the explosion, which took place at its Boca Chica Starbase facilities
The raptor testing stand at McGregor experienced an anomaly
Well, which is it? I’m going to trust NASASpaceflight over this article and go with it was a McGregor. No where near Starbase. And that means it will likely have no effect on IFT4 as this article says.
edit: Adding to this, the author of this article has no idea what they are talking about.
The Raptor engines that are currently undergoing testing are SpaceX’s Raptor 2 engines
So clearly nothing to do with IFT4, as Ship 29 and Booster 11 are already outfitted with their engines, non of which are Raptor 2s.
On its last flight test, IFT-3, Starship finally reached orbital velocity and it soared around Earth before crashing down into the Indian Ocean. On the next flight, SpaceX aims to perform a reentry burn, allowing Starship to perform a soft landing in the ocean.
IFT3 burned up on reentry, maybe parts of it made it to the ocean, but it was not crashing into the ocean that was the problem. IFT4 does not plan on doing a reentry burn. No one does a reentry burn from orbit. Starship uses a heat shield like every other orbital space craft. They are planning to attempt a landing burn, that is probably what they are talking about.
It waw McGregor. And while the explosion was spectacular, it happened on the test stand, so not much damage was done actually.
The front fell off.
You must be from Reddit. I appreciate good comments like this
What’s with all the snobbery?
Shhhh, they’re winning the Internet by being 3L1T3.
That’s not how you spell l33t. You fucking n00b.
1337, cmon now!
Actually I remember when it was still “elite” and it meant you had access to the warez section of a BBS.
Oh, Warez.
That sure was a long time ago…
Thanks for the memory!
Do you get to the cloud district very often? Oh what am I saying, of course you don’t.
I’d just like to make the point that that is not normal.
Does anyone else think the thumbnail looks like a llama with laser eyes?
Good lord, everyone please learn a tiny bit about spacex and the state of the space industry instead of letting your (justified) hatred of Elon do the typing.
I’d have a lot more sympathy for this comment if people would actually do this in reference to Space Billionaires. I’ve had far too many conversations online and elsewhere where the individual shits on NASA for space industry problems and worships Space Billionaires because [some convoluted “government bad rich entrepreneurs good” reason] and their problems aren’t really problems. I’m not saying you’re part of the billionaire sycophant club, but I’m not against musk’s well deserved criticism as he sacrifices people in his rush, and probably work quality suffers alongside them.
Is it ok to shit on NASA for dumping so much money into developing Starship?
Also the SLS doesn’t seem much better. But at least they’ve been around the moon on the SLS.
Personally I’d rather they work on developing spacecraft that can be launch on Falcon 9 or Falcon 9 Heavies, even if it meant multiple launches and assembling things at the ISS before going to the Moon and onwards. Doing this during the Apollo era was difficult because docking operations weren’t all that reliable and there was no ISS back then so giant rockets was the way to go. But things have changed and dumping insane amounts of money into building massive rockets seems like a waste of money and probably isn’t as safe as using proven rocket systems.
Also the SLS doesn’t seem much better.
Are you joking? The SLS is a pretty major step backward for American spaceflight. If we continue flying the SLS, and make all the launches we plan (spoiler alert, that isn’t going to happen) then the cost per launch could be as low as $2 billion. But more likely we will end the SLS program when it proves to be a never ending money sink, and with so much money put into development, we’ll end up with a per launch cost upwards of $5 billion. Meanwhile, for that price it can only manage to get 95 tons to low Earth orbit.
Compare this to the Saturn V, which could lift more and cost much less, even when adjusted for inflation. The Saturn V cost $185 million, or $1.23 billion adjusting for inflation. And it could put 141 tons into low Earth orbit.
To sum up, this new rocket is much less capable and much more expensive than what we were doing 55 years ago.
You could of course also compare this to what spaceX is doing… Their aim is to make a rocket of similar payload capability 100-150t, but with a per launch cost of about $100 million via reusability. That’s an order of magnitude of improvement, that’s huge.
