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It isn't like he's contributing to the company anyway
He is clearly still contributing dates for launch.
Maybe he made the final selection from several possible reschedule dates, though.
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Well said. On the other hand, the SLS — having a launch escape system and not requiring sophisticated acrobatics in order to reach land safely — is totally the ship I'd rather be on.
SLS will never reach land, you'll be splashing down in the middle of the ocean, stuck inside a tin can getting battered by waves until NASA can scramble their limited resources to get you. The booster presumably like you will have been thrown into the ocean. Very wasteful system.
"a rapid unscheduled disassembly" - what a phrase for an explosion
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How could this be a success? It was a catastrophic failure. Sorry but bullshitting releases only works in software.
Sorry but engineering doesn't give a shit about your feelings. The primary objective was to leave the pad and not destroy the billion dollars of gear on it. Everything else after that was a win.
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Well said. On the other hand, the SLS — having a launch escape system and not requiring sophisticated acrobatics in order to reach land safely — is totally the ship I'd rather be on.
I suspect SpaceX will have to add something resembling an escape system before the thing gets "man-rated". That system could also be used to protect the passengers in case of a failed landing. It will add weight and thus lower the carrying capacity but they seem to have enough margin to allow for such an addition. They already have the header tanks in the top of Starship, adding a number of escape engines and some ex…
Anyone reading the headline could easily be misled: this was a massive success. Some context: - This was the first "integrated test" of the Starship space craft with its booster - The whole thing together was 120 meters tall - It will be one order of magnitude larger than the current largest rocket in terms of carrying capacity (~150 tonnes if it needs to return the booster, 250 if it doesn't) - There's 5 more of the…
Saturn V was 110m tall and 140t in the 1960s.
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SLS will never reach land, you'll be splashing down in the middle of the ocean, stuck inside a tin can getting battered by waves until NASA can scramble their limited resources to get you. The booster presumably like you will have been thrown into the ocean. Very wasteful system.
This is pretty hyperbolic. In the shuttle era, these contingencies were thought of and planned for. The amount of preparation NASA would do before shuttle launches was incredible, including flying medical and rescue teams to the chosen launch abort sites. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Tran... "Preparations of TAL sites took four to five days and began one week before launch, with the ma…
Parts falling off, engines going out, something getting inside the interstage. That ship was an absolute fighter.
I was thinking this as well... It spiraled seemingly forever without failing, while they hoovered telemetry off of it, until pressing the big red button. Massive fault tolerance at play. SpaceX is awesome in so many ways. Thanks Elon.
And the many many many other people actually conceiving the engines/rockets/&c.
People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. Compare the SLS to Starship. SLS has had a 100% success rate. One launch, one success. But it costs $2B per launch (and climbing) and has taken 12 years to get here. Plus, it's stealing pieces of the Space Shuttle, which was developed in the 70s over a long period of time. Starship will launch a half a dozen "failures" before they achieve…
The technological developments in the 60s/70s in aerospace never cease to amaze me. The SR-71, X-15, Saturn 5 rocket all developed when computers were less powerful than the NES yet they achieved things that no one else has been able to accomplish since (although I am sure there these have been surpassed via classified Skunk Works).