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SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

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Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#231

Post by ortusdux »

b112 wrote: post #225
lupusreal wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really shitty thing is they knew early on the O-rings were slipping and partially extruding themselves, which wasn't part of the original design. They shrugged and ignored this, which then opened the door for disaster when the O-rings behaved differently (and still wrong) when cold. If they had pumped the brakes when the initial deviation from the design was discovered, it wouldn't have ended in disaster.

My memory saya that some engineers objected, but they were ignored.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Boisjoly#O-ring_safety_c...

"Boisjoly wrote a memo in July 1985 to his superiors concerning the faulty design of the solid rocket boosters that, if left unaddressed, could lead to a catastrophic event during launch of a Space Shuttle. Such a catastrophic event occurred six months later resulting in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster."

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#233

Post by soperj »

wolverine876 wrote: post #208
bradley13 wrote: post #66

I haven't watched launches since the space shuttle days. I have watched both of the Starship launches, and will watch all of them that I can. Excitement about space is back with a vengeance!

Rovers and helicopters on Mars, leaving the solar system, close-ups of Pluto, asteroid material brought back to Earth, etc. etc. Those weren't exciting, but reaching orbit real cheap is?

I was excited about a number of those things, but the production values on some of them (leaving the solar system, helicopter on mars) was pretty bad.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#234

Post by zardo »

rbanffy wrote: post #84
Sanzig wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But imagine the PsyOps impact of the enemy looking up and seeing the US raining down literal ODSTs on them ;) Realistically, they'd be dropping into an allied base in-theatre with a pad able to support a Starship landing, and then taking conventional means the rest of the way. Of course, I suspect that when it comes to "drop operators from space" vs. "train extra operators who can be forward deployed," the latter is…

Imagine how much of a sitting duck is a rocket glowing infrared on a ballistic trajectory to the landing site.

Like an aircraft carrier, good at projecting power below a certain threshold of conflict and capability where they turn into a liability.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#235

Post by neverrroot »

ein0p wrote: post #219
croes wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineers who build the rockets, and they didn't succeed and anything impossible. Building landing rockets was thought to be too expensive not impossible. Why is Tesla's FSD still not working? Wasn't Musk around? The Spaceship is also nothing impossible, let's wait for his Mars colony.

If it’s all so possible, how come SpaceX has no viable competition? I get it, you don’t like Elon, that’s understandable, but let’s please give adequate credit where credit is due. Pulling off just one of the things he did would be a monumental achievement for anyone. He’s done what at this point, 3-4? Does that really mean nothing to you just because you don’t like that he has the gall to use the First Amendment?

It's something that has increasingly bewildered me: why do we as people get so biased when we don't like someone? So biased that we can't see anything good in them anymore, and we can't recognize (sometimes any of) their accomplishments?

Biden, Trump, Elon, etc., depending on what side you are, there's always someone to think of as an example.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#236

Post by TMWNN »

somenameforme wrote: post #33
baq wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are customers from three letter agencies who could find a use for this payload capacity, for sure. OTOH imagine if a reusable launch of this costs approximately the same as an expendable Atlas 5 in it's most performant configuration and reliability is proven - NASA could launch a Pluto probe like New Horizons, except it'd be able actually make orbit over there.

Atlas 5 is already completely obsoleted by the Falcon Heavy which costs about half as much, for a reusable launch, and carries about 3x as much. But for Starship, most people don't seem to realize what a potential game changer this is. The goal for Starship is to get costs down to about 15x less than Falcon Heavy. When you can start sending stuff to space for a few dollars per pound, we're not talking about just prob…

>Atlas 5 is already completely obsoleted by the Falcon Heavy which costs about half as much, for a reusable launch, and carries about 3x as much.

Which is why the rocket has been discontinued.

This is also why Boeing Starliner is dead man walking. Starliner is only certified for Atlas 5, and there are enough spare boosters for the launches NASA contracted with Boeing for, no more. The consensus is that Boeing will fulfill the contract then that'll be the end of Starliner, which is great for Boeing in the sense that it'll finally close that money-leaking wound, but not great for NASA because the whole point of Starliner + Crew Dragon was to have two separate US-owned ways to send people into space.[1] Even if Starship passes every test going forward ahead of schedule and gets man-rated, NASA would prefer to not have one company provide both methods, but I don't know what would be a better alternative. Sierra finally gets that big contract to man-rate Dream Chaser? Blue Origin?

[1] Setting aside how everyone at the time believed that Starliner would be the first one into orbit

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#237

Post by neverrroot »

croes wrote: post #222
ein0p wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do tell, who’s doing the hard work, and why do they only succeed at anything “impossible” if Elon is there?

BTW Musk is the guy who thinks that if one man with a plough can't produce enough food in his field, we need more men with more ploughs instead of just one man with a tractor. Or how do you explain his desire for a growing population? The concept of increasing productivity seems to be foreign to him in this context.

Yes, I suspect you are right, productivity is something foreign to Elon Musk. Definitely.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#238

Post by avmich »

bumby wrote: post #220
chpatrick wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wisdom of the crowds.

How well does this work when there is fundamentally little information? It works in stock trading because so much information is standardized and regulated. I am skeptical of it being as useful here simply because the crowds don't have much relevant information, as far as I know. For example, do the crowds know about the design redundancy? What about the supplier quality control? Or the reliability data on the check…

Engineering, physical principles, I guess. Those who place bets or making predictions may know a thing or two on mechanics, rocket science and history of building launchers.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#239

Post by TMWNN »

Sanzig wrote: post #50
misiti3780 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, wont it theoretically speed up and decrease international shipping + travel. We should be able to go from the US to Japan in an hour or two in the future.

I am pretty skeptical of Starship ever getting used for suborbital transportation, other than maybe for ultra-elite VIP transport or something like a rapid deployment system for military special forces. It seems highly unlikely they will ever get the price down to where it can compete with commercial airliners, and Concorde's commercial failure showed us that people will happily choose cheap subsonic flight over fast…

>Concorde's commercial failure

I thought Concorde failed commercially because it couldn't get approval to fly over the US elsewhere over land because of sonic booms. I know reentering spacecraft cause sonic booms but thought that they occur high enough to not cause the same problems on the ground.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#240

Post by TeMPOraL »

foobarian wrote: post #104
TeMPOraL wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't notice. I stop watching them, because they got boring . Let me say that again: space launches got boring . I hoped, but never believed, I'll live long enough to see this happen.

Not only that, but freaking first stage landings got routine. Not quite boring yet - I still tear up any time I see one :-)

Oh yes. I don't bother watching them anymore. Initially, I was excited about the possibility of successful landing, after a while, I was secretly waiting for RUDs, but past the first Falcon Heavy launch with a pair of boosters landing safely at the same time, I started to feel they've solved automated powered landing and didn't tune in again until Starship trials.

Funny thing though: I occasionally see some old (like, 1970s old) book or comic cover with a rocket ship landed vertically, or most recently, such drawings in my daughters' books; I used to laugh at them being nonsense, but after first few successful booster landings, I'm no longer laughing. I'm ashamed to admit that our forefathers got that thing right, and Star Trek et al. got it wrong.

Also, one of the books my little daughter has a picture of Falcon 9 next to the usual lineup of Vostok-K / Saturn V / Space Shuttle lineup. I shed a few tears when I saw this - for the first time it really hit me that there was meaningful progress in space exploration that happened within my adult lifetime, a fundamental shift I got to see and follow closely as it developed, and which my kids will see as "just how the world is". Sure, same is true about the Internet and smartphones, but neither made me feel the generational perspective gap, the way SpaceX rocket landings (and subsequent uptick in space missions) did.

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