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SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

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Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#121

Post by fluoridation »

dylan604 wrote: post #110
fluoridation wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I don't think it's possible for them to say anything meaningful for comparison on their own. It depends on how different they are. Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there and hasn't orbited once. Ignoring R&D and just going by launch costs alone, that's USD 4B (2025) to orbit 1 Saturn V, vs USD x to orbit 1 Starship, where x >= 1B.

> Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there Apollo 1 - lost on the launch pad, crew killed. very bad Apollo 13 - major malfunction causing loss of mission but crew saved. very not bad Starship - 10 launches 5 failures. No crew ever so that pressure is also not comparable. Are we really claiming Starship has achieved 75% of the results of Apollo? That's absolutely ludicrous

Starship is 75% of the way to 13 launches. That's just mathematically correct.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#122

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

fhd2 wrote: post #54
ekianjo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had virtually infinite budget at the time. SpaceX is much, much cheaper.

Is it though? I'm not knowledgeable on this at all, but it _seems_ like Space X is blowing up a lot more expensive equipment compared to NASA back in the space race days. Genuinely curious how it compares and how true my outsider impression is.

Cost comparisons are strange because Starship isn't finished.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#123

Post by Culonavirus »

foobarian wrote: post #51
ge96 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deployment system was interesting, how the last one in the layer would go back then forward before releasing.

It looked like something one would cobble together from a garage opener and weld together a bunch of rebar

Keep in mind the ship diameter is like 30 feet. It may not seem like that from a camera view, but that pez dispenser is pretty massive.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#124

Post by Zigurd »

Too many things don't add up, for example: SpaceX, and friendly commentators, have framed this as a highly experimental test flight. The most visible aspect of that are the heatshield test tiles on various parts of the upper stage.

That kind of testing is understandable to a certain extent. But it doesn't make sense to ditch the rocket in the Indian Ocean once you've run those experiments, instead of catching it, and having all the parts available to study.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#125

Post by fastball »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #63
fhd2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though? I'm not knowledgeable on this at all, but it _seems_ like Space X is blowing up a lot more expensive equipment compared to NASA back in the space race days. Genuinely curious how it compares and how true my outsider impression is.

Not to mention the mountain of prior art to work off of... It's way harder to do it the first time.

The mountain of prior art being... one rocket that had very different requirements?

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#126

Post by somenameforme »

ballenf wrote: post #53
stetrain wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, although it was stated before the flight that they were intentionally flying with some heat tiles removed and with a more aggressive profile to test some outer limits.

They even removed some near fuel tanks. In the past the missing tiles were in less critical areas. I'm surprised they didn't take less risks just to avoid a narrative of failure.

That's probably the first step on the path to stagnation.

There's a lot more eyes on them now a days, and Musk is much more well known, so it creates a lot more drama - but they've done the exact same process with everything. They even published a montage of failures [1] on the way to their first successful landing 'back in the day.' It was fiery, but mostly peaceful. They didn't even hit a shark!

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#127

Post by fluoridation »

stetrain wrote: post #120
fluoridation wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the boosters are not being reused. They're just making brand new engines for every launch. If we're generous they're being dismantled and recycled.

They were talking about Falcon 9, which is absolutely being reused.

Alright, if we're talking about Falcon 9, I don't know what the cost savings are for a reusable rocket, or if there are any. If someone has that data, feel free to provide it.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#128

Post by spwa4 »

bzzzt wrote: post #89
fhd2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though? I'm not knowledgeable on this at all, but it _seems_ like Space X is blowing up a lot more expensive equipment compared to NASA back in the space race days. Genuinely curious how it compares and how true my outsider impression is.

It's not as expensive as it looks, Starship plus booster costs around 100 million. A Saturn V Apollo mission cost 185 million in 1969 which, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Cost , would now be a bit less than a billion dollars. Also, SpaceX is not building rockets, they are building a rocket factory. If they succeed they will have lowered the cost of putting stuff into space by an order of magnitu…

Clearly this is not true. I'm not even sure what about it is not true, but there must be some reason Musk paid Trump to destroy his competition.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#129

Post by yakz »

Zigurd wrote: post #124

Too many things don't add up, for example: SpaceX, and friendly commentators, have framed this as a highly experimental test flight. The most visible aspect of that are the heatshield test tiles on various parts of the upper stage. That kind of testing is understandable to a certain extent. But it doesn't make sense to ditch the rocket in the Indian Ocean once you've run those experiments, instead of catching it, and…

How much would it cost them to catch it, though? Not just in money, but time. How do you know it doesn't make sense?

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#130

Post by megaman821 »

m4rtink wrote: post #115
megaman821 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this launch showed they were very robust. Engines went out on booster and ship which they can compensate for. A small explosion and a half melted fin didn't seem to affect the splashdown sequence or target.

I think there was just one unexpected engine out on the booster during launch. Starship engines worked without any issues on this flight AFAIK. :)

The flight looked good, but I was wondering if the ship splashdown burn was the ideal one or an alternate one from a damaged engine. To me it looked like they were working around a damaged engine.
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