[HN Gopher] Starship Flight Test [video]
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Starship Flight Test [video]
Author : somenameforme
Score : 206 points
Date : 2023-04-17 07:34 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Scrubbed due to the pressurization issue with the first stage.
|
| Will finish fueling and stop the clock at T-3.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Back in the days rockets were more or less unique, because the
| tech was new and every bit of efficiency mattered. But the common
| trope among the designers was always "launch on a modular rocket,
| assembly from pieces in LEO, depart anywhere". And orbital
| assembly and modular launchers have followed in 1980s/90s, when
| the extreme optimization didn't matter so much anymore.
|
| It's interesting to see SpaceX taking the path of a custom-
| tailored launcher again, trying to integrate everything as
| tightly as possible (especially speaking of their direct Mars
| flight concept). This would probably be impossible to scale
| without designing a new system from scratch, so they have to get
| everything right. Kind of the Amiga of the spaceflight.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > But the common trope among the designers was always "launch
| on a modular rocket, assembly from pieces in LEO, depart
| anywhere".
|
| It's a design constraint imposed by the reality of launching
| from Earth. It puts an upper bound on how much weight you can
| send at one time. That's pretty much the only choice until we
| can manufacture directly in space.
| robryk wrote:
| What's the source of the constraint on rocket size that you
| refer to?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The tyranny of the rocket equation means it starts to get
| crazy if you can't improve the payload fraction and want to
| send up more mass. I don't think there is a literal upper
| limit, but you very quickly get to the point where a few
| extra kilograms means you have to double the size of your
| rocket.
| robryk wrote:
| But that doesn't limit the rocket size in any way, only
| the fraction of its mass that can be used for payload.
| That limit does not depend on total mass of the rocket.
| Is there something that makes larger rockets less
| feasible than smaller rockets with the same payload mass
| fraction?
| cubefox wrote:
| Isn't Starship planned to launch 100 tons into LEO, just
| with a two stage rocket, and with both stages being
| reusable? I don't know the numbers but this seems to
| suggest efficiency (cost per ton to orbit) improves with
| increasingly large rockets.
|
| (Though I imagine there could be a size sweet spot beyond
| which efficiency shrinks again.)
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| And it needs to refuel to get to Mars despite being the
| largest rocket ever built and an incredible feet of
| engineering. The limits are height and space to put
| engines under it.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > "launch on a modular rocket, assembly from pieces in LEO,
| depart anywhere"
|
| That's still what they are doing, its just that the pieces are
| fuel.
|
| > This would probably be impossible to scale without designing
| a new system from scratch
|
| Its not like the amiga of space flight, its like cloud. Instead
| of horizontal scaling, its vertical scaling. Instead of of
| building bigger, you just build more and scale that way.
|
| They will add like 10m to the Starship, there is some
| horizontal scale left.
| bluesm wrote:
| Explain Amiga analogy please.
| philistine wrote:
| The Amiga had a litany of custom chips to achieve its
| incredible performance. The Mac and PC used far less custom
| ICs.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > The Amiga had a litany of custom chips to achieve its
| incredible performance.
|
| Exactly, and with PC technology rapidly catching up,
| updating them to a level on par with the latest VGA and
| sound cards was an enormous effort that didn't kill
| Commodore (internal mismanagement did) but came too late to
| save them. First prototypes of the AAA chipset are
| mentioned and visible in the famous "Deathbed Vigil" video
| shot by Dave Haynie himself at the C= headquarters in West
| Chester PA when the company was already belly up. I would
| highly recommend watching it also to non ex Amiga users,
| also for interesting vintage technical content, but keep
| tissues ready in case you were.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaTjwo1ywcI
| simonh wrote:
| The heavy booster can be the same, and any mission beyond LEO
| will require refuelling, and the tankers can be standardised.
|
| I think the terminal mission component is always going to have
| to be customised to the mission type. A Lunar lander and Mars
| lander are very different beasts, but even just basing those on
| a basic Starship hull is a big win over completely custom from
| scratch systems such as the Blue Origin lunar lander.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The big idea with Starship, at least for missions going beyond
| LEO is to drop upper stages in LEO as fuel tanks and use them
| to fuel the "payload" Starship. In the Artemis mission, it is
| supposed to take astronauts from the Orion capsule, land them
| on the moon and back to Orion, with talks about a "gateway"
| space station. So Starship definitely follows the modular /
| orbital assembly principle.
