Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tortoise and hare, perhaps. Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit. Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in 1969 - with 60's tech.
Starship didn't really start in a meaningful way in 2012. In 2012 there were at best some vague concepts of a large rocket and some initial concept ideas for Raptor. But at that time for Raptor they were still thinking about Hydrolox. SpaceX simply didn't have the resource to fully invest in Starship until much later. Even by the early presentations around 2016 it was a tiny part of SpaceX and was prototyping with li…
Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
301–310 of 559 posts
Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am watching it here: https://www.youtube.com/live/6na40SqzYnU?si=t8iwk8rO3lAtF6wj Everyday Astronaut on youtube.
Their commenting be like: Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!
Their commenting _is_ like.
Otherwise, I agree.
Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#303...THAT was a big explosion.
Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
Im not interpreting their message as negative. Something obviously went wrong, the termination system was activated, and it blew up. Thats what it’s supposed to do when activated.
>Im not interpreting their message as negative. But shouldn't it be interpreted as negative? It blew up.
Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#305Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#306Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, Apollo also had government funding to the tune of approximately 2.5% of GDP. Starship would probably go a bit faster too with an annual budget of half a trillion.
Perhaps, although not obvious that it's cash starved. NASA's slow but meticulous approach has had a few failures, but also incredible successes such as the sky crane martian rover landing - got to get it right first time, tough to move fast and break things when the test environment is 100 million miles away! Edit: Same goes for 1969's lunar lander - had to work first time.
Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
To expand on KennyBlanken's answer: Rockets generally want their fuel to be sitting on the bottom of the tank, where the engines are. That's easy enough when the rocket is sitting on the ground and when the engines are firing, but once the rocket starts coasting/decelerating (e.g., when the engines turn off due to reaching the end of their burn) the fuel may drift away from the fuel intakes, resulting in the engines…
Given how successful our Saturn package was, it seems curious to me that we wouldn’t just follow the ullage motor method.
Also, If you are not reusable you have much more margin to play with. SpaceX is optimizing this thing to an incredible amount. Liftoff thrust is 2x as much as Saturn V and they are aiming at 3x as much. Total payload to orbit is 2-3x larger while being reusable.
SpaceX could have done what they did on Falcon 9 (200+ successful launches in a row) but Hot-Staging like the Soyuz is also successful.
SpaceX optimizes for long term performance and operational simplicity. Ironically that leads to more Soviet way. The N1 would also have used hot staging.
Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Start of the Apollo program literally precedes the Clean Air Act, establishment of EPA etc. When the government decided to build Kennedy Space Center in Florida wilderness, they just did. No lengthy environmental impact assessment process in the way.
Sure, but most of the (anyways rapid) turnaround time from Starship launch #1 to #2 was rebuilding and deluge system .. can't be more than a month or two max delay attributed to regulations.
Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
#310Maybe it's something on SpaceX's side of things, a change in the burn profile? Perhaps it's related to losing the Starship about a minute later.