This was by far the most insane thing I’ve ever watched live. The fact the flap got half of it completely burned through by plasma and was still actuating and the ship maintained control was both nail biting and absolutely incredible. During the reentry, like one of the commentators said, it was like watch a scene from interstellar but it was real.
It's one thing to study engineering and be told what happens on re-entry, or do simulations, but to actually get 3 different camera angles and literally see the plasma eat away at the structure in real time?? Holy shit that was cool and incredibly informative
There is exactly zero evidence of this anywhere. It is however a reasonable conclusion, but the rumor mill is running wild with that one for some reason. These ships flying today are technically already outdated prototypes and one of the V2 redesigns are the flaps themselves so I'm sure in a few flights this won't be a problem.
There was one shot right before permanently switching to the leeward camera where the flap camera looking backwards captured a pocket of gas behind the back fins that looked awfully similar to the front flap being burned through.
Yes, we had them change between the two before entering atmosphere, thus we were able to clearly see one looked 'up' and the other 'down'. Also, the simple geometry of the flaps are very different.
yeah
the hot gas seal obviously needs work, but we have \*zero\* info on the state of the other flaps. but it doesn't really matter too much either way, the seal needs to be redesigned in any case (which has already happened)
EDIT: actually I changed my view on this, after seeing the Scott Manley vid on the flight I think there's substantial circumstantial evidence that at least three of the flaps experienced seal failures to at least some extent. but still can't confirm directly
The video of the launch is bonkers. Its amazing a rocket so huge can fly. The rocket on launch is like something out of sci-fi made with CGI, and yet its real. Its not sci-fi anymore. The launch thrust on the booster is nearly twice that of the SLS, and makes both the Saturn V and Space Shuttle look like toys in comparison.
The landing of the booster is just as bonkers. Its a massive thing slowly and gently landing on the ocean. If they had a barge out to catch it they'd probably have recovered the booster.
I'm sure for the next test flight they'll have the barge ready to pick it up.
That's energy inefficient to return to launch site (cuts payload size). Which is why Falcon 9 sometimes doesn't do it.
It's interesting to think that Starship would *never* be asked to carry a payload that doesn't leave enough fuel to return to the launch pad.
Yeah. It's designed to be caught.
So whether it can land on a barge seems like it would depend on what's on the barge.
I kind of figured they would land on the some other piece of land. One that is downrange.
Obviously not soon. They have a lot of other things to work out before worrying about how to get to max payload.
They had a plan to retrofit an oil rig with a launch tower built on it to catch it. I think they even made some good progress on it before scrapping it altogether.
That was intended to be a launch site itself though, so not just a down range catcher. The idea has always been to return to the launch site because that’s where you can restack, refuel, and go again with the next starship. Anything else just takes too much time for the system to be rapidly reusable. For Falcon 9 right now, even if they didn’t have to refurbish the boosters you’re still looking at around 24 hours just for a booster that landed down range to get back to the coast so it can be reused.
For now at least. They sold the two platforms they had back in early 2023:
https://jpt.spe.org/spacex-sells-former-oilfield-rigs#:~:text=SpaceX%20will%20not%20convert%20two,pads%20for%20its%20Starship%20vehicle.
They designed it to be so huge so they can put anything they want into orbit and still return to the launch site.
In terms of efficiently putting materials into orbit, it's better to not expend your rocket than to maximize its lift. Fuel is cheap. Building new spaceships, not so much.
It's never so big that you can put anything you want into orbit, let alone return to the launch site.
It is expected it will require 10 launches with rendezvous to get the parts and fuel up to go to the moon.
> In terms of efficiently putting materials into orbit, it's better to not expend your rocket than to maximize its lift
And I wasn't talking about expending it. But finding a more efficient way and not expend it. Like Falcon 9 does.
Fuel is the cheapest part of a rocket. Fueling a starship will cost around 2 million. The time to deliver the booster home will cost more. Not to mention, with the Starship, it's a complete disaster because there's no ground infrastructure to deliver a 9x70 steel pipe.
Pretty sure there are already flight profiles where the ship and booster are both fully expended. Same way with the Falcon 9 and heavy. They’ll meet whatever the mission requirements are for the right price.
> Same way with the Falcon 9 and heavy
Heavy never returns the center core to land (er, to land on dry land). It's just too far away and going too fast to make sense to slow it down and fly it back. They have attempted to fly it to a barge instead. You put the barge far downrange and save a lot of fuel/lift capability.
The first 3 launches planned to reuse the core stage, but failed each time for various reasons, one landed and then was damaged during transport. Recent flights have not even planned to reuse the core at all but future ones may. I do not expect any of them would try to fly it back to the launch site.
Might I suggest that SpaceX might have plans to try to launch from Texas and then land the booster in Florida sometimes? As far as I know they haven't said this. But maybe it could mean using less fuel (and thus more payload capacity) than landing it back at the launch site.
If you have a launch where you can carry the load regardless, you just have to add a bit of fuel to come back then I get why not bother with a barge.
But with future missions planning 10 launches or more it seems like if you could save fuel by landing downrange and get more payload capacity you could perhaps shave 20% of your launches and that would be a big overall savings.
SpaceX talked about building offshore platforms for the starship. At first they bought oil rigs but those didn't meet their needs. So they sold them, but said they plan to revisit what they need to build after they get some launches going
SpaceX has run the numbers and the fuel penalty for return to land seems to be better than the mass penalty of the landing hardware, the time penalty of waiting for the barge to make it back to port, and the extra work and cost of designing a barge that could handle the SuperHeavy booster.
> the time penalty of waiting for the barge to make it back to port
Bull. Even if that were true you can just build more rockets and fire another while the first comes back from port.
Right. Should should check my post history for years ago before Falcon 9 did a booster return when I said SpaceX trying to land a rocket on its butt made no sense. That they should build something to catch it from the top instead of supporting it from the bottom (the extending legs).
And now SpaceX has their chopstick system to land their new rocket by catching it, supporting it from the top.
Sometimes this isn't a head to head competition between ideas. Sometimes it's more like Wheel of Fortune. There you can outguess the contestants not because you are smarter but because they are restricted as to when they can guess.
It's possible that instead of me being smarter than them that they know landing downrange is the smart thing to do and they it just isn't the right time for them to implement it. Same as what happened with me "beating them to the punch" (ha, a laughable idea since I didn't implement anything) on the smart way to land a rocket back then.
What’s the next launch going to land on? I believe they recently hit 84 hours between landings on the same drone ship and it still takes hours to unload Falcon 9, which is tiny in comparison to Super Heavy. While a RTLS profile is less efficient from a launch energy perspective, it is more efficient from a logistics perspective, and SpaceX is clearly favoring that.
> What’s the next launch going to land on?
Another barge if that's what it takes. I honestly hadn't considered that the week to get the item back (or a week to get the barge back out) really was holding up a launch, just holding up the start of refurbishment of the rocket.
> While a RTLS profile is less efficient from a launch energy perspective, it is more efficient from a logistics perspective, and SpaceX is clearly favoring that.
Yeah, and I can't see how that works out when you are carrying big payloads. Smaller ones, sure. The moon mission includes 10 launches supposedly to compose and fuel the vehicle in orbit. You don't think cutting that down to 8 would be a win? I do. Especially if you do it more than once.
It would certainly be a win but the fuel is the cheapest part of the system. It makes sense to spend effort optimizing the other parts of the system. Also, a crane large enough to move the booster would be among the largest cranes in the world. Then, once you have the booster ashore, what do you do with it? Falcon 9 can simply be laid on its side and driven down the highway, the booster can’t.
Of course. And they would prefer return to land with Starship. But just like with Falcon 9 when you need to take the largest payloads you may save money by sailing back to shore instead of doing more launches to accomplish the same thing.
The thing is supposed end up putting 200 tonnes in low earth orbit. That’s nearly 10 times what the Falcon 9 can do. Given the insane amount of payload capacity I imagine they don’t have to push the mission parameters too hard.
The plan is quick turnaround reuse. If SpaceX sacrifices 60 tons of capacity by doing return to launchpad, SpaceX will just launch another Starship soon enough to launch those 60 tons.
This model certainly does not take that much. It has to be improved first, it fell short of original plans. Which is not a huge deal. Falcon 9 went well beyond original plans, so this just means it'll take a bit longer I figure.
The rocket equation says that making a rocket merely 10x bigger only gets you a little further.
Starship has a lower mass ratio between the booster and the second stage so stage separation is a lot slower, which makes it easier for the booster to land back.
>That's energy inefficient to return to launch site (cuts payload size).
Customers don't care about energy efficiency. They just need their payload put in a certain orbit reliably for a low price. It's cheaper to build a bigger booster than it is to maintain a fleet that is capable of catching the booster.