|
| The idea of purely modular launchers (like OTRAG) never really
| took of. Armadillo Aerospace tried to capitalize on that idea,
| but they never really went beyond John Carmack's hobby project.
| All attempts at anything but "extreme optimization" failed,
| including the other end of the spectrum with the humongous Sea
| Dragon. That's because of the so called "tyranny of the rocket
| equation" and considerations like the square-cube law.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| What I meant is not things like OTRAG (which was an
| abomination indeed), but practical configurable launchers
| unified to the certain degree into a family. Think Delta IV,
| Atlas V, Angara, or even Falcon 9, which is the only
| surviving rocket from the family that was originally planned.
|
| The reason modularity of that kind wasn't especially
| successful isn't the tyranny of the rocket equation, but the
| economy. Turned out the launch market is too small to
| capitalize on fringe cases, and the added flexibility simply
| haven't outweighed the loss in efficiency. When the
| modularity was starting to pick up steam, most thought that
| the market will expand much faster, and few people expected
| Iridium to be a miserable failure, for example.
| pil0u wrote:
| Could anyone provide a good explanation about "pressurisation
| issue"? What happened?
| chasd00 wrote:
| from what i understand when there's a leak in a valve the
| pressure drop causes ice to form on the outside near the leak.
| If the ice gets so thick as to impact the actuator it can get
| stuck in its current position. The motor/hydraulics or whatever
| is used to physically turn the valve can't break the ice so
| it's just stuck.
|
| so someone probably needs to go find the valve and figure out
| what's leaking and either put in a new one or tighten the bolts
| a bit more :)
| dan1234 wrote:
| According to an Elon tweet it was due to a frozen valve.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Cryogenic propellant load of Starship is underway, liftoff
| in T minus 1 hour"_
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1647937628808040448
|
| NSF has their own livestream already running (watching the
| propellant loading):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN57x2a_waw
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Could NASA not have chosen the acronym for the oldest science
| funding institution in the US for this?
| DerpyBaby123 wrote:
| From their 'about' page:
|
| NASASpaceFlight is not affiliated with and does not represent
| the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
| NASA initials used with NASA's permission.
| cubefox wrote:
| The name certainly is confusing for newcomers...
| osigurdson wrote:
| Scrubbed for today
| dwaltrip wrote:
| For those who don't know, Starship is the first fully-reusable
| orbital rocket.
|
| If they manage to get it working as designed, it would radically
| change the economics of going to space. You can imagine the
| savings from not having to rebuild your vehicle after every use.
|
| This would be a paradigm-shift and would likely cause a massive
| boom in human space activity. Space tourism and in-orbit
| manufacturing are two commonly discussed use cases that would
| become far more economical. Existing use cases such as remote
| sensing and communication would expand.
|
| All this could cause positive feedback loops of innovation, cost
| reduction, induced demand, and so on. A new era of human space
| activity. That's what all the hubbub is about.
|
| P.S. Not to mention the _slightly_ more far-fetched possibility
| of human settlements on Mars...
| hwillis wrote:
| I wrote this 5 years ago, but it's still relevant:
|
| The Falcon 9 is $62 million, or $2,719 per kg to LEO. The
| Falcon Heavy is $2,351 per kg when expendable or $1,411 when
| reused.
|
| The BFR is supposed to have 2.5x the payload for 8% of the
| cost: _$46 per kilogram_. Even fully expendable it 's $2,233
| per kg. That's INSANE. It's space elevator money:
|
| > [For a space elevator, the cost varies according to the
| design. Bradley C. Edwards received funding from NIAC from 2001
| to 2003 to write a paper,[8] describing a space elevator
| design. In it he stated that: "The first space elevator would
| reduce lift costs immediately to $100 per pound" ($220/kg).](ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_economics)
|
| If the BFR actually becomes reality it turns a journey to orbit
| into an airplane ride. A $10,000 airplane ride that will shake
| your fillings loose, but make no mistake: that completely
| changes everything about space. It makes putting satellites in
| orbit around Jupiter as hard as visiting the north pole.
| Fucking TV hosts will be able to go for a quick jaunt around
| the moon.
|
| If the BFR happens, we'll have a mars base just because it
| would be so cheap it's a no-brainer. Building a new ISS would
| be about as hard as building a new Sealab.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| For those who are confused about the acronym, as I was:
|
| BFR was the code-name for Starship, short for Big Falcon
| Rocket
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_development#.
| ..
| _justinfunk wrote:
| Yes, the "F" definitely stands for Falcon
| [deleted]
| ccorcos wrote:
| It's also a play on the BFG from Doom, aka Big Fucking Gun
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFG_(weapon)
| benj111 wrote:
| All this was promised from falcon though.
