I’m old enough to remember the Apollo program. Not one Saturn V blew up on launch. I guess we had a different notion of “success” back then.
SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
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Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#42In spite of this, it was still a great success.
> SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
It's really a glass half empty headline, isn't it? It's like if someone got bronze at the Olympics and the headline were, "Athlete loses to multiple opponents, fails to get gold or silver medal."
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#43Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#44I’m old enough to remember the Apollo program. Not one Saturn V blew up on launch. I guess we had a different notion of “success” back then.
I think it was more that we had a different notion of how much money we were willing to spend on it back then.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#45Altogether, it was a terrific flight and a big step forward for the Starship program. The biggest success was the survival of stage zero, which bodes well for a quick turnaround for the next flight. Hot staging was the second big success, and Starship got to space. The flight termination was disappointing, but the actual functioning of the FTS system seems to be fixed. That was a problem with the first flight and sho…
Isn't reentry supposed to be the hard part? How was this a success?
If they can get stage 2 to a stable orbit then they can start putting payloads up, and this is long before they start recovery of the units. Now stage 2 popping at the (almost) orbital insertion stage is interesting as it just should have shut down for stable flight.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#46I’m old enough to remember the Apollo program. Not one Saturn V blew up on launch. I guess we had a different notion of “success” back then.
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Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#47In spite of this, it was still a great success.
> SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight It's really a glass half empty headline, isn't it? It's like if someone got bronze at the Olympics and the headline were, "Athlete loses to multiple opponents, fails to get gold or silver medal."
I was thinking “glass 1/5th empty” but yeah. Imho this sort of reporting and belief among the general populace is a big part of why rocket-builders have been afraid of the iterative approach since what, the mid-1960s?
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#48"Loses" is kind of an incorrect way to talk about the launch. The flight made great progress and was just shy of orbital velocity (it was over 24,000 km/hr and orbital velocity is around 24,500 km/hr for a low orbit). Keep in mind that the goal of this launch wasn't to carry any payload. It was to get data and further iterative development. People here, especially, should understand how iterative development works.
Fair point - they didn't even plan a landing for the Spaceship, just a splashdown in the Pacific, so the plan was always to "lose" it. And it was well on track for that, it reached target height and already fired about 90% of its fuel. The only thing it didn't get to test was the heat shield, but there'll be plenty of other chances.
I'm sorry about the booster tho. But overall it's hard to consider this anything other than a great success.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#49https://archive.is/k459Q
It totally decided I was a robot. After my third "check all the boxes with..." I gave up.
Re: SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight
#50I’m old enough to remember the Apollo program. Not one Saturn V blew up on launch. I guess we had a different notion of “success” back then.
Yes, in exchange for an investment that constituted a non-trivial portion of the GDP of a superpower near the peak of its trajectory.
There’s a reason words like “unsustainable” are so often associated with the Apollo program. It was amazing, but it couldn’t be a model for continued progress.