My favorite part of this launch that others haven't already mentioned: during reentry, the dummy payload satellites were visible burning up behind the ship!
Curious! Got a timecode?
SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
191–200 of 326 posts
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#192Earlier 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.
At this point in time, Musk can afford to ignore the stock price since he will retain sufficient shares (with 10x voting rights if I am understanding correctly) to outvote any board.
However, some projections I have seen suggest even the public raise won't be enough for the entire vision (which includes LEO data centers AND trips to the Moon and Mars). That means he will either have to find the revenue or eventually sell even more shares. It will only be at that point he will care about stock price.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The F-35 is designed to be able to break into and defeat modern air defense networks. The gripen is a much less capable non expeditonary platform designed to maximize asymmetric losses if sweden is invaded. As a small country sweden has to follow a porcupine strategy to deter invasion. Presently the actual comparable to the F-35 is attritable drones, which is why every mid-size and major power is developing them.
The Russians have been trying to use attritable drones for years to break down the Ukrainian IADS and have not yet succeeded. Meanwhile the Israeli F35 fleet with no direct American support was able to crack open Iran’s air defenses at the start of the Twelve Day War with relative ease.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#194Cool splashdown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiWX1nsvqBs&t=173s
So crazy that the NBC video didn’t include that! It’s still not as bad as NASA skipping the good view of the live separation.
Better to always watch from the official source, the only one that is in 4k too AFAIK
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm concerned about the cracking clearly visible on the heat shield tiles. It doesn't bode well for rapid reusability.
The tiles ablate. The shuttle returned from every mission with missing tiles.
The tiles are not supposed to ablate - they're supposed to be ~fully reusable. That said I think it's plausible that the much higher iteration speed and lack of a need for human-rating (at least during reentry, for now) will allow for more success than the space shuttle saw with its similar approach.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is there videos of booster crash?
Not that I have been able to find, the 1400 km/h number comes from the telemetry on the video just before it contacted the water. Presumably one could estimate the return point if you had access to the telemetry and perhaps a platform in the Gulf might have eyes on it. Depends on how far east it got.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
All what tiles breaking and needing repair? There was remarkably little visible damage this time around compared with previous flights. There's no materials science breakthrough needed -- the shuttle used ceramic tiles successfully its entire service life. What's needed is engineering work, and that's what SpaceX has been doing.
You know a whole the size of a quarter can wreck the entire spacecraft and make it effectively throw away? Also, you'd want to use this many times. Making a system robust while not requiring months of refurbishment is really really hard.
For some of the tests, they removed a few tiles before launch, presumably to test that. Starship did fine.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#198I am just delighted that SpaceX continues with the "good enough" pace of development here, at least at these phases. Rapid iteration of build, test, learn, and improve rather than wait for perfection. They are willing to have "negative outcome learning experiences" to gather data quickly. and, of course, data, data, data. I like it because I know what insane amount of red tape has built up to do anything similar in a…
Shame they're risking that ability with the IPO. We've seen how irrational and ignorant stock traders are from other publicly traded space companies. Even scrubbed launches cause the price to dip.
Elon negotiated with Nasdaq to automatically accept it in Nasdaq 100 index after 15 days, so the stock traders don't really matter.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#199[flagged]
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
All what tiles breaking and needing repair? There was remarkably little visible damage this time around compared with previous flights. There's no materials science breakthrough needed -- the shuttle used ceramic tiles successfully its entire service life. What's needed is engineering work, and that's what SpaceX has been doing.
Weren't the tiles one of the worst obstacles to quick turnaround times for the shuttle? It was something like 18 months before one could be launched again, and that's if they were in a hurry.
SpaceX has been specifically engineering both the tiles themselves (e.g. manufacturing) and the way that are used on the ship to be much more rapidly repairable than the Shuttle.