|
| I don't doubt theres potential savings, I'm dubious that we'll
| see order of magnitude cost reductions. Escaping earth's
| gravity is always going to be hard.
| DennisP wrote:
| That was not promised from Falcon. The upper stage is not
| reusable and is 20% of the hardware cost, so at best Falcon
| could reduce costs by a factor of five. Plus it runs a
| dirtier fuel so it needs more refurbishment. What they did
| expect from Falcon is to be significantly cheaper than any
| other major launch provider, and they achieved that, but
| there's only so far you can go when you're building a whole
| new upper stage for every launch.
|
| Orbit is hard but the actual fuel cost is not all that high.
| If you have a rocket that's cheap to build, and you can
| amortize that cost over a large number of launches, you're
| mostly just paying fuel and ground services.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They did have a fully reusable Falcon program that got
| cancelled to concentrate on BFR.
|
| https://youtu.be/sWFFiubtC3c
| cubefox wrote:
| Interesting.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Falcon 9 never promised full reusability, only first stage
| reuse, and it did cause a large reduction in launch costs, as
| well as pretty obviously representing a paradigm shift
| considering all the other reusable rockets in development,
| the surge in funding for space tech startups and
| megaconstellations becoming practical for private entities.
|
| To emphasize that last point, on the back of Falcon 9,
| Starlink represents over half of all satellites in orbit and
| Falcon 9 itself accounts for nearly half of all orbital
| launches in the past 2-3 years. The lower costs are also
| evident from the fact that many lower budget NASA missions
| which would have previously had to rideshare ended up just
| getting a dedicated F9 for less than the rideshare would've
| cost.
| mabbo wrote:
| Falcon 9 had "second stage reusability" the same way that
| Tesla has full self-driving. That was _the plan_ , but then
| it turned out to be really hard.
|
| But at least with SpaceX, they simply gave up and said they
| were focusing efforts elsewhere.
| avmich wrote:
| BFR is more capable than Falcon, it's only natural to
| invest in projects with better prospects.
| [deleted]
| dexterdog wrote:
| > Falcon 9 had "second stage reusability" the same way
| that Tesla has full self-driving.
|
| So it's in version 11 of the beta?
| 93po wrote:
| imagine the meme of two button options to press with the
| dude sweating over which to choose, and one is "tesla
| released FSD too fast" and the other is "tesla is keeping
| FSD in beta forever"
| [deleted]
| cubefox wrote:
| Though it should be mentioned that SpaceX currently no
| longer pursues Starship upper stage reusability, as the
| upcoming upper stage prototypes do no longer have a heat
| shield. Is seems likely that they want to first finalize
| lower stage reuse, as it is likely much more expensive to
| produce.
| DennisP wrote:
| That just means they're not testing reentry in the next
| several flights. They have a new heat shield design that
| will fly later.
| _kst_ wrote:
| Without a heat shield, Starship wouldn't be able to bring
| a crew back from orbit (or higher), regardless of reuse.
|
| Starship HLS, the planned lunar landing version, probably
| won't need a heat shield, but they'll definitely need
| shielding on any version meant to bring a crew back to
| Earth. They're just not bothering with heat shielding for
| tests that don't need it.
|
| (I don't know what kind of shielding the Starship that
| was supposed to launch today has.)
| hwillis wrote:
| The Delta Heavy is $12,340 per kg to LEO. Saturn V was
| ~$8,800 in current costs. Falcon Heavy is $1,411 per kg when
| reused.
|
| For a $10 million launch, Starship would cost $67 per kg.
| Musk has said costs could come down to 1-2 million, although
| I would disregard that given the cost of the fuel is ~$1
| million.
|
| Musk is absolutely utterly dismissive of marginal costs like
| support and maintenance, but $20-30 million per amortized
| launch ($134-$200 per kg) does not seem _that_ crazy. The
| structure and materials of the rocket are _absurdly_ cheaper
| than the Falcon Heavy, and the cost of getting all that on a
| pad is pretty much constant. The Heavy has 27 Merlin engines,
| Starship has 33 Raptor engines. If it really is that much
| cheaper and that much cheaper to refly, a 10x reduction is
| definitely possible.
| benj111 wrote:
| All that assumes a market for a rocket as big as starship
| though.
|
| If you're still stuck launching the same kind of payloads
| as smaller rockets then the benefit will be smaller.
