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Starship Flight 7

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Re: Starship Flight 7

#671

Post by DrBazza »

EncomLab wrote: post #447

First Shuttle orbited astronauts and successfully recovered all intended components. Every Saturn 5 was successful, the 3rd flight sent a crew to lunar orbit, and the 6th put a crew on the moon. To date a Starship has yet to be recovered after flight - and those launched are effectively boilerplate as they have carried no cargo (other than a banana) and have none of the systems in place to support a crew. Some people…

> Every Saturn 5 was successful

On the other hand every Russian N1 wasn’t.

Rocketry is hard. It’s seems proven that if you’re a government space agency it’s even harder.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#672

Post by notorandit »

penjelly wrote: post #488
nicky0 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Test code by running it. Test a rocket by launching it.

launching a rocket is far more analogulous to shipping a release, than it is running code.

Launching a rocket is far more complex than shipping a release.

It is more like an "all or nothing" process.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#673

Post by dr_orpheus »

ceejayoz wrote: post #224
andrewinardeer wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it if SpaceX debris hit and destroyed a boat the owner can claim damages from SpaceX? Does international space law allow for this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention Only used once, when the Soviets dropped a nuclear reactor on Canada. > States (countries) bear international responsibility for all space objects that are launched within their territory. This means that regardless of who launches the space object, if it was launched from State A's territory, or from State A's facility, or if State A caused the launch to happe…

But don't forget about a local government in Australia fining NASA $400 for littering after debris from Skylab re-entry landed there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab#Re-entry_and_debris

Re: Starship Flight 7

#674

Post by mempko »

SpaceX started Starship development in 2012. Despite 12 years of work, its best test flight reached space but not orbit, sending a banana to the Indian Ocean.

While NASA's SLS began in 2011 and successfully flew around the Moon in 2022.

Blue Origin's New Glenn also started development in 2012 and reached orbit on it's first flight with an actual payload.

When they say SpaceX is fast, what do they mean exactly?

Re: Starship Flight 7

#675

Post by tsimionescu »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #616
tsimionescu wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your using how much they charge, not how much it costs... You seem to not understand any kind of sales strategy or atleast basic game theory here. I'm using the only public information about this that we have. The Ariane 6 and Soyuz-2 numbers are also prices and not costs, by the way. We don't know how much Russia or the ESA actually spend per launch, we only know what they are asking others to pay for it. > Also,…

so, what your saying is that you admit SpaceX is a world class provider of launch services, but you don't like it cause it's not THAT much better than everything else?

I'm saying that SpaceX is a world-class provider of space launch services, and leads the market on virtually any metric, but they aren't, as some are claiming in this thread, orders(!) of magnitude cheaper than others in the business. I'm just trying to counter balance some of the narrative here that presents SpaceX like some savior almost sent from the future.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#676

Post by mempko »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #246
artemonster wrote: post #53

I like how chopsticks catch (a very impressive feat) completely distracts everyone from totally fucked timeline and already spent budget on mars mission. Its like any criticism is being drowned in loud cheers. Only time will tell, but I hope I will be wrong on this one

They are making the impossible merely late. Which, you know, is still pretty fucking cool. I’d love to see any other country or competitor catch a stainless steel rocket larger than the Statue of Liberty that was just cruising back to earth at sub orbital velocity. Everybody else is so far behind it’s not even funny. Spacex is cool as shit. Screw the “skeptics” and haters. Some people have a complete lack of imaginat…

Starship started development in 2012. SLS started development in 2011, New Glenn in 2012.

SLS flew in 2022 around the moon. New Glenn just flew, reaching orbit with an actual payload.

Starship hasn't reached orbit, the best they did was send a banana to the Indian ocean.

Remind me again how SpaceX is the fast company?

Re: Starship Flight 7

#677

Post by tsimionescu »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #657
tsimionescu wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The achievements you quote are highly overblown. SpaceX sells capacity to orbit somewhat cheaper than anyone else on the market, but not by some huge margin - half the cost or so, at best. They also don't have any fully reusable rockets today, and Starship is still probably a year or more from being production-ready. It remains to be seen how reusable Starship will actually be, how long it will take to refurbish and…

Half the cost is not "some huge margin"?!? So, like, if you found a 50%-off sale on a car, you're telling me you wouldn't test drive it because it's not a very good deal? What color is the sky in your world?

Given how little we know about the cost structures of any of these space launch systems, yes.

Consider that Russia was charging less per seat to the ISS in 2007, back when they ahd to compete with the Shuttle, then SpaceX is charging NASA today. And not a little less - almost half ($25M in 2007 dollars, $38M in today's dollars, vs SpaceX charging $55M today).

Does this mean that the Soyuz was much cheaper than Falcon 9? Probably not, it just means that there is so much margin on both sides that we can't estimate much.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#678

Post by ChuckMcM »

floating-io wrote: post #410
Galxeagle wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any extra time spent during a burn is wasted fuel. Intuitively, any time before the rocket is in orbit, some part of the rocket thrust is resisting the force of gravity or else it would fall back down to earth. The longer that time is, the more thrust (and thus fuel) was spent negating that force. It's the main reason why the Falcon 9 boosters do a 'hoverslam' on return and land at close to full throttle - any extra…

I thought the hoverslam was because the Merlin can't throttle down sufficiently to actually hover?

Yup, apparently Raptors have more dynamic range in their throttling.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#680

Post by saberience »

EncomLab wrote: post #624
saberience wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The space shuttle lol? Are you not considering the fact that the huge external tank and the two SRBs were destroyed every time? Not to mention the insane costs of refurbishing each space shuttle, not the mention the insanely bad safety of the shuttle and the 14 astronauts who died in it! Space shuttle, while cool, was really, really bad design, bad safety, and totally uneconomical. It was definitely cooler than Soyuz…

The Shuttle program only failed to recover 4 SRB's out of 270 launched - and 2 of those were on Challenger. Why should we care what you think if you can't get something that basic right?

Recovering parts that landed in the literal salty ocean and need massive refurbishment to work again isn't really reusable in the same way that Falcon is though really is it? Trying to compare the two is honestly disingenuous.

Calling Space Shuttle to what SpaceX have done really is like comparing chalk and cheese.

Space shuttle cost (inflation adjusted) about 700M per launch(!!). Compared to Falcon 9 (10-20M). Superheavy and starship will start costing maybe 100M and rapidly decrease to maybe 10-20M also, but with more than double the carrying capacity of shuttle as well as in generally being far more capable.

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