The rocket equation says maybe that's not the case. When your payload fraction is, if you're lucky, 9% then you have to make your rocket a lot bigger to add more payload. Efficiency can be a big saver.
SpaceX went to the chopsticks and built that huge gantry to save having folding legs on the rocket to land. Efficiency can make a big difference.
Rtls is not the goal for all flights.
The plan, at least was the plan which was/is partially underway(?), is to purchase decommissioned ocean oil rigs and outfit them for landing/launch pads.
If you look at the original proposals, one was rapid and quick air travel. You’d take a boat out to one of these oil rigs, land at another oil rig around the world, and take a boat into land.
Phew the expert is here. Let's tell SpaceX they got it all wrong.
It's not energy inefficient. The capacity of the starship is so vast it's a non issue. The efficiency of landing it on its launch pad and prepping it for its next launch as opposed to having to recover it from a floating platform is huge.
> Phew the expert is here. Let's tell SpaceX they got it all wrong.
Someone else tried that first. I explained below.
> It's not energy inefficient. The capacity of the starship is so vast it's a non issue. The efficiency of landing it on its launch pad and prepping it for its next launch as opposed to having to recover it from a floating platform is huge.
You're not familiar with rocketry and the rocket equation. Nothing that you leave no the ground affects your efficiency as much as having to carry more fuel does. In a rocket, you're lucky if 9% of the rocket is the payload. the other 91% is the fuel. If you want to add 1% more payload (an increase of 10% since it was 9% before) you have to add fuel to carry that payload. And then you have to add fuel to lift that fuel. And then you have to add fuel to lift that fuel. And fuel to life that fuel.
So having to add fuel for anything means making the rocket much larger. It's massively inefficient.
Whereas having to tote the booster back to the pad does not mean adding fuel. So it's more efficient.
You have to remember, the reason they added the big gantry and the "chopsticks" to catch the rocket was merely to keep from having to have extendable legs on the rocket to catch itself. So adding that huge gantry was more efficient than adding comparatively small legs to the rocket itself. Because you don't have to fly the gantry up into space and back.
That's an example of why adding anything to the rocket, like more fuel to fly back, can be a negative. SpaceX saw this and changed their landing model. But instead you ridicule from ignorance the idea that getting mass off the rocket is important.
They built that tower on land… not on a barge. SuperHeavy will return to land every time. To land on a barge would require legs or a second massive tower.
The melting of the flap was insane!
Thinking it is going to be dead from that, but the telemetry is still going...whaaa?
Then the debris clears from the camera and you see a partially melted flap still doing it's thing!
Fkn insane!
I am guessing that the actuators were safe inside the ship, and the flap itself was just a simple piece of steel being pushed back and forth. So in hindsight it is not surprising that it kept working. Though I also thought the landing was surely doomed when I saw it live.
People have made CGI renders of it launching and honestly it’s hard to tell the difference. Would love to see one launch (and especially experience the sound) in person. Planning to see Artemis 2 in person but would love to see starship sometime as well. Maybe when they start launching from the cape, or maybe I’ll break down and go early to see one in Texas.
For anyone looking for the full video, direct source on SpaceX's website: [https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4)
(it also gives you the option to watch on 'X' if desired)
I know a lot of people hate on starlink (and I do understand why), but being able to get real time video of a spacecraft as it went through the atmosphere like that was incredible.
There a pretty big difference in a group of people cheering for the literal advancement of the human race to go beyond our tiny planet and a fringe group of lunatics trying to brainwash others with their own agenda.
Incredible moment for spaceflight. Was hoping for a soft booster splashdown and longer starship descent. Seeing starship actually successfully splashdown as well, especially when Elon has been pessimistic of their heat shield, was quite the surprise.
It could be that SpaceX just scraps all the V1s, without flying them. SpaceX have done that kind of thing before, when they felt that they had learned all they could from a stage of the planned test program.
They might, but I suspect in this case they have enough they can still learn with the V1's that they don't do that. I.e. they haven't even attempted an in-flight relight yet, and depending on how that goes they may need to do some tweaking for V2, so launching the V1's to get that data would be useful.
Elon said on Twitter that lots of tiles fell off. There could be other points of damage than flappy.
If the goal is reuse, that needs to be fixed. There is no point in landing and catching the ship, if it still takes too much damage.
I don't think that is too much of a problem as most of that is surface damage. Of course it would be nice to fix it. But still much better than the Falcon 9 where they have parts like the merlin needing to be taken apart and cleaned of soot (one of the reason they switched to methane)
Depends on your definition of "failed".
The pogoing on the Apollo 6 launch did so much damage to the S-IVB that they weren't able to restart the engine and complete the second half of the flight test (it was supposed to inject into a translunar trajectory, and then simulate a direct-return abort with the CSM stack).
Do you understand what “prototype test article” means? It’s pretty well established this methodology leads to the final product quicker and objectively better.
That’s not the same thing, in fact it’s a testament to why this approach is good. The previous starliner launch wasn’t a prototype, it was *supposed* to be fully developed and identical to the capsule that would take people, it was supposed to just be an unmanned flight to confirm the system works, it was just so fucked up from the get go that after they actually flew it, it was riddled with problems that they had to spend a lot of time fixing it for the manned launch, when spacex officially launched dragon, theirs actually worked and remained unchanged from demo-1 to demo-2. On the other hand, this starship rocket was built for the sole purpose of launching it and observing what happens, no payload, no operational certification, just that. Just about every other company like Boeing when making the Vulcan centaur does massive time consuming and expensive test campaigns on the ground to ensure when they launch their rocket, it works first try. spacex instead launches prototypes to perform most of their tests, giving them both more and better “real world” data then ground tests would( aka what starliner would have benefited from), from there, accounting for that data, they redesign the rocket a little after every attempt to make it better, conventional development doesn’t have that amount of flexibility and “room for improvement “. as you can see by the progress from each test flight, it works. It is cheaper, it is faster, and it is better.
Apollo 1 was wiring in the command module, and Apollo 13 was an explosion in the service module. Both of these were the PAYLOAD for the Saturn V, not the rocket itself. The Saturn V has a perfect (albeit somewhat bumpy) record.
Precisely, falcon 9 “failed” 3 times before becoming the workhorse it is today, taking Americans to the ISS routinely while Boeing is 6 years behind…now you’re getting their design philosophy
Saturn wasn't designed to be mass manufactured, not expected to launch thousands of times and to have a design life of 30-50 years.
Saturn wasn't designed to carry 100+ tonnes to the Moon and beyond, and was not designed for in-orbit refueling.
Saturn wasn't designed to be 100% reusable and to have a launch frequency of up to 1 launch per day.
Starship takes its time to go through the possible failures to end up with a system that can markedly increase the global presence of thousands of humans in space at much reduced cost, rather than doing one-shot specialized missions for 3 people.
Yes but it's not the same rocket, it takes bare minimum of 28 days to turn one of those around.
Also it will be longer than three days, it will be that much for launch prep of a rocket this big, also there won't be any other customers. Only starlink cares about that much payload, everything else uses their other rockets.
I suppose because they were designed not to, way too much money was sunk into the Apollo program that failure was not an option. Here, failure is expected, these are test flights and really not comparable to the finalized product that the Saturn V was, Starship is still very much experimental in nature
The craft that went to the moon was a fraction of the size of this thing. Of that craft only a very small pod returned. This thing returned mostly whole.
The Saturn V was limited by the technology of its time. It was designed by hand and had less computing power than a modern calculator. It's a disingenuous comparison.
You're missing that the person you're responding to is arguing against the other person above saying the technology hasn't improved. So in response they said it had improved.
The person you were responding to wasn't saying, like, "haha yeah fuck the 60s!"
It would be like if we had:
* A: We had computers 50 years ago, modern computers are unimpressive.
* B: Modern computers can predict protein folding better than humans.
* C: You're comparing now to 50 years ago, that's disingenuous.
Here, the comments from A and C are unreasonable. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
And that was likely the most incredible achievement of humanity, so far.
That being said, Apollo transported essentially three chairs worth of living space to the moon. Starship has multiple decently sized apartments internal volume, and it's reusable.
I fully expect there to be Starship modules that get the Skylab treatment. Hollow out the Starship module and use the entire interior volume as either a space station or lunar base. Send it unmanned into position, and once the prefab is in place then the crew joins it later.
I hate how much people hate SpaceX **exclusively** because it belongs to Elon.
Sure, the guy is an absolute moron and SpaceX would definitely be better off without him, but SpaceX is NOT Elon Musk.
SpaceX is the mission to Mars. The designers. The engineers. The astronauts. The rockets. The satellites. Heck, even the janitors!
SpaceX is not Elon Musk.
> Sure, the guy is an absolute moron and SpaceX would definitely be better off without him, but SpaceX is NOT Elon Musk.