Then why arent we building Saturn Vs?
That’s actually a really good question. The short answer is that we don’t remember how to. A lot of the techniques used to actually make the parts were poorly documented. That was partly on purpose, everything was top secret because we didn’t want the Russians to know how we were doing it all. And now, all the people who did those jobs have gotten old and left the industry.
Their aim is to make a rocket of similar payload capability 100-150t, but with a per launch cost of about $100 million via reusability.
Elon Musk promises a lot of things, but doesn’t have a good track record on delivering.
SLS has at least been around the moon. I agree that it’s a step backwards, but Starship is two steps backwards. Just seems to be a knock-off of the Space Shuttle (which also proved to be a bad idea) that’s being developed by just blowing shit up. I hope I’m wrong about Starship, it would be awesome it it worked. But it’s the same goes fore the Space Shuttle too.
But more likely we will end the SLS program when it proves to be a never ending money sink, and with so much money put into development, we’ll end up with a per launch cost upwards of $5 billion.
SpaceX has already blown through $5 billion and hasn’t launched anything yet. Well yeah I guess they got it into space briefly… spinning out of control until it burnt up. They haven’t even gotten to the part of testing to make see if the heat tiles that we see peeling off the thing will make it go full Columbia on a regular basis. If it ever works it’ll be a long time before that thing gets man rated.
Like I say, SLS sucks but it’s has a successful launch and has gotten around the Moon. Actually successful not SpaceX “successful”.
SpaceX is currently losing the “bad idea space race” to NASA. The only winners in the Space race will be the billionaires that’ll make a lot of money from making giant rockets that go nowhere.
Elon Musk promises a lot of things, but doesn’t have a good track record on delivering.
SpaceX has a fantastic track record of delivering. So I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Just look at the dragon capsule and compare that to Boeing’s Starliner. They got funding to the exact same thing and they started work around the same time. So far dragon has done 10 cargo missions and 13 crew missions without any major problems. The Starliner has done 1 test mission in which there were major problems (including a parachute that didn’t deploy… yikes), and only recently, years later, 1 crew mission.
Is the SLS a failure? I guess not… but it’s not worth the 30 billion we have already put into it for a technological step backward. Calling it a success is like calling the Concord a success, that vehicle flew too.
But the idea that spaceX is losing the space race is just laughable. They’re clearly dominating the space race. They put the Russian commercial launch program completely out of business (the Russian space program actually named SpaceX as the reason they gave up). These days SpaceX launches more rockets than the rest of the world combined. Through the savings they see with reusability they can undercut all their competition and still make a great profit. The starship promises to do that to a much greater extent. They’re on track to be able to produce these for something in the area of 100 million a piece, and then be able to reuse them up to 100 times. This could bring launch costs down immensely. Can you imagine launching 100 tons to orbit for $10 million? Think of all the things that would suddenly be possible.
SpaceX is essentially two companies. One company uses the Falcon 9 launch system, launches from Cape Canaveral and is very successful. The other company is directed by Elon Musk and launches giant fireworks from Boca Chica.
The Boca Chica SpaceX is burning money and does lame brained shit like not building a proper launch pad just chucking whatever up there. This siphons off money from the Falcon SpaceX which takes away from improving the Falcon 9 launch system, and also siphons off money from NASA.
Given that they’re throwing away money at Boca Chica, other competitors will catch up and overtake the Falcon 9.
Kinda like Tesla not improving quality control and doing stupid shit like the Cyber Truck and allowing competitors to catch up in making sensible EVs.
Musk is an idiot but no one can tell him no at his companies. At least SpaceX was smart enough to send him to Boca Chica to play around so he wouldn’t screw up the part of the business that actually works.
Well, basically that whole post is simply incorrect.
