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Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

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Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#341

Post by x86x87 »

sidibe wrote: post #148
KennyBlanken wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the booster and ship have been destroyed. SpaceX can keep claiming these RUDs are 'fine' and 'we're getting data', but the rest of the industry does not consider it normal or a "success." Hotstaging didn't "work" until they can demonstrate the Starship vehicle survives orbital insertion, re-entry, and landing without damage or malfunction caused by the hotstaging.

Come on man they did a lot better than last time. How dare you bring any negativity here

Are there any rules against having a different take on things?

Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#342

Post by ben_w »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #301
panick21_ wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, whether you want to call it 8/9 years ('61-'69) or 14 ('55-'69), I don't think NASA looks too shabby landing men on the moon in that time frame without the decades of experience we have to draw on today, and with 1950's/60's technology, and so far no-one else has done it.

The Apollo missions were certainly an achievement worthy of getting memorialised.

I also think that, given the size of the Apollo landers, if SpaceX had actually wanted to they could've redone those missions years ago with a Falcon Heavy and a variant of the Crew Dragon design.

Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#343

Post by ceejayoz »

x86x87 wrote: post #335
ceejayoz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry laughed it up as Falcon 9 failed landing repeatedly. ( https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ ) Then they shifted to “ok but do it 10x”. They aren’t laughing now. They’ve lost as many Starships as NASA lost Space Shuttles so far, with no deaths. It’s a test program for now. Ask the “rest of the industry” about how Boeing’s Starliner is going. That’s what failure looks like.

This is not about laughing or not. This is about if it was objectfully a successful test or not. If you want to take the stance that any test is a success that's fine but remember this depends on what your definition of success is. The other thing to keep in mind is that past success is not always a good predictor of future success.

There's no "objectively" here. It's all feels.

Objectively, this test successfully demonstrated the water deluge system, an intact launch pad, all engines on the first and second stage igniting and staying lit, stage separation, hot staging, and a long burn nearly to orbital speeds. That's a pretty good list of ticked boxes.

They very openly stated they didn't necessarily expect it to get all the way to splashdown. You can argue that's PR, but their history has objectively been one of incremental progress (again, see Falcon 9's landing attempts) via repeat testing.

Personally, I'd consider a mission failed if a) it carries a real payload it's supposed to get somewhere and doesn't, b) it breaks due to a previously known issue, or c) it breaks sooner than the last test. I'd also consider it entirely fine to have "reach goals" in a test.

They went longer, faster, further, and more successfully than the first test. I'm happy calling that a win, and I suspect SpaceX will as well.

Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#344

Post by mulmen »

mcpackieh wrote: post #320
T-A wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo Careful what you wish for. The Saturn test program peaked at 3 tests / year (unless you want to count the separately tested launch escape system for the crew capsule), and the fully stacked Saturn V was only tested twice (in 1967 and 1968) before crewed missions. For all its speed, Apollo was not a SpaceX-style rapid iteration program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apo…

Apollo also killed three astronauts on the ground in the posthumously named Apollo 1, and almost killed at least three more with Apollo 13. Apollo 6 (the final uncrewed test) suffered from pogo oscillations and also had two engines go out in the second stage. Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill. This is all to say, Apollo was an extremely risky progra…

> Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill.

This is a common misconception but mixes up at least three things.

1) Yes, Eagle was long, but not because of a software bug. The exact reason is unclear and there may have been multiple factors.

2) Yes, there were unexpected computer alarms but these were caused by a hardware bug that manifested because a switch was in an unexpected position. The software handled this appropriately.

Margaret Hamilton said: “To blame the computer for the Apollo 11 problems is like blaming the person who spots a fire and calls the fire department. Actually, the computer was programmed to do more than recognize error conditions. A complete set of recovery programs was incorporated into the software. The software's action, in this case, was to eliminate lower priority tasks and re-establish the more important ones. The computer, rather than almost forcing an abort, prevented an abort. If the computer hadn't recognized this problem and taken recovery action, I doubt if Apollo 11 would have been the successful Moon landing it was.”

