[HN Gopher] Starship's Sixth Flight Test
___________________________________________________________________
Starship's Sixth Flight Test
Author : hnburnsy
Score : 310 points
Date : 2024-11-06 18:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spacex.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spacex.com)
| lupusreal wrote:
| Note that there _will not be_ an official livestream on Youtube.
| Every time there are some people who fall for scammers pretending
| to be one and end up listening to an AI impersonation of Elon
| Musk try to sell them cryptocoins, missing the real launch.
|
| If you must watch on youtube, NSF or Everyday Astronaut typically
| have good (unofficial) livestreams.
| djd3 wrote:
| The Everyday Astronaut was _ahead_ of the SpaceX curated one
| for Flight 5. It had the weird effect of showing the outcome
| before the sound of the cheering crowd going crazy when the
| booster got caught by the chopsticks (which was also audible in
| the same stream).
| gridspy wrote:
| Each streamer adds a delay to their stream. This means that
| any stream forwarded to you by another streamer is going to
| be delayed.
|
| The delay was between SpaceX recording and uploading an event
| and Everyday astronaut decoding it at their mixing desk.
| Their own feeds from their cameras and microphones had less
| delay than the SpaceX stream did. Everyday astronaut then had
| another delay between when they encoded this result and you
| saw it.
|
| If you had opened up the SpaceX stream directly you would
| have found it was ahead of the stream shown inside Everyday
| Astronaut.
|
| BTW I was also watching EA's stream.
| wmf wrote:
| EA and NSF have their own cameras so they aren't just
| republishing SpaceX's Twitter stream. But things definitely
| get out of sync when there are multiple layers of
| streaming.
| abulman wrote:
| Some of the views their cameras get are fantastic - and
| the tracking on the last flight test would quite possibly
| make NASA envious. Cameras on the beach and also just
| next to StarHopper are in harms way too, they've lost a
| couple of them. I'm not sure what the cost of repair was
| after a chunk of concrete from what used to be the pad
| took out the back of a car!
| djd3 wrote:
| Thank you for the clarification. It's delays all the way
| down. :)
|
| I was cycling between the "official" stream and EA to try
| and catch the most-live and I found EA was a couple seconds
| ahead.
| hayd wrote:
| It's ironic given pre-acquisition under every Elon Musk tweet
| the top replies were always crypto scammers. Hopefully this
| time YouTube fix the impersonation stream but it was up for a
| long time during/after the last launch.
| tiahura wrote:
| I assumed a large portion of YouTube/ Google management had
| been in a plane crash as that seemed the only plausible
| explanation for it to stay up as long and have as many
| viewers as it did. It really was stunning.
| lysace wrote:
| Nah, they are just ignoring the damaging effects on
| individuals and cashing in the ad money.
| tslocum wrote:
| Considering how long those videos have been allowed on YouTube,
| you have to wonder...
|
| https://mashable.com/article/fake-elon-musk-crypto-scam-yout...
| lysace wrote:
| > Nearly four years ago, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
| actually sued YouTube over Bitcoin scam livestreams that were
| using his likeness. So, this has clearly been going on for
| quite a while now. And, unfortunately, it looks like these
| fake YouTube livestream schemes are going to continue on, at
| least for the foreseeable future.
|
| I recently reported a bunch of the SpaceX ones that were
| running for long time. Nothing happened. I think
| Google/Alphabet is just happy with the extra ad views.
|
| This aspect needs regulation.
| abulman wrote:
| I'll often spend a little time while watching the flight-
| tests (usually with Tim Dodd / EverydayAstronaut) just
| doing a search on YouTube for 'spacex live' and usually
| report 15-20 each time. They are very easy to spot when
| you've seen a few of them. I'll usually get a report of a
| few being shut down later in the day, and more over the
| next couple of days.
|
| But, yes, they should be easy for YT to detect & block
| automatically - it's frustrating they (and other scams) get
| to stay online so long.
| lysace wrote:
| Perhaps your account has more Youtube XP.
|
| > But, yes, they should be easy for YT to detect & block
| automatically - it's frustrating they (and other scams)
| get to stay online so long.
|
| It's the Google way. It's impossible until it suddenly
| isn't.
|
| Break up this monster company and regulate the resulting
| companies until they behave.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Break up this monster company and regulate the resulting
| companies until they behave.
|
| Uh, seen the news lately? Not really going to happen.
| mnau wrote:
| How about RICO act? Youtube is clearly and knowingly
| profiting from a criminal activity.
| schappim wrote:
| Suddenly, all those crypto-scam videos seem plausible now that
| Elon Musk pledged to give away $1 million daily to individuals
| who sign his political action committee's petition supporting
| the First and Second Amendments.
| mulmen wrote:
| > If you must watch on youtube, NSF or Everyday Astronaut
| typically have good (unofficial) livestreams.
|
| It amazes me that NASA Space Flight managed to rip off the
| names of both the National Science Foundation and the National
| Aeronautics and Space Agency. Their coverage is good but that
| name is _really_ misleading.
| anticrymactic wrote:
| Last times catch was incredible, anything groundbreaking being
| attempted this time?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They're working off the same license they used for test 5, so
| they basically have to exactly the same thing they did for test
| 5. They did manage to add this:
|
| "An additional objective for this flight will be attempting an
| in-space burn using a single Raptor engine, further
| demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship
| deorbit burn prior to orbital missions."
| modeless wrote:
| I think that's the last thing they need to do before they can
| actually launch satellites. I'm surprised there was no
| attempt on the last launch. Glad to see it this time. The
| improved Starlink constellation that Starship will enable is
| going to be awesome.
| cryptonector wrote:
| That and flap sturdiness, if they want to be able to re-
| enter over land so they can catch the ship.
| modeless wrote:
| It's not required for launching satellites. But yeah,
| they need to figure out the heat shield for the flap
| hinges before they can recover the ship.
| cwillu wrote:
| The next block of starship has an altered
| geometry/location of the flaps for that reason; it's more
| or less a solved problem, but not worth scrapping the
| older ones they've already built. Iirc, the launch after
| this one will be SN7, which is block 2 with the new
| geometry.
| jltsiren wrote:
| It's not a solved problem. Surviving the re-entry in a
| condition that makes reuse economical was always the
| biggest challenge for the Starship. It's far from certain
| that they can achieve it without a fundamental change in
| the concept.
|
| The feasibility of building big rockets was already
| demonstrated a long time ago. Given the reliability of
| the Falcon 9, it looked plausible that a big rocket could
| work with many engines. And SpaceX had already shown that
| they can reuse boosters economically. But reusing orbital
| spacecraft - the entire upper stage with engines, fuel
| tanks, and whatever - without expensive and time-
| consuming refits is something nobody has done before.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They're saying that one specific part burning off is a
| solved problem, not the entire reuse process.
| cryptonector wrote:
| If that part burning off is a solve problem then
| returning the orbital ship to the launchpad is too given
| that they are able to gently put it down on the sea, and
| that they are able to gently catch the booster. This part
| is basically the only problem left that is ship-specific.
| However for _reuse_ (or rapid reuse) they might need to
| rethink heat shielding to reduce refurbishment time and
| cost.
| mnau wrote:
| I think they will want to deal with heatshield first. As of
| now, it hasn't survived deorbiting.
|
| SpaceX can launch satellites using Falcon9 and do it
| routinely. Starship needs to be developed and reach
| milestones, so they can get paid by NASA. Having a payload
| is a complication (unless it's a fun payload, remember the
| roadster car :D)
| cwillu wrote:
| The next block of starship has altered flap geometry that
| should largely fix that.
| laverya wrote:
| I think they can probably do both at once - heatshield
| testing and pez dispenser testing shouldn't interfere
| with each other, so might as well use whatever spare
| upmass you have!
|
| Yeah you might lose the payload, but SpaceX has the
| cheapest satellites in the business from what I
| understand.
| 93po wrote:
| i hope the next dummy payload is a giant 2 story tall
| anime figurine, knowing musk it's not out of the question
| cryptonector wrote:
| And they need to demo that the flaps hold up through re-entry
| with nominal, minimal damage, otherwise a permit for a plan
| involving re-entry over land (which is needed to catch the
| ship) would obviously not issue.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They've addressed that in Block 2. Test 6 still flies block
| 1, so we won't see any substantive improvements on that
| until test 7.
| scotty79 wrote:
| That's cool PR move. If they managed to light one then it's
| great success. If they don't people will think they just got
| unlucky. But if they tried to light all and only one would
| work or none, or one would work but some other blew up whole
| rocket it would look terrible. That last eventuality is
| something they want to prevent by trying to light just one.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| It's not groundbreaking but it's important. They are
| demonstrating in orbit relight capability of the raptor
| engines. This is an absolute requirement before they can put it
| fully into orbit because losing control of a Starship in low
| earth orbit would be catastrophic.
| lysace wrote:
| > because losing control of a Starship in low earth orbit
| would be catastrophic
|
| Why? Remote detonation wouldn't work in that case?
| perihelions wrote:
| Remote termination is something they can do in the early
| boost phase, when there is a defined hazard zone over a
| depopulated patch of ocean. It doesn't cause the rocket to
| disappear; its effect is to disable the engines, end
| uncontrolled acceleration, and break the booster apart into
| small pieces--all of which will still fall to the ground
| (ocean) as debris.
|
| If you did this to a Starship in orbit, you'd likely have
| large chunks of steel reentering and reaching the ground
| intact.
| lysace wrote:
| If I understand you correctly: So you'd have to do it
| over unpopulated/depopulated areas, which is impossible
| to guarantee when you are zooming around the globe at
| very high speeds. Thanks for explaining.
| mcswell wrote:
| "...all of which will still fall to the ground (ocean) as
| debris..." After it's been flying in orbit for awhile,
| where it could in theory hit something else.
|
| As you say, the other part of it--and probably more
| important--is that if it's turned into orbiting pieces,
| there's no control over _where_ it lands. Some of it
| could easily land on the ground rather than the ocean,
| who knows where. That of course has happened with other
| satellites and their final stage rockets in the past
| (notably by the Chinese), but Starship is bigger, and
| therefore the pieces that hit the ground could be bigger.