SpaceX is definitely 1 company the whole company has the same CEO (Gwynne Shotwell) who oversees the whole operation. And for what it’s worth, the highly successful falcon 9 definitely was one of those “Lame brained” ideas once. “Landing an orbital class rocket is ****impossible” that was the prevailing wisdom, because it had never been done before. SpaceX is experimenting, figuring out what’s actually possible and redesigning a rocket from the ground up. The falcon 9 was the first phase of redesigning, it proved that you can make a rocket cheaper and you can further optimize a staged combustion cycle rocket engine, more than anyone has in the past, and finally it proved that you can land a booster and reuse it. The starship is phase two of that process, (Reusing the whole thing). They’ve switched from kerosene to methane, a change that will make engines much more reliable for extended use. They’ve figured out how to make very large rocket bodies out of sheet metal. And they’ve figured out how to mass produce the first ever reliable full flow staged combustion engines (That’s a very big deal)! In short, nothing about Starship is “Lame brained”.
The Boca Chica SpaceX is burning money … This siphons off money from the Falcon SpaceX which takes away from improving the Falcon 9 launch system,
The boca chica facility is not taking money away from development of falcon 9, there is no development of falcon 9, it’s done, the design set in stone. Ever since they started ferrying astronauts NASA needs them to stick with a set design. They got that design (called block 3) approved for crew use by NASA and from this point on they’re only allowed to make very minor changes to the rocket.
Musk is an idiot but no one can tell him no at his companies.
I actually agree that Musk has some problems and seriously needs some people who can tell him “no”. He needs that in his companies and he needs that at home, I think he’s got some addictions he needs to deal with before they ruin him.
I’ve been against the space industry/NASA/etc’s bullshit love of Elon’s fucked up project ever since the idiot took over. If they can’t see how he has mismanaged every single thing he’s ever touched and pulled out of every single contract with them because of him, they have serious issues.
Maybe now NASA will come to their senses, kick SpaceX to the curb, and work with someone actually competent.
Please see my other comment in this same thread. It’s not like Tesla or Twitter where they’re clearing slipping and releasing bad product. Look at the actual accomplishments!
As much as we on lemmy might look down on consumers of conservative news, I’m really surprised by how similarly reflexive and uninformed a lot of the comments here are.
So that obliterated launchpad is just normal, then? That empty star ship launch that managed to tumble in space was normal? SpaceX alway cheering and laughing when rockets blow up is normal? SpaceX dominates because they receive our tax dollars. Without that, they’d be dead in the water long time ago
One only has to read any current news about how mismanaged SpaceX is and how many problems they are having to recant this “we love Elon and can’t imagine not having our dicks all the way up his ass” attitude about SpaceX or anything that incompetent, privileged little shit runs.
Cry harder. Without SpaceX the US space industry would be worse than Russia right now. SpaceX launches hundreds of rockets per year and saves NASA millions in launch costs, and can actually launch people into space, unlike Boeing
Relying on a company so unpredictable and full of problems and errors is worse than not going to space at all. Your unnatural love for that laughable idiot Musk is going to get astronauts killed.
SpaceX makes the most reliable rockets in the world https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-has-set-a-record-for-most-consecutive-successes/
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-successful-commercial-rocket-launcher
Keep talking and making a fool of yourself
Also trying to conflate my defense of a rocket company for some sort of love for an oligarch is beyond stupid. Get some help, you need it.
Relying on arstechnica (full of bullshit) and GWR (sensationalistic bullshit) to prove your claim? How deep in Elon’s asshole are you?
I dont see whynanyone’s surprised, anything Elon is touchung is tainted by association. It’s not rocket science.
You’re right, Elon Musk being associated with a company is negative. And what SpaceX has accomplished despite that association is truly impressive.
I think around here most people agree that billionaires don’t earn their billions, they reach that point having benefited from the efforts of thousands of workers. So why don’t we recognize those people’s work? Somehow, SpaceX has managed to avoid the meddling that we see from Musk in relation to Twitter and Tesla.
Before SpaceX the U.S. was reliant on Russia’s soyuz to get us to and from the space station. We didn’t have anything that could launch people into orbit.
