Earlier quoted context omitted.
China is spending a crazy amount of money with several companies trying to copy SpaceX. They are trying to land boosters right now.
Have you got a link?
Starship's Sixth Flight Test
441–450 of 455 posts
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
Falcon 9 and SLS are not in the same class.
This is true. SLS is around $ 37000 / kg to Orbit Falcon 9 is around $ 2700 / kg to Orbit So in excess of an order of magnitude difference. Starship build cost is currently estimated at $90 million [1]. Let's call it $100 million to make the calculations simple. So even if they can't reuse anything and the payload is at the low-end of what they expect, so 100t from the 100-150t range, that would be $1 million per ton…
NASA pays $23,300/kg for Falcon 9 and Dragon though.
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
Democracy?
Democracy happened in 1930s Germany as well.
It really didn't, it was an armed insurgency.
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#444I 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…
Disregarding other implications of Musk's political influence, it's not probably not good for SpaceX long-term. Right now it feels like the beginning of SpaceX turning into the next Boeing. A revolving door between industry and regulators, regulators looking the other way, too big to fail, over-charging and under-delivering.
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#445There is so much hype here from people who don’t seem to understand that Space X is years behind schedule and over budget.
Saturn V went to the moon with crew on its sixth flight. Space X have yet to complete a flight without an accident or lift any payload at all, putting aside their claimed capability.
People seem so dazzled by the hype that they fail to see this system isn’t working.
Each rocket costs the taxpayer billions and this far they are being destroyed. Even worse the cost per seat with Space X in Falcon is not cheaper than Soyuz in real terms despite the reusability.
Wonder why the cost of refurbishing these rockets isn’t shared?
This will be downvoted but it doesn’t make any of it untrue. Space X is failing in front of cheering crowds who think they are inventing what they have copied.
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#446Earlier 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.
So if we're moving the goalposts from hundreds of successful booster landings and reuses back to a simple technology demonstrator executing a hop in the 1990s, then I propose we go all the way back to propulsively landing a manned capsule on the Moon in 1969. SpaceX is 60 years obsolete!
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article [0] is a pretty good explainer for why Starship is such a big deal [0] https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st...
That's very good. And it's from 2021. Since then: - Starship is actually launching now - Boeing's reputation and credibility are in tatters - Trump won with heavy support from Musk. Expect a new head of NASA who is pro-Musk, and a cancellation of the Senate Launch System. On the other hand, it's not clear what a Moon base is good for. The ISS isn't very useful.
> it's not clear what a Moon base is good for
not letting China do it first
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true. SLS is around $ 37000 / kg to Orbit Falcon 9 is around $ 2700 / kg to Orbit So in excess of an order of magnitude difference. Starship build cost is currently estimated at $90 million [1]. Let's call it $100 million to make the calculations simple. So even if they can't reuse anything and the payload is at the low-end of what they expect, so 100t from the 100-150t range, that would be $1 million per ton…
NASA pays $23,300/kg for Falcon 9 and Dragon though. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093
Apples and oranges: a human-rated capsule is a significant additional cost.
Orion alone costs another $1 billion per shot [1]. Project cost is $21 billion.[2]
OTOH: "Since 2020, when Dragon 2 flew its first crewed and uncrewed flights, it has proven to be the most cost-effective spacecraft ever used by NASA." [3]
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/03/nasa-inspector-gener...
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
No I got answers. As I’ve been saying before, to which YOU don’t want to listen to my perspective. None of what you list would be halted or forfeited by the discontinuation of Starship. None of what you list would affect my personal day to day. It is very clear YOU don’t want to consider any other perspective than “of course everything is perfect and good from Starship”. I will gladly eat my words when it is proven o…
> None of what you list would affect my personal day to day. You've made up your mind so I'm not going to convince you. I'm only trying to debunk that for the sake of other readers. More precise, more timely weather forecast will definitely affect your day. Better crop, more efficient cargo transport definitely have the potential to improve your life, your health, and lower your cost of living. Starlink V2 is capable…
You've made up your mind so I'm not going to convince you. I'm only trying to debunk that for the sake of other readers.
Starship is not a new piece of tech, perhaps it’s refined tech but we were building rockets before. So the continued insinuation that we can only improve weather and gps via Starship is absolute snake oil.
Starlink also isn’t new tech, it’s just Musk’s flavor.
Yes thinking deeper and asking questions then asking how the answers can possibly be true will really affect my life. As evidenced by this thread where Starship enthusiasts are getting irritated and talking down to me. How’s the advanced weather prediction up their on your high horse?
Re: Starship's Sixth Flight Test
#450There is so much hype here from people who don’t seem to understand that Space X is years behind schedule and over budget. Saturn V went to the moon with crew on its sixth flight. Space X have yet to complete a flight without an accident or lift any payload at all, putting aside their claimed capability. People seem so dazzled by the hype that they fail to see this system isn’t working. Each rocket costs the taxpayer…
I'm not sure where you're getting the billions in taxpayer cost per rocket. It sounds like to date SpaceX has spent a few billion on the whole program. They did receive a ~$3B contract for Artemis, but as I understand it, that's a fixed rate for delivery of a functional spacecraft, regardless of how many they lose in development.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship
It's also making meaningful progress with each launch. Comparing it to Saturn V seems like apples and oranges. This is a functional full flow liquid fueled rocket and booster at the current stage of development. They've also always been open about an iterative development approach (i.e. blow up more rockets). It's not Saturn V, so I'm not sure why we'd expect the same number of launches during development? Seems like a pretty arbitrary metric.