|
| For a rocket like starship to make sense you need an ~
| order of magnitude increase in the market which isn't a
| given.
|
| If you look at large jets, that wasn't the future. On the
| other hand cargo shipping seems to be heading that way, so
| I'll accept it could go either way, I'm just not convinced.
|
| I just have a feeling this is more akin to musk buying
| Twitter, than musk landing a first stage falcon for the
| first time.
| ls612 wrote:
| The market even at $300 per kg (if the starship
| eventually costs what Falcon costs) is dramatically
| different from the market today.
| benj111 wrote:
| Is that a given?
|
| What's the driver of satellite size? Is it the size of
| current rockets? Cube says etc would tend to point the
| other way.
|
| What the total cost of a satellite? Fine sending a 1
| tonne satellite to space costs $300k but if it still
| costs $x million to build the thing you're still looking
| at a select group who can afford it.
|
| Taking those 2 things together how many organisations
| will opt for the absolute cheapest option giving up the
| ability to get a dedicated launch to a given orbit?
|
| What are these new markets? Is asteroid mining going to
| become economically viable? Is lunar exploration going to
| be profitable? It's cheap to get to the middle of the
| Atlantic, it isn't exactly a hive of economic activity
| though. Yes there's starlink, but that has downsides
| relative to wired alternatives so the market is always
| going to be limited. Yes starlink is a massive expansion
| of the space economy, but that just highlights how small
| the space economy was and is, which just raises the
| question of whether such a massive rocket like starship
| will be able to be supported.
|
| 'build it and they will come' sounds nice, but it isn't a
| given.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Part of the insane costs of satellites comes from the
| launch cost: If the launch is expensive, the satellite
| needs to work, and it needs to last. If every kg you
| launch is $$$, it's worth using much more expensive
| materials to make it lighter.
|
| If the launch is closer to the price of shipping a parcel
| internationally, you can cut a lot of corners. No more
| specially optimized titanium parts where cheap sheet
| metal will do. No more space-rated parts at 100x markup,
| launch with off the shelf parts, see what fails, and
| iterate based on that.
|
| No more designing for super redundancy and quintuple-
| checking everything, if it fails let it fall out of orbit
| and send up a new one (LEO satellites deorbit reasonably
| quickly, so not a major "orbital waste" concern).
| cubefox wrote:
| It depends also on how often they can reuse the lower and
| upper stage, and how large the difference between launch
| cost and launch price will be. As far as I know, only China
| is currently developing a rocket comparable to Starship
| (Long March 9) and it will not compete with Starship for
| customers. So if there are indeed large internal cost cuts
| for Starship, large price cuts seem to be wishful thinking.
| idlewords wrote:
| "If"
| dwaltrip wrote:
| It's a medium-sized if. So many people said they couldn't
| land the Falcon-9 booster.
|
| Ignoring the mars stuff, the vision isn't that crazy, given
| their track record.
|
| Biggest questions in my mind are: how rapidly reusable will
| it actually be (e.g. refurbishment costs), how expensive will
| it be to scale up the ground systems and launch
| infrastructure, and what the induced demand will actually
| look like.
|
| I'm taking for granted that they will be able to land the
| Super Heavy booster. It doesn't seem that much of a leap from
| what they have done before.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| If Starship flies as often as Musk says, one Starship would
| take one year to bring as much mass into orbit as everything
| ever launched before. Something like that or so I heard.
| jacknews wrote:
| It is not an orbital test.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| It's an orbital test in that it tests the capability of the
| system to reach orbit. It is not an orbital test in that it
| does not actually achieve orbit.
| mabbo wrote:
| It's _almost_ an orbital test. It 's so close that in theory
| they could accidentally make it an orbital test if they fired
| the engines for a tiny bit extra.
| pixl97 wrote:
| There are some tests that are not orbital tests because there
| is a lack of technical capability of the launch article.
|
| In this case they are shutting off the rocket early so they
| don't reach orbital speeds in the case they lose contact with
| starship (in the very unlikely case it makes it to space) as it
| circles the Earth. This avoids a second burn on the test unit
| to pull it out of orbit where you could possibly end up with an
| out of control descent in to places not of your choosing.
| ragebol wrote:
| Excitement guaranteed!
|
| My bet is that it won't launch today and that when it does in a
| few days, some Starship's heat tiles somehow fall off and the
| reentry fails.
| [deleted]
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| As it turns out, excitement was not guaranteed.
