested platform. What else do you call it?

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#190
post #13

[flagged]

He's always been all-in on the winning candidate. His whole business is getting government subsidies. His single principle is sucking up to people in power. He loved Obama when he was in power, too. Proud to say I've found that asshole annoying since WAY before it was cool.

As SpaceX is essentially the only mature commercial launch company with reusable rockets, it should be no surprise that the company gets government contracts.
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