| By launching it sub-orbital for now, and turning off the
| engines so it lands in the middle of the Indian Ocean,
| the risks of both orbital debris and unknown ground
| landing points are avoided.
| jpk wrote:
| If the object is already in orbit, the debris from an FTS
| activation would also mostly be left in orbit, which isn't
| great. They really need to demonstrate the ability to de-
| orbit the vehicle before putting into orbit.
| valine wrote:
| Detonating something in orbit could trigger Kessler's
| Syndrome.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Detonating something in orbit could trigger Kessler 's
| Syndrome_
|
| Unlikely in general, no at LEO and definitely not at the
| suborbital velocities IFT-6 contemplates.
| valine wrote:
| LEO is the exact place you need to be careful. Higher
| orbits have more space and have fewer satellites overall
| so it's less of a concern.
|
| Obviously not a problem for IFT6 since it's sub-orbital,
| but the original comment was about why we need a deorbit
| burn rather than just triggering the flight abort system.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| but lower orbits also decay quickly.
|
| If you have debris in geostationary orbit, it will stay
| there basically forever whereas in low earth orbit it
| will burn up within a few years at worst.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _LEO is the exact place you need to be careful. Higher
| orbits have more space and have fewer satellites overall
| so it 's less of a concern_
|
| No. In LEO orbits degrade in single-digit years at most.
| There is no known solution for rendering an orbit in LEO
| inaccessible with a Kessler cascade--the best you can do
| is blind an area with repeated ASAT fire.
|
| In higher orbits debris last longer. That makes cascades
| possible, though again it only denies a limited area and
| requires almost active effort.
| gridspy wrote:
| At least in LEO you need to keep expending DeltaV to keep
| stuff in orbit. Trace atmosphere slows everything down
| and would eventually clean LEO at 500km of relevant junk
| in about 25 years depending on altitude.
|
| https://space.stackexchange.com/a/55995
| kibwen wrote:
| Even at suborbital velocities, putting debris into the
| path of an existing satellite that is traveling at
| orbital velocity is enough to trigger a cascade.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Collision, yes, cascade no.
| kibwen wrote:
| No. An object in orbit colliding with anything threatens
| to create debris in orbit. Debris in orbit collides with
| other objects in orbit, creating debris in orbit. That's
| a cascade.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| No. Orbital mechanically, no.
|
| > _Debris in orbit collides with other objects in orbit,
| creating debris in orbit. That 's a cascade_
|
| For the same reason not every nucleus that fractures on
| neutron bombardment sustains chain reactions not every
| orbital configuration supports a Kessler cascade. In LEO,
| it's virtually impossible: you get a nuisance, not SOL.
|
| Note that Kessler posited his syndrome before we could
| computationally verify it. We can now. It's not a real
| threat in the long term, and is more of an insurance
| question than existential issue for spaceflight in the
| medium term. It's pertinent in the very short term,
| militarily, which is partly how we know it's very
| difficult to trigger across even limited orbits.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The chance anything hits fragments within the next hour
| or two is not very high.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It would work, all too well. Especially if the speed was
| just slightly suborbital. Rain of steel over a random spot
| (or, rather, a trace) on the Earth's surface. You may be
| lucky and that trace might cross a desolate ocean; or you
| may not be lucky, and some Asian megalopolis with 25
| million people may be below.
| stetrain wrote:
| Generally that isn't done for a vehicle in orbit, since the
| distribution of debris in orbits used by other spacecraft
| would be significant.
|
| A Starship second stage stranded in orbit would be a
| problem because detonation would cause a bunch of orbital
| debris, but simply waiting for natural re-entry would
| result in an unpredictable landing location that could
| result in large debris reaching populated areas.
|
| Reliable, controlled re-entry to a targeted location is
| very important for Starship to be an operational launch
| system.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Detonation in orbit would cause garbage in orbit that could
| destroy many satellites. It is absolutely not permitted.
| lysace wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Not to much mostly just a repeat. Just engine relight on the
| upper stage. The reason for this is that the next version is
| much improved and almost ready. That's the one they will really
| want to do the next steps with.
| waltbosz wrote:
| > the 30-minute launch window will open at 4:00 p.m. CT
|
| Is that correct? They're launching in the afternoon this time?
| Always42 wrote:
| They call out later launch on the page linked
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| "Finally, adjusting the flight's launch window to the late
| afternoon at Starbase will enable the ship to reenter over the
| Indian Ocean in daylight, providing better conditions for
| visual observations."
|
| From the linked article.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _Finally, adjusting the flight's launch window to the late
| afternoon at Starbase will enable the ship to reenter over the
| Indian Ocean in daylight, providing better conditions for
| visual observations._
| Nekhrimah wrote:
| It's explained further down the page that this launch time will
| facilitate the Indian Ocean landing in sunlight, for improved
| visual capture of that.
| umeshunni wrote:
| For anyone else who was confused and thought this was happening
| today. It's actually in 12 days:
|
| The sixth flight test of Starship is targeted to launch as
| early as Monday, November 18.
|
| The 30-minute launch window will open at 4:00 p.m. CT
| modeless wrote:
| SpaceX just posted this video of the last test. It's one of the
| most inspiring things I've ever seen.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI9HQfCAw64
| paul7986 wrote:
| Not into space things and while this is cool i wonder what the
| great significance of this is? I see lots signaling how great
| this is and it's lost on me.
| modeless wrote:
| Totally reasonable question. This is the first rocket ever
| that will (assuming further success) land in its entirety
| back on the launch pad, refuel, and go back to orbit the same
| day.
|
| Imagine that every time an airliner landed its cockpit was
| destroyed and you had to build a new one. A fully reusable
| airplane would be a transformational improvement. That's the
| level of achievement we're talking about here.
| nexus6 wrote:
| Is there such a need for a heavy launch rocket to launch
| routinely?
| stetrain wrote:
| If we want to establish long term bases on the Moon or
| Mars then yes, you need not only to send crew and
| habitation modules but ongoing supplies and equipment.
|
| Other use cases include launching and maintaining
| satellite constellations (Starling / Starshield), and
| launching singular large payloads like space telescopes.
|
| Even for smaller payloads, having both the first and
| second stages be reusable will reduce launch costs.
| soperj wrote:
| If satellites don't have to worry as much about weight
| constraints they can be made cheaper and quicker. Space
| missions can become more routine.
| modeless wrote:
| SpaceX already launches multiple times per month just to
| maintain Starlink. That will be much cheaper with
| Starship while enabling larger and more capable
| satellites. In fact, it's likely that one of the reasons
| SpaceX built Starlink is to create their own customer
| (and spur competitors) to plausibly use a significant
| fraction of Starship's capabilities. None existed at the
| time.
|
| In the near term the biggest reason to do multiple
| launches in a day will be orbital refueling. This is
| required for sending much, much larger payloads to the
| Moon and Mars. It will require on the order of 10
| launches to fuel up one moon lander in orbit, and
| obviously doing that as quickly as possible will be
| beneficial. NASA has already committed to this plan for
| Artemis.
| dmurray wrote:
| > It will require on the order of 10 launches to fuel up
| one moon lander in orbit
|
| Require, or just make comfortable? Saturn V had the lift
| capacity of "only" a couple of Falcon Heavies, but was
| enough to carry astronauts, a car, a lunar lander with
| enough fuel to take off, and a command module.
| modeless wrote:
| We're not trying to do Apollo again. That would be
| easier, but we want to build a base this time. For that
| we need to send a _lot_ more mass and it needs a _lot_
| more fuel.
| fernandopj wrote:
| Require. I answered that in this same subtopic.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| It's necessary because the Starship upper stage is so
| heavy. With a non reusable upper stage Starship's
| capacity would be enormous.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Also because of the Lunar Gateway part of the plan. That
| pretty much just serves to waste fuel and funnel taxpayer
| money to the companies funding several congressmembers'
| election campaigns.
| dmurray wrote:
| Is that true? SpaceX [0] gives the capacity as 150t
| reusable or 250t expendable, which is significant, but
| not enough to make one "enormous".
|
| If you really got order-of-magnitude gains from an
| expendable upper stage, it wouldn't be that exciting to
| have reusable rockets (which are more complex and still
| only fly one order of magnitude more times) in the first
| place.
|
| [0] https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/
| DylanSp wrote:
| If the upper stage wasn't designed to be reusable, it'd
| probably have a lot less structural dry mass - no heat
| shield, no fins, possibly different geometry (depending
| on how much volume they wanted). It might also be
| possible to drop the sea-level Raptor engines and just
| use the more efficient vacuum Raptors. I don't think
| you'd get an order-of-magnitude difference, but it'd be
| significant, especially for higher-energy trajectories
| than LEO.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| I don't understand why they don't make such an upper
| stage. It would allow them to refine the booster design
| and catch logistics while also launching payloads.
| DylanSp wrote:
| My guess would be that it would take too much extra
| design work. Making the current upper stage reusable is
| necessary for the HLS contract anyways, and they've got a
| lot of work to do already on refining the heat shield &
| fin protection, enabling landing, and working on
| propellant transfer.
| modeless wrote:
| They are making an upper stage with no fins or heat
| shield. It's called HLS. But they don't need it just to
| launch payloads to orbit. Starship has such a bonkers
| huge payload capacity already that it's plenty for now.
| Nobody is asking for more yet. Testing Starship reentry
| is super important too, so it makes sense to do it on
| every launch until it's perfected.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Needs tend to develop once the means are there.
|
| 200 years ago, there was no need to use electricity. 100
| years ago, there was no need to use a programming
| language. 30 years ago, there was no need for gigabit
| wireless Internet.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Or perhaps earlier and closer to the heart of USA's
| citizens, 300 years ago, there was no need for rail lines
| and trains.
| Animats wrote:
| > Needs tend to develop once the means are there.
|
| Counterexample: space stations. We've had small manned
| space stations for decades now, but no real application
| for them. They're national prestige items only.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Because launch cost is expensive. There are a lot of
| interesting things we can develop in zero gravity if the
| cost per pound was cheap.
