SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by rozab » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

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…

The thing is, there is no demand to get that much stuff into space.

Falcon 9 has massively brought down the cost per orbit, and even with the whole world as a captive market, every university in every country putting up cubesats, they still don't have nearly enough payloads to make the economies of scale kick in. Hence Starlink. The majority of SpaceX payload mass has been Starlink, something nobody was even asking for. 300+ launches.

And the idea to reach the economies of scale for Starship is... Even more Starlink. How much Starlink could we possibly need? When will humanity come up with another use for this glut of payload capacity?

Even with the Artemis deadline looming large, SpaceX are still pushing this Starlink angle for Starship, it's nuts

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

#272

Post by jjk166 » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

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…

> 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).

There are a lot of other potential technological problems (dozens of engines, stainless steel construction, the belly flop maneuver, etc). Ultimately if Starship would were to fail for technical reasons, it would only indicate the particulars of Starship's implementation don't work. Starship is not the only (or even in my opinion the best) way to achieve full reusability. And partial reusability, which just a few years ago was considered radical, has already been so firmly proven that just about everyone is doing, or trying to do it. The idea of "don't destroy this extremely expensive vehicle after only a single use" won't die for as long as people can see expenses on their books.

If anything, the alternative approach, making a low cost, mass producible rocket has been abandoned, possibly pre-maturely.

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

#273

Post by terminalshort » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:40 PM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #258

terminalshort wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 parac…

> Is that it? I was thinkin more along the lines of unconstitutionally cutting things like USAID thats going to actively result in more unnecessary deaths, personal vendetta against LBGT organizations in cutting those budgets, cutting IRS funding which is going to end up costing more ironically as there isn't enough staffing to pursue all the people using tax avoidance Not to mention in general supporting someone and…

> cutting things like USAID thats going to actively result in more unnecessary deaths

That's bad IMO, but not helping people isn't remotely the same as starting a war that kills them (different if they were US citizens, but in this case they aren't).

> personal vendetta against LBGT organizations in cutting those budgets

I don't even have anything against these organizations, but I would cut their budgets to zero if I were in charge because funding them is none of the government's business.

> cutting IRS funding which is going to end up costing more ironically as there isn't enough staffing to pursue all the people using tax avoidance

This is dumb, but hardly a moral issue.

> In comparison to GWB, Trump is going much worse (especially if you want to compare deficit spending)

I 100% agree, but so was Biden, and I don't blame everyone who supported him either.

Fundamentally I don't blame Elon (or anyone else) for anything that Trump (or whoever they supported) has done that he didn't have a direct hand in e.g. DOGE. It's the nature of politics that you have to swallow a lot of things you don't like when you choose a side to support.

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

#274

Post by Iwan-Zotow » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

coolspot wrote: post #255

hiddencost wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people talk about data centers in space? Heat management is wayyy harder in space.

Common folk assume that the space is super-cold, so it must be good for hot servers.

Well. 2.7K is cold

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

#275

Post by yencabulator » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

hiddencost wrote: post #237

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…

Why do people talk about data centers in space? Heat management is wayyy harder in space.

Simple: VC money. The only thing surprising to me about that is that the pitch wasn't "AI in space".

My take: The idea that heavy computing in LEO is better than sending data down to Earth sounds very naive. Starlink is great proof that the bandwidth is plentiful and the latency is good, once the equipment is modern. Definitely cheaper and easier than cooling a datacenter.

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

#276

Post by jjk166 » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:47 PM UTC

lordofgibbons wrote: post #193

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 Did it really stop for decades? I think SpaceX and Blue Origin were both already working on re-usable launch systems around that time

SpaceX started with the business plan of low cost, mass producible single use launchers. Falcon 9 was not designed with any level of reusability in mind. There was a major redesign to add landing hardware, but the whole reason for Starship being a totally new design was the reusability that a Falcon "super-heavy" derivative could never achieve.