Before SpaceX we were launching single use rockets built by companies like United Launch Alliance (ULA), which was founded as a joint venture between defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing. (They’re still around and still for the most part suck)
And before SpaceX the cost to do anything in space was extremely prohibitive. NASA didn’t and still doesn’t really build their own rockets, they contract out, and the contracts had been cost-plus, meaning ULA got an agreed on profit plus expenses. So if the schedule slipped on development or development cost more than expected, they actually make more money. There wasn’t much of a private market in space.
With SpaceX they created re-usable rocket components, re-established a U.S. sourced crew capsule, and using fixed price contracts they reduced the cost of launch by an order of magnitude. And by publishing fixed prices to get into space, they pretty much by themselves kicked off the private space economy. SpaceX launches more frequently than any other company, and more than any nation.
And they did all that with a better safety record than previous programs! I can’t speak to this particular explosion, but SpaceX has taken an approach where they create new designs quickly, and test them quickly with the potential for explosions, before they put humans at risk on a live launch.
Elon Musk didn’t do all that, the people at SpaceX did. And if anything I’m concerned about the point when he gets tired of fucking up twitter and tesla and turns his attention to SpaceX. I’m hoping the national security aspect of the company will mean responsible adults prevent him from interfering.
And before SpaceX the cost to do anything in space was extremely prohibitive.
As opposed to now…
With SpaceX they created re-usable rocket components
Nobody had done that before? Wasn’t the promise that they would do few quick checks, refuel, and send it back up same day?
Before SpaceX the U.S. was reliant on Russia’s soyuz to get us to and from the space station.
Nasa had do use Soyuz because crew dragon was late. SpaceX won the contract then underdelivered a late product. Basically exactly what ULA or Boeing would have done.
Wanna talk about Artemis?
Meaning no disrespect, it’s clear from your response you’re not familiar with space history. And that was my point - a lot of people are jumping in here and making negative comments just because of the Musk association without knowing or caring about the reality.
The space shuttle (the U.S.’ s previous manned “reusable” vehicle) was retired in 2011, and the Crew Dragon was ready in about 2020. NASA was not forced to use Soyuz because of a delay in the Crew Dragon, it was because the Space Shuttle had two previous fatal disasters, was way more expensive than planned, and would be even more expensive to keep running. I didn’t know this until looking at the wikipedia just now, but early safety estimates put the chance of catastrophic failure and death of the crew between 1 in 100 to as low as 1 in 100,000. After those two disasters they re-evaluated and put the risk as high as 1 in 9.
NASA was willing to take a chance on other contracts for commercial vehicles because it had no other options. It awarded contracts both to SpaceX and ULA. The first is doing dozens of uncrewed launches per year and has flown 12 crewed missions. The other is doing like 3 launches per year, has yet to fly Starliner with a crew, and costs more per launch.
The space shuttle vehicle itself was re-usable. The “external tank” was discarded and not re-used. The solid rocket boosters would fall into the ocean, and then would have to be recovered, examined and refurbished. Those tanks/boosters represented a huge portion of the cost. While the space shuttle was slightly more re-usable, other rocket launches would be single use. What SpaceX did that no one else had before was a controlled vertical landing of the booster. In other words, it landed under power and standing up. That’s very difficult, and a game changer since it skipped the recovery step, and they didn’t require the time and cost of examination / refurbishment the way the space shuttle components did.
What is it you want to say about Artemis?
I like to think that Musks obsession with Twitter saved SpaceX. Thankfully he seems happy to just give them money and do the odd walk around tour during milestones.
They really have turned around our space capabilities.
🤡
Man, this is really downplaying the history that was legitimately made by the incredible people at SpaceX. It actually felt to many of us like we had just gone to the Moon for the first time.
Dunno about anyone else but I was freaking out.
Well, this is rocket science.
More like rocket surgery from SpaceX.
Right, and that’s the joke. All that talent and progress is tainted by Elon’s actions.
Elon founded SpaceX in 2002. He said he wanted to build reusable, cost effective space platform where rocket boosters could land themselves and be refurbished with low turn-around times to fly multiple missions.
