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Starship Flight 7

spacex.com

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Re: Starship Flight 7

#481

Post by noneeeed »

charles_f wrote: post #39

That "landing" (is it still considered a landing if it's chopsticked a few meters before it touches the ground?) is so unnatural it almost looks fake. So big and unimaginable that it feels like watching fx on a movie! The close-up camera right after was interesting, I thought it captured on the grid fins, but it looks like there are two small purpose-built knobs for that. The times we live in!

I found the same when the first Falcon Heavy executed the simultaneous booster landing. Watching them both come down, within moments of each other at neighbouring pads was incredibly cool.

Its sad that Gerry Anderson never got to see this. It's like something from a Thunderbirds episode.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#482

Post by ricardobeat »

orwin wrote: post #469
nicky0 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Test code by running it. Test a rocket by launching it.

In production? I don't disagree that tests 'in production' are sometimes necessary (canary tests), but most of the quirks are often fixed by then. Honestly I thought they would be live testing fuel exchange in orbit by now. Seems pretty far from it sadly.

That might still happen this year, it’s the next step in the development plan.

What makes these launches “non-production” tests is that they are not carrying any valuable payload. Blowing up rockets like this is exactly what gives the company it’s advantage over competitors who try to anticipate everything during design stages.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#483

Post by TypingOutBugs »

EncomLab wrote: post #447

First Shuttle orbited astronauts and successfully recovered all intended components. Every Saturn 5 was successful, the 3rd flight sent a crew to lunar orbit, and the 6th put a crew on the moon. To date a Starship has yet to be recovered after flight - and those launched are effectively boilerplate as they have carried no cargo (other than a banana) and have none of the systems in place to support a crew. Some people…

> First Shuttle orbited astronauts and successfully recovered all intended components.

There were 16 taxi and flight tests with Enterprise before the launch in 1981 (Approach and Landing Tests - Enterprise) where the first 8 were uncrewed. Just saying there were prior test flights using it.

There was something like 4 years of testing before the proper launch.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#484

Post by tsimionescu »

throw5959 wrote: post #473
tsimionescu wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apollo program was inventing all of this technology, and using only extremely rudimentary computers, still doing many calculations with slide rulers. SpaceX has all of the Apollo program's work to build on, and computers that could do all the computing work that the Apollo program ever made, in total, in probably a few minutes.

SpaceX is inventing quite a lot, there's more areas where they started greenfield than where they got help.

They are inventing a little, but the basics of rocket flight are now well understood. You can get a university (probably post grad) course on it. And nothing that they are doing is all that revolutionary, definitely not compared to what Apollo did (going from airplanes and ballistic missiles to orbital space flight and then Moon missions).

Consider that even reusable self-landings boosters were being worked on in the 90s, before funding was cut off. And for expandable rockets, virtually all rockets designed and launched in the last few decades have successfully accomplished their first ever flight, launching some kind of payload to orbit.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#485

Post by gcanyon »

varjag wrote: post #412
throw0101a wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (as seen from ground) As seen from a plane in the air with the break up right in front of it: https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1i34dki/starship_...

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion

I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#486

Post by onion2k »

api wrote: post #477
dpifke wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity. Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880060983734858130

Would be unpleasant if there was crew. Of course this thing is pretty far from human eating.

Would be unpleasant if there was crew.

19 people have died in the 391 crewed space missions humans have done so far. The risk of dying is very high. Starship is unlikely to change that, although the commoditization of space flight could have reduce the risk simply by making problems easier to spot because there's more flights.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#487

Post by saberience »

me_me_me wrote: post #475
tsimionescu wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apollo program was inventing all of this technology, and using only extremely rudimentary computers, still doing many calculations with slide rulers. SpaceX has all of the Apollo program's work to build on, and computers that could do all the computing work that the Apollo program ever made, in total, in probably a few minutes.

this doesn't even scratch the surface. Slow motion cameras and real time sensors for debugging hardware issues, computer simulations, 3d printing. Apollo program directors would advocate to start a nuclear war with ussr if they could get hands on that kind of tech. But also NASA landed two SUVs on mars first try, using skycrane, Full remote. they developed and built mars helicopter/drone (rip). First try. But spaceX…

This seems like a fairly disingenuous comment.

SpaceX gets credit and rightly so because they have achieved things which no national space agency nor private company has ever done before, and done it faster and at a lower budget than anyone has done before.

Every other national space agency and private company had both infinitely more money, time, and engineers than SpaceX did (when founded) yet they were making zero progress on reusable rockets, cheap super heavy lift capacity to orbit, and America had no way of taking their own astronauts to the space station!

Musk (hate him or love him) founded a company from nothing which has exceeded the capabilities of nasa and the us government, the European space agency, and the russian space agency, as well as ULA, Boeing, Lockheed etc.

They have the first rocket ever made which can take payloads to orbit and then be reused. They have the most cost effective rocket ever made for taking loads to orbit. They have reused rockets up to 20 times! They have build the most powerful rocket ever built which is fully reusable. They have built the most efficient and powerful rocket engines ever built before. And they have done it all incredibly quickly starting from nothing.

Oh and they also built a massive internet constellation providing fast and cheap satellite internet to the whole world, saving countless lives and also helping stimulate economies across the world as well as enabling more remote work etc.

So much of what they have done was considered impossible or not economical or not practical or so difficult other countries or companies didn’t even TRY.

So yes. Given their success it’s worth trying to understand their development methodology, which is iterate fast and fail lots and learn lots. Given how much they’ve kicked the shit out of the SLS program in capability and budget and also how they’ve crushed Blue Origin (which started earlier with more budget) who both operate in a more old fashioned way, I would certainly say it’s important to acknowledge they may be doing something right!

Re: Starship Flight 7

#488

Post by penjelly »

nicky0 wrote: post #454
notorandit wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running a code test doesn't require firing a rocket. How would you test a rocket?

Test code by running it. Test a rocket by launching it.

launching a rocket is far more analogulous to shipping a release, than it is running code.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#489

Post by eecc »

pyrale wrote: post #395
TMWNN wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nice, what happened of it?

Re: Starship Flight 7

#490

Post by me_me_me »

saberience wrote: post #487
me_me_me wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this doesn't even scratch the surface. Slow motion cameras and real time sensors for debugging hardware issues, computer simulations, 3d printing. Apollo program directors would advocate to start a nuclear war with ussr if they could get hands on that kind of tech. But also NASA landed two SUVs on mars first try, using skycrane, Full remote. they developed and built mars helicopter/drone (rip). First try. But spaceX…

This seems like a fairly disingenuous comment. SpaceX gets credit and rightly so because they have achieved things which no national space agency nor private company has ever done before, and done it faster and at a lower budget than anyone has done before. Every other national space agency and private company had both infinitely more money, time, and engineers than SpaceX did (when founded) yet they were making zero…

> SpaceX gets credit and rightly so because they have achieved things which no national space agency nor private company has ever done before

Such as?

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