What does this mean for the crewed mission to Mars next year?
SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
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Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#12Wow, still, while the booster was lost that much success must have given them so much more data.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#13Altogether, it was a terrific flight and a big step forward for the Starship program. The biggest success was the survival of stage zero, which bodes well for a quick turnaround for the next flight. Hot staging was the second big success, and Starship got to space. The flight termination was disappointing, but the actual functioning of the FTS system seems to be fixed. That was a problem with the first flight and sho…
Isn't reentry supposed to be the hard part? How was this a success?
All of those are very hard.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#14Altogether, it was a terrific flight and a big step forward for the Starship program. The biggest success was the survival of stage zero, which bodes well for a quick turnaround for the next flight. Hot staging was the second big success, and Starship got to space. The flight termination was disappointing, but the actual functioning of the FTS system seems to be fixed. That was a problem with the first flight and sho…
Isn't reentry supposed to be the hard part? How was this a success?
The largest rocket ever built just got to space for the first time. Even without re-entry this is a milestone.
They have a production line to build these things. They’ll roll out the next one and try again. It’s not like SLS where everything is expected to work perfectly.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#15The engines on the first stage did well in this test. During the first test they were malfunctioning like crazy.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#16What does this mean for the crewed mission to Mars next year?
It means I’m confident and signed up.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#17"Loses" is kind of an incorrect way to talk about the launch. The flight made great progress and was just shy of orbital velocity (it was over 24,000 km/hr and orbital velocity is around 24,500 km/hr for a low orbit).
Keep in mind that the goal of this launch wasn't to carry any payload. It was to get data and further iterative development. People here, especially, should understand how iterative development works.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#18In spite of this, it was still a great success.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#19Altogether, it was a terrific flight and a big step forward for the Starship program. The biggest success was the survival of stage zero, which bodes well for a quick turnaround for the next flight. Hot staging was the second big success, and Starship got to space. The flight termination was disappointing, but the actual functioning of the FTS system seems to be fixed. That was a problem with the first flight and sho…
Isn't reentry supposed to be the hard part? How was this a success?
It was more successful than the last one. These are experimental rockets that are tested, usually to destruction. It's a success to the extent that it gets them further along in their R&D. To call it a failure would be to ignore the fact that this is progress.
But yeah, landings would have been much bigger successes.