People laughed at the idea of a rocket that could land itself upright. And after countless tests that resulted in magnificent fiery failures and flops, a private American company is now responsible for launching crew and cargo to the ISS so we don’t have to rely on Russia or ELA alone, and has more recently gone on to develop the largest rocket ever made.
In the 22 years since it’s inception, SpaceX has designed it’s own:
- Rockets
- Engines
- Rocket Propellant
- Satellites and base stations
- Bespoke robust communications network
- Ground support structure (including a moving robotic tower named “Mechanical”)
- Crewed mission vehicle platform
- The world’s biggest fucking rocket
Say whatever you want about his beliefs, his opinions, his shit takes-- point me to another company that has done even half of that in that amount of time, or had nearly as monumental of an impact on the global space industry and America’s access to space in the last two decades.
And if y’all haven’t yet already, do yourselves a favor and look up NASASpaceflight on YouTube, watch their most viewed videos, which should be some of the SpaceX tests. You’ll come to understand why shit blowing up is normal and a good thing with SpaceX: because they prototype and develop iteratively and rapidly, intentionally testing to failure so they know exactly how far from failure their nominal conditions would be. If they did not do this, the platform would not be safe and they would be getting fucked by a camel wearing another camel’s skin for kicks.
Important to point out that a lot of NASA’s problems are probably caused by Congress: their attempts to “save money” by re-using designs, the risk of NASA losing funding if any rocket they make fails, their insistence on having NASA support government military contractors, etc
This is a lot of what is preventing them from taking the rapid prototyping and iterative approach of SpaceX.
Uh huh, totally not the drug addicted scammers fault that he made bullshit claim after bullshit claim, pushing engineers to make reckless decisions, totally not the owners fault.
I’ll grant you that SpaceX has, amongst others, a number of smart engineers, though smart is a relative term if you’re working for elon musk
Hope everyone was okay, the article doesn’t talk about injuries.
If they didn’t think they had a chance of exploding, they wouldn’t be testing them
Personnel are evacuated from McGregor whenever a test is to be performed, just like they are with Starbase.
There is absolutely zero chance anyone got hurt. This isn’t Boeing.
‘Zero chance’ is suspect
I’m confident enough in that to put my money where my mouth is.
SpaceX has been very transparent about their testing procedures and it is established that testing locations are always evacuated for any kind of test, as is required by the FAA. If you really wanna cast doubt on this, then why don’t we put some money on it?
Your response is even more sus. You keep your money, Comrade. Sounds like you need it
oh aren’t you a treat. For a second I almost had you mistaken for one the few Moskal typewriter monkeys who remembered to bring a joke book, but now I’m beginning to worry that you’re own of my those fellow constituents of ours who’s succumbed to the brain rot.
At least we won’t have to worry about you voting for a few more years, judging by the way you act kiddo. Or perhaps you are old enough, but the polling place is too sus for your precious intellect.
Word of advice though, if you’d want any hopes of being employable or perhaps even making IRL friends, ditch whatever this is you think you’re doing with your attitude, it just ain’t working in your favor. While you’re at it, might also help to learn the definition of the word “untenable”-- if you need a visual example, any mirror should do the trick.
Anyway, maybe put down the smartphone and walk a natural trail or visit the library bud. Based on your comments, you owe it to yourself badly. I mean, if you fancy yourself a socialist then why aren’t you taking advantage of the freely available public recreational services that our tax dollars fund to live a better life? Everyone else is, and it makes dealing with this late stage capitalist hellscape just a bit more tolerable.
Holy shit you have a lot of free time! Don’t you have a sticker you should be putting on your car?!!
For now.
Bruh its a TEST STAND TEST STAND this is not the Frist time a engine exploded on a test stand raptor engines in their development phase are supposed to explode. Elon musk has said if something doesn’t explode then you did something wrong
Well, if Musk said it, it must be true. /s
If you’re testing for fail state, sure.
If you’re testing for sustained burn, you fucked up. Time to science and figure up how to unfuck it.
