111–120 of 326 posts
The best part of this flight was seeing the full reentry with no visible hot spots or burn through like we've seen on every previous reentry of Starship. Seems like they have the heat shields really nailed.
It seems to give the booster a real kick - what's that do to turbo's and fuel movement?
You've got hot exhaust onto cold cryo fuel tank header?
You've got to carry more mass in terms of protection for the tank?
Is doing MECO and then push and then get 100 yards apart or something before second stage / ship engines kick on a big enough penalty to justify all the extra complexity?
It's worth remembering that, according to SpaceX's own filings, they've spent >$15 billion on the Starship program thus far with more to come. And SpaceX is burning cash still, particularly because Elon Musk bailed out his own bad decisions with Twitter and xAI with SpaceX stock, basically. Flight 12 was a relative success. Some engines failed to light but that's an unintended good test. Rockets are typically designe…
> At this point, the entire SpaceX project is a bet on telecommunications services, specifically direct-to-satellite handheld Internet. That's the only market that will recoup the program costs. There's also a military angle here. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to look into Musk's history with Michael D. Griffin from the Reagan SDI/'Star Wars' program.
Obviously a few hundred kg of payload in orbit are not equivalent to the same payload delivered directly to a target.
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The videos were incredible. My favorite part was watching the booster flip in such clarity. Normally we don't get full view of it, let alone 4k.
The videos are great!, but the rest of it is never going to work lol, just never. Even without a rethink about how to get heavy payloads to another planet this is still good entertainment.
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…
> The amazing views of the plasma during re-entry, something never seen live before starship, are now routine. The word "live" is doing a lot of work here. Astronauts used to film the plasma going past the windows of Shuttle. I remember as a kid my science textbook had a still of it to illustrate plasma.
A latency of a few seconds for streaming video compared to several months for a still photo from the Shuttle seems an entirely valid use of 'live'.
I am just delighted that SpaceX continues with the "good enough" pace of development here, at least at these phases. Rapid iteration of build, test, learn, and improve rather than wait for perfection. They are willing to have "negative outcome learning experiences" to gather data quickly. and, of course, data, data, data. I like it because I know what insane amount of red tape has built up to do anything similar in a…
Shame they're risking that ability with the IPO. We've seen how irrational and ignorant stock traders are from other publicly traded space companies. Even scrubbed launches cause the price to dip.
Absolutely true, but ignorant stock traders making irrational trades only matters if company management pays attention to them. Musk will maintain complete control of SpaceX even after the IPO, so he can focus on long-term value rather than short-term ups and downs.
Of course, over time, if more shares are issued, this may change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The videos are great!, but the rest of it is never going to work lol, just never. Even without a rethink about how to get heavy payloads to another planet this is still good entertainment.
why won't it ever work?
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’s people were saying it was on target, and it seems to have landed in about the same position relative to the camera buoy as previous flights. I don’t think there’s any evidence to call it off target. The landing and toppling looked the same as previous flights too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Five years ago SpaceX reported that they had 30000 seconds of test firing time on the Raptor, over 567 engine starts. Since them the program accelerated dramatically. Well over one thousand engines had been produced, and on an average day at McGregor test facility the Raptors are fired for about 600 seconds. That would give about a million seconds over five years. That's a lot for any engine development program.
Consider for a moment the data requirements for the telemetry system that records those engine runs.
Does anyone know how important hot staging is? It seems to give the booster a real kick - what's that do to turbo's and fuel movement? You've got hot exhaust onto cold cryo fuel tank header? You've got to carry more mass in terms of protection for the tank? Is doing MECO and then push and then get 100 yards apart or something before second stage / ship engines kick on a big enough penalty to justify all the extra com…