Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 222 posts

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#131

Post by marricks »

texasbigdata wrote: post #130
marricks wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really think a bit more about it. We have so many problems here and none are solved by leaving. Climate change, wealth inequality, hungry, poor. None of the billionaires (Musk/Bezos) building rockets treat their workers terribly well now, and their end game will just be exploiting workers around the solar system. Coming as a past fan of space exploration is was pretty devastating to realize...

Perhaps Elon is not the best example for climate change due to his battery research, solar panels, electric cars, etc...

Eh, I’d say he’s a fine example. Musk may be trying to help the environment but he’s not going to save it, that’s for sure, and his future dream doesn’t involve treating his workers any better than he is now.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#132

Post by GekkePrutser »

as-j wrote: post #15
geuis wrote: post #10

If you watch the last few frames, it looks like the ship indeed landed. From the perspective that for a split second the entire vehicle was upright and in touch with the ground, that is. I’m not one to be a pedant, but you can claim a landing if you squint at it long enough.

a) "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing" b) "Any landing where you can re-use the equipment again is a great landing" Old aviation sayings. :) Oh well. ;)

Don't forget "Takeoff is optional but landing is mandatory" :)

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#134

Post by colechristensen »

chasd00 wrote: post #80
ansible wrote: post #4

Great flight! Elon tweeted that the header tank pressure was low: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1336809767574982658 There was also a substantial green flame coming from the raptor engine used for landing. Group consensus over on /r/SpaceX is that it was copper burning. We're amazed the engine didn't explode sooner.

as soon as I saw the green I thought "uhoh". That's called running "engine rich". still, so amazing to see the belly flop and relight.

I’m a great fan of all of the “this is fine” sort of phrases for engineering failures. “engine rich” is a new one for me today, joining things like letting the magic blue smoke out of electronics and rapid unplanned disassembly.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#135

Post by disown »

mhh__ wrote: post #87
sneak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ms Shotwell is no man.

The fact that SpaceX's President and COO is a woman seems to get surprisingly little publicity, especially given that she seems like the more qualified engineer out of Musk and herself as well.

> The fact that SpaceX's President and COO is a woman seems to get surprisingly little publicity

How much publicity do COOs of other companies get? Hardly none.

Shotwell is all over media. She has given tons of interviews that are on youtube/social media as well. Most of them are great so feel free to watch them at your leisure. She's also in the 2020 Time's 100 most influential list.

For a COO, she's gets surprising too much publicity rather than too litte.

> especially given that she seems like the more qualified engineer out of Musk and herself as well.

Why does she seem like it? Just because she's a woman? She's mostly worked on the business side at spacex.

Are you as concerned that the male COO of tesla is getting no publicity? It's a trick rhetorical question so you needn't answer it.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#136

Post by sq_ »

koobz wrote: post #128
zaroth wrote: post #88

I swear the thrust vectoring algorithm was just plain showing off at the very end. Just super cool to watch, looks like a render not real life; https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1336849897987796992?s=21

This is an incredible bit of footage. It's so cool to see the engines looking sideways like a chameleon. Raises a question: I suppose they fired 2/3 engines not because of a failure, but because 3 engines would produce too much thrust. That does mean that in a high stakes situation (landing) you can't afford to lose an engine. I wonder if there's any margin there for lighting the third engine in case of engine failur…

Not at all sure, but some of the Falcon 9/Heavy failures seem to suggest that SpaceX's thinking on landing is "don't give up, fly it all the way to the ground," when there's an issue.

Especially with the fact that Starship is eventually supposed to fly humans and doesn't have a limit on relights since the Raptors are electrically ignited, I would bet that the software will/does include the ability to light up extra engines in an emergency.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#137

Post by sneak »

mhh__ wrote: post #87
sneak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ms Shotwell is no man.

The fact that SpaceX's President and COO is a woman seems to get surprisingly little publicity, especially given that she seems like the more qualified engineer out of Musk and herself as well.

I think CEOs tend to be publicly assigned most credit for what their companies do, for some reason.

This also happened to Jobs.

People talk about "Elon Musk is building rockets to go to Mars". While not strictly incorrect, the insane numbers of people working long, hard hours for years on end is the reason these rockets are getting built, despite the indelible fact that Musk has served as a nucleation site that allowed and facilitated so many incredibly talented people to come together around a shared dream. Zubrin tried for decades and failed, and yet Musk succeeded.

Anyway, Jobs would usually get pretty much full credit for just about anything that came out of Apple, too. He accomplished a lot, to be sure, but I always tell those people the iPod fishtank story, or the details of the wage pricefixing scam he masterminded that successfully stole billions of dollars from his staff.

I think people just really really need to personify large groups into a person or facsimile, so that they can fit large entities into narrative structures in their heads (whether true or false). The same thing happens to nations, too: the political result of tens of thousands of people working very long hours is assigned singularly to Xi, or Putin, or Trump.

The system is not its figurehead.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#138

Post by macintux »

valuearb wrote: post #121
ansible wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shivetya is talking about landing rockets afterwards. If they keep up the launch cadence next year, they will surpass the Shuttle in number of reuses in a space program.

Who is Shivetya?

Can’t find it via DDG or Google.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#139

Post by natch »

ineedasername wrote: post #74
amanzi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever reason, Wired preferred the clickbait title, but the opening sentence of the article is: "On Wednesday afternoon, SpaceX successfully launched—and nearly landed—a fully-assembled prototype of its next generation Starship rocket on a suborbital flight from its facility in south Texas."

Given that it's a rocket, "nearly land" could mean it kept going in some way, towards space or simply not yet touched down. So when I read the HN title and thought "what do they mean by nearly landed?" I then saw the article and realized "oh, it crashed". I'm not sure where the balance should be... "Crash" has a negative connotation, but "nearly lands" is a pretty soft euphemism.

Landing safely was an unexpected outcome, so it’s remarkable (thus making it into the headline) that it came close to doing so. The right wording is highly context dependent. Here the “nearly landed” phrasing appropriately acknowledges the realistic expectations for the launch by those most in the know, the SpaceX team.

“Crash” would be totally appropriate in a different context with different expectations. But it would make less sense in this case.

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#140

Post by sneak »

valuearb wrote: post #121
ansible wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shivetya is talking about landing rockets afterwards. If they keep up the launch cadence next year, they will surpass the Shuttle in number of reuses in a space program.

Who is Shivetya?

The person who posted the grandparent comment (beginning "It says something...") to the person (ansible) who mentioned their name, and also the poster of the the great-great grandparent to this comment.
Post reply on HN