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SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

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Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#381

Post by greedo »

panick21_ wrote: post #377
greedo wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A civil war. Right. Completely displaying your ignorance of the region's history.

The history where for the last 400 years the were part of the same country and share close history for 2000 years and only a tiny amount of time they were fully separated. They speak essentially the same language (often the very same) and use the same national origin story and the Russian Orthodox Church was literally representing people from both sides of the border. There are tons of families and other connections…

Russian and Ukrainian have similar roots, but are not "essentially the same language."

The "national origin story" (unless you mean the 1917 Revolution) is nothing like how the two countries were created.

Mexico and the US have "tons of families and other connections over the (sic) boarder as well."

The reason the elites treated the border between Ukraine and the Russian Federation as meaningless was because ex-Soviet cronies were running Ukraine to plunder its assets. Until the Maiden Revolution, these cronies were basically stooges controlled by Moscow.

The current conflict (2014 to now) is nothing like a civil war. Moscow uses some proxy forces from the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, but the majority of forces are from the Russian Federation. They control everything, supply all the equipment and determine goals and objectives. If you were to remove the Russian forces from these two oblasts (as well as Crimea and Zaporizhzhia) these proxy forces would collapse immediately.

Oh and regarding England and Scotland, well, many Scots would like to leave the UK. That wouldn't be a civil war either, but an independence movement. A civil war would be the more like the Hundred Years war...

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#382

Post by pests »

Sanzig wrote: post #331
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of this market: The NFL wants to expand to Europe, Asia, South America badly. Problem is the logistics of Mach-1 air travel won't allow that. Same for the NBA, NHL, and MLB. A true world super league of futbol. We're talking 10s of billions of dollars in new annual revenue for these sports leagues ... if they could transport a whole team anywhere in the world in 4-5 hours. It costs a couple hundred thousand per…

A transcontinental flight ranges from low five figures for a long range business jet to upper five/lower six figures for a widebody jetliner. Those are machines purpose built for the job of moving people transcontinental distances. They benefit from decades of heritage building tens of thousands of units leading to extremely aggressive cost optimization. I just can't see Starship getting the cost per flight down into…

I agree it would t work.

The Miami Dolphins charter a private 747 with 143 business class seats, 36 economy seats, 26 upper deck business and 10 first class.

Not only do all 55 players need to travel but so do all the people accountable for electronics, medical, gear, coaches and staff, etc.

It's a lot to transport and a lot of risk on one vehicle.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#383

Post by TMWNN »

somenameforme wrote: post #376
TMWNN wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So for instance the Space Shuttle was only retired in 2011. After all was said and done it ended up costing $1.6 billion per launch - about $30,000 per pound of payload. The Falcon Heavy costs about $0.1 billion (in reusable mode) and brought the costs down to less than $700/lb. Is that an apples-to-apples comparison? Each shuttle launch cost $1.5 billion when including development cost (that is, $200 billion in tot…

It's all about what the customer pays. In the case of the Space Shuttle the customer also completely paid for the development of the launch system, so it doesn't really make sense to exclude that. It's also fair to include it because it's also included for SpaceX. When we say a Falcon Heavy got launch costs down to below $700/lb, that also includes a enough of a profit margin built in to completely fund their past op…

> It's all about what the customer pays. In the case of the Space Shuttle the customer also completely paid for the development of the launch system, so it doesn't really make sense to exclude that.

Good point. I agree that from the customer's perspective, the flyaway cost is what matters. That said, wouldn't that also mean that for Starlink launches, the development cost would still have to be amortized across them when they are not for other launches? That doesn't feel right to me; surely the flyaway/incremental cost is still what matters.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#384

Post by bumby »

mlsu wrote: post #380
bumby wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a particularly good strategy here for a couple reasons: 1) Risk on safety critical operations is not something people tend to want to roll the dice with. 2) The nature of the industry makes each trial pretty expensive. Over decades, the shuttle only had something like 135 launches and the managers still didn't have a good handle on the actual risk.

> the shuttle Sort of proving the point here, no? There is a reason SpaceX has gone to orbit more times than the Shuttle has. Soon they will have launched more Starship prototypes than the shuttle ever did. And they will be safer, because SpaceX understands why their rockets fail. Obviously this strategy does not work with humans in the loop. It might have been impossible to do what SpaceX is doing now in the 80s giv…

>Sort of proving the point here, no?

I don't think so, for the same reason you identified: it only works when the risk isn't safety critical (ie when humans are in the loop). In other words, it's acceptable when risks are low. It's the same reason NASA is more risk-tolerant with non-human-rated missions. But keep in mind CCP is also meant to transport humans. The risk we'd want to bolster against is the human biases that lead us to get complacent. There are some instances that make me wonder about that with SpaceX, but I'm giving them the benefit to the doubt that they've learned from those.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#385

Post by gibolt »

hoseja wrote: post #360
gibolt wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The focus on making lots of prototypes reduces cost. They streamline the largest and most expensive manufacturing bottlenecks. Each Starship has 30+ engines required per flight and tons of precision welding. All of it can now be made in a month. That means massive cost savings going forward, the faster each can be made

We could have had dozens of James Webb Space Telescopes for the cost of, like, five.

