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SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

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Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#81

Post by MPSimmons »

generuso wrote: post #33
xt00 wrote: post #22

The amount of data they must have at this point running so many of those raptor engines has got to be insane... at least 300+ engine launches now -- wow.

Five years ago SpaceX reported that they had 30000 seconds of test firing time on the Raptor, over 567 engine starts. Since them the program accelerated dramatically. Well over one thousand engines had been produced, and on an average day at McGregor test facility the Raptors are fired for about 600 seconds. That would give about a million seconds over five years. That's a lot for any engine development program.

Consider for a moment the data requirements for the telemetry system that records those engine runs.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#82

Post by dnautics »

jordanb wrote: post #76
EA wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tiles ablate. The shuttle returned from every mission with missing tiles.

Shuttle's tiles not being durable as hoped is what killed it's turnaround time. The problem was never solved and turned what was supposed to be a few days into weeks or months. Every mission the shuttle had to go back into the assembly building and have all tiles inspected and potentially replaced.

Shuttle tiles were also unique per position and starship tiles have a few base forms that are interchangeable

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#83

Post by SilverElfin »

dylan604 wrote: post #66
SilverElfin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of engine failures. Doesn't exactly bode well for a company looking to go public immediately. One of the engine failures was not on the booster but Starship as you noted, and that is a bit unexpected. I don't think they have spoken about it being equal in capability with one engine out, right? Those engines don't move around to compensate IIRC.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. The capabilities can overcome loss of engines. The fact it was successful with loss of engines shows it is working as designed.

No, it just means the mission happened to be salvageable because of its parameters. The booster is designed to have engines out and can compensate because it has so many engines and many of them are on gimbals. On starship, the vacuum engines aren’t on a gimbal. I’m not sure how it could compensate for one of three engines being out.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#84

Post by XorNot »

mempko wrote: post #78

This incremental progress, far smaller improvements than planned, has put them so far behind schedule I'm not confident this design is any good. Still haven't done orbit. This launch was not a smooth launch. SLS by contrast seems to work. Why did nasa contract SpaceX for the lander. The whole plan is bad.

There's plenty of finicky systems which go on to be good systems with a lot of work. Some things are just hard, a lot of the time you just don't see them being hard so publicly.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#85

Post by echoangle »

SilverElfin wrote: post #83
dylan604 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. The capabilities can overcome loss of engines. The fact it was successful with loss of engines shows it is working as designed.

No, it just means the mission happened to be salvageable because of its parameters. The booster is designed to have engines out and can compensate because it has so many engines and many of them are on gimbals. On starship, the vacuum engines aren’t on a gimbal. I’m not sure how it could compensate for one of three engines being out.

They explicitly said that they have engine out capability on the ship in the stream.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#86

Post by decimalenough »

mempko wrote: post #78

This incremental progress, far smaller improvements than planned, has put them so far behind schedule I'm not confident this design is any good. Still haven't done orbit. This launch was not a smooth launch. SLS by contrast seems to work. Why did nasa contract SpaceX for the lander. The whole plan is bad.

Are you serious? They just launched a completely revamped version of Starship from an entirely new pad, and still hit almost all of their planned milestones while demonstrating that the design is reliable enough to handle a missing engine.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#87

Post by ivewonyoung »

ajross wrote: post #27
redox99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can afford it, I'm sure anyone developing a rocket would prefer to do it this iterative way. I don't really understand the complain.

The point was more that there is a point where (to borrow the software terminology) "iterative design" becomes "death march". Trying a few times in the early days and being willing to throw stuff out and start over is a powerful tool. I think blowing up a handful of rockets is a fine idea. But at some point you have to ask yourself if it will ever work? Why are we on a another engine redesign? Why is this the third i…

Reminds me of the adage - The successful have failed more times than the unsuccessful have tried.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#88

Post by jmyeet »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #79
jmyeet wrote: post #46

It's worth remembering that, according to SpaceX's own filings, they've spent >$15 billion on the Starship program thus far with more to come. And SpaceX is burning cash still, particularly because Elon Musk bailed out his own bad decisions with Twitter and xAI with SpaceX stock, basically. Flight 12 was a relative success. Some engines failed to light but that's an unintended good test. Rockets are typically designe…

> At this point, the entire SpaceX project is a bet on telecommunications services, specifically direct-to-satellite handheld Internet. That's the only market that will recoup the program costs. I seriously doubt that. Just for example, mining a single asteroid has the potential to flood the market for any number of metals. I don't pretend to know how expensive it would be to achieve that in practice; my point is tha…

If there were infinite gold bars just sitting on the surface of the moon, it wouldn't be economical to go collect them and bring them back to Earth. No matter how expensive you think any metals are here on Earth, the cost of launching vehicles, rendezvousing with said metals and bringing them back to Earth makes it uneconomical.

An asteroid is much, much further than that but more important than distance is the delta-V required for change its orbit to reach an Earth orbit. So you not only need to get there, which, as discussed, requires in-orbit refuelling with Starship (or any vehicle), but you have to carry all the fuel you need for the orbital burn to bring it back. The rocket equation just kills this immediately.

You really hope you have to get incredibly lucky that an metallic asteroid is on a near-intercept course with Earth that is just shy or going into orbit. The odds for that are, well, astronomical.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#89

Post by clippy99 »

Laremere wrote: post #15

Summary from my watch: - Launch roughly on time, after a scrub yesterday. (Sounds like the scrub was due to ground equipment, most notably the water system.) - Initial ascent was good, but then one engine on the booster went out. - Relight of the booster's engines after stage separation for the boost back burn failed. Engines did light again for a landing burn, but seems to have hit the water harder than expected and…

SpaceX does an excellent job at videography. Sad that Nasa flew its Artemis mission with potato cameras.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#90

Post by jmyeet »

aero-glide2 wrote: post #50
jmyeet wrote: post #46

It's worth remembering that, according to SpaceX's own filings, they've spent >$15 billion on the Starship program thus far with more to come. And SpaceX is burning cash still, particularly because Elon Musk bailed out his own bad decisions with Twitter and xAI with SpaceX stock, basically. Flight 12 was a relative success. Some engines failed to light but that's an unintended good test. Rockets are typically designe…

Revenue from xai renting to anthropic this year alone will be more than starlink and launch revenue

xAI is burning through $1 billion a month [1]. With Anthropic as a customer, it's basically an argument that we're losing money on every transaction but we'll make it up in volume.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/musk-s-xa...

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