Okay? It was on a test stand. That’s what test stands are for. Isn’t stuff like this almost a weekly occurrence for them?
I don’t know how frequent it is, but the important point is the attitude that test failures can be ok. I don’t know if this one is, but yes there’s a pattern ….
Instead of being so risk averse that you take years and billions extra doing your best to create one of a kind hardware trying be perfect (NASA/Boeing), SpaceX builds many copies, iterate, test frequently, learn from failures. This approach seemed to have worked extremely well for previous rockets, so I’m still cheering them on.
Even just consider this test - the fact that they’re trying to build a rocket engine every week with the goal of automating the process well enough to have high confidence in them, can test it without the rocket, can build a rocket and attach engines later, can use a rocket and replace a failed engine. If this modular approach comes together this is huge!
…what? SpaceX is years behind schedule for delivering crewed space flight to NASA. US tax payers have had to cough up billions of dollars for seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to at least be able to get to space somehow in the meantime.
Iterating and failing is okay, but SpaceX has neither been faster nor cheaper in doing so than NASA’s original moon landing program.
Weekly explosions on a test pad? No. None of the integrated tests have exploded on the pad. (Edit: like this one, which did)
The last starship on the pad was mid March. It made it up, but fell apart during reentry. Before that, IFT 2 was in Nov 23, and the exploded 8 min up. IFT 1 was over a year ago, and that only made it 4 min after lift off.
Like you say, nobody is making this explosion out to be a deadly emergency but it also probably doesn’t inspire confidence when the company fails so much more often than it succeeds. Starship engines have been “unexpectedly” exploding for years.
Fails more often than it succeeds? That’s… not even close to accurate.
They’ve already had more than 50 successful missions this year.
Testing doesn’t count as a failure, it counts as test data.
I don’t think exploding was part of the test. I don’t think being investigated by the FAA in 2020 for failure to listen to warnings about unintended shockwave damage was part of their tests. I don’t think losing an entire rocket to a booster explosion last year was part of the test.
I think their tests are throwing things at the stainless steel wall and hoping it sticks.
Cry harder. SpaceX is single handedly saving the US space industry
Yeah, we’ve got ongoing mars missions and revived transport of facilities even to the moon. Right? We have, right?
Hey, how did the dearMoon mission turn out? We kind of stopped hearing about that, huh.
I tell you what, you’re absolutely right that he helped industry. Not any of the people who work in the industry, mind you.
This is dumb. SpaceX is launching over a hundred times per year. PER YEAR. Dear Moon was always a long term goal for anyone in the science community they understood it will never happen before 2030. The large launch quantity has helped reduce launch costs and has enabled small sat launches aka cubesats. Universities can now launch things to space because the launch costs are so low. So your statement that it hasn’t helped anyone is patently false. You just have a raging boner against SpaceX, but you are incredibly uninformed. You can either continue in your delusion or see that SpaceX is actually good for the industry, universities, knowledge, and technology over all. That is all. Have a good life, or continue being a miserable hater. Whatever
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently announced that Starship’s fourth integrated flight test, IFT-4, could be just days away.
He should really stop predicting things.
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It’s just an opinion.
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NASA successfully launched Artemis 1 first try.
At a greater cost than every starship built to date combined…
Congrats?
I expect they’ll be able to launch 2, perhaps even 3 more Artemis rockets before the program is cancelled and the rocket architecture abandoned due to unreasonable cost.
Where’s your evidence proving exactly how much Starship has cost in total? Or wait, maybe you are just making bullshit up because you have no idea how much it has actually cost them because they don’t disclose that information like NASA does.
SpaceX can likely build and launch a fully expendable version of Starship for about $100 million. Most of that money is in the booster, with its 33 engines. So once Super Heavy becomes reusable, you can probably cut manufacturing costs down to about $30 million per launch.
This means that, within a year or so, SpaceX will have a rocket that costs about $30 million and lifts 100 to 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
Bluntly, this is absurd.
