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Starship's Sixth Flight Test

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Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#391

Post by righthand »

shkkmo wrote: post #371
righthand wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, now you want to put more satellites in the sky, for weather and gps. Is there some evidence that what we have now is not enough or wouldn’t ever be replaced? I cannot find anything online about that. So I still do not see how this will necessarily improve my daily life as the weather information I have now is already good.

Weather prediction isn't just about "should I have a picnic today". Accurate weater information is important for innumerable economic activites, from farming to shipping to contruction to power generation planning. Providing better forecasts would allow us to save lives and money in these industries and this will reduce the costs you pay for goods. It might even save the life of someone you love. There are 3 new GPS…

Yeah but we can already launch rockets. Everything else you’re telling me is not application of it but promises that something will come from it. But not listing anything valuable to my average earth dweller life doesn’t tell me that anything beneficial will come from it. No matter how many times someone insists that “yes there will be many advancements obviously, we just need cheaper rockets to tell you what they are first”.

You have to acknowledge that we could also spend a bunch of money and time doing this to no benefit at all for the average earth dweller.

I like the positive attitudes about it but the whole “this’ll be good in the long run, you’ll see” talk is just talk.

It was beneficial previously when we had 0 rockets and 0 sattelites, that was easy to see. Now that we have it, it’s just an R&D playground for the rich and those willing to invest in the dellusion.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#392

Post by ceejayoz »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #364
nulld3v wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I stopped watching when the criticism of Falcon 9’s pricing came up. Why should SpaceX, a private company, undercut itself? It’s already the cheapest (relative to mass; PSLV gives it a run for some orbits), most reliable and most frequent launch provider in the world. It makes sense for them to capture the delta as profit versus cut prices for the sake of it. (There is also no inflation adjusting done.) Exactly, th…

Musk expressed outrage that the Russians are massively overcharging the US so he went on to massively overcharge the US.

Eh, Cargo/Crew Dragon is wildly cheaper than the non-functional Boeing option, and I suspect cheaper (both in cash, and geopolitically) than using Soyuz.

They've taken the lion's share of the market by being quite a bit cheaper. It makes plenty of sense to keep the price there and put the resulting profits into R&D.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#393

Post by shkkmo »

righthand wrote: post #391
shkkmo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weather prediction isn't just about "should I have a picnic today". Accurate weater information is important for innumerable economic activites, from farming to shipping to contruction to power generation planning. Providing better forecasts would allow us to save lives and money in these industries and this will reduce the costs you pay for goods. It might even save the life of someone you love. There are 3 new GPS…

Yeah but we can already launch rockets. Everything else you’re telling me is not application of it but promises that something will come from it. But not listing anything valuable to my average earth dweller life doesn’t tell me that anything beneficial will come from it. No matter how many times someone insists that “yes there will be many advancements obviously, we just need cheaper rockets to tell you what they ar…

Next time please bother reading my comment if you are going to reply.

I listed spefic gains from lower launch costs that are not theoretical and directly improve the lives of everyday people.

As I said before, you don't actually want an answer here.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#394

Post by indoordin0saur »

sebazzz wrote: post #389
indoordin0saur wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean after the Boeing debacle?

I think they meant buying Trump. As far as I understand the super heavy launch market doesn’t yet exist. Even if in payload mass capacity Starship can do it, we still need to see one with a payload door rather than a pez-satellite dispenser.

An obvious use case is just ridesharing. Multiple companies want to launch midsize satellites? Rather than paying for multiple Falcon 9 launches group up a few into one Starship launch and save a lot of money.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#395

Post by coconoconut »

thelastparadise wrote: post #213
hackitup7 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the experience of watching these SpaceX videos very emotional. There's something really inspiring both from an "exploring the universe" perspective and also just from the human side of all of the effort that went into them. The first video that really got to me was when they landed multiple boosters. This one as well, especially seeing the rocket take off with every booster firing when compared with the first…

This kind of thing is why I got into engineering in the first place. There's so much more to it than money.

[dead]

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#396

Post by caekislove »

paul7986 wrote: post #67
modeless wrote: post #38

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.

Yeah we should call this whole thing off and spend the money on solving poverty! /s

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#397

Post by cryptonector »

ceejayoz wrote: post #252
cryptonector wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you call that a subsidy still if the government saved more money than it provided as the subsidy?

Yes, absolutely. We made money off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program , but it was 100% a subsidy.

Does his competition also get subsidies? Who gets more, who gets less? Are your complaints motivated by Musk's political opinions and activities?

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#398

Post by Shawnj2 »

joshmarlow wrote: post #384
jmward01 wrote: post #366

I am a fan of space. I love the things that have happened with SpaceX and breaking the space industry out of a multi-decade rut, but is it possible to dsiconect the political ambitions of Musk from the technical achievements? Or, to put it more clearly, should the discussion be less about 'look how cool this tech is!' and more about 'This tech will be the gateway to space and Mars, shouldn't we be talking about the g…

There's no reason to assume that SpaceX/Musk will be the only launch providers long-term. They proved out reusability and are proving out the benefits of the Starship design and there are multiple startups working to emulate them. EDIT: typo, removed redundant 'long-term'.

The launch startup space has completely fallen apart over the last 5 years. SpaceX and rocket lab will make it, I’m not so sure about everyone else.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#399

Post by thinkcontext »

DylanSp wrote: post #383
dmurray wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? SpaceX [0] gives the capacity as 150t reusable or 250t expendable, which is significant, but not enough to make one "enormous". If you really got order-of-magnitude gains from an expendable upper stage, it wouldn't be that exciting to have reusable rockets (which are more complex and still only fly one order of magnitude more times) in the first place. [0] https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/

If the upper stage wasn't designed to be reusable, it'd probably have a lot less structural dry mass - no heat shield, no fins, possibly different geometry (depending on how much volume they wanted). It might also be possible to drop the sea-level Raptor engines and just use the more efficient vacuum Raptors. I don't think you'd get an order-of-magnitude difference, but it'd be significant, especially for higher-ener…

I don't understand why they don't make such an upper stage. It would allow them to refine the booster design and catch logistics while also launching payloads.

Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test

#400

Post by DylanSp »

thinkcontext wrote: post #399
DylanSp wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the upper stage wasn't designed to be reusable, it'd probably have a lot less structural dry mass - no heat shield, no fins, possibly different geometry (depending on how much volume they wanted). It might also be possible to drop the sea-level Raptor engines and just use the more efficient vacuum Raptors. I don't think you'd get an order-of-magnitude difference, but it'd be significant, especially for higher-ener…

I don't understand why they don't make such an upper stage. It would allow them to refine the booster design and catch logistics while also launching payloads.

My guess would be that it would take too much extra design work. Making the current upper stage reusable is necessary for the HLS contract anyways, and they've got a lot of work to do already on refining the heat shield & fin protection, enabling landing, and working on propellant transfer.
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