Post AVdRlhW8DvTHvTkSVE by NathanK@poa.st
 (DIR) More posts by NathanK@poa.st
 (DIR) Post #AVdRlhW8DvTHvTkSVE by NathanK@poa.st
       2023-05-14T05:02:48.183328Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl5-9
       
 (DIR) Post #AVeEv5T1RYdaZ7OopE by ThatWouldBeTelling@shitposter.club
       2023-05-14T14:13:32.932249Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @NathanK Cool as always, extra so for a night launch including first stage/booster landing on a drone barge at sea.  Thanks!Am not following SpaceX closely enough to know they’ve achieved useful reuse of the fairing halves, didn’t have much doubt they were doing to solve it. They’re fairly expensive, $2 million plus total from memory, takes a long time to construct and cure the composites they’re made out of, were a potential launch rate bottleneck.This one reused two, previously “flight proven” seven and eight times.  Booster had been used eleven or twelve times,  Will add that insurance companies and customers are now slightly preferring the latter, that shakes out issues like the last in flight Falcon 9 loss when a third party supplied steel strut gave way at like one third of its official rating.Note for others, the beginning of this video has a bunch of “best of SpaceX” video clips to entertain and amaze before they switched to the live coverage.  Which is getting routine, recently read Falcon 9 had two hundred successful flights in a row after that oops on the ground which lost a payload.  For roughly the same system (there have been all sorts of incremental improvements) that’s arguably the record.OK, let me also add this long comment a reader sent to the Instapundit which sounds credible:MAY 11, 2023“THIS IS FROM LAST WEEK, but I wanted to share these thoughts from a longtime space-community friend (who doesn’t work for SpaceX).“I was surprised at how far the first Starship test got. I was then utterly shocked at how tough the thing is. It is by far the sturdiest rocket, let alone spaceship, ever built. It blew up some engines. It kept going. It lost its hydraulic system and steering. It kept going. It spun (think of the Statue of Liberty at 39km altitude). but did not break up like every other rocket in human history would have. Then they blew explosive charges and put holes in the fuel tanks. It did not break up.“Finally it spun down into some thicker air and finally exceeded its design limits.“I do not think the media folks (who are exceedingly ignorant when it comes to engineering and probably cannot define the word ‘test’ let alone understand what it means) have a clue of how utterly, gobsmackingly incredible this test was.“I simply would not have believed you if you had told me a rocket could go through that list of insults and remain intact. Impossible! And yet… si move![…]”Musk and company’s decision to go with stainless steel, which among other things gets stronger the colder it is, is looking good.  Plus a system designed for complete reuse will trade off some weight for added strength.https://instapundit.com/584045/