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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

#501

Post by kbenson »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #431
jholman wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is a thread about pedantry (rocketry pedantry), I'll allow myself to be pedantic about words. "A wiki" is a type of software. But when you use "Wiki" as a proper noun, referring to one specific instance, that's the name of Ward's Wiki, the original wiki, also known as wikiwikiweb, available at wiki.c2.com . I'm guessing that you were not citing Ward's Wiki, but were rather citing some other site, in partic…

While we're at pedantry, English is a descriptivist language... I guarantee you that when I say "the wiki", approximately nobody thinks of Ward's. (Yes, I think Wikipedia's Don't Abbreviate... page is just wrong about this.)

It's entirely context dependent. For me and the people I deal with (which deal with various wikis in our lives for both work and play), "the wiki" refers to the specialized wiki on the topic we are speaking (for work it's the work wiki, for the game were playing it's the wiki for the game, etc), and Wikipedia is used to refer to Wikipedia, because it's not specific to anything. If someone just mentioned "the wiki" or "wiki says" in a conversation and was intending to imply Wikipedia, it would just confuse me by making me think there's some specific wiki they were referring to that I missed previously or they weren't clear in communicating, unless we were specifically referring to Wikipedia earlier.

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

#502

Post by Torkel »

lisper wrote: post #439
pantalaimon wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All but one engine successfully relit (the outer engine ring has no re-light capability) but they started to fail quickly afterwards. Scott Manley also has the theory that the maneuver caused a sloshing motion of the fuel and the water hammer ruptured piping on the engines, causing a cascading failure. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7LYw6gU65ac

I love how at the end of the video the SpaceX announcer refers to what just happened as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly of the booster".

RUDimentary jargon

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

#503

Post by cratermoon »

dotnet00 wrote: post #492
cratermoon wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for a minute, then, let's think like engineers and not Starman Jones. Granted it was a test flight: so what were the objectives of the flight, how man y of them did it achieve, and how many were not? Get beyond calling it a success or failure and talk about what worked and what didn't. > the fuel was much easier to work with This is a technical detail where I hard disagree. The oxidizer was liquid oxygen, so tha…

In terms of objectives, the stated primary objective was to get through staging without blowing up. That was a success. The secondary objective was getting to reentry for the Ship - testing the heat shield, which was a failure.

> the stated primary objective was to get through staging without blowing up.

So I was more or less correct at the top of the thread when I said, "if the launch works through staging, SpaceX fans would declare it a success", and I consider that a low bar.

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

#504

Post by lisper »

bronson wrote: post #486
lisper wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how at the end of the video the SpaceX announcer refers to what just happened as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly of the booster".

That's an industry term. Lithobraking is too.

Oh, I know. I used to work at NASA. But I still think it's a delightful euphemism. (And yes, I'm being ironic.)

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

#505

Post by [deleted] »

serf wrote: post #420
theolivenbaum wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no parachuting from 900km/h

i'd be willing to believe it's an economics thing more-so than a physics thing. one could envisage a '747-like' sized plane with many passenger escape-pods similar to the pod from an B-58 Hustler -- but who would pay the astronomic cost for such a ticket? and similar to what the other person in this thread mentioned : those escape pods won't help during takeoff/landing phases.

[deleted]

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

#506

Post by Aeolun »

cratermoon wrote: post #503
dotnet00 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of objectives, the stated primary objective was to get through staging without blowing up. That was a success. The secondary objective was getting to reentry for the Ship - testing the heat shield, which was a failure.

> the stated primary objective was to get through staging without blowing up. So I was more or less correct at the top of the thread when I said, "if the launch works through staging, SpaceX fans would declare it a success", and I consider that a low bar.

I think you might build a rocket that was less prone to blowing up, but it might not be as efficient.

You might also not be able to build it with a room full of idealistic youths running on inspiration.

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

#507

Post by refulgentis »

LanceJones wrote: post #457
refulgentis wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting re: good result...I've sort of lost track because the program's timeline has been extended several times: what sort of results are they shooting for?

Good one. :-) SLS, anyone?

Good one? Silly Lizard String?

Consider a more substantial contribution the next time, this reeks of some sort of internalized battle the rest of us don't know about, and projection of it onto others.

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

#508

Post by base698 »

fnord77 wrote: post #419
WillPostForFood wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They added this system after Challenger, seems extremely limited. https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/crew-escape-sy...

"The crew escape system was intended for emergency bailout use only when the orbiter was in controlled gliding flight and unable to reach a runway. " I'd take my chances and stay with the orbiter

> The vehicle touches down at 214 to 226 miles per hour, back wheels first. The nose then touches down, the drag parachute is deployed, and the shuttle cruises to a stop.

That's a lot of energy to bleed off.

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

#509

Post by lern_too_spel »

oceanplexian wrote: post #423
lovecg wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s easy. Give NASA 4-5% of the federal budget like it had in the 60s and we’ll go back in no time. This stuff is ridiculously expensive. It’s not the “how”, it’s the political “why” that doesn’t have an answer right now.

Elon Musk doesn’t have 4-5% of the federal budget and SpaceX is well on their way to doing it. I agree with the parent, there’s something else going on, either with society, or our government.

NASA doesn't have 4-5% of the federal budget but is about to do it again on the Artemis missions with one hand tied behind their backs on Congressionally-mandated designs.

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

#510

Post by mr_toad »

cratermoon wrote: post #451
kbenson wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you count as success depends on what your goal is. It's entirely possibly SpaceX could have thrown extra billions at it and had a higher chance of successful orbit, but that doesn't mean they deemed that the most efficient use of time and money to advance the project. Sometimes it's far less costly in time and effort to start it up and see where it fails rather than look it over another 20 times and wrack your b…

> What you count as success depends on what your goal is Yes. My point is that the bar seems pretty low for Starship, and it's not clear why. Yes, some of the ways they are doing things are new, but overall, building large multi-stage rockets is 50s tech.

50s, and even 60s era Rockets were smaller, with fewer engines and didn’t attempt crazy aerobatics while stopping and restarting engines.
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