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.
SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
141–150 of 326 posts
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#142Earlier 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 said some raptor engines are on a gimbal, not vacuum engines.
To be precise, the three central engines can gimbal up to 15 degrees. That can control the thrust vectoring when an engine fails, and that’s what happens in the last flight.
Since the flight already happened and we know it didn’t spin out of control (unless you imply their diagnostic and telemetry was completely off and the engine was actually on) something must have compensated for the failure. It wasn’t magic, it was in fact the central 3 engines that did that.
You may be confused because those are called sea level engines, but that doesn’t mean they can’t work in vacuum.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can afford it, I'm sure anyone developing a rocket would prefer to do it this iterative way. I don't really understand the complain.
The part that makes no sense to me is why they are going starship scale rather than falcon 9 scale. Had they done their prototyping on a rocket with 9 engines on the first stage and 1 on the second, they could have gotten to raptor 3 (and a falcon 9 replacement) while blowing up way fewer engines, launch complexes, etc. There's a reason Spacex started with the falcon 1 rather than the falcon 9. It's a lot cheaper to…
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you serious? They just launched a completely revamped version of Starship from an entirely new pad, and still hit almost all of their planned milestones while demonstrating that the design is reliable enough to handle a missing engine.
Go back and look at the original plans and projections. Constantly redesigning is not something to be proud of. I call it vibe spaceship design.
Starship's design is so far beyond where the rest of the world is that even if it takes another 3 years of iteration to perfect it will still be by far the best rocket in the world for many years afterward, to the point where it would hardly make sense to choose to launch on any other existing or currently in development rocket for any reason other than political ones.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't see the progress between flights, do you?
Some of his employees have died in the meantime, but that's a price Elon is more than willing to pay
Over 100 died building the hoover dam. Over 5000 building the Panama canal, and over 30,000 if you count the failed attempt.
30,000 people trip and die in their homes per year.
70,000 Americans die per year from medication error or accidental overdose.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#146Summary 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…
Nice work by SpaceX engineering. Good summary. The booster appeared to hit the water at 1400 km/h (a bit under 900 mph) so not really survivable :-). Engine out on ship seems to left them with just enough fuel to land but not enough to do the hover thing (simulates being caught by chopsticks). They notched it down to two engines (vs planned 3) on the landing it seems? Basically if they can figure out the engine issue…
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tiles ablate. The shuttle returned from every mission with missing tiles.
Shuttle's tiles not being durable as hoped is what killed it's turnaround time. The problem was never solved and turned what was supposed to be a few days into weeks or months. Every mission the shuttle had to go back into the assembly building and have all tiles inspected and potentially replaced.
Obviously doesn’t guarantee they’ll find solution, but fast iteration will definitely help.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
The shuttle required long expensive refurbishment after each flight.
Just made me realise, this is just like the F-35. Its turn around time is ridiculous, it has to be maintained with specialized equipment/hangers, along with external contractor assistance. Compared to the Gripen, as an example, which can land on a freeway and be up in the air again in a few minutes. One was designed to be used in war, in desperate scenarios, with no ability to coddle it. The other, the F-35? Is desig…
It’s an extremely different design goal, the US doesn’t mind exotic weapons that require exquisite (and expensive) methods of servicing, they have the budget and the assumption that a well equipped air field will be immaculately maintained.
Meanwhile the Mig-29 designers assumed it’d operate from damaged/poorly maintained fields, so on the ground you can shut the primary air intakes and it uses ones on top of the plane to get air, drastically reducing the FOD risk on taxi/takeoff.
I do wonder how well the F-35 would fare in an actual shooting war against near peers when all the peacetime assumptions breakdown.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
The shuttle required long expensive refurbishment after each flight.
Just made me realise, this is just like the F-35. Its turn around time is ridiculous, it has to be maintained with specialized equipment/hangers, along with external contractor assistance. Compared to the Gripen, as an example, which can land on a freeway and be up in the air again in a few minutes. One was designed to be used in war, in desperate scenarios, with no ability to coddle it. The other, the F-35? Is desig…