Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

space.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 363 posts

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

#311

Post by Sparyjerry »

fluoridation wrote: post #82
anonymars wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as phrased this is going to get way too pedantic. But I think it raises a larger point which is worthy to consider. Presumably what we're trying to get at is, in broad strokes, "is Starship more cost-effective to develop than Saturn V" (and I assume the follow-on for that will be to compare the "NASA approach" vs the "SpaceX approach") But you raise a good point in that the baseline playing field is completel…

>but I don't think it's possible for them to say anything meaningful for comparison on their own. It depends on how different they are. Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there and hasn't orbited once. Ignoring R&D and just going by launch costs alone, that's USD 4B (2025) to orbit 1 Saturn V, vs USD x to orbit 1 Starship, where x >= 1B.

Starship has already reached orbit many times but places itself on a suborbital trajectory to intentionally test re-entry and landing which it has done successfully several times.

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

#312

Post by m4rtink »

GMoromisato wrote: post #290
m4rtink wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Agreed! Even at $300/kg to LEO there are a ton of new applications that suddenly make sense. If we get to $10/kg we will literally colonize the solar system.

Yeah - while real space development will use 99% of local resources eventually, the cheaper we can get stuff to LEO the quicker we can get things going. Not to mention lifting any complex stuff & humans, that which simply not be available otherwise until much more stuff is operational in space.

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

#313

Post by Sparyjerry »

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…

Shenanigans of its founder being falsely accused of doing a Nazi salute when he was just waiving and not agreeing with certain peoples politics. When someone tries to compare someone to the most evil person that has ever existed then odds are that person is lying through their teeth. On one had we have a 'wave,' literally, and on the other hand we have genocide. It's incredible to me how many people choose not to see through the lies about Elon Musk, even though they have the capability, and to this day think he is a nazi.

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

#314

Post by Sparyjerry »

protoster wrote: post #150
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…

[flagged]

Supporting DOGE is an extremely intelligent thing to do with the amount of debt our government has, 34 TRILLION last time I checked. Supporting a democratically electable party, and eventually the elected president of your choice is the right and moral thing to do by all objective measures, including if you believe in majority rule. Politics is always about disagreement and every generation thinks their disagreements are the most dire, but in reality live moves on. By siding with the literal winning party you are defacto 'moral' in the eyes of the majority.

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

#315

Post by jurking_hoff »

Sparyjerry wrote: post #314
protoster wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Supporting DOGE is an extremely intelligent thing to do with the amount of debt our government has, 34 TRILLION last time I checked. Supporting a democratically electable party, and eventually the elected president of your choice is the right and moral thing to do by all objective measures, including if you believe in majority rule. Politics is always about disagreement and every generation thinks their disagreements…

[dead]

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

#316

Post by foobarian »

m4rtink wrote: post #261
potato3732842 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many potential designs they considered. You've got the mass of the doors and structure of the ship to consider, the mass of the cargo, actuators for both, the arrangement of cargo in the ship, all of which have interconnected tradeoffs.

Also add pressure management, warping of the dispenser and ship hull & thermal expansion. And fornlong duration missions also lubricant evaporation, possibility of vacuum welding & atomic oxygen reactions if you spend long in low Earth orbit. :)

The fun thing is that as long as you have the requirements and acceptance right, this could still be solved with a garage door opener and welded rebar :-D

Reminds me of early Google DIY rack PCs. [1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1lf6yat/googles_fir...

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

#317

Post by senectus1 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #39
nomilk wrote: post #19

Given the results of test 10 (successful splash down of Starship), any ideas what test 11 will entail? Could we be looking at a chopstick catch of the Starship itself?

They're probably gonna keep wasting ships until they've got the exact limits of their capability established. I know it seems counterintuitive to everyone who grew up in the era of the space shuttle, but the ship is the cheap part, the giant booster is the expensive part. The ship has a way longer cycle time so starship unit costs are going to dominate fleet construction cost despite being the cheaper unit so knowing…

given one of the flight control wings was melting on the way back in I suspect you're right.

I expect them to start catching the booster more often tho.

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

#318

Post by potato3732842 »

foobarian wrote: post #316
m4rtink wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also add pressure management, warping of the dispenser and ship hull & thermal expansion. And fornlong duration missions also lubricant evaporation, possibility of vacuum welding & atomic oxygen reactions if you spend long in low Earth orbit. :)

The fun thing is that as long as you have the requirements and acceptance right, this could still be solved with a garage door opener and welded rebar :-D Reminds me of early Google DIY rack PCs. [1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1lf6yat/googles_fir...

The garage door opener (literal or metaphorical) is sitting at the end of 50yr of incremental refinement, albeit for a different use.

If you can spare the weight and it meets your specs and the use it close enough you'd be a fool not to use it.

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

#319

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

fluoridation wrote: post #265
DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We didn't get to the moon with a refuelling station did we? No. We did it by throwing away ~98% of the vehicle on the way there. > How come we need one now? Because building a new gargantuan tower and tossing that majority of it into the ocean/deep space every time we need to go the moon is not sustainable. > We're really seeing 15 starship launches per moon trip as reasonable, rather than just building a single tr…

>The alternative (dictated by physics) is that we expend the whole thing. We can also, you know, not. We could put that money to something here on Earth instead of burning it up.

The money is not "burned up" - it is spent right here on Earth. It's paid to extremely skilled engineers, technicians and scientists.

The technology developed for doing such a difficult task will inevitably benefit all of humanity. It did so for Apollo. It will again in the future.

https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...

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

#320

Post by fluoridation »

Sparyjerry wrote: post #311
fluoridation wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I don't think it's possible for them to say anything meaningful for comparison on their own. It depends on how different they are. Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there and hasn't orbited once. Ignoring R&D and just going by launch costs alone, that's USD 4B (2025) to orbit 1 Saturn V, vs USD x to orbit 1 Starship, where x >= 1B.

Starship has already reached orbit many times but places itself on a suborbital trajectory to intentionally test re-entry and landing which it has done successfully several times.

Wrong. Starship has yet to orbit the planet. Certainly not "many" times, considering this is only its tenth flight.
Post reply on HN