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

#277

Post by lstodd » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:47 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #143

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside the founder or company itself, philosophically and ethically the “ends justify any means” concept is deeply flawed.

Especially when the ends are even less likely to work then Marxism Leninism

But the scientific method does work. So we observe the experiment kindly undertaken by Mr Musk. And then when some results happen we decide.

Remember, development of the R-7 into the most reliable expendable booster took about 40 years and that with full backing of a Soviet Union.

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

#278

Post by Ajedi32 » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:48 PM UTC

themgt wrote: post #147

Romario77 wrote: post #18

It was a significant progress, but I won't call it "nailed it". As there was an damage or explosion on re-entry where the skirt of the starship got damaged. And we could see pretty significant damage on one of the fins. Nailing it would be without the things above.

SpaceX has two big things going for it: Starship/Raptor factories churning them out cheap, and themselves as a paying customer in Starlink who can dogfood a risky new launch platform. Now that they're demoed pez-dispensing v3 dummy Starlinks, I'd assume they'll start launching real ones within ~1-3 months. At that point as long as they can deliver payload to orbit and catch the booster the program is operational and…

> I'd assume they'll start launching real ones within ~1-3 months

I think it's still a bit early for that given that they've only had one successful flight and are still testing lots of new design changes, but I think you're right that the capabilities they've already demonstrated are probably enough to make Starship commercially viable even if literally none of the other revolutionary improvements they're working on pan out.

Falcon 9 doesn't recover the 2nd stage at all, and it's already by far the least expensive rocket out there in terms of cost/kg.

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

#279

Post by m4rtink » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:48 PM UTC

rozab wrote: post #271

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…

The thing is, there is no demand to get that much stuff into space. Falcon 9 has massively brought down the cost per orbit, and even with the whole world as a captive market, every university in every country putting up cubesats, they still don't have nearly enough payloads to make the economies of scale kick in. Hence Starlink. The majority of SpaceX payload mass has been Starlink, something nobody was even asking f…

Demand takes some time to ramp up, especially with quite expensive and complex stuff like Satellites. SpaceX is now even launching competing constellation comsats (project Kuiper), private manned space missions and there are quite a few manned space station projects under development that would be basically unthinkable without the cheaper lift Falcon 9 provides.

As for "How much Starlink could we possibly need?" I think the answer is simply "YES". Even when you possibly somehow satisfy all your Internet access customers, you can start adding other services, like mobile phone coms (already in progress) or maybe imaging or hosted payloads.

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

#280

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 6:51 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #257

GMoromisato wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point! There were many reusable projects in that era, but Apollo budgets consumed everything else. I still think Shuttle could have worked, if it had been cheaper to evolve it. Elon's focus on Starship is to make each iteration as cheap as possible, which means they can radically evolve the design without fear. Think of the (recent) switch to hot-staging or the evolution of Raptor. If Shuttle had been able to e…

> I still think Shuttle could have worked, if it had been cheaper to evolve it. I doubt it. It's a gigantic kludge that isn't fixable. For example, the requirement that it land like an airplane meant it needed wings, landing gear, and a full set of flight control surfaces. None of that is useful apart from the landing, and yet it is necessary to push it all into space and re-enter it. I once emailed Homer Hickam abou…

None of that would have been a serious concern had the shuttle actually met any of it's re-usability claims. It doesn't matter that it costs a bit more in fuel and initial outlay for the orbiter if you actually could turn it around with little effort or cost in a couple weeks.

Having to inspect each and every tile after every trip because they basically didn't work like initially designed was the primary failure of the Shuttle program. It also wasn't nearly safe enough, primarily due to a shitty management culture that was taking over America (and is still currently in power in nearly every business).

The thermal tile technology was for some reason believed to be dramatically easier to design, engineer, and manage than it ever came to be in reality. I'm not convinced that Starship has "solved" the problems inherent in tile systems.