SpaceX’s Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight
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I don't agree with the person you replied with and am heavily pro space exploration (although my personal focus is on the science side I'm also not against human exploration). So I don't mind you necessarily dunking on that specific guy, but I do mind you framing the whole thing in high and mighty platitudes and obnoxious rhetorical questions that preemptively frame any opposition as fundamentally cowardly. I could use almost your exact words to chastise anyone for almost anything, so empty is your argument I could fill it with whatever I want.
Proponents of "space" (science, exploration, business etc.) have a real problem with communication. They're really good at saying things other proponents like ("because we can"?). It's a common deficiency, I have it too and I know it because I've had conversations in real life where I probably sounded more like you than I'd like to admit. But in real life you can't dunk and run, as it were, and you have to listen to the other person ask you questions and think about those answers.
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You’re rather lacking in imagination. Good thing you’re not in charge of anything.
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Humans are not descended from mammals. Humans are mammals.
Also, I hear a hedgehog can be arbitrarily fast - just depending on how hard you toss it.
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I'm trying to figure out what they meant. Humans might be the fastest animal on average under their own power over long distances (our own power or soaring birds might have us beat, but then they're also a little at the whim of air currents and such) because of our wild endurance, efficient cooling, and springy tendons.
Or he just meant because of our vehicles, but you can put an animal in a space capsule too!
Google search
Alaskan sled dogs, camels, ostriches, well-trained horses and pronghorn camels can smoke us in a marathon pretty easily. Well-trained horses can beat us in a marathon but over 100 miles it's only very well trained horses and Alaskan sled dogs. And that's pretty much it. Going back to cooling I bet we can take the huskies in hot weather!
(I think horses have to be trained to manage their energy really carefully...but then again so do we!)
Edit2: pronghorn antelopes. The pronghorn camel does not exist, unfortunately.
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I’ve never heard SpaceX fans ever say that. There are many who despise Elon, should we also be required to despise the achievements of SpaceX and its other employees?
After all I hear from many musk haters who tell me that he has nothing do with its success?
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Yeah, there's fair points in there and I've been coming back to this thread repeatedly trying to get a grip on my own uneasiness with my reply, wondering at why I'm still doing what I did when I posted: resisting the strong impulse to strip it down to the central Munroe quote.
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Yeah just about. It will likely happen this year.
I think they are at least 2 flights away from a stable base then things take off from there. 1 flight to clear all the present issues. Following flight for booster catch, maybe even ship catch. So maybe 3 or more months combined for both flights?
Some list of things left which are not trivial once base established: Payload doors, Solar panels on ship (it needs to last more than 48hours), in flight refuelling, life support, escape module?, human rating, draco integration for HLS? At least 2-3 years probably with Humans rating the most long lead and highest risk of delay.
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The roll is clearly visible in flap views after deploy. We just don't have the video from this later point in the flight yet
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In cladistics, a clade includes all descendents of the founding member. Birds are within the dinosaur clade. And humans are within the mammal clade.
In cladistics, saying that birds are descended from dinosaurs is a roundabout way of saying that they are dinosaurs: members of the dinosaur clade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics
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This was my take as well; that looked like a classic methane flame. It does surprise me a bit that we didn't previously know they planned to change from the ullage/cold gas thrusters used on v2 to these hot gas thrusters. That big a change is usually something the spaceflight community hears about. Even Tim Dodd on the EverydayAstronaut stream seemed taken aback.
Could these new thrusters still be using the ullage gas for fuel and pressurization, or would it make more sense for them to be plumbed into the liquid methane/oxygen?
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I expect these thrusters use pressure-fed gaseous propellants, sourced from dedicated COPVs. That way, you always have assured performance on-demand without having to worry about propellant settling (or lack thereof). Trading lower specific impulse vs. liquid-fed, pump-driven thrusters, in exchange for lowered complexity (and higher reliability) would make sense, IMHO. (With that kind of setup, you also retain RCS capability even in case of a loss of pressure in one or both of the main propellant tanks.)
If my guess above is correct, then for long-endurance craft (like Depot, or HLS), I expect there will be an onboard gasifier and compressor system, to periodically recharge those RCS COPVs from the main propellant tanks.
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Quite aside from the counterarguments which folks have already put forward, you'd better lobby SpaceX about this need to get off the planet in quantity. Because, looking at their own IPO prospectus, the addressable market for that kind of stuff is a rounding error compared to the addressable market for Grok in Space Soonest. Granted, the whole farcical excess is rigged to ensure that Elon retains all control over the company, but his latest comments have been all-in on orbital datacentres too, so I'm not holding my breath for much attention being paid to Mars any time soon.