| rodiger wrote:
| Not true! The ISS has functioned as an outpost for
| science- 3,000+ experiments and counting
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/five-space-station-
| res...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And most importantly for anyone who cares about space the
| way Elon claims to: The ISS has done pretty much all the
| research we have on how humans _survive_ in space.
| seadan83 wrote:
| This feels like tautological reasoning. Since you said,
| "tend" - are there any counter examples that you can
| think of?
| edm0nd wrote:
| Yes, obviously.
|
| It takes a heavy launch rocket to launch heavier things
| into space or missions, refueling, and to goto other
| planets.
| fernandopj wrote:
| It's a mandate for the next Artemis Mission. [1]
|
| The HLS (Spaceship) will need many refuels at orbit in
| order to get to the Moon and back. That means at least a
| dozen of fully-loaded Heavy launches to LEO just so each
| one of them can load a bit of fuel into HLS. The fuel in
| orbit can't sit idle for too long, or it deteriorates; I
| haven't found a limit on days for that, but a week-long
| launch window is considered a dealbreaker, we're talking
| a dozen Heavy launches in a week.
|
| It's either a short launch window, or at least 6
| Starships built and launched twice in ~10 days. Don't
| count out on SpaceX building 12 Heavy Starships just for
| that Artemis mission.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_III
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Yes, to do anything at all in the rest of the universe.
|
| We are insatiably curious explorers. The cosmos calls to
| us. Many are willing to do anything they can to answer
| that call.
| eunoia wrote:
| > go again the same day.
|
| That seems like a stretch. What is the actual turnaround
| time for Starship? fwiw the Shuttle had a lot of lofty
| promises of reusability that were technically true as long
| as you didn't consider how long the turnaround time was.
| modeless wrote:
| It's a good question. The hurdle to clear for same-day
| reuse will be the heat shield. SpaceX hasn't yet
| demonstrated that Starship can reenter the atmosphere and
| remain fully intact. Doing it while sustaining near zero
| wear on the heat shield will be even harder. But I think
| it is not impossible, and I don't know of any other
| obvious blockers for same day reuse.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Even if they can reuse the booster, it would be huge.
| soperj wrote:
| They'll likely reuse the booster on the same day well
| before the starship portion. No heat shield on the
| booster. Some starships will likely stay in space for a
| long time before returning.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Musk has said they're aiming for hundreds of reuses for
| the booster and dozens for the ship.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's certainly looked fully intact when reaching ground.
|
| When they manage to do the intended landing it should be
| pretty unharmed, but I'm sure it will take a while before
| same-day reuse is attempted.
| modeless wrote:
| One of the flaps burned through again. Not as bad as the
| first time. The hinge area seems like the hardest
| challenge.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is this a bit of over engineering? How much is drag
| reduced during liftoff by having the flaps folded?
| modeless wrote:
| The reason the flaps move is to provide attitude and
| speed control during reentry. Like a skydiver spreading
| their arms and legs.
| dylan604 wrote:
| oh, you mean like actual flaps of pretty much any
| aircraft. doh! i was thinking it was like the folding of
| the wings for planes on an aircraft carrier. sometimes my
| brain, boy, i don't know
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It was a flap hinge that burnt through, not the flap.
| They have a solution for block 2 which we'll likely see
| in test 7 -- move the flap slightly further back so that
| the hinge isn't in direct flow.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Zero wear is not necessary. The tiles can be thicker than
| the minimum, and be reusable until they wear down to the
| minimum. Like the brake pads on your car.
| soperj wrote:
| With the Falcon 9 they're already at over 100 launches
| this year. It's multiple rockets, but the turn around is
| pretty quick and getting quicker every year. They're
| designing starship from the start with same day
| turnaround in mind. I wouldn't bet against it I guess.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Some of SpaceX's first stages are getting close to the
| individual Shuttles' launch counts, with substantially
| less turnaround time and cost than Shuttle ever had.
|
| Starship has work to do, but it's hard to argue they're
| not at least on the right path.
| cwillu wrote:
| Also, less cost in life.
| marcusverus wrote:
| SpaceX was able to re-fly a Falcon 9 in 3 weeks, and it
| was reported[0] that the refurb process only took 9 days.
| So they're well on their way.
|
| It's also worth noting that Booster (the first stage),
| Starship (the second stage) and Raptor (the rocket
| engine) were all designed with the benefit of the above
| experience and with the goal of same-day reuse in mind.
| They know where all of the refurb time went and where the
| bottlenecks are.
|
| I have no doubt that they can reduce the turnaround
| further, but the goal of same-day re-flight does seem
| mighty ambitious.
|
| [0] https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-falcon-9-new-
| booster-turnar...
| fragmede wrote:
| The previous flight was October 13, 2024, so while I
| can't speak to every day, one month turnaround is a
| reality.
| soperj wrote:
| It's a completely different booster and ship that's
| flying.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| And both are already outdated - flight _seven_ (Ship 33)
| introduces a new generation of hardware. They 're moving
| fast with these.
| gridspy wrote:
| The shuttle boosters required rebuilding / refueling
| (which is solid rocket goop) and the fuel tank was
| completely lost and required rebuilding. The head shield
| tiles were extremely fragile on the shuttle.
|
| It was never a fully reusable design, just more reusable
| than before.
|
| SpaceX plans to have no parts that are lost each flight
| and is working to make the tiles mostly standardized and
| less sensitive to faults.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Are they going to replace all the tiles before it can
| relaunch? And what about the engine nozzles? They must be
| taking quite the beating.
|
| No doubt SpaceX has very smart people working on this and
| I'm not an expert in material science, but I just find it
| hard to believe that same day turnaround could be
| possible. If true, that would really make us a confirmed
| space faring civilization. We could actually start
| colonizing Mars.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what about the engine nozzles?_
|
| Falcon 9 has reflown in just over 4 hours [1]. (EDIT:
| Operational turnaround. Nozzles have been turned around
| allegedly without refurb in 3 weeks.)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_
| Falcon_...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No, those were separate craft, on opposite sides of the
| country. It demonstrates an ability to manage multiple
| missions at once, but not rapid booster turnaround.
|
| https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-launch-
| doubleheader-ju...
|
| They've since done two flights in about an hour with
| https://spaceflightnow.com/tag/starlink-9-5/ and
| https://spaceflightnow.com/tag/starlink-8-10/
|
| I think the first-stage turnaround record is something
| like two weeks.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-
| stage_b...
|
| > B1062 booster holds the record for fastest turnaround
| at 21 days. It launched on 8 April and again on 29 April
| 2022.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| For context on JumpCrisscross's comment in this thread:
| the 4 hours is between two separate launches on two
| separate rockets. This is absolutely not refurbishing and
| launching the same rocket 4 hours apart.
|
| Seems like the actual record for turning around the same
| booster is 21 days, which is still quite impressive.
|
| https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-falcon-9-new-booster-
| turnar...
| wongarsu wrote:
| The heat tiles are reusable, just like the Shuttle's.
| They are basically just a material that insulates very
| well, instead of a traditional ablative heat shield that
| burns away. With the space shuttle they ended up spending
| a lot of time inspecting each tile for damage and
| replacing cracked tiles. SpaceX has a modern iteration of
| the same material, hopefully with fewer cracks.
|
| Other factors that work in SpaceX's favor are 1) that
| most launches will be unmanned, meaning they can take
| bigger risks than the Space Shuttle program; 2) that the
| steel body of Starship can handle higher temperatures
| than the Space Shuttle's aluminum, so a compromised heat
| shield is more tolerable; 3) for now they have a
| secondary ablative heat shield below the tiles (that does
| have to be replaced when it gets used, but that should
| only happen when tiles fall off)
| seadan83 wrote:
| Beware the dunning-kruger effect. There is a lot more to
| colonizing mars than reusable rockets. Just saying..
| LorenDB wrote:
| For the Super Heavy booster, SpaceX is targeting a <1hr
| turnaround time. For the ship, it gets a bit more
| complex. Ships have to make complete orbits before
| returning, and generally they have to be loaded with
| cargo as well. Tanker Starships for lunar/Mars missions
| will probably have pretty quick turnaround given that
| fuel can be loaded on the pad; other ships will have
| significantly longer turnarounds.
| 7e wrote:
| I think the economics of space are are much more likely to
| be transformed by something like
| https://www.longshotspace.com/. Rockets are complex, still
| costly, and polluting.
| modeless wrote:
| The problem with space guns is you can't just yeet rocks
| into orbit. Any orbit that starts at the surface returns
| to the surface. So you still need a disposable rocket and
| avionics and fuel in every payload to change the orbit
| once out of the atmosphere. Only now the rocket needs to
| survive being literally shot out of a gun _and_ then
| traveling at orbital velocity in atmosphere. That puts a
| pretty high floor on the cost per shot.
| gridspy wrote:
| Plus, your payload needs to be gun compatible. Not gonna
| put people in there.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Well, in WW2 we did manage to put working radar in
| artillery shells.
| itishappy wrote:
| With vacuum tubes, no less!
| 7e wrote:
| Space is for robots.
| gridspy wrote:
| While mass to orbit costs as much as it does now, sure.
| However later on it's gonna be great to have humans
| closer to the working robots to reduce the round-trip
| latency. They could also perform tasks robots are not
| suited for.
|
| Consider operators living on Mars and operating drones
| near their habitat each day. It would be like modern day
| drone operators and robot assisted surgery. Like remote
| operators of mega-trucks today.
|
| Those robots could interact with the operators - driving
| into a "garage" that can be pressurized for maintenance,
| upgrades or science.
|
| StarShip promises to reduce the cost of mass to orbit,
| making larger and more complex scientific, industrial and
| habitat options feasible.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| If you want to look at someone that is further along on a
| concept like this you can look at SpinLaunch. Exactly
| what it sounds like with a gigantic centrifuge to spin
| and throw things really fast. But they are still throwing
| a small two-stage rocket.
|
| https://www.spinlaunch.com/orbital
| 7e wrote:
| I think a reusable orbital tug which rendezvous with
| payloads is the play here. The tug would refuel from some
| of the gun-launched payloads.
