Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

space.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 326 posts

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#211

Post by djeastm »

clippy99 wrote: post #89
Laremere wrote: post #15

Summary from my watch: - Launch roughly on time, after a scrub yesterday. (Sounds like the scrub was due to ground equipment, most notably the water system.) - Initial ascent was good, but then one engine on the booster went out. - Relight of the booster's engines after stage separation for the boost back burn failed. Engines did light again for a landing burn, but seems to have hit the water harder than expected and…

SpaceX does an excellent job at videography. Sad that Nasa flew its Artemis mission with potato cameras.

SpaceX probably spends a lot of money on marketing/public relations creating great media. I'm guessing NASA's on a shoestring budget for that kind of thing.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#212

Post by fooblaster »

GuB-42 wrote: post #197
fooblaster wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know a whole the size of a quarter can wreck the entire spacecraft and make it effectively throw away? Also, you'd want to use this many times. Making a system robust while not requiring months of refurbishment is really really hard.

For some of the tests, they removed a few tiles before launch, presumably to test that. Starship did fine.

coming back in one piece, and being good enough to use for 5 more missions are two very different things. For example, all existing reentry vehicles come back "fine" but they need to be completely remade to go up again.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#213

Post by hvb2 »

isodev wrote: post #206
Laremere wrote: post #15

Summary from my watch: - Launch roughly on time, after a scrub yesterday. (Sounds like the scrub was due to ground equipment, most notably the water system.) - Initial ascent was good, but then one engine on the booster went out. - Relight of the booster's engines after stage separation for the boost back burn failed. Engines did light again for a landing burn, but seems to have hit the water harder than expected and…

And the “side effect” of polluting the ocean? SpaceX is more of a let’s only do things half way kind of company it seems.

You do realize that every company so far has been doing that to every booster for every launch, right?

There's 2 options if you don't want to drop stages back on earth. You don't launch, you land the stage.

SpaceX is the company that pioneered propulsive landing of a booster. You can say a lot about them but not that they pollute with dropping stages in the ocean. Even in absolute sense that doesn't happen often and that's ignoring that they put over 90% of all the weight in orbit nowadays

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#214

Post by MetallicDragon »

isodev wrote: post #206
Laremere wrote: post #15

Summary from my watch: - Launch roughly on time, after a scrub yesterday. (Sounds like the scrub was due to ground equipment, most notably the water system.) - Initial ascent was good, but then one engine on the booster went out. - Relight of the booster's engines after stage separation for the boost back burn failed. Engines did light again for a landing burn, but seems to have hit the water harder than expected and…

And the “side effect” of polluting the ocean? SpaceX is more of a let’s only do things half way kind of company it seems.

Polluting with what? It's mostly stainless steel and other inert materials.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#215

Post by whatevaa »

b112 wrote: post #132
throwaway85825 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shuttle required long expensive refurbishment after each flight.

Just made me realise, this is just like the F-35. Its turn around time is ridiculous, it has to be maintained with specialized equipment/hangers, along with external contractor assistance. Compared to the Gripen, as an example, which can land on a freeway and be up in the air again in a few minutes. One was designed to be used in war, in desperate scenarios, with no ability to coddle it. The other, the F-35? Is desig…

Gripen will not be able to fly higher than tree lines in zones with active anti-air. Russia can't really use any of it's air power in Ukraine war, for example.

F35 can actually do something in such scenarios, as detecting them in the first place is hard.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#216

Post by ajross »

avmich wrote: post #48
ajross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was more that there is a point where (to borrow the software terminology) "iterative design" becomes "death march". Trying a few times in the early days and being willing to throw stuff out and start over is a powerful tool. I think blowing up a handful of rockets is a fine idea. But at some point you have to ask yourself if it will ever work? Why are we on a another engine redesign? Why is this the third i…

In a somewhat similar situation Sergey Korolyov stopped his colleague in front of the Party officials asking a similar question and explained: "We are exploring terra incognita, this is the process of getting knowledge". He was sort of right - even though there were many specific engineering problems, and many of those were rather solvable, especially in hindsight, overall process was stepping into the unknown. Here…

> Sergey Korolyov [...] explained: "[...]"

Not relevant to the discussion, but while it's fairly bland and feels right, I can't find a reference to that quote anywhere. Is this a hallucination? Where did you get it? The fact that you're quoting directly implies you copied it from somewhere.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#217

Post by wildzzz »

b112 wrote: post #132
throwaway85825 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shuttle required long expensive refurbishment after each flight.

Just made me realise, this is just like the F-35. Its turn around time is ridiculous, it has to be maintained with specialized equipment/hangers, along with external contractor assistance. Compared to the Gripen, as an example, which can land on a freeway and be up in the air again in a few minutes. One was designed to be used in war, in desperate scenarios, with no ability to coddle it. The other, the F-35? Is desig…

The Gripen is a light multirole aircraft like the F-16. The F-35 is a stealth strike fighter. It requires another level of special care to maintain its stealth performance. If you want mass-produced stealth aircraft, that's what's required. Stealth aircraft up to this point have been in extremely limited numbers at astronomical costs.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#218

Post by chasd00 »

maxlin wrote: post #19

Having a faultless payload deploy and a pinpoint landing after losing a whole vacuum engine (one of 3) so early was an unexpectedly amazing performance. I suppose they gimballed the inner non-vac engines to the max and burned longer, next level adaptability. Most obvious improvement was having no re-entry heating problems, secondmost was deploying with zero issues and with a faster pace. It appears they decided to pa…

Starship moved around so much there were a couple times I thought for sure it was out of control. Oh and takeoff looked very late but I’m sure I’m wrong. Heh I was watching the deluge turned on with no ignition thinking the whole things is about to hard start and explode.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#219

Post by dmix »

djeastm wrote: post #211
clippy99 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX does an excellent job at videography. Sad that Nasa flew its Artemis mission with potato cameras.

SpaceX probably spends a lot of money on marketing/public relations creating great media. I'm guessing NASA's on a shoestring budget for that kind of thing.

SLS was far from a shoestring budget and both NASA and Boeing/Northrop/etc have equally strong incentive to provide solid coverage for the public to keep the jobs program going.

SpaceX has much better infrastructure for video with their satellites and are just generally more competent at production

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#220

Post by ceejayoz »

fooblaster wrote: post #212
GuB-42 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some of the tests, they removed a few tiles before launch, presumably to test that. Starship did fine.

coming back in one piece, and being good enough to use for 5 more missions are two very different things. For example, all existing reentry vehicles come back "fine" but they need to be completely remade to go up again.

I remember this being the same argument used against the Falcon 9 when it first stuck its landings.

"Oh, they'll need to do it 10x to be profitable!"

Now they do, as a matter of course.

Post reply on HN