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Starship Flight 7

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391–400 of 772 posts

Re: Starship Flight 7

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can you name a space company with less failures? Also I think it is unfair to even compare SpaceX to anything else, because of the insane amount of starts / tests combined unparalleled creativity. According to this website their current success rate is 99,18%. That's a good number I guess? Considering other companies did not even land their stages for years. https://spaceinsider.tech/2024/07/31/ula-vs-spacex/#:~:text…

It says right there in your source that that figure refers to Falcon in particular. For comparison, Starship's current track record is 3/7 launch failures (+1 landing failure).

There's an order of magnitude difference between them. If they were cars, it'd be like comparing the smallest car you can think of vs one of the biggest tanks ever made.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can you name a space company with less failures? Also I think it is unfair to even compare SpaceX to anything else, because of the insane amount of starts / tests combined unparalleled creativity. According to this website their current success rate is 99,18%. That's a good number I guess? Considering other companies did not even land their stages for years. https://spaceinsider.tech/2024/07/31/ula-vs-spacex/#:~:text…

Success rate isn’t a great metric for efficient initial work: it will keep improving as more launches are done, regardless of the initial work.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#393
What worries me about space innovation is the fact that there is such little margin for error. Materials are being stressed so much while trying to defy the laws of physics that the smallest angle error, the smallest pressure mismatch, smallest timing error, and boom. This did not happen when we were inventing cars, trains and air planes. Now imagine these risks, while you're halfway to mars. Is it possible that we just have no found/invented the right materials or the right fuel/propulsion mechanism to de-risk this, and that is where we should be allocating a lot more resources?

Re: Starship Flight 7

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, the debris was likely closer to around ~100km in altitude. Commercial airliners fly around ~10km in altitude. Appearing to be at a similar altitude as the plane and "in front" of it was an optical illusion because the debris was intensely bright, very far away, very high and moving several times faster than a bullet. While we don't have exact data yet, I believe it is highly likely there was zero chance of…

> the debris was likely closer to around ~100km in altitude. Commercial airliners fly around ~10km in altitude (Not wishing to ask the obvious, and depending on the size of the pieces) debris at 100km altitude pretty much always ends up being debris falling through 10km ... right?

No, all or the absolute majority of it burns around 50km.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#395
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The one that still flips a bit in my brain is the two Falcon rockets landing in unison side by side. I'd say it was high-end CGI except no director would approve an effects shot of orbital rockets landing in such a perfect, cinematically choreographed way. It would just be sent back to ILM marked "Good effort, but too obviously fake. Rework to be more realistic and resubmit."

Seeing a rocket land vertically goes against almost 70 years of what we "know" about rockets. Falcon 9 rockets landing on legs seem unnatural enough; now we have a rocket, the size of a 20-story building, landing on chopsticks. There are lots of vertical-landing rockets ... in science fiction, and only before Sputnik in 1957. Once actual space programs came about and lots of engineers understood just how difficult la…

Not to rain too much on your harping, but the DC-X program did vertical landing 30 years ago.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, the debris was likely closer to around ~100km in altitude. Commercial airliners fly around ~10km in altitude. Appearing to be at a similar altitude as the plane and "in front" of it was an optical illusion because the debris was intensely bright, very far away, very high and moving several times faster than a bullet. While we don't have exact data yet, I believe it is highly likely there was zero chance of…

> the debris was likely closer to around ~100km in altitude. Commercial airliners fly around ~10km in altitude (Not wishing to ask the obvious, and depending on the size of the pieces) debris at 100km altitude pretty much always ends up being debris falling through 10km ... right?

At the incredible speeds Starship was moving (>13,000 mph) by the time it was over the Caribbean, debris from a Starship is expected to burn up by the time it reaches the surface. But you said "depending on the size", so let's imagine it's a different spacecraft carrying something that won't entirely burn up, like the Mir space station from several years back.

In that scenario, debris from 100km will survive to pass through 10km. The point is: if the mass becomes debris >143km high traveling at >13,000 mph over the Caribbean - it doesn't pass through 10km anywhere near the Caribbean. Even though the friction causing tempered metal to glow white hot is slowing it, the trajectory is ballistic so by the time it slows enough to get that low (10km) it's hundreds or thousands of miles East from where the explosion happened (and where that airplane was).

It's weird because given these orbital velocities and altitudes, our intuitions about up and down aren't very useful. Starship exploded in orbit over the Caribbean, so planes in the Caribbean were safe from falling debris. If it was Mir instead of Starship, planes hundreds or thousands miles to the East of the Caribbean would be at elevated risk. My high school astronomy teacher once said something like "Rockets don't go up to reach orbit. They go sideways. And they keep going sideways faster and faster until they're going so fast, up and down don't matter anymore." While that's hardly a scientific summary, it does give a sense of the dynamics. You'll recall that Mir was intentionally de-orbited so it would land in a desolate part of the Indian Ocean. So, did they blow it up right over the Indian Ocean? Nope. To crash it in the Indian Ocean, given the altitude and speed, they "blew it up" on the other side of Earth, like maybe over Chicago (I actually don't recall where the de-orbit began, but had to be very far away).

Re: Starship Flight 7

#398

What worries me about space innovation is the fact that there is such little margin for error. Materials are being stressed so much while trying to defy the laws of physics that the smallest angle error, the smallest pressure mismatch, smallest timing error, and boom. This did not happen when we were inventing cars, trains and air planes. Now imagine these risks, while you're halfway to mars. Is it possible that we j…

It definitely happened with planes, we have a century of improvements that made them much much safer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_(material)#de_Havillan...

Re: Starship Flight 7

#399
post #286

I absolutely cannot relate to the HN excitement over rockets. What is the point? What are we going to do with them? It feels like half religion half misplaced techno-positivism. (Also a person who actively platforms outspoken neo-nazis runs the company that is launching them)

> half religion half misplaced techno-positivism

It sometimes feels like it: everything blows-up and thread here is like "what a success", Second stage explodes - "beautiful" (while trash is falling into ocean).

Re: Starship Flight 7

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a space company with less failures? Also I think it is unfair to even compare SpaceX to anything else, because of the insane amount of starts / tests combined unparalleled creativity. According to this website their current success rate is 99,18%. That's a good number I guess? Considering other companies did not even land their stages for years. https://spaceinsider.tech/2024/07/31/ula-vs-spacex/#:~:text…

It says right there in your source that that figure refers to Falcon in particular. For comparison, Starship's current track record is 3/7 launch failures (+1 landing failure). There's an order of magnitude difference between them. If they were cars, it'd be like comparing the smallest car you can think of vs one of the biggest tanks ever made.

It’s like comparing the reliability of the Model 3 and the Cybertruck.
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