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Starship’s second flight test

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31–40 of 235 posts

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#32

If Starship meets its reusability goals it's going to be absolutely nuts. Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner or something, carrying more than the entire habitable volume of ISS every time. It's impossible to overstate how much that would change access to space, and how much of an advantage it would give SpaceX over its competitors (even other nations).

"Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner."

Probably not. It takes 85 days, on average, to turn a Falcon 9 around.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#33

Did Fisheries and Wildlife finally figure out the areal density of whales in the ocean for impact probability estimation? https://youtu.be/JN3KPFbWCy8?t=4742

That's incredible. It's not really about whales and sharks, they know the probability is 0%, those agency people can't be that stupid. What they are really saying is they'll shove all the sticks they have in his spokes. If it was in some other country, I might have guessed they are just plainly asking for a bribe, but here I think they just really don't like the Musk and his company.

When some random person interacts with the bureaucracy, and hits these catch-22 scenarios, it's often not personal, they just fall under the wheels of the bulldozer, so to speak, and nobody notices or cares. But with something like Space X it's a bit more political, and it seems whoever drives the bulldozer was turning it towards Musk a bit to get him on purpose.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it turned out the federal government was just dicking around out of some unrelated grudge towards Elon Musk, half the country would still support them. Some days most of HN would too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Beside the point. I don’t think Fish and Wildlife is doing anything other than being annoying obstructionist bureaucrats, but even if you interpreted their obstruction in the least flattering way possible, which I agree is unfair and uncharitable, it still wouldn’t win any sympathy for SpaceX.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#35

Did Fisheries and Wildlife finally figure out the areal density of whales in the ocean for impact probability estimation? https://youtu.be/JN3KPFbWCy8?t=4742

Didn't even realize there already was a comment for this. Pointed out the exact same timestamp independently in another comment.

Talking of the more reasonable bureaucratic hoops, SpaceX has done quite a job filling all of FAA's requirements they landed on the program from the previous attempt. In a way I hoped that SpaceX would operate outside US to not have to abide by all the crazy laws they have (even with hiring!) but this seems to be the only way.

Overall, Starship isn't being given a fraction of the coverage it should be. This is the Apollo of our time, but without the dependency of hyper-inefficient and unstable government funding. But this time, Moon will be just a bus stop.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#37
post #32

If Starship meets its reusability goals it's going to be absolutely nuts. Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner or something, carrying more than the entire habitable volume of ISS every time. It's impossible to overstate how much that would change access to space, and how much of an advantage it would give SpaceX over its competitors (even other nations).

"Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner." Probably not. It takes 85 days, on average, to turn a Falcon 9 around.

Starship is designed with way faster turnaround time. Falcon 9 had optional reuse, while Starship aims to be the 747 of space access.

Elon said in 2020: > Starship is being designed to be relaunched an hour after landing, with zero nominal work

Now while that might take some time to reach, before that the pad itself is likely going to be capable of many launches every day given there's more ships. Starships seems to be made to be way more economical to manufacture per-ship than the shuttles or Saturns so I don't see a bottleneck in that.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#38
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend the above link because it gets even weirder than you might surmise from the parent's comment.

The seal story is amusing as well. Isn't there some other way to figure that out besides a real test? Does no one know the hearing ability of seals before?

I think the effects of noise on sea mammals is a fairly recent area of research. I know of a researcher who has been working on this as part of research into offshore wind environmental impact. But they were already researching porpoises and this was just a new thing to keep track of.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#39

I’m excited to watch 350,000 gallons of water sprayed at fire.

I'm excited to watch 3,400,000 kg of fire sprayed at water, concrete, and hopefully open air.

I'm more interested in what that will make the rocket do, like move, though.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#40
post #30

If Starship meets its reusability goals it's going to be absolutely nuts. Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner or something, carrying more than the entire habitable volume of ISS every time. It's impossible to overstate how much that would change access to space, and how much of an advantage it would give SpaceX over its competitors (even other nations).

But more important first is to put headphones on seals and play sonic boom sounds to test and make sure they aren't startled by the scary rocket sounds. (Ok, stretching a little. That is what a seemingly similar survey did at Cape as a part of some similarly goofy bureaucracy thing that has been holding Starship back the last month or so. For Starship they're worried for the risk of what happens if Starship literally…

This is why we can't have good things. A group people will cry about everything.
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