But, back to the fine article. After reading the article and the more detail oriented comments, I'm getting a 'welcome to the new problems - same as the old problems' vibe from this test. Engine relight tests being scrubbed, engine out problems, engine explosions (as per that Scott Manley video that somebody posted). The heatshield improvements and not yeeting chunks of Stage 0 into the ocean are encouraging though, I guess.
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I was suspicious of that too. But I am surprised they haven't mentioned it yet. That is a pretty big change!
Edit: Upon reflection I am more surprised that we did not yet know about this change. That is a lot of extra piping to run all over the ship. In years past those pipes would have been caught on camera dozens of times before the vehicle was fully built. But with Stafactory and Gigabay blocking our views now, I guess I should not be surprised that such a big change can happen without us knowing in advance.
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TLDR: It is rocket science. The Starship might fail to deliver but you really can't use the same judgement criteria for it compared to other rocket companies.
For better or worse, SpaceX has a different development philosophy than other space transport launchers, choosing to launch a lot of test prototypes to iterate quickly rather than spending a lot of time and money doing testing/simulations on the ground.
It might be better to compare Starship vs SLS in terms of years and money development. The SLS core body is using the same RS-25 engine as the Space Shuttle (built in 1981) and hence it is literally technology from 50 years ago. It is "dependable" but it is a lot less powerful and cost efficient than the new Raptor 3 engine (previously were using a less efficient/powerful more expensive Raptor 2 variant). I mean a single SLS RS-25 engine cost as much as an entire Starship launch ($100M) and the SLS uses four of them that are immediately discarded after use (sunk into the ocean).
Launching 12 starship prototypes cost about $1-2B (which is for basically covered by SpaceX itself as NASA isn't paying for the test launches, just for the capability to launch a production variant in the future), in contrast a single SLS launch costs $2-4B (there have only been two in the 15 years since the SLS program start) plus $3-4B a year in standby cost (the SLS system can't launch more than once per year but NASA has to pay ULA even if they don't launch).
So far the SLS system has cost NASA like $35B (and $3-4B a year over the next 10 years plus $2-4B per launch). While SpaceX spent about $15B of it's own money and is only getting like $4B from NASA if it delivers a rocket that meets NASA's requirements and each launch is like $100-200M.
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What happened with the altitude variations in the earlier phase of the suborbital flight of Starship? At one point early on, the second stage was almost at 170 km, and then only a minute or so later it was down at 143 km. Then, a few minutes later it was again back at or close to 170 km. Was this an actual altitude variation or simply a telemetry error? Or was it expected behaviour? I don’t think I’ve seen that before.
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False equivalences FTW...
The Shuttle would not be accepted today, due to its high LoC probability. NASA has learned that lesson pretty well, by now.
Airliners have plenty of emergency landing and early flight abort modes and options. Starship has none: either both the ascent and landing are 100% successful, or it's a 100% fatality event.
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The Ship lost a big chunk of its thrust (a whole RVac's worth) early in the ascent. To compensate for the lower thrust, it adjusted its trajectory, tilting itself upward so as to better fight gravity during its slower climb. As part of that trajectory adjustment, it gained excessive vertical speed; then it reoriented itself more tangential to Earth's surface for the remainder of the ascent burn. The excess vertical speed carried it to ~170 km altitude by inertia, and then it dropped back to ~140 km while continuing to accelerate horizontally. By the end of the burn, it was on an acceptable suborbital trajectory, which is elliptical with apogee (~190 km altitude) above the southern Atlantic, between the easternmost point of South America, and the western coast of Africa.
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You're going to either retrieve or scuttle any floating hulk, regardless of informational security considerations - it is a danger on the high seas.
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Ah I see. Really appreciate the detailed explanation. I guessed it might have something to do with the non functional vacuum engine but couldn’t see how that would cause it to drop altitude, only that it’d ascend slower. So in essence it sounds like this particular starship had plenty of excess thrust (due to I suppose) having almost no payload mass?
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I really wish Musk would leave poor Iain Banks alone; or at least do some introspection and realise that he’s 100% an Affronter.
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I am a human and a mammal - I am also descended from the same.
Among the many meanings of descend: "To come down, as from a source, original, or stock; to be derived; to proceed by generation or by transmission; to fall or pass by inheritance; as, the beggar may descend from a prince; a crown descends to the heir."