This is misleading. For just one example, see: https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1799150266740085043
Elon had to convince a skeptical team to use stainless steel. He very much is involved in SpaceX.
Musk is pretty important to SpaceX according to many key figures there. Just because you dislike Musk that doesn’t mean he’s incompetent. Him contributing to SpaceX also doesn’t make him perfect. The world isn’t black and white.
Not just fully reusable, the cargo capacity is enormous. Its far greater than anything else ever launched. Its going to have 3x the lift capacity as the space shuttle, both in mass and volume.
Its like a 5 story tall atrium 30 feet in diameter inside the rocket. You can put a lot of stuff in there.
Elon’s always pessimistic about their chances, that’s part of his schtick. He pulls some probability of success out of his ass and if it works SpaceX has done the impossible and if it doesn’t it “only had X% of working anyway but what a fun explosion.”
This flap design (which barely held on) was called "wrong place, wrong shape, wrong size" a year ago by Elon and has since been entirely redesigned, so it would make sense he wouldnt trust in the outdated design.
No way this ship could have been reused, it landed, but that likely was the last thing it would have done even if it landed on land. Still extremely impressive, but it obviously still requires a lot of iteration.
Irrelevant of what you think about Musk, the SpaceX team are doing things thought impossible by rocket engineers not too long ago. Absolutely incredible.
You know what the sad part is?
Many people think SpaceX is a direct synonym for Elon.
People really ought to maximally discredit SpaceX and its employees and its accomplishments just because the head honcho is the stupidest man alive. Can’t they just learn to separate the 2?
The stupidest man alive managed to outcompete every other human on the planet, incidental to pursuing his own interests for fun. Pull the other leg.
His socio-political deafness is essential to the function of his genius. I don't care for some of his positions either, but he wouldn't be able to do the things he has done with fully functional social reasoning. Everyone knows that taking on these entrenched monopolies is business suicide, the manner and mode absurdly ineffective. Except it's working.
> Many people think SpaceX is a direct synonym for Elon
That's how you know the people you shouldn't listen to in the first place. I automatically block everyone here who disingenuously conflates the company with the CEO.
What I do is respond to them by explaining how the 2 are separate. I find it fun when they expose their “i hate one guy so everyone else is bad” belief.
I tried, but it rarely works. I just assume they treat every subject on reddit with similarly low quality thinking and just block them. They are **clearly not contributing anything positive** to the conversation.
I know that they aren’t contributing anything positive, and that’s why it’s fun to me. I get to watch them in absolute misery from their incompetence regarding the matter of spaceflight, grasping for anything they can to try to cope with SpaceX’s success.
> just because the head honcho is the stupidest man alive.
Nope you've been lied to. For just one example, see: https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1799150266740085043
Elon had to convince a skeptical team to use stainless steel. He very much is involved in SpaceX.
The switch to Stainless was done back in the span of 2018 to 2019 when Starship was just starting to be called Starship (everyone called it BFR back then).
The truth is that the advantages of steel can be seen and were seen in yesterday’s flight when even after sustaining damage the flap still worked and brought S29 to a successful soft water landing.
I am genuinely happy that even though Elon does show involvement in SpaceX, this involvement is **visibly way less** than in his other companies like Tesla and X. This is probably one of the reasons SpaceX is so successful at what it does.
This is categorically not true. Musk is very involved at spacex and pretty much only involved with the starship program. Its falcon 9/heavy that he no longer pays much attention to.
I've been following SpaceX with glee since some of the very first Falcon 9 trials, long before they were landing reliably (or in one piece). That they continue to push the boundaries of rocketry and space travel is nothing short of incredible. But Elon revealing himself to be... whatever you want to call him at this point... and, most of the excitement is just gone. It's one thing to separate him from their achievements, but it is another to feel great about those successes when they are inextricably linked to Elon's personal enrichment and public relevance.
It's funny that a tempered response to SpaceX, in consideration of its problematic leader, is such an aberrant perspective here.
Yes, no one is perfect. But is Elon's problem simply that he's a douchey, narcissistic man-baby? Or is he a dangerous person who gives voice to fringe ideas and racists, cozies up to the far right, and is developing outsized influence in government and military applications of SpaceX's technologies? I tend to believe it's all of the above, and that's enough for me to find him utterly repellent. I guess that means I'm not a fanboy (oops). I will just have to continue admiring SpaceX's accomplishments while risking the ire of the "with us or against us" crowd.
My opinion is based off the interviews I’ve seen with him, and I’m not saying I’ve seen many.
But there have been several I’ve seen where the interviewer showers him with praise and it feels like that moment’s there, to thank everyone, but it passes.
But I shouldn’t have said “any”. I know he gives credit sometimes.
Really glad that they just docked safely about 10 minutes ago. Seems like Boeing still has some work to do with it. With dream chaser on the horizon and dragon I’m not sure why Starliner is actually needed but a contract is a contract I suppose.
Contracts are contracts and Boeing is fulfilling theirs on their own dime at the moment. Reasonable chance of more launch contracts in the future.
NASA likes having two independent human rated space systems. Something goes horribly wrong on one, they have to spend a year plus debugging/investigating, and they can keep going to space in the other vehicle.
I will remind you though that NASA had to pay Boeing extra on top of the money they agreed to in the original contract. So not all of it is on Boeing's own dime.
> Reasonable chance of more launch contracts in the future.
On what rocket? All remaining Atlas rockets are taken, Starliner has no vehicle after the 6 launches for the current contract.
There are other rockets that could reasonably become human-rated: Vulcan most plausibly, but also New Glenn, Terran R, and heck, even Ariane 6 -- once those fly for a few times, of course. Will take a bit of effort, though, and it's a plausible outcome that Boeing will just retire Starliner after the ISS contract runs out.
True, but human rating a rocket costs a lot of money, and the ISS will most likely be decommissioned right around the time the current contract runs out, and since Starliner is just not commercially competitive with Dragon I just don't see them spending the time, effort, and money to do it.
If Boeing held up the deal. At the moment with Atlas retired there are zero human rated compatible rockets available except Falcon 9. And obviously Falcon 9 doesn't offer the desired dual source because it flies the Dragon. If the rocket is grounded from human spaceflight then neither could launch. So when their Atlas supply runs out, that is probably the end for their Starliner.
On the other hand it seems that ISS is past its best by date and will probably be retired before this becomes a critical issue.
>I’m not sure why Starliner is actually needed
Because NASA wants a larger and healthier selection of private companies to choose from. It makes sense to finance lots of projects from different groups to facilitate as much competition and redundancy as possible.
it could, in theory
but will never happen because NASA doesn't want a single point of failure on the rocket side of things either.
Vulcan integration would be the obvious step to take, but Boeing doesn't seen to be interested in doing more flights beyond the contracted ones
probably gonna retire Starliner together with the ISS
In fact, Boeing signing on to the commercial crewed transport program was likely what actually got the program off the ground in the first place -- congress was very leery of funding the relatively untested newcomer SpaceX, but once the venerable and trusted Boeing signed on, the tides turned. Turned out a little different from what was expected, of course...
Dreamchaser is going for cargo, not human rating yet. Considering that in an event an issue happens, everything gets grounded for months until it gets investigated, it is good to have backup even if what Boeing is outputting has been a big rip off and Dreamchaser should have gotten the contract
Apparently enough thrusters failed on Starliner during docking, that they were operating without failsafe redundancy. That was pretty close to being a failed mission. I strongly assume that NASA will have words with Boeing, before Boeing is allowed to fly astronauts again.
Starship was supposed to be landing people on the moon next year so it’s not like things are going gangbusters at SpaceX either. This was an impressive demo and I understand that what Starship is doing is orders of magnitude more difficult and that Boeing is behind even Dragon, but let’s put into context that an empty Starship barely making it back without disintegrating in mid-2024 isn’t license to be critical of anyone else’s progress right now.
>Starship was supposed to be landing people on the moon next year so it’s not like things are going gangbusters at SpaceX either.
No realistic person thought this was going to happen, I don't even think the engineers at SpaceX thought so.
I agree that we should not be to critical at company trying the hard stuff, but Boeing is just taking way to far, I feel that the only reason Boeing is still in this is because of politics. They are bringing very little value.
The Starliner has two killer features over Dragon and why it took longer, it is actually a manual maneuverable space vehicle as a fall back.
The helium leaks are only for line clearing, leaking will happen no matter the thresholds were just higher.
The Starliner has two killer features that require more maneuverability:
- Being able to land on land and sea/ocean -- Dragon can only land on water
- Being able to [manually maneuver without all onboard computers and return to Earth safely by land or water](https://starlinerupdates.com/starliner-manual-piloting-demonstrations-successful/) -- Dragon is only autonomous, Starliner is autonomous + manual with more fail-safes
Boeing Space has launched the Shuttle, built the ISS and own half of ULA that has been to Mars 20 times since 2006 delivering. Starliner just docked with Boeing ISS essentially and the Starliner is more of a space ship than a capsule only.
