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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

#211

Post by chrisjc »

ansible wrote: post #4

Great flight! Elon tweeted that the header tank pressure was low: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1336809767574982658 There was also a substantial green flame coming from the raptor engine used for landing. Group consensus over on /r/SpaceX is that it was copper burning. We're amazed the engine didn't explode sooner.

So does that mean that if things had gone to plan the flip would have been even more dramatic/extreme?

Starship is supposed to be able to carry passengers, not just cargo. How would the human body hold up to a flip like that?

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

#212

Post by nickik »

marricks wrote: post #207
nickik wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So because he can't fix the climate by himself, fuck him. And his workers are treated pretty well, his companies often rank on top of places people want to work.

His factory workers are? With all the workplace injuries? If you're just talking about his engineers then I think you have some serious issues.

His factory workers a payed like factory workers, better then most factory workers, less then some, he is not running a charity.

And the short-seller meme of Tesla factory being a death trap is just nonsense. In the first couple of years, Tesla as a company had somewhat more injuries then companies that have literally existed for 100 years but not really by much. How horrible, the company wasn't perfect from day 1.

Additionally Tesla is in the by far most regulated place in the US in terms health reporting and regulation. Why do you think every other car company has left California?

Maybe ask the workers in the city if the would rather the car plant be closed, like every other car plant or not.

You just hate him based on the political philosophy you have clearly adopted, so you need to find reasons to justify your hate to fit it in your framework. You have to re-frame the whole story into some sort of dystopian future space based slave society in order to justify shitting on the progress.

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

#213

Post by foxyv »

elihu wrote: post #171
koobz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think their goal is to make the Spacecraft reliable enough that it wouldn't need the abort system. In the same way that 737s don't have one. However I think crew is a long way away for now. If they are launching 100 passengers it may be hard to do an abort system that isn't just the entire Starship itself. Maybe for smaller crew launches they will have ejection seats like Soyuz?

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

#214

Post by thepete2 »

colechristensen wrote: post #134
chasd00 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as soon as I saw the green I thought "uhoh". That's called running "engine rich". still, so amazing to see the belly flop and relight.

I’m a great fan of all of the “this is fine” sort of phrases for engineering failures. “engine rich” is a new one for me today, joining things like letting the magic blue smoke out of electronics and rapid unplanned disassembly.

Oh yes, today I learned that RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) is apparently an established term, but I didn't get what "engine rich" means until now.

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

#215

Post by Melting_Harps »

ajnin wrote: post #191
Melting_Harps wrote: post #55

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. That is the goal for me, I'm not going to Mars and I knew that as soon as I went to the MDRS. I also made it an effort to make the director (commander on several mission) to realize how important it is motivate the younger generat…

> MDRS Is it Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station ? Space nerds tend to abuse acronyms almost as much as developers.

> Is it Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station ? Space nerds tend to abuse acronyms almost as much as developers.

Yes. Agreed, I probably should have written that out. Or maybe its just my (weak) developer side speaking...

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

#216

Post by Melting_Harps »

garmaine wrote: post #182
Melting_Harps wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :)

OPA for life, bossmang.

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

#217

Post by aardvarkr »

tristy wrote: post #164
virgilp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this context, "chief executive" clearly means "C-level executive" which includes the COO.

No, "the chief executive" refers to the CEO, and it's particularly likely to mislead people in this case since one of her titles is "president", which can be the top position at some companies.

Say what you want as you squabble about title but Shotwell runs the company.

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

#218

Post by ineedasername »

natch wrote: post #141
ineedasername wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to my comment-- I think the CNN headline got it better without the softening euphemism by pointing out it was a success: "A SpaceX Mars rocket prototype just exploded. It was still a success"

I don’t think it exploded. It broke up by hitting the ground (not by exploding) which caused fuel and oxygen to leak out, which then ignited in a large fireball. But maybe this is splitting hairs. It sure looked like an explosion.

oxygen to leak out, which then ignited in a large fireball.

That sounds a lot like a thermoberic bomb :)

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

#219

Post by garmaine »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #216
garmaine wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

OPA for life, bossmang.

I'm only half joking, kopeng mi. One of the startups I currently have on the back-burner is a space resource commodity market and mining claim exchange, to jumpstart an investment market for asteroid and lunar mining startups.

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

#220

Post by chrledntsurf »

As someone who's not knowledgeable about this...will SpaceX or a private space company ever begin sending satellites, probes, rovers to planets besides NASA's current planning or does the reduced cost of the reusable rockets not help that much given the lack of financial payoffs and amount of time needed to maintain.

Always bums me out that we aren't sending probes off to all the inner and outer planets every year given the length of time it takes for them to even get to their destination.

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