| zpeti wrote:
| Just playing devil's advocate, literally everyone is worried
| about the tiles so surely they aren't launching without massive
| confidence that they are working properly? Or have the team
| said that there are still issues with the tiling?
| cubefox wrote:
| Their upcoming upper stage prototypes don't have a heat
| shield anymore, and the FAA launch license mentions that they
| won't survive reentry. So reentry of the upper stage doesn't
| seem to be their focus in the foreseeable future. They are
| probably more interested in making the lower stage reusable,
| since it has many more (expensive) engines than the upper
| stage.
| ragebol wrote:
| They are not required for making orbit I suppose, only for
| safe reentry. But can't know how well it all works without
| trying, so going even if confidence is not perfect.
|
| But I guess they're pretty confident.
| manquer wrote:
| The next two prototypes already being built for a while now
| do not have tiling in them , that doesn't suggest there is
| confidence in the design is final and stable .
|
| The addition delay and opportunity cost [1] [2] in perfecting
| re-entry is probably not worth it , I.e. better to launch now
| without second stage reentry than get it perfect and then
| launch
|
| [1] Starlinks on F9
|
| [2] not being able to launch full v2 higher mass and volume
| on current gen
| HPsquared wrote:
| Even without the tiles, they can probably still test
| several parts of the reentry process. Just not once it gets
| too hot...
| XorNot wrote:
| They also don't need the tiles for the moon lander Starship
| variant.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| True but without being able to reuse the tanker the
| mission would be ridiculously expensive by SpaceX
| standards.
| Kye wrote:
| There might be a point where they get cost low enough to
| trade some of those savings for things like simplifying
| engineering and increasing launch cadence.
| ragebol wrote:
| Sometimes it's not nice to bet and 'win'. A few days to wait...
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| The boat removal requirement seems open to abuse of people
| attempting to 'protest' Musk, especially considering his post
| twitter profile these days where they might conflate unrelated
| grievances with him to SpaceX.
|
| I wonder if they need to change the rules so 'a reasonable
| attempt' to remove and inform people needs to be made only.
|
| No doubt some people involved have discussed this one.
| DennisP wrote:
| Wouldn't be that easy to abuse, the Coast Guard is involved.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| I suspect it would. Off the cuff, one or more jet skis
| sitting outside of limited zone til ~10min before then goes
| for it. Would be hard to round up fast, especially if a
| handful of them.
|
| Im sure if people put their heads to it and knew the area
| they could do something.
| chasd00 wrote:
| it's so close to a public road, if you're fast you could
| probably run in and handcuff yourself to the OLM before anyone
| catches you.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| I really don't see that happening. Perhaps an environmentalist
| group could think of doing that if they decide to take issue
| with these launches--that would definitely be in character.
| [deleted]
| Aeolun wrote:
| Well, that was anticlimactic...
| sva_ wrote:
| Leave it to HN to have 2/3 of the thread arguing about timezones.
| [deleted]
| cubefox wrote:
| We are programmers after all! We care a lot about things like
| timezones, fonts, and date formats.
| niccl wrote:
| and me, in NZ, trying to tell a friend exactly when the
| launch window opened: 12:00 UTC on 2023-04-17 translates to
| midnight on the night between 17/4/2023 and 18/4/2023 NZ
| time. I ended up telling the friend that the window opened
| 00:01 2023-04-18 NZT, because that got rid of the 00:00
| ambiguity
| mabbo wrote:
| The part that seems to be unexpectedly really hard is getting to
| and successful at ignition of stage 2.
|
| Relativity Space recently had a failure with their Terran 1
| launcher on its first and only test fight because stage 2 failed
| to correctly ignite. Virgin Orbital (RIP) had a similar second
| stage failure. Astra lost their rocket 3 last year when the
| second stage failed to separate from the first stage correctly.
|
| Those companies had good engineers who had thought they had every
| edge case covered.
|
| Space is hard!
|
| Godspeed Starship.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| SpaceX as well, with their original Falcon 1 (demonstration
| rocket, before they secured funding to pursue Falcon 9)
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >Those companies had good engineers who had thought they had
| every edge case covered.
|
| I doubt anyone at Relativity thought they had every edge case
| covered. From my understanding, they consider the flight to
| have exceeded expectations.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Yeah, that test was really about proving that their 3D
| printed rocket components could withstand the forces of
| launch. Once they got past Max Q successfully, that test was
| completed successfully... anything else would have been
| gravy.