For fun, we could compare that to some existing rockets. NASA’s Space Launch System, for example, can lift up to 95 tons to low-Earth orbit. That’s nearly as much as Starship. But it costs $2.2 billion per launch, plus additional ground systems fees. So it’s almost a factor of 100 times more expensive for less throw weight. Also, the SLS rocket can fly once per year at most.
likely
probably
Where is the “exactly” that I asked about?
In the early days of Starship I was a little bit optimistic. The “move fast and break things” strategy had quickly succeeded when SpaceX was trying to land boosters, so I was hopeful that each exploding Starship was one step closer to a working spacecraft.
But at this point it’s just sad. I don’t see anything resembling progress.
I think the boosters were a “fake it till we make it” thing that luckily worked out. I don’t think Starship will ever make it into space.
That’s a bonkers take. It’s the largest and most powerful rocket in history and it’s already made orbit. The raptor engines are the first full flow staged combustion engines to ever be put into a production rocket (This is a holy grail of rocketry). All estimates suggest that it’s also probably much cheaper to build than any of the other heavy lift rockets. And that was accomplished while also building full reusability into the design…
The work they’ve done is nothing short of astounding. Which makes your take come off as either insane, blind, or biased.
It has not made orbit.
It has done a suborbital flight.
The difference between getting to space and getting to orbit is well, an orbit.
Starship did not achieve the speed needed to maintain an orbit around the earth, if it can do so has not been proven.
Getting something that big off the ground is impressive, but we did it 50 years ago with slide rules and pencils. Getting something off the ground should not be a success for a company that already has an orbital rocket in frequent use. Having 3 vehicles fail to achieve orbit, fail to demonstrate critical features like fuel transfer and engine relight, and fail to re enter the atmosphere while under control, is not a success. I do not buy the SpaceX corporate spin that “everything after clearing the pad is icing on the cake” that’s not good enough for a critical piece of hardware that is supposed to take humans to the moon and land them there.
If ULA can develop a rocket that completes its mission on the first launch, and NASA can do the same, because they take the time to check everything, then why are we giving SpaceX the pass to move fast and break things when it’s clearly not working. They do not have a heavy lift orbital rocket. They have a rocket that can, from all evidence, achieve a suborbital flight while completely empty.
And remember, this is not private money they are burning every time one of these explodes or burns up in the atmosphere. They were given 3 billion American Tax dollars to develop this thing. And now the Government Accountability Office has not even been shown that the Raptor engine is even capable of achieving the mission goals for Artemis. And their test articles are behind schedule and routinely failing in catastrophic ways.
I want to see humans back on the moon in my lifetime. I think we need to go and set up a colony so that we can explore our solar system better and develop technologies for sustaining humanity both off of earth and in the harsh conditions we will face as our climate changes. Anything that threatens the mission of establishing a human presence off of earth needs to be looked at closely and realistically.
Back in the 60’s we knew that the only way to get humans to the moon was to keep the equipment reliable and redundant, anything else was asking for people to die. We seem to have lost that simple insight in recent years, and Starship is the epitome of that hubris. A ridiculously complicated vehicle with a complicated flight plan that has not been shown to work in any capacity. That needs to be pointed out and investigated if for no other reason then it is delaying a major mission.
"Starship did not achieve the speed needed to maintain an orbit around the earth, if it can do so has not been proven. "
Arguing this point makes you seem either uneducated on the launch or just someone shitting on SpaceX because musk. If you were actually familiar with the launch profile you would know starship nearly reached orbital velocities but did not on purpose, so it could reenter the atmosphere and test the heat shield.
So you’d be technically right in your statement, however knowing the full details of the situation makes your take stupid.
While completely empty.
An empty vehicle does not have the same performance as one with cargo.
Ignoring this point make you seem either uneducated on space flight or just someone blinded by the tech bro philosophy of “trust me bro it’ll work next time”
¯_(ツ)_/¯ while starship performance is ass compared to what they want they could still have easily put cargo onboard, you are talking about the most successful and likely profitable spaceflight company in history here you know?
