Starship's Twelfth Flight Test • Hacker News Board

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#121

Post by PyWoody » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

robhlt wrote: post #103

PyWoody wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The percentage isn't the percent of it occurring but the area affected. So 51% of thunderstorms means 51% of that town/county/etc. will experience thunderstorms.

That's not how it works. Probability of precipitation means exactly what it sounds like: the probability that precipitation will fall in a specific forecast area. Here's the definition from the NWS: https://forecast.weather.gov/glossary.php?word=probability%2...

Interesting. The way I explained it was how it was explained to me by a group of weather forecasters. For instance, here [0], is an explanation from a random weatherman that is in-line with how I was told.

[0] https://www.ktvh.com/news/weather-wise/weather-wise-so-there...

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#122

Post by GMoromisato » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

tristanj wrote: post #106

GMoromisato wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goals of the V2 flights were to test the improved heat shield and to test satellite deployment. The first three V2 flights did not make it far enough to test either of those goals. It wasn't until Flight 10 that they could actually test that, and that was 9 months later. Effectively, SpaceX lost 9 months due to problems with V2. Sure, one could argue that it's still research (no customer was affected), and there…

Your standards of success are unrealistic and don't reflect the history of spaceflight. Designing and building rockets is incredibly difficult and has always been marred by a high failure rate. The early years of the US space program had an abysmal mission failure rate. Vanguard (1957-1959) was a disaster with 9 failures out of 12 attempts. A 25% success rate. Ranger (1961–1965) had 6 failures in a row out of 9 missi…

Absolutely--space is hard, and Starship is the most ambitious rocket ever, and SpaceX is, pretty obviously, the most talented and capable space company today (and maybe ever). I'm not arguing anything different.

I'm just saying that SpaceX themselves expected V2 to work better than it did. I don't think they would disagree that the first three launches of V2 were failures relative to their expectations.

But none of that contradicts your point that, even with failures, Starship is an engineering marvel. I do agree with you on that.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#123

Post by librasteve » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:25 PM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #60

john_minsk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

question: what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit?

Presumably the effect of any explosion would decrease proportional to the volume as it expands. Is there much volume in space?

the clue is in the name

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#124

Post by jjk166 » Tue, May 26, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #48

jjk166 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 200-280 tons. A standard barge can support 1500-3000 tons of cargo. Even with the added weight of a catch tower and a healthy factor of safety thrust isn't gonna sink the barge. Far more likely the major hurdle would be stability issues with how tall it is.

It's not 280 tons... it's a falling object with kinetic energy so that rocket thrust is going to be very problematic for that boat especially if it' hitting unevenly. That and there's no way for it to stand without a catch tower.

Well the idea would be to put a catch tower on a barge so those aren't actually issues.