| BenoitP wrote:
| Scrub reason (from Elon's twitter): "A pressurant valve appears
| to be frozen, so unless it starts operating soon, no launch
| today"
|
| T-2: New launch attempt in min 48h
|
| T-8: Launch scrubbed (pressurization issue), still proceeding on
| some things for rehearsal
|
| T-15: Pressurization issue on stage 1, but the countdown
| continues. Still one boat to remove from area
| fallingknife wrote:
| In terms of boats encroaching into the exclusion zone it should
| be fuck around and find out IMO. Crazy to cancel a huge and
| expensive launch just because one idiot can't follow the rules.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That doesn't work though - without consequences you'd have
| hundreds of idiots wanting to fuck around and find out, with
| kids on tow, because freedom.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Then launch _and_ issue severe fines to discourage them.
|
| Or just let them. The sea is big, it's not going to hit
| _that_ many. Not everything needs to be 100% safe. We let
| people chase storms, or fly wingsuits (1 death per 500
| jumps, according to [1]). We also have ways to deal with
| parents who endanger their children past what we as society
| consider acceptable.
|
| [1] https://explorersweb.com/wingsuiting-dance-with-death/
| chasd00 wrote:
| in an earlier thread i half joked going to Matamoros and paying
| a fisherman $50 to take you out to see the launch. just for the
| record, that boat in the area is not me! ;)
| philjohn wrote:
| Saying 48 hours now.
| jordanreger wrote:
| Weather is also poor for the rest of the week so I doubt
| launch will be within a couple days
| rippercushions wrote:
| Update: it will be a minimum of 48 hours until they can try
| again. Maybe the rocket will get high on 4/20 after all.
|
| Elon is now saying there was a frozen valve, which seems fairly
| tractable.
| yuppiepuppie wrote:
| This would not be out of character for Elon
| dang wrote:
| Please let's not have another boo-vs.-yay $celebrity war.
| It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is
| for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| TOMDM wrote:
| earliest window for a new attempt is 48 hours, not tomorrow.
| codeulike wrote:
| T-16 minutes: livestream mentioned some sort of pressure issue on
| the first stage, they're looking into it, might be a scrub
|
| edit: but in the meantime preparation continues
| twoodfin wrote:
| Now scrubbed.
| pliny wrote:
| launch scrubbed
| pixl97 wrote:
| As others have said, scrub on liftoff, a wet dress rehearsal
| will occur.
| nmca wrote:
| Apparently launch is planned for 8am CT / 2pm BST
|
| https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1647767704177192961?t=9e-I...
| aaron695 wrote:
| 13:00 UTC even
|
| Coverage starts at 12:15 UTC
| iruoy wrote:
| 15:00 CEST (Central European Summer Time)
|
| For all us Europeans
| [deleted]
| Ekaros wrote:
| 16:00 EEST (Eastern European Summer Time)
|
| For the always left out Europeans...
| usrnm wrote:
| 13:00 UTC
| jacknews wrote:
| Thank You
| geuis wrote:
| So weird no one else put this in standard American times,
| considering its an American launch. 6am PST
| West coast 7am Mountain time 8am Central time
| 9am Eastern standard time
| victor96 wrote:
| Early start for anyone on the west coast
| riffic wrote:
| daylight time would be correct for this time of year
| downvotetruth wrote:
| 9 AM EDT = 8 AM EST
| Narkov wrote:
| Or perhaps a global time, such as UTC, given the global
| audience?
| geuis wrote:
| I'm just recognizing the facts of the planet we live in.
| Lots of interested parties are in the US, so it makes sense
| to also simply add US times. Especially considering its a
| US company (hopefully) launching from US soil.
| tulio_ribeiro wrote:
| I'm so surprised that a country who still clings to the
| imperial system would have any clue about UTC, the time
| standard that the rest of the world uses.
|
| The launch is scheduled to 1300 UTC, for us engineering
| folks.
| bombcar wrote:
| UTC (Zulu) is universally used by airplane people. Most
| have at least heard of it, even if they don't easily do
| the math.
| Titan2189 wrote:
| "airplane people" - technical term
| geuis wrote:
| Its currently 6:10pm in Beijing. Its also 6:10pm
| everywhere else in China
| (https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/china).
|
| Because that's a country that doesn't use the imperial
| system and still insists its the same time as the eastern
| capital no matter where else in the country people happen
| to be.
|
| Lets also mention that China is almost the same width as
| the US, probably larger to be fair.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| It probably pays off in efficiency.
|
| I was gonna say it must be weird to see solar noon at
| 3pm, or live in one of the western provinces and have
| sunrise at 4:30pm / sunset at 9-10pm for part of the
| year, but that describes life in the Netherlands too.