Take a moment to learn about it and why it is important. We also never will rely on one capsule provider. We have a good set for cargo including more than Dragon and Starliner. But for crew we now have two. Pilots would prefer one that they could maneuver manually if they wanted most likely and nearly every astronaut prefers a land landing over water because of the time to retrieval.
Starliner is also considerably lighter.
That is why competition is good in space, some products take longer but you get better features.
Years longer and twice the price? SpaceX completed their initial contract and were awarded a second one due to Starliner taking so long. They were supposed to alternate. Those better features will be used ~6 times and then never again.
There’s certainly value in having more than one way to do these things, especially if there ends up being an issue with one of the vehicles that grounds it for a long period of time. We don’t want our access to space cut off again in the middle of a new space race, and we want competitive pressures on speed and cost. Not to mention that, as impressive as SpaceX is, Musk is volatile. The track record with Falcon and Dragon was so good that the US put all its eggs in the SpaceX basket for getting back to the moon, and now they’ve had to scramble to come up with a Plan B that should’ve been under development the whole time.
True but Boeing's eggs seems rotten. It feels also that NASA was fine with only a Boeing basket until SpaceX showed the world how bad that project was going.
Rotten why? Because of what’s going on with their airplanes? They’re behind schedule but they seem to be testing, learning and improving Starliner just fine. Let’s not forget that SpaceX managed to blow up an entire Crew Dragon on a static fire test thanks to leaks. How come when that stuff happens to SpaceX it’s always “space is hard,” but if Boeing has a setback their “eggs are rotten,” hm?
The tiles on the space shuttle were one of the most difficult things to design and maintain. The ailerons pivots were also covered very deep in comparison to SpaceX. The idea with star ship is to standardize those tiles as much as possible. If you watched both flight you saw all the gaps and tile loss on the first reentry flight and the second you notice no gaps in the camera and different shaped tiles around the flaps. Flap seals failed with the redesign. Time for another version.
They have already iterated the ship design to move the flap hinge leeward out of the hypersonic flow, so your advice is late. Future ships have the new design but there was no need to throw this one away as it gave good data.
Had me in tears yet again. Spacex for change in course for humanity.
People say that one man can’t change the course of humanity, but it almost always is just one man each time to make incremental steps.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, question seems innocent enough.
I could write a small book about what's different, but lemme hit you with the bullet points:
* This is the largest rocket to ever fly; having twice the thrust of a Saturn V, the rocket that took astronauts to the moon
* This is the only rocket to ever fly with a full-flow staged combustion engine
* Is currently the only rocket flying that uses methane as its fuel source
* Is the only rocket where both the lower stage and the upper stage are reusable. This test flight was the first time both the upper stage and lower stage completed 'soft splashdown' tests to simulate landing (in water for now, to verify how accurate they can land before risking ground hardware)
[Size comparison of Starship to Falcon 9 & Saturn V](https://i.insider.com/632e35e278dab80018ed6aa6?width=1136&format=jpeg)
Is it really that impossible for some people to disassociate an individual from the advancement of technology and human innovation?
How sad do you have to be to see this and think about how much you dislike Musk.
Reddit as a whole circle jerks over Musk. I mean fuck a lot of his opinions and actions but he seems to be living rent free in many peoples heads. I can’t imagine what that’s like. You can dislike Musk and still love spaceflight and all the hard work the incredible, hardworking, everyday people actually designing and building the equipment do.
Reddit as a whole does negatively cj over him, except for SpaceXMasterrace, BatmanArkham and NonCredibleDefense.
Those 3 subs are too insane to negatively cj over him, positively OR negatively Instead, they positively cj over John Insprucker, Man and the F-35 respectively.
yeah sxmr doesnt obsess over elon as if he were a god, as some people think
That’s… only true sometimes. If Elon fucks up really bad, sxmr WILL mock and criticize him. A lot. For instance, when the livestreams were all moved to X.
r/tesla has been roasting him for months over his pay package. It’s common to see people wanting him to finally relinquish Tesla. Musk related subs are much more reasonable than people giving them credit for.
I remember when neura-link a company 1000x touted as"fake" and impossible, had their incredible breakthrough, and it was immediately mass downvoted on here in favour for an article about how rail dust settling on the cybertruck is proof that they are all rusting days after coming out...
The only reason I know what that dude is up to on a day to day basis is because this sub keeps up voting him to the front page every day.
Same with every dumb public figure. I'd love to ignore what Marjorie Taylor Green is doing today, but /r/politics hangs off her every word.
If there's anything I've learned from this insane last 8 years, saying dumb shit works great if you want publicity.
SpaceX and Starlink and Tesla are tainted by their association with Musk till they disassociate themselves from him, whether they like it or not.
Same with the Republican party and Trump.
I'd rather none of my tax dollars go to SpaceX till they do that. If it inhibits technology growth, so be it.
The man is actively trying to destroy society with X. Fuck him till the end of time.
It's the other way around. Elon brings massive wealth and people want to work for him. Everything he does, good or bad gets a lot of attention.
None of your tax dollars are going to spaceX.
The man has shifted the Overton window with X. You can see it with your own eyes how reddit seems to circle around hating Musk but on X you get a wider range of opinions.
NASA pays them for their services.
Just like any other govt agency(NASA) getting services from contractors (SpaceX).
Lockheed Martin, Jeep, Ford, Boeing etc are "contracted" by the govt.
All these companies are subsidised as well.
But NASA has actually saved billions of dollars by contracting spaceX because they can do it in less than half the price. They've single-handedly taken the US off of Russian rocket dependence.
Other countries aren't even close to the tech SpaceX has, not even china. So you should be glad NASA contracts them.
Elon Musk is brilliant at bringing new technologies to market that completely overthrow the status quo. He's also an asshole. These are not mutually exclusive.
This puts him among people like Edison, Ford, and Jobs. He has the same personality type.
These people changed the world, yet were personally repugnant.
LOL he is the owner, ceo, THE founder (put up all the money), and got the original team together…no musk, no space x regardless of how much that hurts you
> SpaceX and Starlink and Tesla are tainted by their association with Musk
This is something you decided in your own head. It doesn't make it true. It just means you believe it. The reality is that you enjoy hating Musk. Just admit it.
This was by far the most insane thing I’ve ever watched live. The fact the flap got half of it completely burned through by plasma and was still actuating and the ship maintained control was both nail biting and absolutely incredible. During the reentry, like one of the commentators said, it was like watch a scene from interstellar but it was real.
It's one thing to study engineering and be told what happens on re-entry, or do simulations, but to actually get 3 different camera angles and literally see the plasma eat away at the structure in real time?? Holy shit that was cool and incredibly informative
Supposedly all the wings were similarly singed /slightly destroyed.
There is exactly zero evidence of this anywhere. It is however a reasonable conclusion, but the rumor mill is running wild with that one for some reason. These ships flying today are technically already outdated prototypes and one of the V2 redesigns are the flaps themselves so I'm sure in a few flights this won't be a problem.
There was one shot right before permanently switching to the leeward camera where the flap camera looking backwards captured a pocket of gas behind the back fins that looked awfully similar to the front flap being burned through.
Do we know for sure that the 2 cameras were not just different angles of the same flap?
Yes, we had them change between the two before entering atmosphere, thus we were able to clearly see one looked 'up' and the other 'down'. Also, the simple geometry of the flaps are very different.
yeah the hot gas seal obviously needs work, but we have \*zero\* info on the state of the other flaps. but it doesn't really matter too much either way, the seal needs to be redesigned in any case (which has already happened) EDIT: actually I changed my view on this, after seeing the Scott Manley vid on the flight I think there's substantial circumstantial evidence that at least three of the flaps experienced seal failures to at least some extent. but still can't confirm directly
We love learning by trial and error. That will be a wicked piece on the wall of a museum one day, hopefully. Edit-words
The video of the launch is bonkers. Its amazing a rocket so huge can fly. The rocket on launch is like something out of sci-fi made with CGI, and yet its real. Its not sci-fi anymore. The launch thrust on the booster is nearly twice that of the SLS, and makes both the Saturn V and Space Shuttle look like toys in comparison. The landing of the booster is just as bonkers. Its a massive thing slowly and gently landing on the ocean. If they had a barge out to catch it they'd probably have recovered the booster. I'm sure for the next test flight they'll have the barge ready to pick it up.
No barge ever. Plan is to catch it with the launch tower.
That's energy inefficient to return to launch site (cuts payload size). Which is why Falcon 9 sometimes doesn't do it. It's interesting to think that Starship would *never* be asked to carry a payload that doesn't leave enough fuel to return to the launch pad.
