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SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

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

#171

Post by elihu »

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…

A variation of that question is: in the event of a hard landing like the one today, will there be some means for humans to survive?

(Googling the question led me to an article about how Starship does not have a crew abort system, which seems like an unfortunate limitation. I suppose in theory maybe the landing is slow enough that if you know, say, a minute or in advance that something is wrong you could possibly just exit the vehicle out a door and parachute down. I'd guess that's easier said than done...)

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

#172

Post by VladimirGolovin »

pmayrgundter wrote: post #7

Swing and a miss.. but not by much! Congrats to the SpaceX team on the amazing and fast progress. What an incredible step forward.

Definitely not a miss. They got telemetry data (3000 signals) covering the entire flight from start to landing -- which would've been impossible if it went RUD mid-flight. Plus they've located the bug (low pressure in the header fuel tanks) -- and the bug is plain and clear, with no uncertainty.

I'd definitely call that a success.

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

#173

Post by mhandley »

grey-area wrote: post #159
nine_k wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video shows us the wreck site at the end. The rocket is mostly one piece though damaged by hitting the ground too fast and from a (relatively minor) explosion. It must be possible to find most pieces, and certainly check the engines, even deformed, for overburn signs.

Bright green flames at the end is a giveaway of engine-rich combustion.

Indeed, which in turn is an espected outcome if the engine is running oxygen rich, and hence much hotter than the design point. Pretty likely the low fuel tank pressure was the cause of this, and I'm sure SpaceX will have the telemetry data to know for sure if this was the case, irrespective of what pieces remain after the landing.

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

#174

Post by inglor_cz »

marricks wrote: post #124
nynx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a young person (21), I feel the same way. Space exploration and a beautiful future suddenly seems achievable with hard work and a lot of engineering instead of just feeling impossible.

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...

"terribly well"

What would be your standard in treating employees terribly well?

And it is strange to mention Musk and Bezos side by side. Their mode of employment is very different.

In Amazon, you are a preprogrammed cog in a spinning retail machine, micromanaged and followed everywhere by algorithms that seek to squeeze maximal output from you and punish you for slight deviations from the script (such as "not having your hand on a railing if you go upstairs"). They even encourage other workers to report you if you do something frowned upon. Human robots - which corresponds well to the nature of Bezos, who is often described as a way-too-rational, aloof man.

This is not what happens around Musk, who is a very different type of personality. In SpaceX, young engineers do overtime voluntarily because they are working on interesting unsolved problems, precisely the thing that you want to take part in at least once in your life. And it is understood that once they leave for a workplace with less driven culture, their stint at SpaceX will be considered very valuble.

Edit: If you are a youngish creative engineering type, you want to have a go at something that is both difficult and world changing. Most people will never have a chance to do so. So if you really become a part of a team that designs Starship etc., no wonder you will spend hours and hours there.

From my personal experience, chasing a difficult bug in my program means that the day flies by and suddenly, the streetlamps are lit. But the victorious feeling is worth it. And my software products are nothing like Starship.

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

#176

Post by wolf550e »

disown wrote: post #135
mhh__ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

She's a mechanical engineer who worked in aerospace before joining SpaceX (and was considering leaving the industry because old space sucks), so technically she is more qualified than Musk (a physicist and economist who worked on supercapacitors and non-realtime not-highly-reliable software before founding SpaceX).

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

#177

Post by japanuspus »

sneak wrote: post #137
mhh__ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 allow…

I find it disingenuous to refer to Elon Musk as a "figurehead" of spaceX, see e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

I actually believe that the fact that spaceX has a leadership qualified to make technical decisions is the reason they are the ones pushing the envelope.

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

#178

Post by agumonkey »

gt565k wrote: post #75

Lmao at all the people hating on a test launch. If this was even 10 years ago, you wouldn't even get a live stream of the launch and attempted landing. Perhaps Elon shouldn't even live stream this, so negative trolls wouldn't be able to assert and express their chair philosopher opinions. The fact that there are another 8-9 SN vehicles being readied at this time for testing tells you exactly what is happening. Slow p…

There's a point where negative trolls is a sign of you being on an important path.

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

#179

Post by ngcc_hk »

sneak wrote: post #137
mhh__ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 allow…

Probably one said it is both. But in real life the direction especially in firm and totalitarian countries are really affected much more by the leader.

Not sure about trump. You look at the way hus sect of state work abd you wonder whether it is trump or in spite of trump sometimes.

And he gave you a good example of migrating from California to Texas, not because of Trump or Biden.

But I would blame xi for all the human violations in Hong Kong and U and T etc. It is not a democracy. So is firm or many firms.

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

#180

Post by verytrivial »

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

I know, right?! As they were cutting the first two engines off in sequence during ascent they were giving little pre-twitches to adjust the centre of gravity, like an acrobat holding another acrobat aloft hand-to-hand, switching from two hands to one. Amazing.
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