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SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

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Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#91

Post by dredmorbius »

justinclift wrote: post #53
Shivetya wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says something about what they have done for rocketry when crashes on landing are note worthy. No one else even tries what they do normally without issue.

> It says something about what they have done for rocketry when crashes on landing are note worthy. Err...??? Crashes of rockets always seem to be noteworthy. That's not anything specific to SpaceX.

Very few rocket launches end with any kind of soft landing, let alone main boosters.

Soft-landing a small payload, or in the case of the shuttle, a winged reentry vehicle, is the exception. (And yes, the Shuttle also soft-ish watered its SRBs underr chutes.)

Retrorocket-soft-landing intact boosters from production launches fully upright was science fiction until four years ago.

https://geekologie.com/2016/04/unreal-video-of-spacexs-first...

The test platform was first hopped in 2012, only 8 years ago.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pzXlUw2WhcE

(I'm not a Musk fanboi,I thought the powered landing was nuts, he proved me wrong.)

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#93

Post by klmadfejno »

bob33212 wrote: post #73
ibraheemdev wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk tweeted this a few weeks ago: > Goals are to test 3 engine ascent, body flaps, transition from main to header tanks & landing flip. Considering they achieved all their goals, I would say it was a success.

Huge Success. This is a prototype. It was going to be thrown away next week regardless. Obviously long term the landing is very important. Just not today.

Would they actually throw it away if it worked flawlessly? Why not try another test?

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#95

Post by airstrike »

obilgic wrote: post #2

HN: "SpaceX Launches and Nearly Lands Starship on Its First Suborbital Flight" vs Article: "SpaceX Launches—and Crashes—Its Starship Mars Rocket"

A better article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/starship-rises-high-...

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#97

Post by Forge36 »

areoform wrote: post #54

I make efforts to add to discussions instead of subtracting with negativity. Recently, I've broken my rule quite a few times, fretting over the future of general compute. I'd vowed to not break it again, but the discussion about Starship lacks a vital perspective. . I don't understand the hype behind Starship. It's confusing to me. It is touching and nice; it's great to see people excited about space. However, the ex…

Perhaps the key to success truely is "over promise under deliver"

He's picked a target of Mars! It's going to be _decades_ of failure until it happens. The current status: successful steps of key component test required for sustainable future price.

Building the hype train for a 20 year goal is hard I don't know many companies that can sell "it takes a year".

Humanity has already sent an object to Mars. The next goal is "human on Mars", and golly if we can we'll bring them back!

The secondary goal "cheaply"

At my current weight i cost 1,700,000 minimum to get into space. Getting that down to 170,000 means I could actually afford it (and written into my marriage is the understanding that if I ever get the chance to go Mars I'm willing to divorce to make that happen)

Or: It's not the ship. It's the mission. The ship is just an visible process towards that goal.

>people are assuming that this is the vehicle itself

>Yet, they've explicitly shaped it like the final version, and hyped it.

It is the vehicle, it's just not finished.

There's work to be done. Let's get to it

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#98

Post by [deleted] »

areoform wrote: post #76
vardump wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Starship isn't anywhere close to the primetime. It's at least half-a-decade to a decade away from initial reusable testflights, and perhaps more given the under funding of the Artemis program." What would be the reason to believe it's that far from being usable? How would Artemis funding have anything to do with Starship? "It is worth remembering that early on in SpaceX's history, Musk made a dummy rocket and took i…

Re: Artemis & NASA The Artemis program and other contracts fund the bulk of Starship development. NASA has poured billions into SpaceX and they're SpaceX's largest "investor" by far, except NASA doesn't take equity and treats it as "pre-funding" an eventual contract (which would also pay per launch). Starship is (likely) to be mostly (up to 60% to 70% or so) NASA funded. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-names-…

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight

#99

Post by garmaine »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #55
nynx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a young person (21), I feel the same way. Space exploration and a beautiful future suddenly seems achievable with hard work and a lot of engineering instead of just feeling impossible.

> As a young person (21), I feel the same way. Space exploration and a beautiful future suddenly seems achievable with hard work and a lot of engineering instead of just feeling impossible. That is the goal for me, I'm not going to Mars and I knew that as soon as I went to the MDRS. I also made it an effort to make the director (commander on several mission) to realize how important it is motivate the younger generat…

This may be off topic and probably person specific, but what made you change your mind?
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