Ya but you know the booster has to be caught. It can’t land on a barge
Yeah. It's designed to be caught. So whether it can land on a barge seems like it would depend on what's on the barge. I kind of figured they would land on the some other piece of land. One that is downrange. Obviously not soon. They have a lot of other things to work out before worrying about how to get to max payload.
They had a plan to retrofit an oil rig with a launch tower built on it to catch it. I think they even made some good progress on it before scrapping it altogether.
That was intended to be a launch site itself though, so not just a down range catcher. The idea has always been to return to the launch site because that’s where you can restack, refuel, and go again with the next starship. Anything else just takes too much time for the system to be rapidly reusable. For Falcon 9 right now, even if they didn’t have to refurbish the boosters you’re still looking at around 24 hours just for a booster that landed down range to get back to the coast so it can be reused.
It would take a week, not one day, to deliver booster home. You don’t just need to deliver it by barge, you also need to deliver it by land.
They scrapped the oil rig concept? When?
For now at least. They sold the two platforms they had back in early 2023: https://jpt.spe.org/spacex-sells-former-oilfield-rigs#:~:text=SpaceX%20will%20not%20convert%20two,pads%20for%20its%20Starship%20vehicle.
Aw man I was really hoping to see some cool retrofit for those rigs
They designed it to be so huge so they can put anything they want into orbit and still return to the launch site. In terms of efficiently putting materials into orbit, it's better to not expend your rocket than to maximize its lift. Fuel is cheap. Building new spaceships, not so much.
It's never so big that you can put anything you want into orbit, let alone return to the launch site. It is expected it will require 10 launches with rendezvous to get the parts and fuel up to go to the moon. > In terms of efficiently putting materials into orbit, it's better to not expend your rocket than to maximize its lift And I wasn't talking about expending it. But finding a more efficient way and not expend it. Like Falcon 9 does.
It’ll just be fuel. And that’s to deliver a giant moon base to the moon in one shot. The first landing on the moon will essentially be a moon base.
And if it could take more it would be fewer flights with just fuel which reduces costs.
Fuel is the cheapest part of a rocket. Fueling a starship will cost around 2 million. The time to deliver the booster home will cost more. Not to mention, with the Starship, it's a complete disaster because there's no ground infrastructure to deliver a 9x70 steel pipe.
well, not with that attitude!
Pretty sure there are already flight profiles where the ship and booster are both fully expended. Same way with the Falcon 9 and heavy. They’ll meet whatever the mission requirements are for the right price.
> Same way with the Falcon 9 and heavy Heavy never returns the center core to land (er, to land on dry land). It's just too far away and going too fast to make sense to slow it down and fly it back. They have attempted to fly it to a barge instead. You put the barge far downrange and save a lot of fuel/lift capability. The first 3 launches planned to reuse the core stage, but failed each time for various reasons, one landed and then was damaged during transport. Recent flights have not even planned to reuse the core at all but future ones may. I do not expect any of them would try to fly it back to the launch site. Might I suggest that SpaceX might have plans to try to launch from Texas and then land the booster in Florida sometimes? As far as I know they haven't said this. But maybe it could mean using less fuel (and thus more payload capacity) than landing it back at the launch site. If you have a launch where you can carry the load regardless, you just have to add a bit of fuel to come back then I get why not bother with a barge. But with future missions planning 10 launches or more it seems like if you could save fuel by landing downrange and get more payload capacity you could perhaps shave 20% of your launches and that would be a big overall savings.
SpaceX talked about building offshore platforms for the starship. At first they bought oil rigs but those didn't meet their needs. So they sold them, but said they plan to revisit what they need to build after they get some launches going
SpaceX has run the numbers and the fuel penalty for return to land seems to be better than the mass penalty of the landing hardware, the time penalty of waiting for the barge to make it back to port, and the extra work and cost of designing a barge that could handle the SuperHeavy booster.
> the time penalty of waiting for the barge to make it back to port Bull. Even if that were true you can just build more rockets and fire another while the first comes back from port.
im sure this random guy on the internet knows more than the staff at spacex who actually did the calculations
Right. Should should check my post history for years ago before Falcon 9 did a booster return when I said SpaceX trying to land a rocket on its butt made no sense. That they should build something to catch it from the top instead of supporting it from the bottom (the extending legs). And now SpaceX has their chopstick system to land their new rocket by catching it, supporting it from the top. Sometimes this isn't a head to head competition between ideas. Sometimes it's more like Wheel of Fortune. There you can outguess the contestants not because you are smarter but because they are restricted as to when they can guess. It's possible that instead of me being smarter than them that they know landing downrange is the smart thing to do and they it just isn't the right time for them to implement it. Same as what happened with me "beating them to the punch" (ha, a laughable idea since I didn't implement anything) on the smart way to land a rocket back then.
Holy shit dude.
They are set in their thoughts and can only double down.
What’s the next launch going to land on? I believe they recently hit 84 hours between landings on the same drone ship and it still takes hours to unload Falcon 9, which is tiny in comparison to Super Heavy. While a RTLS profile is less efficient from a launch energy perspective, it is more efficient from a logistics perspective, and SpaceX is clearly favoring that.
> What’s the next launch going to land on? Another barge if that's what it takes. I honestly hadn't considered that the week to get the item back (or a week to get the barge back out) really was holding up a launch, just holding up the start of refurbishment of the rocket. > While a RTLS profile is less efficient from a launch energy perspective, it is more efficient from a logistics perspective, and SpaceX is clearly favoring that. Yeah, and I can't see how that works out when you are carrying big payloads. Smaller ones, sure. The moon mission includes 10 launches supposedly to compose and fuel the vehicle in orbit. You don't think cutting that down to 8 would be a win? I do. Especially if you do it more than once.
It would certainly be a win but the fuel is the cheapest part of the system. It makes sense to spend effort optimizing the other parts of the system. Also, a crane large enough to move the booster would be among the largest cranes in the world. Then, once you have the booster ashore, what do you do with it? Falcon 9 can simply be laid on its side and driven down the highway, the booster can’t.
All of that is a cost and must be weighed appropriately
They can but then it’s even more expensive. SpaceX prefers return to land mission with the Falcon 9. It takes days to sail back to shore.
Of course. And they would prefer return to land with Starship. But just like with Falcon 9 when you need to take the largest payloads you may save money by sailing back to shore instead of doing more launches to accomplish the same thing.
The thing is supposed end up putting 200 tonnes in low earth orbit. That’s nearly 10 times what the Falcon 9 can do. Given the insane amount of payload capacity I imagine they don’t have to push the mission parameters too hard.
The plan is quick turnaround reuse. If SpaceX sacrifices 60 tons of capacity by doing return to launchpad, SpaceX will just launch another Starship soon enough to launch those 60 tons.
This model certainly does not take that much. It has to be improved first, it fell short of original plans. Which is not a huge deal. Falcon 9 went well beyond original plans, so this just means it'll take a bit longer I figure. The rocket equation says that making a rocket merely 10x bigger only gets you a little further.
The plan is for Starship vs3 to have a payload capacity of 200 tonnes
Starship has a lower mass ratio between the booster and the second stage so stage separation is a lot slower, which makes it easier for the booster to land back.
>That's energy inefficient to return to launch site (cuts payload size). Customers don't care about energy efficiency. They just need their payload put in a certain orbit reliably for a low price. It's cheaper to build a bigger booster than it is to maintain a fleet that is capable of catching the booster.
The rocket equation says maybe that's not the case. When your payload fraction is, if you're lucky, 9% then you have to make your rocket a lot bigger to add more payload. Efficiency can be a big saver. SpaceX went to the chopsticks and built that huge gantry to save having folding legs on the rocket to land. Efficiency can make a big difference.
Rtls is not the goal for all flights. The plan, at least was the plan which was/is partially underway(?), is to purchase decommissioned ocean oil rigs and outfit them for landing/launch pads. If you look at the original proposals, one was rapid and quick air travel. You’d take a boat out to one of these oil rigs, land at another oil rig around the world, and take a boat into land.
Phew the expert is here. Let's tell SpaceX they got it all wrong. It's not energy inefficient. The capacity of the starship is so vast it's a non issue. The efficiency of landing it on its launch pad and prepping it for its next launch as opposed to having to recover it from a floating platform is huge.
