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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

#301

Post by chermi »

thesmart wrote: post #148
Aeolun wrote: post #79

And maybe more interesting. How much did it cost them to get this far vs the sls?

You can't really compare them because SLS was a jobs program intended to spread out contracts across many states by reusing suppliers from shuttle programs. Cheap? No. Wasteful? also no. Most of that money went back into those economies.

Ahh, much like the economy has grown so much because the government gave people money and shovel to dig and refill holes. Went back into the economy, must've been a good move. Let's not bother considering what else could've been done with the money.

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

#302

Post by WalterBright »

Teever wrote: post #299
WalterBright wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's sort of a fallacious argument though because you could say the same thing about every part of a spacecraft that is used only for the return phase of its mission. It might be more accurate to say that the ratio of mass for re-entry equipment to the entire craft mass is too great. But with that said I think that the ultimate failure of the shuttle was that the design wasn't amenable to low cost maintenance. A sp…

It's not fallacious at all. Look at the difference in the hardware bringing the Apollo crews back vs Shuttle crews. Several orders of magnitude.

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

#303

Post by Teever »

WalterBright wrote: post #302
Teever wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sort of a fallacious argument though because you could say the same thing about every part of a spacecraft that is used only for the return phase of its mission. It might be more accurate to say that the ratio of mass for re-entry equipment to the entire craft mass is too great. But with that said I think that the ultimate failure of the shuttle was that the design wasn't amenable to low cost maintenance. A sp…

It's not fallacious at all. Look at the difference in the hardware bringing the Apollo crews back vs Shuttle crews. Several orders of magnitude.

And what's the ratio of that to the returned payload mass?

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

#304

Post by ActorNightly »

terminalshort wrote: post #273
ActorNightly wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Look bro, we can spend arguing about details, but in reality, its pretty easy to put a nail in this: Trump tried to coup the government in 2020. And Elon supported this. This is not arguable. There is no fake media around this, you can read the lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court immunity ruling yourself.

You would have to prove with exceptional evidence that whatever Biden did or Kamala would have done would have been much worse.

Literally no other issue matters until you get over this bridge. Unless of course you are in support of a dictator and think his attempt to throw any legal process and the constitution out was justified, but at that point just say that instead of dancing around the issue.

>It's the nature of politics

No, at this point its solely in the moral/fabric of society territory.

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

#305

Post by metalman »

WalterBright wrote: post #295
GMoromisato wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think @WalterBright is probably right and that the Shuttle design was too compromised to be fixable. Stacking the orbiter on top of the external tank is a non-starter, IMHO. Obviously you'd have to add engines at the bottom, but now your cost goes up unless you plan on recovering the external tank (and how do you do that?). And now you need another fuel tank for the orbiter, right? Do you extend the orbiter so it c…

The Shuttle cannot even fly straight. The engine thrust has to be tilted.

Ouch! These arguments are new to me, and so painfully obvious from an aircraft design point of view. Ouch!

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

#306

Post by chris_va »

GMoromisato wrote: post #251
nroets wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With one company being so far ahead is actually a good thing: No tragedy of the Commons. Or reckless gambling on unproven technology.

Agreed! Also, Kessler Syndrome is over-feared, like the China Syndrome from the nuclear age. At Starlink orbits, space debris renters in years, if not months. And even then, having cheap access to orbit would allow us deploy replacements quickly. At GEO, the distances are so vast that Kessler Syndrome is much less likely (though not impossible). In between, there is some danger, but again, cheap access to orbit gives…

Well, SpaceX originally wanted 1000km+ orbits for Starlink, which would basically never have decayed.

Said fear was relevant.

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

#307

Post by jaybrendansmith »

enraged_camel wrote: post #20

Incredible achievement, but what is more incredible is how many people (including almost all of my friends circle) have started rooting for SpaceX to fail due to the shenanigans of its founder. I think as a culture we've lost the ability to compartmentalize. We should be able to criticize and even despise the head of a company, and at the same time celebrate when the intelligence and hard work of the countless smart…

I am rooting for them all. I don't need to like the founder, or his politics. I understand that Gwynne Shotwell and so many others are behind much of the progress.

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

#308

Post by Sparyjerry »

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 comes at a curve, the cheaper you make it, the more demand there will be. The demand for satellites and eventually human travel is practically infinite if the cost is low enough.

If Starship cuts cost to orbit by at minimum 1/3 and at maximum 1/100th demand will skyrocket (pun intended) either way.

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

#309

Post by ricardobeat »

jjk166 wrote: post #284
ashishuthama wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'lobbing things' i.e launching things, OP didnt mean it would reach there in 30 days.

You couldn't start launching things in 30 days, you need to wait for a launch window, which happens every ~2 years. The transit times are on top of that.

The launch windows are for the most fuel efficient transfer. You can still launch outside of the window if you’re willing to pay the cost elsewhere.

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

#310

Post by ls612 »

saubeidl wrote: post #55
enraged_camel wrote: post #20

Incredible achievement, but what is more incredible is how many people (including almost all of my friends circle) have started rooting for SpaceX to fail due to the shenanigans of its founder. I think as a culture we've lost the ability to compartmentalize. We should be able to criticize and even despise the head of a company, and at the same time celebrate when the intelligence and hard work of the countless smart…

Wernher von Braun had the incredible achievement of shooting the first rocket up to space - the V2. Thanks to the intelligence and hard work of the countless smart and hard-working people he pushed the boundaries of what is possible for humanity. Still, I find it hard to accept we should compartmentalize and not think about who those rockets were built for and with what purpose.

>Still, I find it hard to accept we should compartmentalize and not think about who those rockets were built for and with what purpose.

Yet that is exactly what the US did and we got the Saturn V out of doing so.

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