| tssva wrote:
| The US doesn't use the imperial system.
| ianai wrote:
| Going back, I have a clear memory of big events with
| global viewership being typically advertised with
| multiple time zones at a time. It was almost a bit of a
| marketing gag even for financial firms to have a ton of
| clocks up with labels displaying many different time
| zones.
|
| So yes, no reason to chose 1 time zone and force readers
| to do mental math. Just list "London: , Tokyo: , Sydney:
| , LA: , NYC: , Lagos: , Singapore: , Mumbai: " etc.
| mlatu wrote:
| at least they could have used good old internet time.
|
| @490
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Come on folks. It's time to start using star dates.
| TinkersW wrote:
| We don't really use UTC in the US, so for most Americans it
| wouldn't actually tell them much of anything. EST & PST are
| the most common.
| baq wrote:
| Nobody elsewhere does either but everyone knows their
| offset, or at least should around here... this is clearly
| an event of worldwide importance, so adding a few more
| timestamps wouldn't hurt
| macintux wrote:
| > EST & PST are the most common.
|
| Which is maddening because most of the year it's EDT &
| PDT but people still reference them wrong, even in
| marketing and corporate communications where they really
| should know better.
| self_awareness wrote:
| Europe/Warsaw: 15:00 CEST (UTC+2)
| explaininjs wrote:
| No way I'm the first pedant on HN to comment PST should be
| PDT (same for EST). The numbers are correct though.
| swarnie wrote:
| 96% of the world isn't US-American.
| geuis wrote:
| Yep, you are correct.
|
| But 100% of the launch is an American company out of
| American territory. And the majority of the users of Hacker
| News are also based in the US.
|
| So for this audience, considering the other facts, I don't
| see why people are having a problem with an extra comment
| that simply posts the relevant launch times in terms easier
| to understand at a glance for an American audience.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| > And the majority of the users of Hacker News are also
| based in the US.
|
| Is this really the case?
|
| Even if it's true, I wouldn't say this is anything to be
| proud of or something to uphold. Why not use
| international standards to make the place more welcoming
| the the majority of the world?
| chronic2803 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ricardobeat wrote:
| https://toolhub.tech/blog/Demographics-of-Hacker-News/
|
| The USA accounts for 41% of users according to this site.
| helli8390 wrote:
| > Why not use international standards to make the place
| more welcoming the the majority of the world?
|
| How do you think the US or China became leading world
| superpowers? By welcoming every standard and culture of
| the world?
|
| Oh wait, that is Europe. And look what happened to them.
| (Spoiler: they are not number 1 any more)
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| Huh? I don't think Hacker News aims to become a
| superpower. What's the relevance?
| ta1243 wrote:
| Yet you decide to ignore multiple American timezones
| including Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, Samoa, Guam and
| Wake Island
| [deleted]
| geuis wrote:
| @ta1243 its 2:40am PST. Sorry I can't reply to you
| directly, apparently HN has some comment thread depth
| limits. (Who knew?) Yeah sorry I forgot to include all of
| the time zones covering the entire country and its
| possessions.
|
| Post edit. I'm not sure what you want. All I did was post
| the 4 standard American time zones that affect most of
| the somewhat 330 million Americans living in the
| continental part of the country.
|
| Why is the original timezone post generating any
| conversation at all? This is insane.
| riffic wrote:
| PDT lol
| Viker wrote:
| [flagged]
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| aksss wrote:
| Missing two other American time zones, Alaska and Hawaii.
| thombat wrote:
| But it already has CT, and I guess a lot of US citizens know
| where they are relative to the other US time zones?
| geuis wrote:
| Yeah fair enough. I'm kinda getting concerned that my
| original comment is generating any discussion at all. Like,
| I just posted US-centric time zones. I'm not sure why this
| is a topic for argument or discussion.
| DrStartup wrote:
| Maybe the judgement and blame part before the list of
| additional time zones?
|
| "So weird that nobody" feels judge-y and blame-y to me,
| but that was probably not your intent.
|
| Dunno
| jaystraw wrote:
| Alaskan here, where's AKST? :-D
| tpmx wrote:
| https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20...
| suction wrote:
| Does anyone else feel that calling this thing a "Starship" is too
| hyperbolic?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't think it'll describe a hyperbola, so no.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Hyperbolic, no, confusing, yes.
|
| Starship is both the name of the full rocket and the name of
| the upper stage, the lower stage is called "super heavy", which
| is as generic as you can get.
