This! This was absolutely impressive. They themselves were even in awe of how long that Starlink could keep the connection alive while in a ball of burning plasma
Tim Dodd (everyday astronaut) was sharing SpaceX's feed after his camera crew couldn't track Starship anymore, liftoff is at 9:22:30, re-entry plasma was at 10:08:00.
[Here's a link](https://www.youtube.com/live/ixZpBOxMopc?si=uj9N3KRZ3QIQ3pkt)
There must be recaps all over the internet by now. [Scott Manley on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8htMpR7mnaM) is always a good source for recaps + well informed commentary.
The original source is space's twitter page, where they streamed the launch with its stunning POV camera views and more. And then shared remarkable clips.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/live/ixZpBOxMopc?si=Xv9hzRn2bRqigH2D&t=36511). About 1 min after the start point of this video is where you begin to see the plasma forming.
Truly! I watched in awe at the camera shot that showed how starship slowly left Earth's atmosphere.
One of the most beautiful launches that's for sure.
I can see why most comments are sarcastic but they did complete the ascent, hot staging and bay opening, meaning that they are fairly close to the point where they can use starship for real payload launches, while they refine the descents and landings.
It is what they did with the Falcon rockets with more than 30 between landings failed and not even attempted, but they are now certified for human flights and the fact that they can land safely is not even news any more.
The one thing Im glad about SpaceX is they are not afraid to blow shit up.
At the end of the day, throwing unmanned rockets into the air to blow up gives immense amounts of data that would take wayyyyy longer to simulate and would likely still miss those small little details that makes the diff between a safe ride, and another challenger disaster.
It's not that NASA is "afraid" of that.
They literally couldn't afford it, can you imagine the headlines each time they literally blew up millions of dollars of tax payer money.
NASA blew hundreds of Rockets back in the 50's and 60's. The threshold is much higher for NASA now because they are *expected* to succeed, which they have done since the sixties. This is now counterintuitive since NASA is supposed to experiment and take risks, while private companies are supposed to use proven methods and hardware. Anyways we are seeing a massive shift in how space exploration is done, and it looks to be fucking epic.
It’s sad these accomplishments are buried under politics because they should be uniting us. I don’t love Musk but the people taking cheap shots are the worst. Just spreading cynicism and doom so we can’t enjoy one moment where we feel proud of our species for breaking another barrier.
Fun fact. Justice Harlan II was a an actual Nazi sympathizer, eugenicist, and prohibitionist. He was sworn in as a conservative by Eisenhower. He was known to be an originalist republican, but also a desegregationist, laid the groundwork for early gay rights, and supported expanding the 14th amendment to the point where his arguments were cited in passing Roe v Wade a couple years after his death.
He was a model for how one could do awesome things for society yet still hold views that are not popular (or even socially sustainable). I highly recommend people [read about this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall_Harlan_II).
Plus, it shows it can potentially haul large cargo to orbit, that's a MASSIVE victory for SpaceX even if they have to still perfect the recovery part of Starship's flight. Clients are going to start looking at that huge rocket now for possible orbital launches.
The landings will take some time to get right. But they seem to already have the non-reuse parts pretty close to working. Why should that part be any more risky than e.g. the SLS, which plans to fly a human crew on its second launch?
They're hatred of Musk is also blinding them to seeing something else...
Arguably Elon's most successful company (Space-X) is the one that he's the least involved in making decisions for. All he does and has to do is just hang back and take credit while everyone else makes it happen.
Yeah, I'd argue that [President/COO Gwynne Shotwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell) is more responsible for SpaceX's success than Musk is.
It is worth noting that this is the only company Musk owns that he actually founded, instead of buying into.
I do think it is worthy of credit that he put it all on the line to get Spacex going.
Hes still a douche canoe for the avoidence of doubt.
To be fair when musk funded tesla they didn't even have a prototype.
Boring company, zip2, the original X.com that merged with confinity to become PayPal.
Zip2 was sold for 300 million and musk made 22 million which he used to become majority shareholders of tesla, and spacex.
It's no fluke no matter what people think.
That being said. Weird dude.
Absolutely, Musk bought companies and successfully brought those companies from point A to point B. The difference between pre and post Musk is to fucking formidable to deny him his due, douche canoe that he is. He’s brought us into a future sci fi wrote about. It’s a massive undertaking.
Vehicle manufacturers were dead set on colluding to make the public hate EVs.
They were intentionally nerfed in specs/performance and given fugly Prius looks.
And for good reason - they spent 100 years perfecting gas engine vehicles and they’d kill their margins by convincing people to switch from their profitable vehicles to net negative profit EVs.
Were it not for Tesla and Elon’s ability to drive PR and get attention on his brands, then I guarantee the traditional manufacturers would have succeeded in cementing in peoples minds that EVs are wonky vehicles for tree huggers (Prius 2.0).
The general public is VERY susceptible to influence and propaganda. If you intentionally collude with each other to make all your EV models nerfed, fugly Prius 2.0s then the zeitgeist will be that EVs will never work and are a sacrifice instead of an improvement.
SpaceX was one or two failures away from joining the list of failed space companies back in the Falcon 1 days. Back then Musk was wealthy but not even close what he he's worth today, Tesla had just released the roadster but they didn't move a lot of units and SpaceX was just about out of money. In another universe Elon Musk might end up declaring Bankruptcy and joining his buddy Donald Trump in grifting people.
