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SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

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Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#121

Post by dylan604 »

itishappy wrote: post #99
dylan604 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Like a rocket” is a phrase for a reason

Eh, they've left some performance on the table: > Sprint accelerated at 100 g, reaching a speed of Mach 10 (12,000 km/h; 7,600 mph) in 5 seconds. Such a high velocity at relatively low altitudes created skin temperatures up to 6,200 °F (3,400 °C), requiring an ablative shield to dissipate the heat. The high temperature caused a plasma to form around the missile, requiring extremely powerful radio signals to reach it…

I’m really struggling to find a point to this comment

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#122

Post by labcomputer »

jmyeet wrote: post #88
fc417fc802 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I seriously doubt that. Just for example, mining a single asteroid has the potential to flood the market for any number of metals. I don't pretend to know how expensive it would be to achieve that in practice; my point is tha…

If there were infinite gold bars just sitting on the surface of the moon, it wouldn't be economical to go collect them and bring them back to Earth. No matter how expensive you think any metals are here on Earth, the cost of launching vehicles, rendezvousing with said metals and bringing them back to Earth makes it uneconomical. An asteroid is much, much further than that but more important than distance is the delta…

That depends on how much a unit of delta-v costs. If you can do the whole mission for $100/kg, quite a few things become economical.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#123

Post by hgoel »

zugi wrote: post #116
hgoel wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We've seen how irrational and ignorant stock traders are from other publicly traded space companies. 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, t…

The argument for the IPO was to fund their space datacenters project, if Musk could afford to ignore the stock price, that wouldn't be needed.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#124

Post by labcomputer »

discordance wrote: post #95
Rebelgecko wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of his employees have died in the meantime, but that's a price Elon is more than willing to pay

Had to check this one and you're indeed right: one death in 2014[0], and one death earlier about a week ago (May 2026)[1] (as well as 600+ workplace injuries [0]). [0]: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-m... [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/18/osha-probing-worker-death-...

Scaled Composites has had a few deaths, too.

Less recent that I thought: https://spacenews.com/explosion-mojave-air-and-space-port-ki...

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#125

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

SilverElfin wrote: post #110
rdtsc wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some are on a gimbal and they specifically talked how others gimbaled out a bit to compensate. This is specifically something they designed in and not an accidental lucky save. In this flight they didn’t intend to test “one engine out” feature but it worked out that way.

See my other comment. The vacuum engines are NOT on a gimbal. None of them. The sea level engines on starship and several of the engines on the booster are on a gimbal. But not the vacuum engines for space. EDIT: I cannot reply further in this thread, but my understanding is that the non vacuum engines are not intended to stay lit throughout the orbital flight in a typical mission. If they are, they can gimbal and co…

I think previous comment means "on a gimbal" as in "angled at a non completely prograde direction" (presumably angled such that each engine points through center of mass so that none of the engines impart a torque)

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#126

Post by skew-aberration »

p-e-w wrote: post #14
ajross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is true, but at the same time: this is Starship Flight 12. The whole point of Starship is that it's a reusable vehicle with easy turnaround and quick maintenance. And in particular it's supposed to be different than the other reusable vehicle with easy turnaround and quick maintenance, which turned out to be sort of a boondoggle. Yet, they've now hand-built and destroyed twelve of these things across multiple r…

But all of those 12 launches happened in just 3 years, and cost a tiny fraction of other major spaceflight development programs. For reference, SLS has been in development for 5 times as long, and cost 15-20 times as much, as Starship, and they still haven’t landed people on the Moon, which has been one of the stated goals since the Constellation program in 2005. I don’t see how the number of failures matters if the…

Recent SpaceX IPO filings put that 'tiny fraction' at about 1/3 or 1/2 of SLS. $15B total investment with about $4-5B of that figure from US gov. Is starship more than 1/2 or 1/3 of the way to a human rated Artemis II style mission? The main reason starship costs less to test (apart from the SLS jobs program baggage) is because of design choices which prevent it from performing such a mission without significant further tech development.

'5 times as long' is dubious too. SpaceX claims to have been working on the design since 2012 vs 2011 for SLS. Ultimately though the start date of a complex program is not well defined, as early conceptual design stages can take years without leaving the drawing board. Government needs to put a start date on such efforts for legal/budget reasons, but a private company does not.

Also relevant - SpaceX has been given a lot of tech and expertise from NASA at a tiny fraction of the cost and time it would have required them to develop it themselves. Therefore, the costs of NASA programs like space shuttle actually includes some of the development costs of SpaceX.

Both programs pale in comparison to Saturn V, which was faster, cheaper, and more technically demanding at the time.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#127

Post by ordu »

GMoromisato wrote: post #107

This was good forward progress (V3 mostly worked, clear improvements on heat-shield, near-final Starlink deployment system). Is this enough progress to keep a 2028 crewed landing? Don't know. I'm curious whether they are going to try to recover a Starship before trying for in-space refueling (or the reverse). Either way, I think both have to work before they can try for an uncrewed lunar landing (presumably in 2027).…

> If they can re-fly a Starship this year AND demonstrate in-space refueling

I'd bet that they'll not try in-space refueling before they demonstrated in-space relight of an engine. So they need to fly at least twice. Or even thrice because to demonstrate refueling you need two Starships in orbit.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#128

Post by zardo »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #118
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…

“seems to have hit the water harder than expected and was very off target.” 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.

You've mixed up the ship and booster.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#130

Post by labcomputer »

hgoel wrote: post #123
zugi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've seen how irrational and ignorant stock traders are from other publicly traded space companies. 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, t…

The argument for the IPO was to fund their space datacenters project, if Musk could afford to ignore the stock price, that wouldn't be needed.

But by the time retail traders can affect the stock price, SpaceX will have already gotten their money.
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