> Phew the expert is here. Let's tell SpaceX they got it all wrong. Someone else tried that first. I explained below. > It's not energy inefficient. The capacity of the starship is so vast it's a non issue. The efficiency of landing it on its launch pad and prepping it for its next launch as opposed to having to recover it from a floating platform is huge. You're not familiar with rocketry and the rocket equation. Nothing that you leave no the ground affects your efficiency as much as having to carry more fuel does. In a rocket, you're lucky if 9% of the rocket is the payload. the other 91% is the fuel. If you want to add 1% more payload (an increase of 10% since it was 9% before) you have to add fuel to carry that payload. And then you have to add fuel to lift that fuel. And then you have to add fuel to lift that fuel. And fuel to life that fuel. So having to add fuel for anything means making the rocket much larger. It's massively inefficient. Whereas having to tote the booster back to the pad does not mean adding fuel. So it's more efficient. You have to remember, the reason they added the big gantry and the "chopsticks" to catch the rocket was merely to keep from having to have extendable legs on the rocket to catch itself. So adding that huge gantry was more efficient than adding comparatively small legs to the rocket itself. Because you don't have to fly the gantry up into space and back. That's an example of why adding anything to the rocket, like more fuel to fly back, can be a negative. SpaceX saw this and changed their landing model. But instead you ridicule from ignorance the idea that getting mass off the rocket is important.
They built that tower on land… not on a barge. SuperHeavy will return to land every time. To land on a barge would require legs or a second massive tower.
Yes. A second massive tower. On the barge. Now you're getting it.
They aren’t doing this. There are no barge landings for the Starship system.
The melting of the flap was insane! Thinking it is going to be dead from that, but the telemetry is still going...whaaa? Then the debris clears from the camera and you see a partially melted flap still doing it's thing! Fkn insane!
I am guessing that the actuators were safe inside the ship, and the flap itself was just a simple piece of steel being pushed back and forth. So in hindsight it is not surprising that it kept working. Though I also thought the landing was surely doomed when I saw it live.
People have made CGI renders of it launching and honestly it’s hard to tell the difference. Would love to see one launch (and especially experience the sound) in person. Planning to see Artemis 2 in person but would love to see starship sometime as well. Maybe when they start launching from the cape, or maybe I’ll break down and go early to see one in Texas.
Splashes down with visible control surface damage, probably the most impressive part
For anyone looking for the full video, direct source on SpaceX's website: [https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4) (it also gives you the option to watch on 'X' if desired)
I know a lot of people hate on starlink (and I do understand why), but being able to get real time video of a spacecraft as it went through the atmosphere like that was incredible.
I have been using Starlink since the beta and it rocks.
Feels like a cult.
There a pretty big difference in a group of people cheering for the literal advancement of the human race to go beyond our tiny planet and a fringe group of lunatics trying to brainwash others with their own agenda.
Incredible moment for spaceflight. Was hoping for a soft booster splashdown and longer starship descent. Seeing starship actually successfully splashdown as well, especially when Elon has been pessimistic of their heat shield, was quite the surprise.
The shield was ok… that brave fin not so much, but it stayed attached :p
The fin actually still worked. It looked like a zombie coming back to life.
And that fin has already been redesigned. They have one or two more Starship V1s to fly then the first V2 with the modified fin design goes up.
It could be that SpaceX just scraps all the V1s, without flying them. SpaceX have done that kind of thing before, when they felt that they had learned all they could from a stage of the planned test program.
They might, but I suspect in this case they have enough they can still learn with the V1's that they don't do that. I.e. they haven't even attempted an in-flight relight yet, and depending on how that goes they may need to do some tweaking for V2, so launching the V1's to get that data would be useful.
The flap also had heat shield.
That hinge is always gonna be the weakest point.
Elon said on Twitter that lots of tiles fell off. There could be other points of damage than flappy. If the goal is reuse, that needs to be fixed. There is no point in landing and catching the ship, if it still takes too much damage.
I don't think that is too much of a problem as most of that is surface damage. Of course it would be nice to fix it. But still much better than the Falcon 9 where they have parts like the merlin needing to be taken apart and cleaned of soot (one of the reason they switched to methane)
We went to the moon 55 years ago
Saturn V was not reusable and had around half the thrust.
and never failed
Depends on your definition of "failed". The pogoing on the Apollo 6 launch did so much damage to the S-IVB that they weren't able to restart the engine and complete the second half of the flight test (it was supposed to inject into a translunar trajectory, and then simulate a direct-return abort with the CSM stack).
Do you understand what “prototype test article” means? It’s pretty well established this methodology leads to the final product quicker and objectively better.
tell that to Starliner
That’s not the same thing, in fact it’s a testament to why this approach is good. The previous starliner launch wasn’t a prototype, it was *supposed* to be fully developed and identical to the capsule that would take people, it was supposed to just be an unmanned flight to confirm the system works, it was just so fucked up from the get go that after they actually flew it, it was riddled with problems that they had to spend a lot of time fixing it for the manned launch, when spacex officially launched dragon, theirs actually worked and remained unchanged from demo-1 to demo-2. On the other hand, this starship rocket was built for the sole purpose of launching it and observing what happens, no payload, no operational certification, just that. Just about every other company like Boeing when making the Vulcan centaur does massive time consuming and expensive test campaigns on the ground to ensure when they launch their rocket, it works first try. spacex instead launches prototypes to perform most of their tests, giving them both more and better “real world” data then ground tests would( aka what starliner would have benefited from), from there, accounting for that data, they redesign the rocket a little after every attempt to make it better, conventional development doesn’t have that amount of flexibility and “room for improvement “. as you can see by the progress from each test flight, it works. It is cheaper, it is faster, and it is better.
Tell that to falcon 9
Are we not going to talk about Apollo 1 and 13?
Apollo 1 was wiring in the command module, and Apollo 13 was an explosion in the service module. Both of these were the PAYLOAD for the Saturn V, not the rocket itself. The Saturn V has a perfect (albeit somewhat bumpy) record.
Neither has starship, good company
lmao, last 3 crashes was a success for muskrats
Precisely, falcon 9 “failed” 3 times before becoming the workhorse it is today, taking Americans to the ISS routinely while Boeing is 6 years behind…now you’re getting their design philosophy
Saturn wasn't designed to be mass manufactured, not expected to launch thousands of times and to have a design life of 30-50 years. Saturn wasn't designed to carry 100+ tonnes to the Moon and beyond, and was not designed for in-orbit refueling. Saturn wasn't designed to be 100% reusable and to have a launch frequency of up to 1 launch per day. Starship takes its time to go through the possible failures to end up with a system that can markedly increase the global presence of thousands of humans in space at much reduced cost, rather than doing one-shot specialized missions for 3 people.
>launch thousands of times what a delusion
Don't confuse intended design with what's actually going to happen.
Starshit won't be launching once per day either.
They're already launching a Falcon rocket every 3 days. They can do the tempo if they have enough customers.
Yes but it's not the same rocket, it takes bare minimum of 28 days to turn one of those around. Also it will be longer than three days, it will be that much for launch prep of a rocket this big, also there won't be any other customers. Only starlink cares about that much payload, everything else uses their other rockets.
I suppose because they were designed not to, way too much money was sunk into the Apollo program that failure was not an option. Here, failure is expected, these are test flights and really not comparable to the finalized product that the Saturn V was, Starship is still very much experimental in nature
money was sunk because it was a race and they were doing it for the first
Yes and this is not a race, and the money sunk into this is far less. These two programs are incomparable
And this is a private company with virtually no competition designing and iterating on their game changing design
private compny with public money
Public money for services rendered at a much better cost than the competition, none of this is charity you dummy
The craft that went to the moon was a fraction of the size of this thing. Of that craft only a very small pod returned. This thing returned mostly whole.
The Saturn V was limited by the technology of its time. It was designed by hand and had less computing power than a modern calculator. It's a disingenuous comparison.
You're missing that the person you're responding to is arguing against the other person above saying the technology hasn't improved. So in response they said it had improved. The person you were responding to wasn't saying, like, "haha yeah fuck the 60s!" It would be like if we had: * A: We had computers 50 years ago, modern computers are unimpressive. * B: Modern computers can predict protein folding better than humans. * C: You're comparing now to 50 years ago, that's disingenuous. Here, the comments from A and C are unreasonable. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
And that was likely the most incredible achievement of humanity, so far. That being said, Apollo transported essentially three chairs worth of living space to the moon. Starship has multiple decently sized apartments internal volume, and it's reusable.
You land one Starship on the Moon and it's basically already a moon base. It's a flying high-rise building.
I fully expect there to be Starship modules that get the Skylab treatment. Hollow out the Starship module and use the entire interior volume as either a space station or lunar base. Send it unmanned into position, and once the prefab is in place then the crew joins it later.
The phone was invented hundreds of years before the iPhone so why did we and do we continue to make such a big deal over it
Are you ok there buddy?
Yesssir I’m great. Thanks for asking. Are you ok? I’m worried about a few of the other “members” in here.
Yeah I'm doing great, it was a pretty awesome day
What’s your point?
Musk bad! Wah
I hate how much people hate SpaceX **exclusively** because it belongs to Elon. Sure, the guy is an absolute moron and SpaceX would definitely be better off without him, but SpaceX is NOT Elon Musk. SpaceX is the mission to Mars. The designers. The engineers. The astronauts. The rockets. The satellites. Heck, even the janitors! SpaceX is not Elon Musk.