| modeless wrote:
| I think it would probably have to refuel with every
| payload. Changing orbits that fast isn't cheap. It would
| be cool to see an analysis of this, I don't know if it
| would really make sense. I've seen some interviews with
| the space gun guys but unfortunately nobody really
| pressed them on this issue and they didn't mention any
| plans for space tugs.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| He's already spent the $3bn funding that was supposed to
| deliver the rocket to the moon and back.
| vojtapol wrote:
| That's just straight up not true. The $3bn were never
| meant to fund the entire project in the way you imply.
| panick21_ wrote:
| That is totally false, but you are not the first person I
| have heard spread this roomer.
|
| You can go to the official govenrment website and look at
| the contract, it tells you exactly how much has been paid
| out and how much has not been. The money is getting out
| as SpaceX hits development milestones.
|
| I don't remember, exactly but about 2.x billion $ were
| paid out so far. The money is spread over 40ish
| milestones. And they have done like 25 or so by now.
|
| To get the full pay out, they will be required to land on
| the moon and take off again. Those are likely the last
| couple milestones.
| tedsanders wrote:
| If you go to space, 90% of the cost is the rocket (depending
| on your accounting). If rockets can be made reusable, then
| you can drop costs by 90%, to first order. Cheaper rockets
| means cheaper satellites for internet and sensors and stuff.
| gridspy wrote:
| Also, as mass to orbit gets cheaper you can build your
| payload more cheaply. Many compromises in complexity and
| material cost are made to minimize payload mass - we'll be
| able to launch cheap and heavy satellites and probes into
| orbit instead.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Cheaper rockets also mean cheaper payload in that the
| payloads don't have to be engineered to such high
| standards of reliability.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >(depending on your accounting).
|
| some of the best weasel words ever laid to print. Enron
| accounting vs PWC vs your mom using Quickbooks for her side
| hustle type of depending?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Rockets that are easily reusable make spaceflight a lot more
| logistically feasible, which should translate to a massive
| drop in costs.
|
| We are going to see massively increased space activity of all
| sorts. It is almost impossible to predict all consequences
| thereof.
| soperj wrote:
| Price decreases significantly when you can reuse. This rocket
| is the same size as the ones that brought the Apollo missions
| to the moon, but will cost significantly less because they
| don't have to build one every time they launch it.
| stetrain wrote:
| It's a rocket in the same ballpark as the Saturn V but where
| the two stages can both be recovered and re-used.
|
| SpaceX has demonstrated being able to fly the same rocket
| stage dozens of times with minimal refurbishment with their
| Falcon 9 family of rockets, but they still have to build and
| discard the second stage of the Falcon 9 for each launch.
|
| Starship scales that up in magnitude and adds second-stage
| reusability.
| politician wrote:
| Consider ocean-going freight transportation: the container
| ships and the containers, the port facilities and the cranes.
| Now imagine that you were able to witness the very first
| round-trip sailing of such a container ship between two newly
| constructed still-experimental-and-heretofore-unproven ports.
|
| That'd be pretty cool right? The dawn of a new era in global
| trade.
|
| This is that, for space. (Booster as container ship, Orbital
| vehicle as container, launch tower as literal crane, launch
| complex as port)
| tialaramex wrote:
| No. The ports were just expanding on an existing idea. I
| live in a port city, a thousand years ago middle ages
| people with much smaller boats used this same area to
| travel much shorter distances with fewer goods, today it
| has those cranes and a railway and moves inter-modal
| containers which have travelled from across the world, but
| it's just the same idea.
|
| Why is there a port here? Because of the unusual tidal
| pattern? Deep water? No. People. The other reasons are
| reasons to put the port here maybe in particular rather
| than a few miles in either direction, but the _people_ are
| why there 's a port. In 1024 there were thousands of
| people, today perhaps closer to half a million depending on
| how you count.
|
| There are no people on Luna, and no people on Mars.
| Visiting these barren rocks is like going up Everest.
|
| This damp rock is where our species was born and it's where
| it will die. It's not much, but its ours, and there's
| nothing like it within any plausible travel distance.
| politician wrote:
| People congregate around water sources. They don't just
| gather anywhere and make it happen. Ports are where they
| are due to the location having the necessary resources to
| support a population servicing a useful(1) industry.
|
| Similarly, moon or Mars bases will be where they are if
| the location has some useful(1) industry and sufficient
| resources to support a population servicing that
| industry.
|
| (1) 'Useful' to them, and not necessarily to everyone
| everywhere all the time.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| This article [0] is a pretty good explainer for why Starship
| is such a big deal
|
| [0] https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-
| is-st...
| cylinder714 wrote:
| Brilliant article, and I neglected to bookmark it earlier,
| thank you.
| Animats wrote:
| That's very good. And it's from 2021. Since then:
|
| - Starship is actually launching now
|
| - Boeing's reputation and credibility are in tatters
|
| - Trump won with heavy support from Musk.
|
| Expect a new head of NASA who is pro-Musk, and a
| cancellation of the Senate Launch System.
|
| On the other hand, it's not clear what a Moon base is good
| for. The ISS isn't very useful.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > We need a team of economists to rederive the relative
| elasticities of various design choices and boil them down
| to a new set of design heuristics for space system
| production oriented towards maximizing volume of
| production.
|
| Great article, but that's not what economists do. It's more
| what cost accountants do.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Starship is designed to be able to launch bulk cargo into
| LEO in >100 T chunks for <$10m per launch,
|
| So, for the cost of a single SLS launch ($4B), Starship
| would be able to put the mass of the battleship USS Texas
| into orbit.
|
| If the cost is reduced to $1M/launch, it could put the mass
| of four Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers into orbit.
| Ductapemaster wrote:
| This is a great resource for why Starship is groundbreaking.
| So much so, it's not even really comprehensive to the
| existing space-industrial complex.
|
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-
| st...
| hadlock wrote:
| The big thing is that it dramatically reduces the cost of
| shipping things into space. Previously it was difficult to
| ship anything much larger than a compact car in to orbit. Now
| you can ship half of a basketball court into orbit, including
| all the vertical space.
|
| Until very very recently the roughly bus sized ISS modules
| were the largest habitable spaces we could ship to orbit
| (although Skylab in the 70s were basically repurposed Saturn
| V fuel tanks and also big) so now it's possible/probable we
| can ship 20 people to space, and have moderately comfortable
| accommodations for them.
|
| We can also ship mining equipment and substancially more
| supplies to the moon. Or mars. We went from using pack goats
| to 18 wheelers to ship stuff in space. The pack goat can ship
| a handful of hand made silk scarves and Faberge eggs over the
| Himalayas, but the 18 wheeler can deliver everything from
| socks and tshirts to cell phones and big screen tvs and
| trucks and lawn mowers. This really opens up space to more
| than the highest, most bleeding edge science and we might
| actually see more than 100 humans in space at the same time,
| in our lifetimes.
| taneq wrote:
| Literally anything but the metric system, huh? ;)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I applaud GP's effort at also avoiding shipping cliches
| like Olympic-size swimming pools.
| hadlock wrote:
| Well, basketball courts have a ~12m diameter 3-point
| line, and the inside of a starship is ~9m. Swimming pools
| are mostly rectangular from the outside observer's
| perspective.
| adamm255 wrote:
| I'm with you. As landing the thing means nothing if you can't
| get payloads to the destination. To get this thing to the
| moon would need like 20 refuelling flights to meet it on the
| way.
| dylan604 wrote:
| this just reads as very strange. "meet it on the way"? it's
| not like they can place these in an orbit that they can
| just pull up and stop to refuel like a highway gas station.
| the refueling "pod" would need to be moving at the same
| speed as the ship.
| cwillu wrote:
| Hence the plan to have ten or so launches to refuel the top
| stage while it's still in orbit, a place that notably _is_
| halfway to the moon's surface + the return trip to the
| earth.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Solar_s
| y...
| llboston wrote:
| Imagine if a round-trip flight from the US to Europe didn't
| cost $500, but only $5, unbelievable, right? This is exactly
| what Starship will do to space travel. Many things we see in
| sci-fi, like lunar and Martian cities or orbital cruise
| ships, could soon become reality.
|
| Personally, I can't wait to see a massive, kilometer-wide
| telescope in space or nestled in a crater on the Moon. We
| might finally figure out dark matter, dark energy, anti-
| gravity.
| deanCommie wrote:
| See this is the kind of thing that's not helpful.
|
| It's just an outlandish overly optimistic mishmash of
| different concepts.
|
| Let's start with your analogy:
|
| > Imagine if a round-trip flight from the US to Europe
| didn't cost $500, but only $5, unbelievable, right?
|
| If you mean to use this to explain that what today costs X
| will in the future cost 0.01X, you're probably right.
|
| But a more accurate analogy is "Imagine if a round-trip
| flight from the US to Europe didn't cost $50,000,000, but
| only $500,000, unbelievable, right?"
|
| Same ratios, but deeply different implications.
|
| Today, the idea of setting up a continuously settled Mars
| colony - hell even a Moon colony - is unfeasibly expensive.
| It's ACHIEVABLE - we have the technology and the money -
| but it would cost an intolerable percentage of the GDP of
| the world to accomplish.
|
| A 100x reduction in costs means that it becomes a fundable
| endeavour that countries like the US could still justify.
|
| We're still talking about generations - maybe a century -
| away from someone being able to just pop over to Mars for a
| summer vacation, the way that a college student could to do
| today with an intercontinental flight.
|
| > Many things we see in sci-fi, like lunar and Martian
| cities or orbital cruise ships, could soon become reality.
|
| For a very generous definition of soon and for a highly
| implausible definition of what a "cruise ship" is - it'll
| never be as accessible to the average person as earth
| cruise ships. Not as long as you keep using rockets.
|
| Regardless of reusability, there are realities of fixed
| FOSSIL FUEL costs associated with getting into gravity.
| They're not cheap, and they're not frivolous. If you want
| to be able get things into orbit as cheap as you're
| suggesting, you need to start investing in a space
| elevator, which noone is right now.
|
| > Personally, I can't wait to see a massive, kilometer-wide
| telescope in space
|
| Cool, yeah, that's true, that becomes more available.
|
| > or nestled in a crater on the Moon.
|
| ..why?
