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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

#181

Post by imdsm »

inglor_cz wrote: post #174
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...

"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 havin…

I think with SpaceX there are people who leave and tell people they were expected to work long, hard hours, as though not having a 7.5 hour days is a crime against employment. There are jobs out there for folks who want 7.5 hour days, but these will not be jobs where you're putting feet on Mars.

There will be people who want to work long, hard hours on complex problems, and for them, somewhere like SpaceX will be perfect. Just because it doesn't fit the ideals of others doesn't mean that it's bad.

The key is choice. I doubt anyone is forced to work at SpaceX. I'm sure they could leave if they had enough, or not join if they didn't like the deal.

If anything, having it available for people who /do/ want to dedicate themselves to something is a good thing. I think some folks could do to remember that. There are enough easy jobs.

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

#182

Post by garmaine »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #170
garmaine wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be off topic and probably person specific, but what made you change your mind?

> This may be off topic and probably person specific, but what made you change your mind? Too long to discuss here, but suffice it to say that my priorities are Earth based. I also realized that Mars is in good hands given what I've seen.

Yeah, I went off and had kids since Mars wasn't an option in my 20's. Now I want to be where they are.

Of course that leaves me free to become the oppressive Earth-based space industry tycoon who owns all those comet mining ships and belter stations :)

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

#183

Post by verytrivial »

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…

The timing of relight probably means there is a zero-tolerance to a flame-out like this when going from two to one engine. A heavier ship might be able to run more at minimum throttle so if one flames out there might(?) still time to throttle up one of survivors that is already lit, from three near mimimum to two near maximum or some combination. These things are moving literally tonnnes of fuel per second so even throttle-up inertia might lag too much unless they can predict failure really early.

One engine didn't have the grunt required(?) but SN8 might have been doomed due to fuel supplying both lit engines. Ho hum.

This was as much a test of the Raptor engines as it was the bellyflop and landing manoeuvre, perhaps more so. They've got data from literally hundreds of Merlin engines regarding failure modes etc. A long way to go with Raptor and many more explosions to be livestreamed!

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

#184

Post by read_if_gay_ »

macintux wrote: post #109
ctdonath wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought gender wasn’t supposed to matter. She’s the best for the job; sexist to dwell on “she’s a she”.

Given how many cultural biases exist that inform young girls that their value is directly proportional to their beauty, it's helpful to draw attention to women who are successful for other reasons.

This is a good point. It got me wondering how effective it would be to try and get rid of those biases in the first place, e.g. by eliminating certain TV shows, or fixing Instagram culture, and why this idea doesn't seem to get much traction.

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

#185

Post by sneak »

japanuspus wrote: post #177
sneak wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First, I didn't make that claim. I do think, however, that the contributions of others must necessarily far outshadow his own considering that he is dividing his time between at least four companies. Even someone of equal competence (to say nothing of greater) working full time on just spacex would likely have a greater impact.

Then again, the thing would not have happened without him, so credit where credit is due.

You're right that figurehead probably isn't exactly the right word.

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

#186

Post by virgilp »

ansible wrote: post #168
arentyouspecial wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planned. They wanted to test restarting the engines as if it was reentering the atmosphere.

Definitely planned. If you look closely at the SpaceX stream, the first two engines that were shut down were the ones restarted during the landing flip maneuver. Too bad about the loss of fuel pressure from the header tank. SN8 wasn't quite on the landing pad, but it was close. We also didn't see the landing legs deploy, not sure why that didn't happen.

My understanding is that the speed didn't get low enough for landing legs to deploy.

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

#187

Post by garmaine »

Doxin wrote: post #153
garmaine wrote: post #94

Nitpick, 12km isn’t quite suborbital.

Surely anything short of reaching orbit is suborbital?

As an industry term, "suborbital" implies space flight, which means crossing the Karman line (100km). Fast enough to exit the atmosphere, but not fast enough to achieve orbit.

The 12-ish km of this test is within the operating ceiling of most commercial jet liners. This was an atmospheric test of an orbital-class rocket.

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

#188

Post by virgilp »

mrandish wrote: post #36
ffggvv wrote: post #11

i know they got the data they needed/wanted but can you really call it a success with that ending? on a side note: how much money do they lose whenever they have a crash landing like that?

Yes, absolute success. All primary mission objectives achieved successfully AND all but one secondary objective achieved. Launch, ascent, MECO, controlled descent, turn and re-orient with nose thrusters, fire engines, decelerate, position over landing pad, in correct orientation, AND, most importantly, capture all mission telemetry and data until after ground contact. As a mere spectator, I'll add they achieved ALL m…

It's not just "cleanup" - they would probably reuse the raptors and maybe batteries/ other stuff too. Losing 3 raptors is probably what hurts the most at this point (but it wasn't unexpected). All in all, the test was most definitely a success.

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

#189

Post by agustif »

nynx wrote: post #70
Melting_Harps wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting involved is a dream of mine, but it's been quite difficult for me to get my foot in the door, so to speak. It is for all of us, it makes the journey that much better. I didn't get into to do any of that above until my mid 30s after starting late at ~26.

Does the journey have to be difficult to make the destination worth it? I suppose it does. Doesn't feel that way when you're still on your way though.

But it's all about the journey bro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZsSR225Ti8

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

#190

Post by nynx »

boothby wrote: post #110
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.

At your age, I had a similar feeling as the pictures from Spirit and Opportunity started rolling in. Quit my cushy but relatively dead-end web dev job, and went back to school. Busted my ass, got the grades, and found a love for math, but eventually found my way back to high tech. It's not what I set out to do, but absolutely worth the effort. An amazing future is within your grasp. It might not be what you're pictur…

Thank you! I'm pursuing engineering science. Until recently, I wasn't sure what I wanted to go into... but now I think I know.
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