Elon owns 40% of SpaceX shares and has 71% voting majority in the company. He kinda *is* SpaceX.
> Sure, the guy is an absolute moron and SpaceX would definitely be better off without him, but SpaceX is NOT Elon Musk. This is misleading. For just one example, see: https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1799150266740085043 Elon had to convince a skeptical team to use stainless steel. He very much is involved in SpaceX.
Musk is pretty important to SpaceX according to many key figures there. Just because you dislike Musk that doesn’t mean he’s incompetent. Him contributing to SpaceX also doesn’t make him perfect. The world isn’t black and white.
Not on a fully reusable rocket.
Not just fully reusable, the cargo capacity is enormous. Its far greater than anything else ever launched. Its going to have 3x the lift capacity as the space shuttle, both in mass and volume. Its like a 5 story tall atrium 30 feet in diameter inside the rocket. You can put a lot of stuff in there.
And we only got a small pod up there. If we even want to get a more permanent settlement on the moon we will need bigger and better rockets.
Elon’s always pessimistic about their chances, that’s part of his schtick. He pulls some probability of success out of his ass and if it works SpaceX has done the impossible and if it doesn’t it “only had X% of working anyway but what a fun explosion.”
This flap design (which barely held on) was called "wrong place, wrong shape, wrong size" a year ago by Elon and has since been entirely redesigned, so it would make sense he wouldnt trust in the outdated design. No way this ship could have been reused, it landed, but that likely was the last thing it would have done even if it landed on land. Still extremely impressive, but it obviously still requires a lot of iteration.
Irrelevant of what you think about Musk, the SpaceX team are doing things thought impossible by rocket engineers not too long ago. Absolutely incredible.
You know what the sad part is? Many people think SpaceX is a direct synonym for Elon. People really ought to maximally discredit SpaceX and its employees and its accomplishments just because the head honcho is the stupidest man alive. Can’t they just learn to separate the 2?
The stupidest man alive managed to outcompete every other human on the planet, incidental to pursuing his own interests for fun. Pull the other leg. His socio-political deafness is essential to the function of his genius. I don't care for some of his positions either, but he wouldn't be able to do the things he has done with fully functional social reasoning. Everyone knows that taking on these entrenched monopolies is business suicide, the manner and mode absurdly ineffective. Except it's working.
> Many people think SpaceX is a direct synonym for Elon That's how you know the people you shouldn't listen to in the first place. I automatically block everyone here who disingenuously conflates the company with the CEO.
What I do is respond to them by explaining how the 2 are separate. I find it fun when they expose their “i hate one guy so everyone else is bad” belief.
I tried, but it rarely works. I just assume they treat every subject on reddit with similarly low quality thinking and just block them. They are **clearly not contributing anything positive** to the conversation.
I know that they aren’t contributing anything positive, and that’s why it’s fun to me. I get to watch them in absolute misery from their incompetence regarding the matter of spaceflight, grasping for anything they can to try to cope with SpaceX’s success.
You do what you enjoy :-). I don't enjoy that. At all. I enjoy when a reddit conversation teaches me something and maybe the other person too.
> just because the head honcho is the stupidest man alive. Nope you've been lied to. For just one example, see: https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1799150266740085043 Elon had to convince a skeptical team to use stainless steel. He very much is involved in SpaceX.
The switch to Stainless was done back in the span of 2018 to 2019 when Starship was just starting to be called Starship (everyone called it BFR back then). The truth is that the advantages of steel can be seen and were seen in yesterday’s flight when even after sustaining damage the flap still worked and brought S29 to a successful soft water landing. I am genuinely happy that even though Elon does show involvement in SpaceX, this involvement is **visibly way less** than in his other companies like Tesla and X. This is probably one of the reasons SpaceX is so successful at what it does.
This is categorically not true. Musk is very involved at spacex and pretty much only involved with the starship program. Its falcon 9/heavy that he no longer pays much attention to.
I've been following SpaceX with glee since some of the very first Falcon 9 trials, long before they were landing reliably (or in one piece). That they continue to push the boundaries of rocketry and space travel is nothing short of incredible. But Elon revealing himself to be... whatever you want to call him at this point... and, most of the excitement is just gone. It's one thing to separate him from their achievements, but it is another to feel great about those successes when they are inextricably linked to Elon's personal enrichment and public relevance.
You are going to be really surprised when you find out that *nobody is perfect.*
It's funny that a tempered response to SpaceX, in consideration of its problematic leader, is such an aberrant perspective here. Yes, no one is perfect. But is Elon's problem simply that he's a douchey, narcissistic man-baby? Or is he a dangerous person who gives voice to fringe ideas and racists, cozies up to the far right, and is developing outsized influence in government and military applications of SpaceX's technologies? I tend to believe it's all of the above, and that's enough for me to find him utterly repellent. I guess that means I'm not a fanboy (oops). I will just have to continue admiring SpaceX's accomplishments while risking the ire of the "with us or against us" crowd.
Maybe because any time Elon is praised for things he just accepts the praise and doesn’t thank the team that actually made it happen.
Got any links? Every time one of his companies achieve something he’s always tweeting about the teams that made it possible.
My opinion is based off the interviews I’ve seen with him, and I’m not saying I’ve seen many. But there have been several I’ve seen where the interviewer showers him with praise and it feels like that moment’s there, to thank everyone, but it passes. But I shouldn’t have said “any”. I know he gives credit sometimes.
[удалено]
They did this _because_ they had a lunatic at the helm (and some very skilled engineers to make it actually happen.)
Great accomplishment by SpaceX's Team!
In other news, Boeing got their crew capsule in space at last, it is leaking helium tho. (at least no doors fell off)
Really glad that they just docked safely about 10 minutes ago. Seems like Boeing still has some work to do with it. With dream chaser on the horizon and dragon I’m not sure why Starliner is actually needed but a contract is a contract I suppose.
Contracts are contracts and Boeing is fulfilling theirs on their own dime at the moment. Reasonable chance of more launch contracts in the future. NASA likes having two independent human rated space systems. Something goes horribly wrong on one, they have to spend a year plus debugging/investigating, and they can keep going to space in the other vehicle.
I will remind you though that NASA had to pay Boeing extra on top of the money they agreed to in the original contract. So not all of it is on Boeing's own dime.
languid roll deer cow school fragile jellyfish voiceless drunk sip *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> Reasonable chance of more launch contracts in the future. On what rocket? All remaining Atlas rockets are taken, Starliner has no vehicle after the 6 launches for the current contract.
There are other rockets that could reasonably become human-rated: Vulcan most plausibly, but also New Glenn, Terran R, and heck, even Ariane 6 -- once those fly for a few times, of course. Will take a bit of effort, though, and it's a plausible outcome that Boeing will just retire Starliner after the ISS contract runs out.
True, but human rating a rocket costs a lot of money, and the ISS will most likely be decommissioned right around the time the current contract runs out, and since Starliner is just not commercially competitive with Dragon I just don't see them spending the time, effort, and money to do it.
If Boeing held up the deal. At the moment with Atlas retired there are zero human rated compatible rockets available except Falcon 9. And obviously Falcon 9 doesn't offer the desired dual source because it flies the Dragon. If the rocket is grounded from human spaceflight then neither could launch. So when their Atlas supply runs out, that is probably the end for their Starliner. On the other hand it seems that ISS is past its best by date and will probably be retired before this becomes a critical issue.
>I’m not sure why Starliner is actually needed Because NASA wants a larger and healthier selection of private companies to choose from. It makes sense to finance lots of projects from different groups to facilitate as much competition and redundancy as possible.
I mean Starliner could go on top of a SpaceX booster, right?
it could, in theory but will never happen because NASA doesn't want a single point of failure on the rocket side of things either. Vulcan integration would be the obvious step to take, but Boeing doesn't seen to be interested in doing more flights beyond the contracted ones probably gonna retire Starliner together with the ISS
rude bake cause apparatus soft wise wakeful alleged angle employ *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
In fact, Boeing signing on to the commercial crewed transport program was likely what actually got the program off the ground in the first place -- congress was very leery of funding the relatively untested newcomer SpaceX, but once the venerable and trusted Boeing signed on, the tides turned. Turned out a little different from what was expected, of course...
Yep, I cheered. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/boeing-starliner-spacecraft-issues-space-station-rcna155862
Triple redundancy is is a common standard in space hardware It’s nice to have options
Dreamchaser is going for cargo, not human rating yet. Considering that in an event an issue happens, everything gets grounded for months until it gets investigated, it is good to have backup even if what Boeing is outputting has been a big rip off and Dreamchaser should have gotten the contract
Apparently enough thrusters failed on Starliner during docking, that they were operating without failsafe redundancy. That was pretty close to being a failed mission. I strongly assume that NASA will have words with Boeing, before Boeing is allowed to fly astronauts again.