|
| > We might finally figure out dark matter, dark energy,
| anti-gravity.
|
| And the final cherry on the cake. Humanity becoming inter-
| planetary is important on a macro scale. And trying to go
| further and further into space will INCENTIVISE research
| into these concepts.
|
| But in no way does getting to orbit cheaper make it easier
| to figure out any of these concepts. There's nothing we can
| do from Mars or on the way to Mars in terms of this science
| that we can't do from Earth.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _A 100x reduction in costs means that it becomes a
| fundable endeavour that countries like the US could still
| justify._
|
| Don't forget the dynamics. Costs of all such projects
| drop further when early steps become affordable. Like,
| with 100x reduction on the sticker price, US might feel
| Mars colony is still too expensive a project, but 100x
| reduction on trying out some adjacent space tech may just
| be in range of NASA budget or some private interest.
| Steps get made, iterated on, making next steps cheaper
| and more likely to happen. Derisking compounds.
|
| I do agree it'd still be a decades long project at least
| (with a settlement established early on; it's the tail
| end that will drag on).
|
| _> > or nestled in a crater on the Moon._
|
| _>..why?_
|
| Having some gravity and hard surface to build on
| simplifies engineering challenges, particularly on large
| scales, as in free space, tension becomes a big issue.
| And, perhaps more importantly, the Moon would shield the
| telescope from all the electromagnetic noise produced on
| Earth, _and also by the Sun_.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Shielding from the sun only happens when it's dark on
| that side of the moon. So half the month, effectively.
| But shielding from Earth can be constant, thanks to tidal
| locking. Particularly nice for really big radio
| telescopes.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _So half the month, effectively._
|
| A little less, if nestled in the crater as the quoted
| idea would have it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Even better: use one of the deep lava tube pits.
| https://futurism.com/nasa-holes-moon-comfortable-
| temperature
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Regardless of reusability, there are realities of fixed
| FOSSIL FUEL costs associated with getting into gravity.
| They're not cheap, and they're not frivolous.
|
| I hope you don't mean hydrogen and methane. Those are
| downright easy to make without fossil fuels. And kerosene
| isn't all that hard.
| shirro wrote:
| Honestly of very little significance to the typical
| individual. It isn't going to pay my bills or provide for my
| kids. It does nothing for people suffering war and genocide.
| Nothing for poverty, access to health care and education.
| Nothing for the biggest threats facing our civilization.
|
| It is still a remarkable technical achievement and I think
| the people who have designed and built these systems deserve
| some celebration for their accomplishments. It has the
| potential to lower costs and increase the capacity for
| greater commercialization, militarization and exploration of
| space.
|
| I think the extent you see that as something positive is
| subject to your faith in humanity. I tend to think
| technologies connection to social progress is a three steps
| forward, two steps back sort of thing. We have certainly made
| gains in my lifetime but we could have gone a lot further.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Your posts reminds me of the building of the first
| transcontinental railroad. It had many fits and starts, and
| people thought it would take decades to pay off.
|
| But just as soon as it was completed, it changed everything
| overnight.
|
| This is what Musk is doing.
| shirro wrote:
| SpaceX are not building a transcontinental railroad. I
| think that is a false equivalence.
|
| An operational Starship should be very impactful on space
| exploration but it won't be shipping cattle back from
| Mars. There is a difficult to discern line between
| reality and bullshit that Musk likes to blur. The
| "vision" stuff is there to hype up the troops and
| investors. You don't need to swallow it to appreciate the
| technology. It isn't narrow minded to reject stuff that
| just doesn't add up. The scales, time, distance, energy,
| investment involved in space colonization are
| incomparable to settling the USA. The railroad was
| bringing people to a land that was already successfully
| settled by neolithic peoples tens of thousands of years
| earlier.
| WalterBright wrote:
| SpaceX is building a railroad to the solar system. It
| will change everything, and quickly.
|
| > The railroad was bringing people to a land that was
| already successfully settled by neolithic peoples tens of
| thousands of years earlier.
|
| That's what people thought before the railroad was
| completed.
|
| See "Nothing Like It In the World" by Stephen Ambrose:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Like-World-
| Transcontinental-1...
| mhh__ wrote:
| The payload is so big it will be a pretty dramatic phase
| transition for almost everything space related, assuming
| theres not some horrible flaw hidden away somewhere.
|
| Quite bizarre how some people genuinely think he's just
| some guy who allocates capital. Or rich dad or whatever.
| I guess his dad was probably rich but that's clearly not
| enough.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Cost. Ballparking from memory (because I'm on mobile) sending
| something to space on the Space Shuttle cost something like
| $40k/kg. The Falcon brought that down to 2500, and the Falcon
| Heavy down to just over $1k/kg.
|
| So nearly two orders of magnitude cheaper, but you still
| can't really do anything too fun in space at $1k/kg. The goal
| with Starship (and its rapid reuse) is to bring costs down
| another couple of orders of magnitude to where we could
| eventually even see costs drop into the single digit per kg.
|
| And at that point suddenly space becomes open to things that
| sound difficult to even fantasize about today, like
| colonizing Mars, taking suborbital flights to get from Texas
| to Hong Kong, or setting up industrial systems on the Moon,
| to say nothing of space tourism that doesn't start with the
| prerequisite of being a billionaire.
| caekislove wrote:
| Yeah we should call this whole thing off and spend the money
| on solving poverty! /s
| guld wrote:
| For those of you who like dubstep, start the following video
| first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2eBMuL0C2o then 3
| seconds later start to watch the (muted) SpaceX video from OP's
| post and thank me later. ;-)
|
| Especially the catch is awesome!
| lasc4r wrote:
| I think it's a cool achievement, but for some perspective
| NASA first did a vertical rocket ship landing without
| chopsticks decades ago.
|
| And the whole point of this thing was to do that on the moon,
| which is never going to happen at this rate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is the whole point of this thing to land the first stage on
| the moon, or just the Starship? My understanding is that
| it's just Starship, and the first stage will always return
| to Earth. I think one of us has a very confused
| understanding of the whole point of the thing.
| adamm255 wrote:
| NASA Landed on the moon in the 60s with an abacus. SpaceX
| can't get out of low Earth orbit.
| ranger207 wrote:
| Didn't SpaceX launch Europa Clipper to Jupiter a few
| weeks ago?
| bandyaboot wrote:
| They also flung a Tesla Roadster off into a wayward
| journey around the Sun. Not nearly as impressive I know,
| but significantly more amusing.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yup. Passed by Mars in Oct 2020 which is definitely
| outside low earth orbit.
| shirro wrote:
| Clipper is a massive payload for a planetary science
| mission as well. SLS was the only other operational US
| vehicle with the payload capacity.
| zwily wrote:
| Do you really believe that they "can't" get out of low
| earth orbit, as opposed to "haven't yet"??
| gridspy wrote:
| I think it's a really responsible decision by SpaceX to
| not put their StarShip stage into a full orbit until they
| have demonstrated the ability to get it back out of
| orbit.
|
| They should be applauded for this, along with their
| iterative approach.
|
| Note that this next test will demonstrate re-light of the
| engine in space at micro-gravity. This is the
| demonstration needed prior to putting the StarShip in
| orbit. We'll probably see a full orbital test for the
| flight after this one.
|
| They could have easily put previous tests into orbit -
| it's a fairly minor change to their existing regime and
| they have plenty of fuel to use.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| They did? I've not heard of that, and a cursory search
| isn't finding anything. Got any more info on this, which
| rocket, etc? I'd love to learn about that.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I am assuming they are talking about this?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls&t=3s
|
| Edit: Another link with probably better info
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC1wgWi9WWU
|
| TLDR: DC-X (Delta Clipper X)
| joshmarlow wrote:
| And in 2002 a neuroscientist hooked a camera to a blind
| man's brain and he could see well enough to drive a car
| around an empty parking lot without running into things.
| And yet there are still many blind people.
|
| Doing something cool once doesn't impact civilization.
| Doing it affordably at scale does. If Space X can do the
| chopstick landing reliably and integrate it into their
| operations, then _that_ will be impactful - and change
| civilization.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Dobelle
| carabiner wrote:
| Just makes it more humiliating for SpaceX competitors. ESA,
| China, ULA all playing catchup to NASA tech from decades
| ago. Why didn't they commercialize it?
|
| Did Apple invent the touchscreen or the cell phone or high
| dpi displays?
| kak9 wrote:
| this was great. i hope someone just recuts video with exactly
| this soundtrack
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Nice, how did you find a music clip with such a good match
| across the whole video? Or are you saying you know that
| SpaceX media people were using that as test music when
| cutting theirs?
| guld wrote:
| Actually I was just listening to this song, when OP
| recommended the SpaceX video and I did not want to pause
| the song. A happy accident.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| OK, that's downright creepy. Especially that the singing
| starts with the lyrics "holding on" at the exact moment the
| booster is caught by the chopsticks.
| halz wrote:
| Another rough take with some orchestra music from Stellaris,
| of all things. Start the SpaceX video and 'Towards Utopia' at
| around the 2:21 mark https://youtu.be/887f76RXvdE?t=141
| hackitup7 wrote:
| I find the experience of watching these SpaceX videos very
| emotional. There's something really inspiring both from an
| "exploring the universe" perspective and also just from the
| human side of all of the effort that went into them.
|
| The first video that really got to me was when they landed
| multiple boosters. This one as well, especially seeing the
| rocket take off with every booster firing when compared with
| the first Starship launch when you could see that some failed
| to light. It's like watching your child take their first steps,
| and then seeing them win an Olympic medal for running. Just
| incredible stuff.
| thelastparadise wrote:
| This kind of thing is why I got into engineering in the first
| place.
|
| There's so much more to it than money.
| neverrroot wrote:
| Amazing what one stubborn person can put into motion
| unaut wrote:
| Seriously, who cares! There are far more interesting stuff in
| space exploration than this flight tests of a giant boiler that's
| been going on for years now.
| hersko wrote:
| You must be joking
| shkkmo wrote:
| I find the starship news exciting, but given the incremental
| nature of starship development, it really isn't the most
| exciting stuff happening today with space exploration as
| there is all kinds of other cool stuff happening and being
| discovered.