SpaceX gets a lot of credit from space fans because they have proved the haters wrong time and time again, people just like you were saying the exact same garbage about falcon 9 and reusing the booster, now that SpaceX succeeded at that they practically own earth’s entire launch industry and will revolutionize it again with starship.
I’m sure we will get lots of “failures” (expected test vehicle losses) along the way for you to doom on, but at the end of the day SpaceX will be the winners like they always are at the end of the day.
Hey, go boo the actual bad shit Musk is doing. Starship is an amazing feat of human engineering. One that has already made orbit, btw.
Hey, go boo the actual bad shit Musk is doing.
Ok. Boo.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-a-new-space-race-could-be-harming-the-earths-atmosphere
https://www.space.com/rocket-exhaust-pollution-upper-atmosphere
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021EF002612
Sooty exhaust from RP-1 and aluminum oxide particulates from discarded upper stages will not be a problem with Starship.
Starship uses methalox, and the upper stage is designed to be reusable.
And the lower stages?
Also reusable, like Falcon 9.
“move fast and break things”
Sounds like a slogan for one of Stalin’s “Five Year Plans.”
Too bad that Mark Zuckerberg coined it as a motto for Facebook then, huh?
Lol what kind of comeback is that? We know he said that, dumbass, that was the entire point of their reference. Do you like… Not know who Stalin is?
Will every reader know that? Will every reader also know the finer nuances of the 3 downward arrows, one of them referring to Stalin’s authoritarianism? I’m not here to score sick comebacks? 🤷♀️
Huh that’s interesting…
Maybe we can hear directly from them about their views on Stalin:
The Three Arrows were adopted as an official social democrat symbol by the SPD leadership and the Iron Front by June 1932. Iron Front members would carry the symbol on their arm bands. The slogan “neither Stalin’s slaves nor Hitler’s henchmen” was also used by the SPD in connection with the symbol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Arrows#Weimar_Republic
So lol at you falling for some kind of bullshit agitprop just so you can attempt a clever comeback on Lemmy.
I’m using it as a general anti-fascist symbol, and I like the idea of vandalizing swastikas with it.
Im authentically perplexed as to where we disagree and why you’re in “sick dunk” mode. Do you think I’m simping for Stalin? The 3 arrows appeal to me for the same reasons they do you, seems.
Will every reader also know the finer nuances of the 3 downward arrows, one of them referring to Stalin’s authoritarianism?
Yeah it seemed like you were implying (or actually just saying) that one of the arrows refers to Stalin’s authoritarianism. Which is a bad thing, right? Do we agree on that? And I have it as my profile pic… So I dunno how else I was supposed to take your comment?
And to be clear, again, it is not true that one of the arrows refers to Stalin in any way.
Garbage minds must think alike, then.
Question: what the fuck is Starship trying to accomplish over Falcon or Falcon Heavy? It seems like the design is a major regression in every imaginable way and its shimmering body screams another rushed, ugly EM pet project that’s an expensive boondoggle like his ketamine fueled AutoCAD nightmare on wheels.
It’s fueled by LOX which can be made from water, making it suitable for refueling anywhere we can find ice in the solar system.
LOX is liquid oxygen, which is not a fuel, but an oxidizer. Starship is fueled by liquid methane. Methane can not be made from just water, you need a source of carbon. On Mars for example methane could be produced from CO2 in the atmosphere and water from ice.
I thought the ship had been designed to be able to use water only as input to its fuel generation.
The only fuel you can make from water is hydrogen. The RS-25 engines used on the SLS core stage and the Space Shuttle used liquid hydrogen, as did the J-2 engines on the second and third stage of the Saturn V (but not the first stage, which used RP-1 (kerosene) burning F-1 engine)
Starship’s Raptor engines use liquid methane however. There are a bunch of tradeoffs between the different fuels, but generally liquid hydrogen is more difficult and expensive to deal with. With low cost reusability being one of the primary objectives of Starship, liquid methane was chosen as the best option. The fact that it can also be manufactured on Mars was also considered, since CO2 is abundant in Martian atmosphere.