Even better, since larger payloads can fit, the design can be far less complex due to weight and folding limitations.

Rather than spend 10 years designing and building one telescope, they could spend 2-3 years and keep refining the hardware, with multiple types on the same platform

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#386

Post by pests »

TMWNN wrote: post #239
Sanzig wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty skeptical of Starship ever getting used for suborbital transportation, other than maybe for ultra-elite VIP transport or something like a rapid deployment system for military special forces. It seems highly unlikely they will ever get the price down to where it can compete with commercial airliners, and Concorde's commercial failure showed us that people will happily choose cheap subsonic flight over fast…

>Concorde's commercial failure I thought Concorde failed commercially because it couldn't get approval to fly over the US elsewhere over land because of sonic booms. I know reentering spacecraft cause sonic booms but thought that they occur high enough to not cause the same problems on the ground.

Not just a boom or booms, a continuous boom along its travel.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#387

Post by ehsankia »

dotnet00 wrote: post #261
ehsankia wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure we're referring to the same "antics". You cannot deny that Elon has changed as a person ever since he got hooked on Twitter. A lot of his personality and how he acts these days is very much focused on trying to get the most likes. Pre-Twitter "fame", it's true that he disregarded what others thought, but he also wasn't so focused on maximizing his likes either. Twitter was like heroine for him, and he now li…

Is it really so hard for you to accept that he's just being like any person and sharing what he finds to be worth sharing? He was always like this. He started SpaceX because he thought putting a dome on Mars within which plants would be grown would be inspiring. The only reason it wasn't on social media was because it wasn't really much of a thing at the time. He didn't care about the optics and tried to buy an ICBM…

> To me that sounds like the same person as he is on social media.

So randomly claiming someone's a pedophile is somehow "the same" as wanting to put a dome on Mars because it's inspiring?

I honestly don't see how you can say that sounds like the same person.

> sharing what he finds to be worth sharing?

Are we honestly looking at the same tweets? Just looked and his pinned tweet is about Mexico and asylum seekers, does that sound "inspiring" to you? What about "My pronouns are Proscute/Fauci"?

He's fully lost the plot. He's no longer about grand inspiring endeavors, and is instead knee deep in social wars, posting shitty memes all day. What's the last inspiring thing he's done?

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#388

Post by ehsankia »

ein0p wrote: post #250
ehsankia wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure we're referring to the same "antics". You cannot deny that Elon has changed as a person ever since he got hooked on Twitter. A lot of his personality and how he acts these days is very much focused on trying to get the most likes. Pre-Twitter "fame", it's true that he disregarded what others thought, but he also wasn't so focused on maximizing his likes either. Twitter was like heroine for him, and he now li…

Maybe he didn’t “change”. Maybe you just see more of him now, and see how he actually is, foot in mouth and all. People who got very rich very early often lack the “filter” - they don’t have to consider your opinion of them. In fact, considering it would probably be strongly counterproductive if they’re ambitious. Popular opinion is akin to a lawn mower - stick your head out too far above others and you’ll lose it. B…

Change likely wasn't the right word. Rather, Twitter "enables" him to be the worst version of himself, as you allude to. Point is, he's no longer focused on any big inspiring project and instead spends his days fighting stupid culture wars and posting shitty memes on X.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#389

Post by pests »

wolverine876 wrote: post #271
soperj wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was excited about a number of those things, but the production values on some of them (leaving the solar system, helicopter on mars) was pretty bad.

> the production values on some of them (leaving the solar system, helicopter on mars) was pretty bad What does that mean? The videos aren't slick enough? Personally, my excitement isn't based on hucksterism. The worst sophists (and megalomaniacs) will have the best self-promotion and slickest videos.

Right, this isn't a movie we're making...

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#390

Post by khokhol »

greedo wrote: post #381
panick21_ wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history where for the last 400 years the were part of the same country and share close history for 2000 years and only a tiny amount of time they were fully separated. They speak essentially the same language (often the very same) and use the same national origin story and the Russian Orthodox Church was literally representing people from both sides of the border. There are tons of families and other connections…

Russian and Ukrainian have similar roots, but are not "essentially the same language." The "national origin story" (unless you mean the 1917 Revolution) is nothing like how the two countries were created. Mexico and the US have "tons of families and other connections over the (sic) boarder as well." The reason the elites treated the border between Ukraine and the Russian Federation as meaningless was because ex-Sovie…

If you were to remove the Russian forces from these two oblasts (as well as Crimea and Zaporizhzhia) these proxy forces would collapse immediately.

As would all of the so-called rebellions in the East from the very start (2014).

While there were indigenous elements - even their own leaders acknowledge they wouldn't have gotten anywhere without support (or at least the hope of support) from the Motherland.

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