|
| One example off the top of my head:
|
| https://earthsky.org/space/final-parker-solar-probe-flyby-
| of...
| rbanffy wrote:
| Starship is an enabling technology. We can easily imagine
| the things it will make possible.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Which is why I find it exciting and am stoked every time
| I see progress made.
|
| Howevever, it's hard to view an announcement of the next
| launch with some minor additions to the experimental
| flight, as the most exciting space news today. Future
| launches, once they get the license updated, will he more
| exciting.
| righthand wrote:
| Please list them because right now it is a hugely costly
| project that has shown no significant capital advancement
| for society beyond propping up Elon Musk and a "someday
| the average man will walk on the moon" dream. If anything
| of capital gain comes from it, it will never actually
| benefit the financial bottom line of the middle and lower
| class.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Space based technology has massive impact on every day
| life. From GPS to weather prediction to communications,
| space infrastructure is critical to modern life.
|
| Launch costs significantly reduce what we can build in
| space and what research we co do there. Decreasing launch
| costs makes our research funding more effective and
| reduces the capital costs and projected profit margins
| needed to build space based infrastructure.
|
| SpaceX has already enabled significant economic growth
| and innovation with the launch cost reductions brought by
| the various falcon rockets and their reusability.
|
| If Starship can accomplish it's reusability goals, an
| ever greater reduction of launch costs is possible. This
| would jump start an even bigger space industry boom than
| the one we are in today.
| righthand wrote:
| None of that listed technology comes from building
| reusable rockets.
|
| The rest of your statement only indicates that Starship
| is indeed a fat pig when it comes to budget. This "boom"
| is all private for profit companies spending investment
| money. Not a "boom" in the sense that any man can get
| involved and benefit in the tangible future.
|
| Pretending that everyone is going to be better off
| because of this space dream delusion doesn't really
| answer my question.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > None of that listed technology comes from building
| reusable rockets.
|
| Lower launch costs are a force multiplier for all of
| those technologies and more.
|
| > This "boom" is all private for profit companies
| spending investment money. Not a "boom" in the sense that
| any man can get involved and benefit in the tangible
| future.
|
| It sounds like your issue is more with capitalism than
| space...
|
| But lower launch costs _decrease_ the capital needed to
| particpate is space, so you point still doesn 't make
| sense.
|
| > Pretending that everyone is going to be better off
| because of this space dream delusion doesn't really
| answer my question.
|
| Everyone is already better off because of the soace
| dream. You don't seem to actually want an answer to your
| question.
| righthand wrote:
| Please explain to me how lower launch costs will help
| weather prediction.
|
| Please give me the benefit of the doubt and help me
| understand what lower launch costs help with the average
| american today. I am asking an honest question to a
| different poster who originally indicated that the
| benefits were easily imaginable.
|
| > We can easily imagine the things it will make possible.
|
| I am trying to imagine how building reusable rockets
| leads to improving GPS and weather systems that decades
| of other fields that use those technologies couldn't
| improve on already. What is this special low cost rocket
| sauce that enables it?
|
| I can see the blind Marvel-movie-like fandom of "but it's
| science" and "its our destiny" and "imagine all the
| wonderful things but don't let me tell you ;)" but I do
| not see the actual details of what this will enable
| besides allowing Musk et al to hollow out planets for
| mining operations for their own gain.
|
| Why would I want to answer my own question when I don't
| understand what the original poster was suggesting?
|
| You seem at a loss for these easily imaginable ideas.
| laverya wrote:
| > Please explain to me how lower launch costs will help
| weather prediction.
|
| Cheaper launch means more weather satellites covering
| more spectrum from more angles than otherwise.
|
| > What is this special low cost rocket sauce that enables
| it?
|
| Everything is dependent on cost. If we had a medicine
| that gave an extra 10 years of healthy life to everyone
| but cost $100,000,000 per person, it would be utterly
| infeasible to give to the masses. If it cost $100,000 -
| now that's an easy decision.
|
| If something is cheap you can do more of it.
|
| > I am trying to imagine how building reusable rockets
| leads to improving GPS
|
| GPS satellites are incredibly expensive because they need
| to be light enough to fit in existing heavy lift
| launchers and reliable enough to last for 20+ years.
| Cheaper, heavier, more frequent launch means you can
| dramatically reduce the cost per satellite in a
| constellation, and thus send up more. Having more GPS
| satellites reduces time to first fix, improves coverage
| in adverse environments (cities in particular) and
| improves accuracy.
| righthand wrote:
| Okay, now you want to put more satellites in the sky, for
| weather and gps.
|
| Is there some evidence that what we have now is not
| enough or wouldn't ever be replaced? I cannot find
| anything online about that.
|
| So I still do not see how this will necessarily improve
| my daily life as the weather information I have now is
| already good.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Weather prediction isn't just about "should I have a
| picnic today". Accurate weater information is important
| for innumerable economic activites, from farming to
| shipping to contruction to power generation planning.
| Providing better forecasts would allow us to save lives
| and money in these industries and this will reduce the
| costs you pay for goods. It might even save the life of
| someone you love.
|
| There are 3 new GPS satellites being launched by the US
| in 2025. Satellites do regularly need to be replaced;
| fuel runs out, batteries die or there os damage or
| failure. We also are developing newer and better
| satellites.
|
| Satellite based internet is currently going through a
| revolution that is bringing internet access and economic
| opportunity to isolated small communities all over the
| world. This is a great example of new deployment that
| simply wasn't economically feasible with pre-SpaceX
| launch prices. This technology has so many potential
| positive impacts that it alone should justify reusable
| rockets. This is another application that could save the
| life of someone you love (better acess to emergency
| services in remote locations or deadzones).
|
| Another incredibly valuable satellite industry is
| satelite based imaging. Timely, high precision satellite
| imagery is currently very expensive. Significant drops in
| the price would enable a unimaginable plethora of usec
| ases. Better wildfire monitoring, more efficient farming
| and ranching, search and rescue, etc.
|
| On top of all this, starship development is actually
| comparatively cheap compared to how valuable space is.
| Losing GPS would cost the US alone 1 billion dollars a
| day which is why the US is planning on spending 2 billion
| building a backup. Starship RnD costs are estimated to
| somewhere near 10 billion total spread out over a decade
| or two.
|
| For further comparison, I'll also note that the 2024 US
| presidential election cost us more 50% more than that.
| The entire space industry is worth about as much as the
| entire semiconductors industry (~600 billion) and
| McKinsie estimated that to triple in the next 10 years.
|
| Finally, I'll say that what I've listed is the merest
| drop in the bucket compared to the uses we haven't
| figured out yet because space launch was so expensive.
|
| An second order of magnitude drop in launch costs on top
| of the ond SpaceX has already delivered would be a big
| boost the the global economy in many ways, including some
| that are hard to predict on advance. If SpaceX can
| deliver a third order of magnitude drop beyond that
| (which has been claimed as possible with Starship) then
| the results would be staggering, completely transforming
| how we view and use space economically and enabling
| completely new types of space exploration missions.
|
| The biggest problem right now is that nobody else is
| keeping up with SpaceX. We need more companies doing the
| same thing SpaceX is.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > I'll also note that the 2024 US presidential election
| cost us more 50% more than that
|
| It'll get much worse when you factor in the next four
| years.
| righthand wrote:
| Yeah but we can already launch rockets. Everything else
| you're telling me is not application of it but promises
| that something will come from it. But not listing
| anything valuable to my average earth dweller life
| doesn't tell me that anything beneficial will come from
| it. No matter how many times someone insists that "yes
| there will be many advancements obviously, we just need
| cheaper rockets to tell you what they are first".
|
| You have to acknowledge that we could also spend a bunch
| of money and time doing this to no benefit at all for the
| average earth dweller.
|
| I like the positive attitudes about it but the whole
| "this'll be good in the long run, you'll see" talk is
| just talk.
|
| It was beneficial previously when we had 0 rockets and 0
| sattelites, that was easy to see. Now that we have it,
| it's just an R&D playground for the rich and those
| willing to invest in the dellusion.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Next time please bother reading my comment if you are
| going to reply.
|
| I listed spefic gains from lower launch costs that are
| not theoretical and directly improve the lives of
| everyday people.
|
| As I said before, you don't actually want an answer here.
| righthand wrote:
| No I got answers. As I've been saying before, to which
| YOU don't want to listen to my perspective. None of what
| you list would be halted or forfeited by the
| discontinuation of Starship. None of what you list would
| affect my personal day to day.
|
| It is very clear YOU don't want to consider any other
| perspective than "of course everything is perfect and
| good from Starship".
|
| I will gladly eat my words when it is proven otherwise.
| mpweiher wrote:
| We don't even have to do "more" satellites, though that's
| also good.
|
| Putting the same satellites into orbit for $1 million
| instead of $100 million means we saved $99 million. Which
| can then be put to other uses.
|
| Lower taxes, spending on other programs, repaying the
| national debt, your pick.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| The most exciting answer to your question about
| applications is that "We don't know yet, it's a
| platform."
|
| The inventors of the internal combustion engines likely
| didn't imaging interstate systems and long distance
| freight shipping - and the economic boom they allow.
|
| The original ARPANET engineers didn't imagine everything
| the internet could become - from this very site to
| youtube to Bittorrent.
|
| No one at Apple thought of all of the things that would
| be built in the iPhone App store.
|
| When prices become cheap enough, it unlocks other peoples
| creativity. By providing ever cheaper access to space,
| Space X (and hopefully soon competitors) is providing a
| new arena where entrepreneurs and engineers can invite
| entirely new things.
|
| > ...but I do not see the actual details of what this
| will enable besides allowing Musk et al to hollow out
| planets for mining operations for their own gain.
|
| Resources mined are useless if they aren't used for
| something; if asteroid mining makes money, it's because
| someone else is buying those resources so Musk isn't the
| only person benefiting. If there is large scale mining in
| space, there's probably broad economic benefit to that.
| unaut wrote:
| Nope, not joking at all.
| montagg wrote:
| I'm just going to choose peace today and say: the SpaceX
| engineers who've been at this forever and have shown that crazy
| stuff is actually possible are seriously amazing humans, and I do
| hope they are successful.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| >I'm just going to choose peace today
|
| As an alternative to what? I don't understand how the first
| part of the comment is connected to the rest.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I think they're trying to maintain focus on the engineering
| rather than the politics surrounding Musk at the moment.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| The news is about SpaceX sharing the launch date for the
| 6th Starship test flight. Musk is not even mentioned in the
| announcement.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Yet people cannot help themselves.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Musk owns, runs, and is the public face of SpaceX, he is
| automatically germane to any discussion of it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It is traditional to summon an Elon Musk Flamewar by implying
| even vaguely that he is successful. Elon Musk's support for a
| candidate may have been pivotal in that candidate's win
| today. This sort of thing is like bathing in gasoline next to
| a forest fire.
| Geee wrote:
| He choose not to mention the top 20 Diablo IV player.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I imagine SpaceX is on for some pretty juicy government contracts
| now!
