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

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

#241

Post by stetrain »

fluoridation wrote: post #199
stetrain wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apollo missions landed two crew members in a tin can with extreme limits on what weight they could bring with them in either direction. A single trip launch will always be constrained like this due to the tyranny of the rocket equation. A modular mission system with multiple launches is the best way to expand capabilities and enable things like landing larger payloads for more advanced or long-term missions.

There's never going to be long-term crewed missions to the Moon. It has no scientific value. Even the little exploration we did in the '60s and '70s were a dubious proposition. There's not that much we could do by sending people that we couldn't do by sending robots.

If you think there's no value to returning to the moon, building a base, etc. then fine. But you keep moving the goalposts of what you are taking issue with here.

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

#242

Post by ranger207 »

GeekyBear wrote: post #232
gcanyon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explosion was unexpected and (as far as I know at the moment) unexplained, but they flew the mission at the edge of the envelope, and with a variety of different materials/missing bits on purpose, to better understand where the edge is. Everything that happened (maybe even including the explosion, we'll see in the final analysis) was, as far as we know, within the plan. The biggest can't-miss milestone was the fl…

> The explosion was unexpected Is it really unexpected that an extremely hot metal pressure tank will rupture when plunged into water? Since the ship is designed to be caught by a tower and not be plunged into water at all, it doesn't seem like this would be an issue in normal operations.

Different explosion, the one the parent comment is talking about happened earlier in reentry

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

#243

Post by GMoromisato »

sho_hn wrote: post #216
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. Th…

I disagree. If Starship fails, the most likely reason will be technological. Either they can never get the heat shield to be reliable, or they can't get cost down below Falcon 9 (meaning, refurbishment costs are too high).

And if it fails, who will spend billions on a new vehicle?

Stoke Space: They are working on Nova, which is designed for 2nd-stage re-use, and they've got a novel architecture. But they are not well-funded and if Starship fails, it is likely that investor sentiment will shift away from full reusability (you know how investors are). And even if they succeed, their current vehicle can only get 3 tons to orbit. That means each launch must cost less than $1 million to get to the $300/kg target. In contrast, Starship can loft 100 tons, so it can cost up to $30 million per launch and still hit the target.

Blue Origin: They are still working on 1st stage re-use, and even assuming they get that to work next year, they are at least a decade away from testing 2nd stage re-use. And their current designs don't have any of the cost-savings in Starship (like launch-tower catch).

And that's it! There are no other companies seriously working on 2nd-stage reuse.

If Starship fails, there will not be another contender for cheap flights to orbit for decades.

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

#244

Post by GMoromisato »

thegrim33 wrote: post #202
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…

"Space would remain the province of the military and large governments." Falcon 9 launches are already only ~10% government payloads, ~90% commercial payloads. They're already vastly not military/government launches.

Fair point!

I should have said that the space economy would remain small.

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

#245

Post by lupusreal »

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.

The constellations they can launch now are only a small fraction of the size they aspire to launch. Their plans for Starlink alone call for almost 10x as many satellites as they currently have. Then there are all the other constellations they might launch in addition to Starlink, including defense contracts that might call for rapid replenishment of expended/destroyed satellites.

As for Mars, Starship might be ready for that in a few years (a year ago I was saying in a year or two, but I've kicked that back). But where are the Mars customers? Who is developing Mars habitation plans and hardware that will be ready in even twenty years? Commercial demand for large satellite constellations obviously exists. Demand for Mars colonization is nonexistent, it exists only in the hopes and dreams of sci-fi junkies.

I really hope I'm wrong, because I'm a sci-fi junkie!

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

#246

Post by ActorNightly »

terminalshort wrote: post #218
ActorNightly wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

No, you evaluate someone's intelligence by comparing what they claim to reality.

For example: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1...

This statement alone disqualifies him to talk about anything self driving.

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

#247

Post by m4rtink »

sho_hn wrote: post #216
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. Th…

I would actually argue that Apollo and the space race damaged reusable launcher projects more than the Space Shuttle. Before the mad scramble to the Moon there were many interesting infrastructure projects and incremental manned mission planned as well as partially or fully reusable launcher or variants of existing expendable launchers.

Then everything that was not contributing to MOON ASAP was thrown away & massive spending on space hardware essentially normalized. The end result (Apollo) was impressive and achieved the goal (first on the Moon) - but was also totally unsustainable, resulting in a big crunch and a lot of setbacks and slowdowns.

Another contributing factor has been military involvement - again, wee need that milsat on orbit and we need it now, costs be damned. ICBMs not being exactly reusable does not help. Even the Space Shuttle design being perverted into its partially reusable clunky form can be traced back to military requirements.

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

#248

Post by m4rtink »

GMoromisato wrote: post #243
sho_hn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Th…

I disagree. If Starship fails, the most likely reason will be technological. Either they can never get the heat shield to be reliable, or they can't get cost down below Falcon 9 (meaning, refurbishment costs are too high). And if it fails, who will spend billions on a new vehicle? Stoke Space: They are working on Nova, which is designed for 2nd-stage re-use, and they've got a novel architecture. But they are not well…

AFAIK there is a bunch of Chinese startups pitching some fully reusable designs and/or ready to clone something that works. There is already some Falcon 9 like first stage reusable booster prototypes in development.

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

#249

Post by Teever »

patall wrote: post #227
mchusma wrote: post #174

Love it, great job SpaceX! I watched the Martian again the other day and I marveled about how much has changed. With Starship progress, almost none of the plot really makes sense (bespoke vehicles and payloads etc). The first mars expeditions will probably be stocked with a thousand tons of gear, enough to easily last a guy 5 years. And if some dude were stranded on Mars, SpaceX could start lobbing things in his dire…

> SpaceX could start lobbing things in his direction within maybe 30 days? If Earth and Mars are on opposite ends of the sun, nobody is going anywhere within 30 days. I do not see how anything will change from the one transfer window per ~2 years for the foreseeable future

While this doesn't apply in the scenario that the person you're responding to has given there are ways to get many more transfer windows between Mars and Earth using Aldrin Cyclers.

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

#250

Post by fluoridation »

stetrain wrote: post #241
fluoridation wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's never going to be long-term crewed missions to the Moon. It has no scientific value. Even the little exploration we did in the '60s and '70s were a dubious proposition. There's not that much we could do by sending people that we couldn't do by sending robots.

If you think there's no value to returning to the moon, building a base, etc. then fine. But you keep moving the goalposts of what you are taking issue with here.

I didn't move any goalposts.

1. Starship is never going to be usable for a Moon mission.

2. There's little scientific value in Moon missions.

3. There's never going to be long-term missions to the Moon.

I maintain all three simultaneously.

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