3) Neil Armstrong did adjust the landing point late in the descent after noticing rough terrain. He utilized semi-automatic control to do this. Essentially adjusting the target point for the autopilot. Eagle wasn’t directly flown like an aircraft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

A great video on the AGC and Apollo 11 landing: https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM?si=Ypn6Gtp16_DEkpK9

Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#345

Post by fragmede »

ceejayoz wrote: post #337
fallingknife wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedestrians didn't consent to human drivers either. The general public also didn't consent to any other human activity that could kill them in general. So that's a line that gets trotted out for self driving, but not one that is really used for anything else.

Human drivers aren't "in beta". I know there are human drivers when I'm crossing the crosswalk. I don't know which ones have delegated to a beta self-driving app.

Do you know when they're using an app on their phone while driving though? Because safety is the crux of the issue, and human drivers are notoriously terrible at driving. Having lost a friend on the first of the year to a driver who didn't stop, human drivers are drunk, distracted, and falling asleep at the wheel. They're not in "beta" only because they're not computer programs. That doesn't mean they're not absolute menaces though.

Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#346

Post by ceejayoz »

x86x87 wrote: post #336
honeybadger1 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naysayers offer a problem for every solution, can't stand these types. This is an enormous achievement for SpaceX.

Move fast and break things, amiright?

It's good enough for NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/white-sands/dest...

We've crashed production probes into Mars, we've burned astronauts alive, we've had the supposedly "safe" options like Boeing's Starliner have fundamental problems even making it to orbit. Space has always been this way.

Starship's more akin to taking the Bell X-1 up for a spin than flying a 787 around, for the time being. Problems are expected at this point in the program, or we'd be sending people on them already.

Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#348

Post by fallingknife »

ceejayoz wrote: post #337
fallingknife wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedestrians didn't consent to human drivers either. The general public also didn't consent to any other human activity that could kill them in general. So that's a line that gets trotted out for self driving, but not one that is really used for anything else.

Human drivers aren't "in beta". I know there are human drivers when I'm crossing the crosswalk. I don't know which ones have delegated to a beta self-driving app.

You don't know which ones are tired drivers, which ones have bald tires or worn break pads, or a million other possible dangers. And you don't know which ones are 16 (or "in beta" as you described it).

Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#349

Post by lutorm »

hackeraccount wrote: post #216
ironyman wrote: post #89

- Starship got just below orbit - Booster destroyed during hot staging - SpaceX reporting that destruct system fired on upper stage towards end of burn all in all a pretty good result: clean launch and separation, good performance on the booster during ascent (no engine mishaps this time)

Below orbit is a strange way to put it. Orbit is more speed then height. Google says it was going 1,400 mph when it was lost. Orbital speed is around 17,600 miles per hour. The goal was something just under orbital speed. Not that this wasn't totally amazing. Hopefully the launch pad wasn't damaged and they can crunch the data and have another test that gets further soon.

Well the technical term is "suborbital", which literally means "below orbital". (It's the energy that's below orbital, not the height...)

Re: Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

#350

Post by x86x87 »

fragmede wrote: post #345
ceejayoz wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human drivers aren't "in beta". I know there are human drivers when I'm crossing the crosswalk. I don't know which ones have delegated to a beta self-driving app.

Do you know when they're using an app on their phone while driving though? Because safety is the crux of the issue, and human drivers are notoriously terrible at driving. Having lost a friend on the first of the year to a driver who didn't stop, human drivers are drunk, distracted, and falling asleep at the wheel. They're not in "beta" only because they're not computer programs. That doesn't mean they're not absolute…

Sorry but it's just not the same thing.

If you, as a human, do stupid things behind the wheel you are personally liable for the outcome.

Human drivers are orders of magnitude more capable AND liable than this autopilot joke.

If a machine advertised as SELF DRIVING does stupid things behind the wheel who do you hold accountable? Should this even be allowed when we know that the machine cannot handle all situations?

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