|
| Personally, I still like to call the full rocket BFR, as it was
| called before being named Starship.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >the lower stage is called "super heavy", which is as generic
| as you can get.
|
| Feels like they took my Kerbal designs as naming inspiration.
| cubefox wrote:
| "Planetship" would have been better, or "Spaceship". A starship
| is something which flies to the stars.
| WJW wrote:
| Meh. The Saturn V rocket wasn't a literal god either, nor are
| the Falcon 9 rockets made out of actual falcons. People have
| been calling their vessels fanciful and/or aspirational names
| for centuries, it's fine. Nobody thinks the "unsinkable 2" is
| actually unsinkable.
| Bluestrike2 wrote:
| _Starship_ seems kind of unique in that it 's an
| extraordinarily utilitarian name compared to most launch
| system names.[0] It expressly doesn't try to evoke ancient
| human mythology, birds (which often have their own cultural
| and mythological ties i.e. _Falcon_ , etc.). And perhaps
| therein lies the aspirational element of the name. _Starship_
| suggests a sort of banality, something so common that there
| 's no point in dressing it up in a fanciful name. That's a
| dream in itself, though I think it's a given that individual
| Starship spacecraft will get named once they start carrying
| humans.
|
| Anyhow, I think the GP's thoughts were along the lines that
| _Starship_ isn 't actually a _starship_ as neither the
| spacecraft nor the super heavy-lift rocket will ever visit
| another star. Which is a valid point, but not one that I
| think matters much either way.
|
| 0.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_systems
| krisoft wrote:
| > And perhaps therein lies the aspirational element of the
| name.
|
| Very possible. It mirrors the naming convention of
| fictional spaceship in the Culture novel series. A series
| Musk is a professed admirer of. They even named two of
| their drone ships after fictional spacecraft from the
| series.
|
| In that series it is a running gag that other aliens find
| the Culture's naming convention lacking a certain gravitas.
| When you have one super weapon you might be tempted to call
| it "Death Star" or something. But when you have millions
| you let the warship AIs pick their own names and that is
| how you end up with a mighty warship named "All Through
| With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff" or "Falling
| Outside The Normal Moral Constraints". That is a real flex,
| I would say.
|
| So all in all Musk is familiar with the concept you are
| talking about here. I can't say for certain if that is
| going on here or not though. Most likely a Culture
| spacecraft's AI would roll their eyes over a crude space
| dingy which can barely reach orbit called "Starship"
| though. :) So who knows.
| aksss wrote:
| > sort of banality
|
| There's a gestalt to the word in the US. If the words are
| parsed or translated literally, particularly for esl, I can
| see how it would seem very plain. But speaking as a kid
| from the American eighties, I don't think "starship" is
| banal - anything but! It evokes for me all sorts of wonder
| and fantasy, probably tied to the media consumed - movies
| like The Last Starfighter, old Trek reruns, and books and
| comics.
| CarVac wrote:
| And Dragon isn't a mythical creature.
|
| (does Boeing's Starliner get a pass?)
| once_inc wrote:
| Does it act as the liner for stars, or does it produce lines
| of stars?
| ritzaco wrote:
| Here's a countdown to 13h00 UTC, which is when the launch window
| opens. I assume the YouTube will have some commentary etc in the
| 45 minutes leading up to that
|
| https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/launch?p0=1440&iso=202...
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Current target time is 13:20 UTC per spacex twitter.
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| I bet $20 it gets delayed by exactly 3 days.
| justrealist wrote:
| Musk likes dumb jokes but I think an intentional 3-day pause
| for a gag is too far.
| capableweb wrote:
| If a person demonstrates the ability to spend $43 billion for
| what could essentially be boiled down to a long running gag,
| is 3 day pause really that much more?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Buying a major social media company isn't a gag.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Well, not an intentional one.
| once_inc wrote:
| You're on. 20$ on it launching this launch window, mon 17th
| april.
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| I accept PayPal and doge.
| once_inc wrote:
| What do we do if they launch on the 18th or the 19th, or
| after the 20th? No exchange seems logical, since we both
| didn't predict those dates.
| hayd wrote:
| well atm it's set for 4/20.
|
| https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1648092752893313024
| baq wrote:
| Unfortunately the weather at 4/20 is forecasted to be not
| launch friendly
| danbruc wrote:
| Why would you delay a launch to Hitler's birthday?
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| Odd looking duck..
| [deleted]
| Viker wrote:
| i can arbiter the bet !
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