I'm optimistic. But they have yet to show the ship can suffer a re-entry without losing part of the front flap. This is a deal-breaker, unless they expect to replace those flaps with every flight.
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Starship's eleventh flight test
61–70 of 83 posts
Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#62I'm optimistic. But they have yet to show the ship can suffer a re-entry without losing part of the front flap. This is a deal-breaker, unless they expect to replace those flaps with every flight.
That's the furthest thing from a "deal-breaker". Flap damage is an inconvenience at best.
Keep in mind: they're yet to reuse a ship, and landing Starship onto the launch tower is even more precarious than their first stage landing trick. There's still a lot of room for actual fuckups to happen there. They're going to lose ships, and they'll be lucky to avoid losing a tower.
Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too bad he's also taking away money from tens of millions of poor americans. I don't even understand. He could have just ... not done that, wouldn't have cost him one cent.
How is he taking money away.
via subsidies @ corporate socialism? that's one of the things.
Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#64I'm saddend by how little I care. I used to follow this quite intensely, and wished space-X the best. But with the owners antics, I just can't get myself to care that much. At the very least, that is sad for all the hardworking people at space-X.
seems like it is mostly sad for you
Not really, no.
What used to be a very exciting pioneering space company is now a cash cow that directly funds and enables whimsies of an unhinged billionaire that keeps doing shit aimed at destabilizing lives of many, including mine. And I am not even in the US!
Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#65Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is he taking money away.
via subsidies @ corporate socialism? that's one of the things.
How are gov subsidies taking away money from tens of millions. That is not how the gov budget works.
Spacex contracts are by far the lowest cost to get cargo into orbit though. They save the gov money.
Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#67The development timeline has been so strange. Falcon 9 was made so quickly compared to Starship. I would have expected a working rocket would have been quick - especially given they have a wealth of experience making the first one. And then I would have expected a protracted period of nailing down the landing and reuse And yet.. just getting this thing to orbit has been seemingly as hard as catching it coming down Do…
Falcon 9 was a fairly conventional design using technology similar to Falcon 1, both using liquid oxygen and kerosene engines similar to those used in the 1960s.
Starship on the other hand is pioneering new stuff - hopefully the world's first fully reusable rocket which no one has managed before.
Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#68[deleted]
Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#69I'm saddend by how little I care. I used to follow this quite intensely, and wished space-X the best. But with the owners antics, I just can't get myself to care that much. At the very least, that is sad for all the hardworking people at space-X.
That's a shame. Following Starship's development process has been amazing, talking as someone who is interested but not intensely so. Raptor engine, booster catching, ship maneuvering, heatsink development, launch infrastructure. All is very exciting. It's was a big disappointment when they encountered setback earlier this year, and I was very happy when they got back on track with the latest flight. You are entitled…
>technological advances are permanent that have long term impacts
That's not necessarily true, look at the clockwork cylinder fished up from the ancient Greeks that was apparently an Olympic oriented calendar.
And.... the pyramids. Built by humans, yet the method is not well understood now, so little so in fact that aliens seems more plausible.
I would say that technological advancement is often lost to time, those are just two examples and I imagine there are countless more we don't know.
Re: Starship's eleventh flight test
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
via subsidies @ corporate socialism? that's one of the things.
How are gov subsidies taking away money from tens of millions. That is not how the gov budget works. Spacex contracts are by far the lowest cost to get cargo into orbit though. They save the gov money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...
Your spacex contracts thing is bullshit too, but first the more important stuff. I think you'll agree many of these affect poor americans greatly, as well as poor people worldwide. A partial list of what Musk did with DOGE:
* Mass layoffs across the government. Especially education is badly affected.
* USAID shutdowns
* DOE downsizing (ie. killing education)
* Sabotaging student loans (purposefully cutting the infrastructure and personnel for getting a student loan)
* Killing off local Social Security access by closing offices
The list goes on. Next time Elon Musk says he needs engineers, I hope someone has the courage to ask him why he seriously and purposefully damaged education for Americans.
As for the spacex contracts: a cheaper price only helps if it actually leads to less spending. Since the US cannot risk spacex being the only access to space, it cannot cut funding to ULA contracts. Therefore spacex is more expensive, despite the cheaper sticker price.
Think of it this way. Let's say there's 2 cars. One is 40,000 USD (thanks to Musk and Trump's tariffs). One is 20,000 USD. But due to law you can only buy the 20,000 USD car if you ALSO buy the 40,000 USD car, there's no other way. So the real price is:
* the "cheaper" car: 60,000 USD total price
* the "expensive" car: 40,000 USD total price
See the problem here? Spacex is not actually cheaper. Only by not counting a bunch of costs because they come out of a different budget is spacex cheaper. A fact ("deception" I would say) that keeps repeating in mr. Musk's businesses. The sticker price on Tesler cars, for example, has similar problems: EXPENSIVE mandatory maintenance means the price of Musk's electric cars is far more than the competition, despite the sticker price sometimes being cheaper. Of course, now even the sticker price is far from the best.