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Yes, considering they're achieving far better results at much
| lower cost than the SLS and other launch providers.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| That remains to be seen. It ain't finished yet!
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| They're already the best and cheapest launch provider with
| Falcon 9.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Falcon 9 and SLS are not in the same class.
| mpweiher wrote:
| This is true. SLS is around $
| 37000 / kg to Orbit Falcon 9 is around $ 2700 /
| kg to Orbit
|
| So in excess of an order of magnitude difference.
|
| Starship build cost is currently estimated at $90 million
| [1]. Let's call it $100 million to make the calculations
| simple. So even if they can't reuse anything and the
| payload is at the low-end of what they expect, so 100t
| from the 100-150t range, that would be $1 million per ton
| or $1000 per kilo. So 1/37th of SLS even when fully
| expendable.
|
| With full reuse, the cost should come down to around
| $10/kg.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/rocket-report-
| a-new-es...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Nobody is arguing Falcon 9 isn't a good deal but you
| can't compare SLS to Falcon 9, the comparison would be
| Starship to Falcon 9, of which, Starship ain't finished!
| That's all I'm saying.
| moralestapia wrote:
| You wrote:
|
| >Falcon 9 and SLS are not in the same class.
|
| Not:
|
| >Starship and Falcon 9 are not in the same class.
| mpweiher wrote:
| > you can't compare SLS to Falcon 9
|
| I just did, so you clearly can. And it is also
| meaningful.
|
| In theory, a heavier vehicle should have _lower_ cost to
| orbit, not _higher_ , all else being equal, as some costs
| are constant overhead. And this theory turns out to be
| true when you have a comparable vehicle, the Falcon
| Heavy: Falcon Heavy: $ 2,100 / kg to
| LEO (fully expended) SLS: $ 37,000 / kg
| to LEO
|
| Payload capacity is 68t and 70t respectively in this
| configuration, so pretty much identical.
|
| If you only need 50t to LEO, price for the Falcon Heavy
| drops to $1,800 / kg as they can then reuse various
| components.
|
| So SLS is already completely outclassed as things stand
| right now.
|
| Then comes Starship. A fully expendable Starship, which
| they have pretty much demonstrated already, would be a
| further incremental improvement. Slightly lower cost,
| double the payload of Falcon Heavy, so around $1000/kg.
| Add even partial reuse, and you're probably in the
| $800/kg range.
|
| And then you have full reuse, which they look to be close
| to demonstrating, which is a complete game changer. In
| the $10 / kg cost range. 3700x cheaper than SLS. That's
| two decades of Moore's Law kind of improvement.
| Absolutely crazy.
|
| Human with food, water and air for a couple of days would
| be what, $5000?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Then comes Starship
|
| That's my whole damn point. It ain't here yet. You're
| comparing SLS to a fantasy rocket. Starship needs to
| materialize before we compare IMO.
|
| I personally don't think Starship will ever deliver
| humans to the moon (but I wouldn't mind being wrong).
| baggy_trough wrote:
| What makes SLS less of a fantasy than Starship?
| mpweiher wrote:
| > You're comparing SLS to a fantasy rocket.
|
| Incorrect. I also compared SLS to both (a) Falcon 9 and
| (b) Falcon Heavy. Both of which dramatically outperform
| it in regular commercial flight.
|
| Whereas SLS has had exactly one test flight.
|
| And of course Starship exists. It has flown 5 times,
| which is 4 times more than SLS. And has landed both parts
| at least once, which is infinitely many times more than
| SLS ever will.
|
| So which of these is the "fantasy rocket"?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Kind of doesn't matter. There is no mission Falcon
| 9/Falcon Heavy couldn't do.
|
| The moon architecture has been designed so that it
| requires SLS, not the other way around.
|
| No rational planner would ever even consider SLS if they
| had a choice.
|
| You would much rather launch distributed into LEO,
| assemble and go from there. The 2 billion $ a year could
| be spent on important things for the transition and the
| lander.
| starik36 wrote:
| They already have lion's share of NASA and Space Force govt
| contracts.
|
| Cargo runs to ISS, bringing astronauts to and from ISS, NROL
| missions, scientific missions (like Europa Clipper recently).
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Sure they do, but the government could choose to spend more
| or less on space, couldn't they?
| rdtsc wrote:
| Shouldn't they be? Boeing, Lockheed and Blue Origin are welcome
| to compete and do just as well.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| You mean after the Boeing debacle?
| sebazzz wrote:
| I think they meant buying Trump.
|
| As far as I understand the super heavy launch market doesn't
| yet exist. Even if in payload mass capacity Starship can do
| it, we still need to see one with a payload door rather than
| a pez-satellite dispenser.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| An obvious use case is just ridesharing. Multiple companies
| want to launch midsize satellites? Rather than paying for
| multiple Falcon 9 launches group up a few into one Starship
| launch and save a lot of money.
| mpweiher wrote:
| > super heavy launch market doesn't yet exist.
|
| Ye of little imagination!
|
| Just imagine how differently you can do space exploration
| when launch costs are not in the multi billion (SLS) or
| hundred million (Falcon Heavy) dollar range, but more like
| a million dollars.
|
| You can send much bigger, heavier and cheaply constructed
| probes. And you can give them lots and lots more fuel,
| especially if you refuel them in-orbit, so less travel
| time.
|
| Have a heavily shielded/armored Starship that launches
| small nuclear propulsion units into orbit that are then
| connected to the probes.
|
| When launching a super heavy ($1 million for 100-150t to
| LEO) costs a small fraction of what a Falcon 9 launch costs
| today ($90 million), you can take over that entire segment
| as well, even without ride sharing.
|
| Or consider CubeSats. They currently weigh around 2kg and
| ride share with a primary launch.
|
| At $1 million per launch and 100 tons, you could launch
| 1000 CubeSats at 100 kg each, for $1000 per CubeSat. Though
| I am not sure if that would work out logistically.
|
| Maybe 200 CubeSats at 500 kg each would be easier, $5000 a
| pop. Still very doable.
| bnastic wrote:
| Thread devolved into petty politics quicker than expected.
| oittaa wrote:
| I tried to search faq how to block people but couldn't find any
| info. How do I do that?
|
| If it's not possible, I'm pretty sure this site is breaking the
| EU social media laws.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| HN is a pretty high trust site, I'd hope the community is
| still mature enough to self-moderate. Then again I was here
| when Terry would post his (admittedly) entertaining rants,
| the epic Michael O'Church essays, and flamewars between
| idlewords and pg. Maybe it always allowed for a little bit of
| funposting, in moderation.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Which EU laws do you think mandate a 'block' feaure on HN?
| akvadrako wrote:
| The site doesn't need to follow the laws of every country on
| earth. If they had paid advertisers from EU it would be
| different.
| AnonMO wrote:
| A brilliant idea some startup accelerator in the EU can
| create a platform that conforms to EU laws. It can't be that
| hard, given that the UI hasn't changed much in a decade or
| more. I can already see it "Hacker news, but hosted in the EU
| with Swiss privacy and is GDPR compliant".
| tantalor wrote:
| That rule doesn't exist.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| There's no "block user" requirement in the EU DSA.
| dpifke wrote:
| I use uBlock Origin cosmetic filters for blocking trolls on
| here. Something like:
| news.ycombinator.com##:matches-path(/^/item\?id=/) tr
| a.hnuser:has-text(/^dpifke$/):upward(tr)
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| Well, I started planning a road trip down Austin as soon as I saw
| this post. Crew of friends is coming together to watch! Thanks
| for posting. I'm so excited to witness this in person.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Does anyone know how to witness these launch events live? Is it
| open to the public or only SpaceX employees + friends & family?
| ganyu wrote:
| I believe they clear out the launch site within a few
| kilometres so nobody gets hit by random concrete debris or just
| melt away, literally. The control centre is probably
| invitational.
|
| But you can freely watch them live on Twitter. Just follow the
| official @SpaceX account.
| llboston wrote:
| Yes it's open to everyone. South Padre Island would be your
| best bet.
| cryptonector wrote:
| So is the Gulf, except in the areas closed by the notam.
| rigrassm wrote:
| Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island is the best public spot
| you can watch from (IIRC it's 3 or 4 miles from the launch pad)
| and it's an amazing experience, highly recommended to anyone
| who's able to make it out.
| adamm255 wrote:
| Can someone give me sources for how to debunk this?
| https://youtu.be/75a49S4RTRU?si=dcGFgcIWNz3nDwxw
|
| For me, it's compelling but I'm no expert. Anyone got any
| background that can prove this guy is wrong?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| TF has had terminal Musk derangement syndrome for a while now.
| You can safely ignore him.
| cryptonector wrote:
| TF seems to have an axe to grind with all things Musk.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What did he say that was wrong?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I've liked some of his other videos and made it in twenty
| minutes. He has three arguments: SpaceX is late and over budget
| on HLS, booster recapture is the easiest part of Starship's
| technical risks and Starship is bad value for money.
|
| On the first two he's right. Starship was, per SpaceX's
| proposal to NASA, supposed to be almost ready by now. It's not.
| But neither is any other leg of Artemis, and there is no
| unforgivable delay in the timeline. (To the degree there _are_
| stupid delays, it's because the FAA was playing water cop.)
