Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm surprised they didn't take less risks just to avoid a narrative of failure. That's the advantage of being privately owned. "Vibes" (hah) don't matter. Public opinion doesn't matter. What matters is executing on your vision / goals. And they're doing that. The fact that they're bringing in loads of cash from Starlink surely helps. They haven't had the need to raise money in a while, now.
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SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
161–170 of 363 posts
Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#162Incredible achievement, but what is more incredible is how many people (including almost all of my friends circle) have started rooting for SpaceX to fail due to the shenanigans of its founder. I think as a culture we've lost the ability to compartmentalize. We should be able to criticize and even despise the head of a company, and at the same time celebrate when the intelligence and hard work of the countless smart…
Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mis-copied the numbers for one launch. Wiki says: > Project cost US$6.417 billion (equivalent to $33.6 billion in 2023) > Cost per launch US$185 million (equivalent to $969 million in 2023) That a manned Apollo mission would/did cost under a billion dollars (todays money) is surprisingly cheap. A single Artemis launch using the Space Launch System (SLS) costs an eye watering $4 billions. Different metric: > [1966…
Part of the SLS cost comes from trying to save money. Yearly budgets are kept low, which spreads out the work over a long time. This makes everything cost more, but the politicians only care about the yearly spending. SLS is also a pretty weird design due to reusing Shuttle components for a completely different kind of launcher. This saves development costs (maybe) by using existing stuff that has already been develo…
Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And we could see pretty significant damage on one of the fin They specifically said they're testing lighter fins to see how much they would hold. Let's not invent problems when it's an experiment that was clearly stated.
Is it common to plan an explosion to test how something will react in these launches? Honest question, I know nothing about rockets. In SRE, we have chaos engineering so I'm wondering if it's the same concept.
It's a different apporach to say the Apollo program, where they did heavy up-front analysis, at the expense of cost-efficiency, speed, and innovation. They had one-shot for a flight, otherwise that's several $bn up in flames.
Even with the last few mishaps, it's an approach that seems to be working. If you look at Starship and Falcon's journey in comparison to SLS and Blue Origin, they have done so much in such a short timespan.
Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#165Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#166Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were no Saturn V test flights like Starship is doing, that I can find info on. Wikipedia lists 3 tests before Apollo 4, which was the first full launch.
From context I interpreted GP to be somehow concluding that Starship is "cheaper" (these test flights are "beating" the price tag of the Saturn V launches), I'm gently pointing out I don't think that is a reasonable conclusion to draw based on empty suborbital test flights vs. taking humans to the moon and back
Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
No need to be condescending when communication is ambiguous. Your question can be better phrased as, "How much did it cost for Saturn V to reach the point where it could successfully orbit?" which I assume means "how much did it cost up to and including Apollo 4?"
Wouldn't the cost of all of Mercury and Gemini missions need to be included in this as they could not have Apollo without the others first.
There are teams of incredible engineers working there because NASA paved the way.
Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#169After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades. A similar thing would happen if Starship fails. Space would remain the province of the military and large governments.
Today it costs ~$3,000 per kilogram to put something in orbit (on a SpaceX Falcon 9). Starship aims to lower that to $10 per kg. That's totally crazy, but even if it could get it down to $300 per kg, that would revolutionize access to space.
Data centers in space, biotech manufacturing, and maybe even asteroid mining and energy generation become practical at those prices. To say nothing of telecommunications, remote sensing, and global navigation--all become much cheaper.
And, of course, that drops the price on all the cool science/exploration goals that we always talk about: massive space telescopes, regular probes to all the planets, and crewed exploration.
We're literally at an inflexion point between two possible futures and we don't know which it's going to be. If I were younger I would absolutely try to work at SpaceX to help tilt the chances.
But as it is, all I can do is root for them.
Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
#170Starship is like AI/LLMs in that success would revolutionize the world, but technological failure is very possible. And despite the confident predictions on the internets, we don't know which it's going to be. After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades. A similar thing would happen if Starship fails. Space would remain the province of the military and large governm…