Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starship’s second flight test

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 235 posts

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#81

Post by AnthonyMouse »

melagonster wrote: post #43
jiggawatts wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved the bit where Fisheries and Wildlife refused to provide the shark density information because they didn't trust their own department with it! Apparently SpaceX must wait patiently to take humanity to the stars because sharkfin poachers have infiltrated spies into a wildly unrelated government agency. I feel like SpaceX should just launch the damned rocket and then if anyone from the government takes issue jus…

I sure sapceX don't have department of wildlife. we don't have enough research on this issue, I don't know why it is OK to do anything before we do not have information. maybe just like old Big oil companies, just do it before people found what do they do?

> I don't know why it is OK to do anything before we do not have information.

Because we never have it. Not once in the history of humanity has anyone done anything with the benefit of all the information. It's simply not possible to know everything about something.

Your choices are to do things where you don't know what's going to happen, or never do anything.

It turns out this is basically fine, because doing them is one of the best ways to find out what happens. And if it turns out something bad happens, then you can prohibit it, so it doesn't keep happening.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#82

Post by maxlin »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #78
happytiger wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s bonkers. It’s absolutely bonkers. I feel like I’m witnessing the creation of the wheel. Non-space nerds don’t quite understand why it’s so exciting. But I can’t imagine how much this is going to change the world, and civilization. It’s kind of the equivalent of going from local freighters to the Seawise Giant in one iteration.

Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?

-Not being dependent on Earth for survival of the species as Starship in its huge capability and reasonably cheap cost, among with refuelability on Mars begins the road to believable planetary colonization

-Asteroid / Moon mining

-Overally, being capable of going to space with more than just miniscule science-oriented payloads. FYI, ISS has cost us over a 100 billion dollars. When Starship hauls its worth in volume in one launch with just just methane and maintenance costs, it's a whole new space age.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#83

Post by maxlin »

rbanffy wrote: post #74
maxlin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows that, but Falcon 9 is extremely successful and Starship is the main project that's been in the making doing good strides once in a while, and the whole "chopstick" lift tower has already been built, with the clear idea of ultimately landing Starships right in to it. And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY73…

> And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds There lies the danger, considering his work leading Twitter.

This has to be the most ignorant comment here. Elon has been heading SpaceX as a Chief Engineer for a LONG time now, with undeniable success. How on earth would what he asks X/Twitter to do affect this, even if you considered that bad or the worst thing ever?

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#84

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jiggawatts wrote: post #24
philwelch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it turned out the federal government was just dicking around out of some unrelated grudge towards Elon Musk, half the country would still support them. Some days most of HN would too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

The problem with Hanlon's Razor is that Grey's Law turns it into just "never attribute anything to malice" which is invalid unless you're willing to assume that no act of malice ever occurs.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#85

Post by mulmen »

maxlin wrote: post #79
mulmen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitter mobile player displays no timestamp so seeking is pointless. Here it is on YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?t=1h18m . And here’s the transcript: https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-4-transcript#chapter12_ai_r... . I listened to the relevant section and there’s no indication that the shark question is what is blocking launch. In fact it is clear that question was already answered. > One of the things that w…

If you research this a bit more it becomes clear that the survey has been the blocker, after the direct FAA checklist was cleared. Just google around, this has been bouncing around as an annoyance for a while in the space enthusiast circles so it's assumed knowledge in the context

You provided a source and made an untrue claim about the content. The shark question may have been a blocker but you haven’t provided any evidence to support that.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#86

Post by IshKebab »

HenryMulligan wrote: post #29

It is interesting that T-0 says "Excitement guaranteed" instead of "launch" or something. Besides being funny, it seems like they are officially accepting the reality that it may not go as planned (even at so early a stage), but will be thrilling nevertheless!

They said that for the first one too.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#87

Post by CuriousCosmic »

jiggawatts wrote: post #66
maxlin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet the chance would be low even if Starship somehow "flew" on the surface of the water for the whole boost period. And even then it should be ridiculously easy to determine it is more beneficial for humanity to revolutionize mass/cost to orbit even if one or a few animals get hurt during many years of operation. If the US government truly cared this crazy much about sharks and whales we would have sent a carrier b…

Navy submarines regularly deafen all sorts of animals with their sonars and are implicated in whales beaching themselves to escape the noise. But let’s make Elon Musk put headphones on seals (plural) because it’s funny to make the billionaire jump through hoops. If I was in Musk’s position I would simply threaten to pack up everything and take all Starship development over to China. I bet a lot of the “essential” pap…

> If I was in Musk’s position I would simply threaten to pack up everything and take all Starship development over to China. I bet a lot of the “essential” paperwork would magically be made to go away.

Yeah good luck with that one. ITAR doesn't work that way. The worst threat they could realistically make is to make their IP 100% public domain (in the ITAR sense which is a bit different from the copyright/patent sense) and the US probably would not care in the slightest since that would be a massive whale fall for the domestic launch system industry.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#88

Post by ChatGTP »

radu_floricica wrote: post #80
XorNot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk's biggest problem is his chronic inability to shut the hell up. No one would care who he was as a person if he just let his media people do their jobs, and stuck to corporate press releases to respond to things. Plenty of people say they dislike Jeff Bezos, but barely anyone even thinks about Jeff Bezos or knows what he sounds like.

I mean, what's the point of getting where he is and shutting up just to make random people happy?

Because it would just be nice if he shutup ?

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#89

Post by maxlin »

bboygravity wrote: post #54
davely wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon said in 2020… To be fair, Elon has said _a lot_ of things about his various projects and not all of them are based in reality.

Can you give an example of 1 thing Elon said that hasn't become a reality and cannot become a reality in the next 10 years? 1 engineering or physics related thing. Deadlines don't count. I'm waiting...

This is a very engaging question. No idea why anyone would flag this.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#90

Post by clort »

maxlin wrote: post #76
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything Hyperloop related is not happening.

Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this? Elon's not the first guy ever to hype the hyperloop idea. On its basis it is hard to think we won't this at some point as it promises essentially orbit-like capability on the surface, so everyone has the right to dream we'd get this sooner.

"Can you give an example of 1 thing Elon said"

..well known example is given..

"Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this?"

you can see that those things are different.

Post reply on HN