851–860 of 1001 posts
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The test was a massive success. So happy to see starship clear the towers. The largest rocket ever built, larger than the Saturn V. Are you kidding me?
Serious question, but why is bigger better? Is there a pending need to launch something huge in one go?
Initially posted this as a reply, but going top-level, cause the hot takes are too spicy for my liking. So the plan was to test x, y, and z. Launch sequence and takeoff, stage separation and Starship engine light, and the post-launch stuff like booster wet landing, reentry, and heat tiles. The booster by itself is not aerodynamic, so the only way to test x is with a starship on top. And if you have starship, you migh…
I think the thing that a lot of people are still stuck at is the NASA attitude of "we've spent a lot of money on this already, we Need to make sure it works first try". Whereas SpaceX is more like Kerbal Space Program in that if it blows up, at least you're having fun. And while they had some failures early on with their early rockets, the Falcon 9 is now a very reliable craft that's done dozens of successful mission…
Elon Musk also said during one of the Tim Dodd interviews that the shuttle had so many limitations because they locked in the design too early. One limitation is the difficult, fragile and hard to reuse heat-shield on the shuttle.
The NASA approach makes it far to expensive to change the design down the road, since that requires resetting all the analysis. Whereas the SpaceX approach never stopped changing things and always tested them in flight.
Much cheaper to take a known good and polished design like Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon and do the analysis after you've proven it works well for non-human flights.
People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. Compare the SLS to Starship. SLS has had a 100% success rate. One launch, one success. But it costs $2B per launch (and climbing) and has taken 12 years to get here. Plus, it's stealing pieces of the Space Shuttle, which was developed in the 70s over a long period of time. Starship will launch a half a dozen "failures" before they achieve…
>> People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. That sounds logical, but isn't really a thing in aerospace/space. Complicated high-energy systems have thousands of failure points. So to have any chance of success each failure point needs to be engineered below, by way of example, a 0.0001% chance of failure. That costs lots of money. But say one decides to accept more risk for less c…
People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. Compare the SLS to Starship. SLS has had a 100% success rate. One launch, one success. But it costs $2B per launch (and climbing) and has taken 12 years to get here. Plus, it's stealing pieces of the Space Shuttle, which was developed in the 70s over a long period of time. Starship will launch a half a dozen "failures" before they achieve…
Well said. On the other hand, the SLS — having a launch escape system and not requiring sophisticated acrobatics in order to reach land safely — is totally the ship I'd rather be on.
> On the other hand, the SLS — having a launch escape system and not requiring sophisticated acrobatics
> in order to reach land safely — is totally the ship I'd rather be on.
That said, I do agree about the flip maneuver. I am very interested to see how that evolves.
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Some Tesla events have been shown to have artificially-inserted cheers to show more enthusiasm than the crowd actually had. I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing that for SpaceX, too, but I also wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX launches had a lot of enthusiastic people in whatever crowd watched them. It was pretty telling that we didn't hear the roar of the engines on the "cheering" track, which would have happene…
Hell, listening to the commentator describe the rocket's ascent like a giddy sports commentator really reminded me that this is just another corporate event with people paid to shape narratives of what you see. I really miss NASA launches in this respect. Less hyped, but you had the solemn sense that something special was happening without anyone yammering in your ear with nonsense patter.
> I really miss NASA launches
Those still exists ...
Not everything has to be the same. Each company has its own spin on its launch coverage and its own company culture.
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The thing that bothers me about this rapid unplanned disassembly development methodology is all the environmental damage that this thing is doing. It was bad enough blowing up next to a wildlife preserve, but now they are (with some degree of certainty) blowing it higher up and scattering fragments across a huge area. The rockets are not getting any smaller. > so the only way to test x is with a starship on top. Why…
The road to the coast likely did more damage than blowing up a hundred vehicles.
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It’s smart PR. Most the public audience won’t realize how each of these steps is a huge success in of itself.
I mean sure. Companies can do PR, I don't really have a problem with it. And it was a technical success, I'm sure. I just think it seemed staged.
Why? This is just the public viewing area from where SpaceX own employees watch from. And they worked on this thing for years, seems pretty realistic that they would be exited.
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It almost blew up on the launchpad (see the debris flying after a few seconds), then at around 30 seconds you can see some explosion at the bottom, throwing away some surface parts. Multiple failed engines. Then it went into an unsurvivable "tailspin" if there was any crew around. Cheering for failure was the topping.
> It almost blew up on the launchpad (see the debris flying after a few seconds) you have literally no idea what you're talking about
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I wonder if this was expected or not. This video immediately comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMbUeO4iGhY (Why SpaceX Cares about Concrete) This probably explains why some of the engines didn't make it off the pad. That is some incredible damage.
Depends on what you mean by "expected." It was absolutely not supposed to happen, although a lot of people in the industry have been shouting "we have flame trenches for a reason!"
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> Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. That's not what they said in their mission presentation though. It was supposed to launch, separate, return the booster back, then the rocket was supposed to orbit once around the Earth and then fall into the ocean. I understand people have their feelings invested into this (for whatever reason), but objectively speaking that was not what "success was defined…
It literally is what they said in their presentation. Repeatedly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI @ 9:38 "We will consider any data inform and improve future builds of starship as a success. From a milestone our main goal is to clear the pad. Every milestone beyond that is a bonus." @ 15:57 "We're focusing on the fundamental systems and operations, so that's the liftoff portion, but we are going to try an…