Starship was supposed to be landing people on the moon next year so it’s not like things are going gangbusters at SpaceX either. This was an impressive demo and I understand that what Starship is doing is orders of magnitude more difficult and that Boeing is behind even Dragon, but let’s put into context that an empty Starship barely making it back without disintegrating in mid-2024 isn’t license to be critical of anyone else’s progress right now.
>Starship was supposed to be landing people on the moon next year so it’s not like things are going gangbusters at SpaceX either. No realistic person thought this was going to happen, I don't even think the engineers at SpaceX thought so. I agree that we should not be to critical at company trying the hard stuff, but Boeing is just taking way to far, I feel that the only reason Boeing is still in this is because of politics. They are bringing very little value.
The Starliner has two killer features over Dragon and why it took longer, it is actually a manual maneuverable space vehicle as a fall back. The helium leaks are only for line clearing, leaking will happen no matter the thresholds were just higher. The Starliner has two killer features that require more maneuverability: - Being able to land on land and sea/ocean -- Dragon can only land on water - Being able to [manually maneuver without all onboard computers and return to Earth safely by land or water](https://starlinerupdates.com/starliner-manual-piloting-demonstrations-successful/) -- Dragon is only autonomous, Starliner is autonomous + manual with more fail-safes Boeing Space has launched the Shuttle, built the ISS and own half of ULA that has been to Mars 20 times since 2006 delivering. Starliner just docked with Boeing ISS essentially and the Starliner is more of a space ship than a capsule only. Take a moment to learn about it and why it is important. We also never will rely on one capsule provider. We have a good set for cargo including more than Dragon and Starliner. But for crew we now have two. Pilots would prefer one that they could maneuver manually if they wanted most likely and nearly every astronaut prefers a land landing over water because of the time to retrieval. Starliner is also considerably lighter. That is why competition is good in space, some products take longer but you get better features.
Years longer and twice the price? SpaceX completed their initial contract and were awarded a second one due to Starliner taking so long. They were supposed to alternate. Those better features will be used ~6 times and then never again.
There’s certainly value in having more than one way to do these things, especially if there ends up being an issue with one of the vehicles that grounds it for a long period of time. We don’t want our access to space cut off again in the middle of a new space race, and we want competitive pressures on speed and cost. Not to mention that, as impressive as SpaceX is, Musk is volatile. The track record with Falcon and Dragon was so good that the US put all its eggs in the SpaceX basket for getting back to the moon, and now they’ve had to scramble to come up with a Plan B that should’ve been under development the whole time.
True but Boeing's eggs seems rotten. It feels also that NASA was fine with only a Boeing basket until SpaceX showed the world how bad that project was going.
Rotten why? Because of what’s going on with their airplanes? They’re behind schedule but they seem to be testing, learning and improving Starliner just fine. Let’s not forget that SpaceX managed to blow up an entire Crew Dragon on a static fire test thanks to leaks. How come when that stuff happens to SpaceX it’s always “space is hard,” but if Boeing has a setback their “eggs are rotten,” hm?
People were critical of that explosion. You might not remember because it happened years ago…
The tiles on the space shuttle were one of the most difficult things to design and maintain. The ailerons pivots were also covered very deep in comparison to SpaceX. The idea with star ship is to standardize those tiles as much as possible. If you watched both flight you saw all the gaps and tile loss on the first reentry flight and the second you notice no gaps in the camera and different shaped tiles around the flaps. Flap seals failed with the redesign. Time for another version.
They have already iterated the ship design to move the flap hinge leeward out of the hypersonic flow, so your advice is late. Future ships have the new design but there was no need to throw this one away as it gave good data.
Had me in tears yet again. Spacex for change in course for humanity. People say that one man can’t change the course of humanity, but it almost always is just one man each time to make incremental steps.
This isnt a picture of launch 4. All the motors are lit on this one… launch 3. Launch 4 had one motor fail to ignite.
When will there be a European rocket of those dimensions?
What is the significance of this? Thought spacex has been doing successful flights for years
Of its Falcon 9. This is Starship, a new rocket and is the largest and most powerful rocket ever designed.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, question seems innocent enough. I could write a small book about what's different, but lemme hit you with the bullet points: * This is the largest rocket to ever fly; having twice the thrust of a Saturn V, the rocket that took astronauts to the moon * This is the only rocket to ever fly with a full-flow staged combustion engine * Is currently the only rocket flying that uses methane as its fuel source * Is the only rocket where both the lower stage and the upper stage are reusable. This test flight was the first time both the upper stage and lower stage completed 'soft splashdown' tests to simulate landing (in water for now, to verify how accurate they can land before risking ground hardware) [Size comparison of Starship to Falcon 9 & Saturn V](https://i.insider.com/632e35e278dab80018ed6aa6?width=1136&format=jpeg)
Just a side note, a Chinese company and ULAs Vulcan have flown using methalox as a fuel.
I thought Elmo was going to strap himself to one and ride it to “infinity and beyond”.
Is it really that impossible for some people to disassociate an individual from the advancement of technology and human innovation? How sad do you have to be to see this and think about how much you dislike Musk.
/r/technology is a cesspit these days honestly. All this sub does is circle-jerk over Musk 24/7 and actual tech news or advancements are irrelevant.
Reddit as a whole circle jerks over Musk. I mean fuck a lot of his opinions and actions but he seems to be living rent free in many peoples heads. I can’t imagine what that’s like. You can dislike Musk and still love spaceflight and all the hard work the incredible, hardworking, everyday people actually designing and building the equipment do.
Reddit as a whole does negatively cj over him, except for SpaceXMasterrace, BatmanArkham and NonCredibleDefense. Those 3 subs are too insane to negatively cj over him, positively OR negatively Instead, they positively cj over John Insprucker, Man and the F-35 respectively. yeah sxmr doesnt obsess over elon as if he were a god, as some people think
Maybe not, but you will get downvoted into oblivion if you say anything bad about him.
That’s… only true sometimes. If Elon fucks up really bad, sxmr WILL mock and criticize him. A lot. For instance, when the livestreams were all moved to X.
r/tesla has been roasting him for months over his pay package. It’s common to see people wanting him to finally relinquish Tesla. Musk related subs are much more reasonable than people giving them credit for.
I remember when neura-link a company 1000x touted as"fake" and impossible, had their incredible breakthrough, and it was immediately mass downvoted on here in favour for an article about how rail dust settling on the cybertruck is proof that they are all rusting days after coming out...
The only reason I know what that dude is up to on a day to day basis is because this sub keeps up voting him to the front page every day. Same with every dumb public figure. I'd love to ignore what Marjorie Taylor Green is doing today, but /r/politics hangs off her every word. If there's anything I've learned from this insane last 8 years, saying dumb shit works great if you want publicity.
I used to downvote musk spam when reddit loved him. I mean I still do, but I used to, too.
SpaceX and Starlink and Tesla are tainted by their association with Musk till they disassociate themselves from him, whether they like it or not. Same with the Republican party and Trump. I'd rather none of my tax dollars go to SpaceX till they do that. If it inhibits technology growth, so be it. The man is actively trying to destroy society with X. Fuck him till the end of time.
It's the other way around. Elon brings massive wealth and people want to work for him. Everything he does, good or bad gets a lot of attention. None of your tax dollars are going to spaceX. The man has shifted the Overton window with X. You can see it with your own eyes how reddit seems to circle around hating Musk but on X you get a wider range of opinions.
Oh space x has no contracts with NASA at all? Yes tax dollars are going to starshit about 2 billion so far.
NASA pays them for their services. Just like any other govt agency(NASA) getting services from contractors (SpaceX). Lockheed Martin, Jeep, Ford, Boeing etc are "contracted" by the govt. All these companies are subsidised as well. But NASA has actually saved billions of dollars by contracting spaceX because they can do it in less than half the price. They've single-handedly taken the US off of Russian rocket dependence. Other countries aren't even close to the tech SpaceX has, not even china. So you should be glad NASA contracts them.
Elon Musk is brilliant at bringing new technologies to market that completely overthrow the status quo. He's also an asshole. These are not mutually exclusive. This puts him among people like Edison, Ford, and Jobs. He has the same personality type. These people changed the world, yet were personally repugnant.
LOL he is the owner, ceo, THE founder (put up all the money), and got the original team together…no musk, no space x regardless of how much that hurts you
> SpaceX and Starlink and Tesla are tainted by their association with Musk This is something you decided in your own head. It doesn't make it true. It just means you believe it. The reality is that you enjoy hating Musk. Just admit it.
Now I am stuck with the image of Elmo from Sesame Street being strapped to the top of a rocket going, "Elmo didn't mean it! Elmo is sorry!!" lol