Live data from Hacker News

Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

twitter.com

461–470 of 1001 posts

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#461
post #506

[stub for offtopicness]

I hate to bring politics into such a momentous occasion, but as a lifelong Democrat, I think Trump might get my vote because of his alliance with Elon. Elon clearly is a once-in-a-century human who has progressed humanity more than anyone else in history. I think we need to let him achieve his goals without being burdened by government bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the Democrats have aligned against Elon. It didn't hav…

Elon will be able to achieve his goals just fine under the Democrats.

Trump will run so much stuff into the ground nobody will be able to achieve anything.

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#463
Incredible achievement, my American friends! Congrats! We, Europeans, can only feel jealous, but hey at least we have free [but comically broken and dysfunctional] healthcare, so, there's that. I hope you'll bring a lot more progress to humankind beyond space exploration!

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, reusable is supposed to reduce the cost. But the space shuttle was reusable and it has been shutdown because it was too expensive. What is the differences between the two?

The main difference is that this is built by a private corporation who can't afford to throw money away, while the Space Shuttle was build by the government, and moreover it had to fulfill a number of conflicting requirements, and commercial profit was not one of them. But on a more technical level. I think the vertical landing is the main difference. Vertical landing was obviously known and done by NASA, this is how…

In order to land as a glider, you'll need wings, landing gear, doors, rudder, stabilizer, flight controls, streamlining, all the structure needed to support it, and a heat shield for all of it. All that complexity has to work reliably, too.

All of that adds tremendous weight, complexity, and cost.

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#465
post #201

At this point I am finding it hard to hate Elon Musk. For everything he does that has annoyed me (like Gloating at people being bombed in the middle east) — his business acumen has completely unlocked for people what they we thought was impossible.

[flagged]

The only 'grift' that holds up is about FSD. Everything else is nonsense. They are making Boring tunnels, the costumer paid and they delivered. The company didn't take off as much as Musk hoped but calling it a 'grift' isn't accurate.

Hyperloop was never promised, that's literally just people who don't like Musk made up. In fact he EXPLICITLY said 'I'm not gone build Hyperloop, its just an idea I had', and then people who don't like him 10 years later 'where is the promised Hyperloop'. How does that make sense? Musk never received a single $ for Hyperloop, but somehow this is a 'grift'.

> how many billions of dollars in government subsidies?

They are big cooperation's in capital intensive industries. When you build big investments, you get government tax reduction and other things, this is literally normal. If you don't like it, that's fine, but that how it works. Its not a 'grift' unless you want to go down the 'modern capitalism is grift' route.

Outside of that, most subsidies he got, were just universal subsidies that anybody could get. The US government gave the same amount of subsidies to foreign companies selling EV cars in the US. This was a plan to increase EV adoption in general. And arguably it worked. How is again is this a 'grift'.

And for SpaceX, I think its pretty clear that the government got much, much, much more then it ever paid for when they paid SpaceX. I would argue SpaceX has already saved the US government more money then they ever paid for SpaceX development. Just Clipper going on Falcon Heavy is billions in savings.

There are plenty of reason to dislike him but those aren't really good ones. Except the FSD one, that one I think is quite bad. At least they finally allowed moving the FSD from one car to the next, but that's not enough.

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#466

I was sure they were going to lose one of the fins at "max q part 2".. Looked like it burned through near the hinge.

If anything, the last 2 flights have shown how good a decisions it was to go with steel. The thermal reserves seem to be really large. While not as bad as with the previous flight, there was still significant leakage of hot air between the starhip and the flap. But it didn't seem to cause significant damage, at least as far as for the landing. For complete reuse, they probably have to still improve that a bit.

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to bring politics into such a momentous occasion, but as a lifelong Democrat, I think Trump might get my vote because of his alliance with Elon. Elon clearly is a once-in-a-century human who has progressed humanity more than anyone else in history. I think we need to let him achieve his goals without being burdened by government bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the Democrats have aligned against Elon. It didn't hav…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#468
post #17

Video of the catch > Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster! https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011

I wonder what will happen when they get to 99% reliability? They clean up and rebuild the Mechazilla every once a hundred catches, on that occasion that one fails?

The booster aims towards the shore until the landing burn starts, only then does it swing towards the tower. So, for the most part, failures should mean that the booster safely crashes into the water.

Re: Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]

#470

I'm just so happy to see this level of progress. This another big step for opening up space. To think that one day this will be considered normal. 150 Metric tons sent on a fully reusable rocket. Thats like a 747 to space.

So, reusable is supposed to reduce the cost. But the space shuttle was reusable and it has been shutdown because it was too expensive. What is the differences between the two?

No one has answered with one of the biggest issues with the shuttle: each one was extremely custom. Every single heat shield tile was unique to a specific position and a specific shuttle. There were probably over a hundred million individual components in the Shuttle, and with many critical ones being custom, the time to refurbish it for a new launch was much longer.

This is in contrast to something like the falcon, which has a very standardized mfg process and components, which allows for really rapid iteration

Post reply on HN