Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

space.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 363 posts

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#211

Post by nroets »

nwah1 wrote: post #170
GMoromisato wrote: post #169

Starship 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…

Assuming it doesn't trigger Kessler Syndrome.

With one company being so far ahead is actually a good thing: No tragedy of the Commons. Or reckless gambling on unproven technology.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#212

Post by terminalshort »

ActorNightly wrote: post #146
enraged_camel wrote: post #20

Incredible 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…

[flagged]

So he's generally an ass to work for, got behind a politician you don't like, and fired a bunch of bureaucrats that probably shouldn't have been fired? Is that it? GWB started a completely unnecessary war, so if that's your example of OK in comparison, then I struggle to understand your standards.

> Vertical landings using engines to slow is inneficient. Sure, you reduce system complexity in not having wings or parachutes, but you gain it all back with things like engine restarts, and the need for high pressure ratio engines.

Well, the most cost effective rocket ever built uses this, but please do elaborate. What system do you propose that would be better?

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#213

Post by fluoridation »

terminalshort wrote: post #200
fluoridation wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I don't think it's possible for them to say anything meaningful for comparison on their own. It depends on how different they are. Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there and hasn't orbited once. Ignoring R&D and just going by launch costs alone, that's USD 4B (2025) to orbit 1 Saturn V, vs USD x to orbit 1 Starship, where x >= 1B.

But who will get to 100 launches first? 1000? Saturn V was in one way a great success that will be remembered for all of history. But in another it was a failure due to your exact statement. It only launched 13 times due to being so expensive as to just not be feasible.

Neither will.

>It only launched 13 times due to being so expensive as to just not be feasible.

"There aren't many uses for such a gigantic rocket. Let's make an even bigger one and hope it works out!"

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#215

Post by terminalshort »

yoz-y wrote: post #105
enraged_camel wrote: post #20

Incredible 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…

I mostly hope that Blue Origin will be a worthy competitor. For me what this shows that the most important thing for a CEO to be successful is to have money, a vison (no matter how unrealistic or unnecessary) and a cult personality. Nothing else matters. Also it shows that with enough virtual money (I.e.: massively overblown Tesla stock) you can do just about anything.

Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos had way more money back then. And when Elon Musk founded SpaceX few people had heard of him and he wasn't even a billionaire. Tesla didn't exist yet, so there was no "massively overblown stock." And where is the "unrealistic vision?" Looks like it turned out to be pretty realistic to me.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#216

Post by sho_hn »

GMoromisato wrote: post #169

Starship 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…

> 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 governments.

I really don't agree with this take.

It may appear as if SpaceX is the only game in town, but in reality a lot of this technology is commoditized now, and space is as diversified and vibrant as ever.

The starting point today is very different from the post-Shuttle environment. If Starship fails, it is unlikely to be for pure technology reasons and something else will take its place with perhaps better product-market fit.

SpaceX is a symptom, not the cause.

The true dangers to all of these lofty human enterprises are geopolitics, domestic political destabilization and environmental collapse.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#217

Post by WalterBright »

GMoromisato wrote: post #169

Starship 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…

With the ability to lift more weight, it also means that the travel time to Mars could be shortened considerably (by using more propellant).

The minimum propellant travel times are a major barrier.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#218

Post by terminalshort »

ActorNightly wrote: post #185
bilsbie wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the guy who built the world’s best rocket from scratch, who popularized EVs and brought self-driving tech to the masses, who built brain computer interfaces, dug tunnels, started OpenAI and PayPal… What if he’s not an idiot? What if we should actually be listening to what this guy says and considering it? What if he has the same ability to see what nobody else can see early on in politics… As he’s shown acros…

>What if he’s not an idiot? Lets evaluate that claim, by first defining what an idiot is, and then looking at his history, all the things he said, and all the things he has done. Ill skip you the trouble of going through that process - he is very much an idiot. Don't confuse the ability to throw money at something and make it work through sheer cash burn with actual intelligence.

You don't look for smart people by looking for people who don't do dumb things. Everybody does dumb things. You look for people who have done smart things. Idiots don't do smart things.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#219

Post by Anon1096 »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #176
lupusreal wrote: post #160

It's a very cool rocket and this success is a nice change of pace from the past several failures. However, I just have to say: > Mars rocket Very dubious. If you disregard all the SpaceX marketting talk and just go by what they're building, then it's a rocket meant for launching very large satellite constellations as cheap as possible.

The only reason they're doing full reusability is to enable Mars missions. Had they only wanted cheap flights for satellite constellations they could have launched with what they have now (i.e. reusable booster and single use starship), and it would be cheaper than anything on the market with huge upmass capabilities.

Something that I rarely see mentioned about SpaceX's goals and financial viability of a reusable Starship is how significant of a boost they get to their talent pool by working on the absolute bleeding edge on things that seem impossible. People go work at SpaceX because they work on crazy things like Starship instead of only working to make "cheap flights for satellite missions". SpaceX attracts the absolute cream of the crop (at below market rates even but that's besides the point) and those people work better/harder than they ever would working on more boring goals. It's the power of vision and motivation.

Re: SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

#220

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

dmbche wrote: post #180
DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine if to make a sightseeing trip to another city you had to stop in the middle of the highway and then make 14 round-trips with a second car to fill your first car back up? If the alternative was throwing away and building/buying a new car for every trip? Absolutely. They said the same about landing a first stage booster - impossible and pointless to attempt. And it just happened for the 400th time yes…

False dichotomy - the mission profile dictates the refuelling station and all that, but it never was the only option. Somehow we've decided we needed to be able to do lots of trips to the moon for Artemis, but it's not clear to me that it's such a precious golden oportunity and warrants this spending/impact on the environnenent. We didn't get to the moon with a refuelling station did we? How come we need one now? We'…

> We didn't get to the moon with a refuelling station did we?

No. We did it by throwing away ~98% of the vehicle on the way there.

> How come we need one now?

Because building a new gargantuan tower and tossing that majority of it into the ocean/deep space every time we need to go the moon is not sustainable.

> We're really seeing 15 starship launches per moon trip as reasonable, rather than just building a single trip program

Yes. Because again. The alternative (dictated by physics) is that we expend the whole thing.

Post reply on HN