|
| Recapture _is_ the easiest technical challenge of the
| programme. Partly because SpaceX already demonstrated most of
| the tech with Falcon 9. Partly because in-orbit refuelling is
| unprecedented. The lunar lander was one of the easiest parts of
| the Apollo programme, by similar measure--that doesn't make it
| unimpressive.
|
| The last--bad bang for the buck--is a value judgement. Do we
| want a heavy lift booster or more Mars rovers? If we want
| sustainable access to space, we need cheaper launch. If one
| doesn't care about that, rovers are better spend, but at that
| point I can start arguing for feeding the hungry with those
| bucks.
|
| I stopped watching when the criticism of Falcon 9's price came
| up. Why should SpaceX, a private company, undercut itself? It's
| already the cheapest (PSLV gives it a run for some orbits),
| most reliable and most frequent launch provider in the world.
| It makes sense to capture the delta as profit, in part to fund
| things like Starship. (There is also no inflation adjustment.)
|
| In summary, the technical criticisms are accurate but out of
| context. The value judgement is subjective. If you don't value
| cheap, frequent space launch _of course_ Starship won't make
| sense for any amount of money.
|
| EDIT: Kept watching. The energy math on second-stage reentry is
| okay as a first estimate. But we don't have final numbers for
| anything. And there are a lot of unknowns, _e.g._ final dry
| weight, how much energy the heat tiles can store and dissipate,
| if transpiration cooling could work, how plasma could dissipate
| energy, whether compression heat could be redirected away from
| the craft, whether firing mid-descent could reduce heat, _et
| cetera_. We certainly don't have enough data to reject it _ex
| ante_. And the second stage being unreadable doesn't tank
| Starship, though it probably does Artemis.
| nulld3v wrote:
| > I stopped watching when the criticism of Falcon 9's pricing
| came up. Why should SpaceX, a private company, undercut
| itself? It's already the cheapest (relative to mass; PSLV
| gives it a run for some orbits), most reliable and most
| frequent launch provider in the world. It makes sense for
| them to capture the delta as profit versus cut prices for the
| sake of it. (There is also no inflation adjusting done.)
|
| Exactly, this is such an egregious claim that it proves there
| is no way this guy is arguing in good faith.
|
| He says SpaceX only saves a tiny bit of money due to reuse
| because the retail price for F9 expendable is only a bit more
| than F9 reuseable.
|
| That's like saying because the Big Mac costs $6.29 and the
| Big Mac combo costs $11.69, then therefore the drink and
| fries must cost McD's $5.40 to make. Just ridiculous.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Musk expressed outrage that the Russians are massively
| overcharging the US so he went on to massively overcharge
| the US.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Eh, Cargo/Crew Dragon is wildly cheaper than the non-
| functional Boeing option, and I suspect cheaper (both in
| cash, and geopolitically) than using Soyuz.
|
| They've taken the lion's share of the market by being
| quite a bit cheaper. It makes plenty of sense to keep the
| price there and put the resulting profits into R&D.
| DylanSp wrote:
| Nitpick about history: the LM was definitely not one of the
| easiest parts of Apollo. It was the long pole in the schedule
| for a good while; part of why Apollo 8 was flown as a lunar
| orbit mission was because the LM wasn't going to be ready for
| testing in Earth orbit until at least early '69, and NASA
| wanted to test the CSM beyond LEO anyways.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the LM was definitely not one of the easiest parts of
| Apollo_
|
| It had to deal with a lot of uncertainties which were
| unresolvable from a distance. But conceptually and
| developmentally it was one of the simpler elements.
| Certainly simpler than keeping humans alive in space or a
| launch vehicle programme.
|
| Better analogy might be Gemini. One could similarly
| criticise Gemini (or any of the early Apollos) as being
| breathtakingly behind the task of landing humans on the
| Moon and then getting them back alive.
| larkost wrote:
| I think he is probably right, if you think of Starship has a
| government-paid program to produce a moon lander. The Starship
| program has blown though the NASA money to produce the basic
| version (but not yet the additional money agreed for a more
| advanced design), but has yet to deliver on any of their
| contracted goals.
|
| So by its own contract, it is just about to be over-budget,
| behind schedule, and thus a failed project. You can argue about
| the pandemic blowing their timing, but the fact remain.
|
| But SpaceX is not treating the Starship as solely a moon
| landing project. They are using NASA's money presumably
| alongside other SpaceX and Starlink monies to produce a
| workhorse for a number of projects alongside the moon lander
| part. In the closer-term it will become the launch vehicle for
| Starlink (the next-gen of which is too big to be launched on
| other vehicles), and in the (very) long-term as a vehicle to
| Mars.
|
| So SpaceX probably sees the Starship project as behind schedule
| (par for the course, both for space projects, and for Elon
| Musk), but not out-of-budget. Whether their customer, NASA,
| agrees with this outlook is something you would have to ask
| them.
|
| So I think that the video's points are true, but lack some
| context.
| floating-io wrote:
| You're ignoring that this is a fixed-price contract. It will
| never be over-budget from NASA's perspective.
|
| Also, for a project like HLS, you don't fail until you stop
| trying (or get someone killed, but SpaceX has been pretty
| good at not killing astronauts).
| pomtato wrote:
| With all due respect, that's one of the most misguided(i wanna
| say retarded but.. HN) takes I've seen in a while. How could he
| even compare the SLS (which costs per launch about as much as
| it took to develop the entire reusable Starship system) to
| Starship?
|
| The guy is just blinded by his hatred for Elon to even
| acknowledge one of the historical achievements SpaceX engineers
| worked their asses off for.
| tim333 wrote:
| It's more sarky and negative. eg the phrase
|
| "musk wasting some $3 billion dollars of taxpayer money"
|
| appears (2:49)
|
| but that's not the deal. The actual deal, from Wikipedia:
|
| >On 16 April 2021, NASA selected only Starship HLS for crewed
| lunar lander development plus two lunar demonstration flights -
| one uncrewed and one crewed - no earlier than 2024. The
| contract is valued at US$2.89 billion over a number of years.
|
| and as far as I know they are still working on that. Compared
| to the last moon landings:
|
| >According to The Planetary Society, The United States spent
| $25.8 billion on Project Apollo between 1960 and 1973.
| Converting 1965 dollars to 2024 dollars, that is $255 billion
|
| it's a bargain. It was also a fraction of what Bezos and the
| other bidder quoted. Starship is not just a NASA funded
| project. SpaceX use their own funds and it will be used for
| things like Starlink commercially and maybe also Mars.
|
| Thunderf00t on youtube goes on and on slagging Musk. I thought
| I'd count how many videos he's done slagging him but got bored
| counting at 37. There are better things to spend time on.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Science fiction becomes reality!
|
| Love the diamonds in the exhaust!
| cwillu wrote:
| Just in case you weren't aware:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_diamond
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Completely amazing.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I am a fan of space. I love the things that have happened with
| SpaceX and breaking the space industry out of a multi-decade rut,
| but is it possible to dsiconect the political ambitions of Musk
| from the technical achievements? Or, to put it more clearly,
| should the discussion be less about 'look how cool this tech is!'
| and more about 'This tech will be the gateway to space and Mars,
| shouldn't we be talking about the gatekeeper?'
| rob74 wrote:
| I don't think we should. SpaceX has successfully applied the
| "move fast and break things" approach to rockets, but that's
| not something you can do everywhere. If Musk, as Trump's
| "efficiency secretary", will reduce regulations that "hinder"
| Tesla from doing the same thing with robotaxis, people are
| going to die.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I think there is an honest debate here for the tech side of
| the house and its implications/risks/etc, but my point is, I
| think, more broad than 'will we move too fast elsewhere'. I
| worry he will bring twitter like problems, 'free speech is
| important, if it is approved by me', to space and Mars. I can
| easily imagine a future where the Moon, Mars and space are
| accessible, so long as you are approved by Musk to be in
| space. That gets to my core point, do we want Musk to be that
| gatekeeper? Do we want him deciding who and what can go to
| space and where they can go.
| ihumanable wrote:
| I agree with this, especially when you consider that it is
| us, the taxpayer that is largely subsidizing musk to build
| out this toll booth.
|
| It is not crazy to believe that in the medium term that
| SpaceX will be one of the only viable ways for America to
| access space. In that position SpaceX will have a lot of
| leverage and ability to extract concessions from anyone
| wanting to go to space.
|
| Why my tax dollars should go to help the worlds richest man
| build a toll booth between earth and space is beyond me.
| jmward01 wrote:
| It may seem a bit trite, but the answer right now is
| 'because SpaceX is actually doing it'. Space was in a
| massive rut. SpaceX is breaking that rut and I don't
| begrudge a single penny that has gone towards that. But a
| core issue that successful people have is that they
| assume that because they had success in x they are right
| in everything else. There is good and bad with Musk, as
| there is with everyone. I personally would like to kick
| start the conversation about how cheap access to space
| can be about society and not about money and personality.
| We are on the cusp of truly being a space based species
| and we are just letting it happen instead of guiding it.
| Now that the technology is rapidly progressing again, it
| is time to have the conversation about society and space
| and not just how cool the tech is.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| There's no reason to assume that SpaceX/Musk will be the only
| launch providers long-term. They proved out reusability and are
| proving out the benefits of the Starship design and there are
| multiple startups working to emulate them.
|
| EDIT: typo, removed redundant 'long-term'.
| Shawnj2 wrote:
| The launch startup space has completely fallen apart over the
| last 5 years. SpaceX and rocket lab will make it, I'm not so
| sure about everyone else.
| alecco wrote:
| China is spending a crazy amount of money with several
| companies trying to copy SpaceX. They are trying to land
| boosters right now.
| sjducb wrote:
| Have you got a link?
| pomian wrote:
| App recommendation, there is a web site and an excellent app,
| (Apple and Google), I learned about on hn, called: next
| spaceflight. It lists all the upcoming space flights, launches,
| etc around the world, with times locations and links to watch.
| The app is very noninvasive, and for once has a useful
| notification system you can set to remind you, that a launch is
| imminent. Of course has other tabs, such as historical flights,
| etc.
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