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It was carrying about 40 t worth of payload, in the form of Starlink mass simulators. (Whether to include the mass of the Pez dispenser mechanism as part of the payload, is up to the reader's discretion.)
The maneuver to load up on vertical speed before quickly transitioning to horizontal thrust while allowing the vertical momentum to keep you above the atmosphere long enough to reach orbital velocity, isn't specific to Starship. I've seen it before, on rockets whose upper stage(s) are high on efficiency but low on thrust. For example, Ariane 6 does something like that:
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Ah, that i didn’t know, interesting. But i was rather referring to that despite losing one sixth of its thrust, starship seems to have been able to compensate? Or should we perhaps under that with all vac engines functional, it would’ve gone event higher initially?
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Great progress. I didn't expect such a successful launch on the first attempt. SpaceX has clearly used the time well and I expect more success in the following tests. If the next one goes well, I think we could get an orbital flight the test after that.
Given past issues with Starship, my hunch is that the internal pipework is the cause of the engine failures, not the Raptors themselves. This shouldn't be a major impediment and is relatively easily fixed.
Given past issues with Starship, my hunch is that the internal pipework is the cause of the engine failures, not the Raptors themselves. This shouldn't be a major impediment and is relatively easily fixed.
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Well, it wasn't carrying the full theoretical max load of 100 t. It also wasn't going all the way to full orbit (stopping short at near-orbital velocity, and not performing a circularization/perigee-raising burn). So, it had performance margin to spare - and it needed that margin in order to compensate for the RVac loss.
A normal ascent probably wouldn't have bothered with such a humpback profile (and after all, this profile is harder on the engines, as it requires them to burn longer). But when you need to squeeze every last bit of delta-V out of an underperforming rocket, it seems this humpback profile is the optimal way to go.
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This launch was an achievement for the United States and its engineering prowess, that's simply a fact. I disagree with lots of governments, but I wish the best for the Chinese, Russian, or North Korean people, and cheer on Soyuz launches and China's manned spaceflight program as well. All of those wins in peaceful spaceflight are wins for humanity. I'm certainly not going to complain about Russians or Chinese celebrating their country at these events.
If you're so far gone with your disgust towards current policy that you're willing to root against 350 million people, I don't know what to say. I imagine you can differentiate between benign and malicious policy in other countries. So why is America singled out for such reflexive hatred? If you're so far gone with your disgust towards current policy that you're willing to root against 350 million people, I don't know what to say. Would you also get upset when people cheer on China's HSR by waving Chinese flags? Or do you recognize that's a human achievement that benefits everyone?
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And also to make the vehicle safe. There's no better way of preventing a future explosion due to unburned fuel than to blow it up oneself as soon as possible!
It also depends on what is covered by ITAR. If it's the engines - well, those will survive and will be recoverable from the ocean. The heat shield tiles: plenty of those would survive too, and I expect that they float! There will also be valves, thruster that would also survive.
The flight control compute hardware (I wonder if they're using that BAE Systems rad-hardened processor board?) quite likely is, and destroying those is probably quite high up the list. The software would go up with that.
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Not wrong, but check the second derivative on population. Birth rates are declining everywhere.
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You see, it wasn't an achievement of any single country. It was the achievement of some team of concrete people, not an abstract country. Any Soviet or Chinese space achievements celebrating their country are even more nationalistic.
Reflexive hatred? Singled out the USA? Nope. I am an equal opportunity hater, don't worry!
I don't even cheer my own country and chanting (e.g.) "Germany!!! Germany!!!" when our team scores a goal in UEFA disgusts me in the same way. Chanting the name of the goal scorer or the winning football captain? Sure! No problem with that.
Celebrating peaceful space progress of all of Humanity? Sure, count me in!
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I have never understood why people say that. Any given bird has two parents that are also birds, and is descended from both of them. Therefore they are descended from birds, and as you note, all birds are dinosaurs. Therefore birds are descended from dinosaurs.
The correct formulation of that argument should be something like "birds are not just descended from dinosaurs, they are dinosaurs".
I hope that ends this wander off-topic.
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I got the impression that it was an early trial of a long-term capability. They may be planning ahead for when Starship is crewed, and when aborting to orbit for rescue by another Starship is an option. They may also be remembering when the Space Shuttle's tiles were hit by a chunk of ice, and they could not easily inspect the damage. They would rather not be in that situation again.
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