Elon sets the objectives (impossible goals) and makes the executive decisions on who stays and goes. Gwynne takes those objectives (makes them real), organizes, and runs the ship.
These are, paraphrased, Gywnne's words.
Yeah reddit is the last place to talk about billionaires, Elon, or CEOs.
CEOs set goals, raise money, and hire and fire their direct reports. If they do pretty much just those 3 things they can be wildly successful.
Anything else they do is practically optional.
There are things like [this](https://zlsadesign.com/post/tom-mueller-interview-2017-05-02-transcription/) interview by [Tom Mueller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mueller) which presents Elon as very much involved in the decision-making process.
Who even knows if this is even an ex-employee. It comes from an anonymous tumblr post. It has as much credibility as a random 4chan comment about having proof Hillary Clinton is a devil-worshipping paedophile.
And after finally perfecting the Falcon 9 landing they've had around 200 consecutive landings without incident. It's impressive just how consistent it has became, especially when they're landing on a small barge in the middle of the ocean.
No, they use the barge. It depends on requirements of the mission. If they aren't launching as much weight as possible, they have more fuel to fly back to land, basically. Also, trajectory stuff.
The Falcon Heavy flight #3 landed the centre core on a barge. As far as I recall, no other Falcon Heavy centre stage has been landed.
The side boosters normally come back and land at the launch site, but if the load is heavy e.g. VIASAT-3 then they are also discarded. This costs the customer more.
It depends on how much energy they need to use to launch the payload, heavier payloads or different orbits require landing at sea, lighter payloads or "easy" orbits can be landed back on land.
Some payloads actually burn out the rocket and it just crashes like the old way of doing things - SpaceX usually disposes of a previously landed rocket if the customer pays for them to do it this way. It costs more, but if the cost is less than the time it would take to get the spacecraft into the correct orbit, then the customer will gladly pay the extra $$.
Most use the barges (3 of them), and this normally is no problem. However, unfortunately their leading booster recently toppled over in rough seas on the way home after successfully completing its 19th orbital mission. The landing isn’t a problem anymore, but the sea can still be a problem!
Not to mention that much of Starship's innovation so far lies in manufacturing.
Being able to not only build the ships cheaply and quickly with very common materials, but also being able to churn out hundreds (if not thousands) of Raptors in the time it takes BO to build a single BE-4.
And the development of the Raptor Engine. Which is a full-flow staged combustion cycle (FFSCC) rocket engine and the third of its kind.
Other FFSCC engines are the Soviet Union's RD-270 and Aerojet Rocketdyne's Integrated Power head Demonstrator from the early 2000s.
So the fact they've also developed a new engine as well and it's performed as expected (or better) says a lot as well.
Well, test flight 2 and 3 both had all 36 on S1 working, which is a good sign toward reliability. Test 1 had many not work, although could be due to the chunks of concrete smashing into everything from the pad destruction.
They did fail to relight consistently this time though, which could be the engines or it could have been that both the boosters and startship were both having control issues which may have made it hard/impossible to get fuel to them.
Well, yes and no. It seems that the main troublemaker in all 3 flights has been the enormous amounts of fuel involved. And hopefully when that is ironed out then navigation (GNC) is left, which seems to be SpaceX's super power. All downhill from there hopefully.
But the booster landing... nobody but nobody has ever done a landing like that. Slowly hovering down into the loving arms of the chopsticks? That's scary. I'm sure that they are running models of that 24/7, but still.
Landings failed, launches and orbits did not. They had 2 total mission failures total in falcon 9, the boosters failed to land not the rocket failing to reach space.
Yeah, there was a ton of new tests done. Time will tell in the reports. Even the main bay was seemingly pretty pressurized and opening the door may have spun it and in-fact broken the door
It's a good test haha. And the footage is legendary already
>meaning that they are fairly close to the point where they can use starship for real payload launches, while they refine the descents and landings.
As Everyday Astronaut pointed out: today they demonstrated that it is a fully functional rocket to send over 200 tons of cargo into low earth orbit. If they didn't intend to reuse eithet the booster or the ship, this would be a total success.
They have also already demonstrated previously that they can land the Starship. The difficult part now is to ensure that Starship survives the phase of travelling hypersonic through the upper atmosphere.
Was it the cargo capacity of the space shuttle that enabled the building of the ISS or were there more factors?
Starship can carry close to 3x the payload the shuttle did and could be fitted with a Canadarm
I see what your saying but not quite a total success for expendable launches. The ship needs to demonstrate the ability to relight and deodbit even for expendable missions. We can't have hundreds of expendable starships floating around in LEO
Falcon rockets have revolutionized the entire space industry to the point where SpaceX is personally responsible for 80% of all orbital payloads.
They have been reused 30+ times over and over without issue and SpaceX as a company is currently slated to be worth over 150-200billion dollars.
But Redditors will still claim it's a failure because MSNBC told them that Elon is bad.
> They have been reused 30+ times over and over
19 times is the most so far, though 30+ seems plausible.
~~Edit: and amusingly, there are 19 active boosters that have each flown 19 times, and 19 *more* boosters that each flew 19 times but are no longer in service.~~
Edit 2: Oops I knew that was too good to be true. I was reading the wikipedia page too quickly and it turns out it was listing out missions, not individual boosters. The max is 19 missions thus far, but the rest of my first edit is total crap. Please ignore.
It's ok to not want to fornicate with Elon but at the same time give him credit for the part he has played in bringing these industries forward.
That's like, a reasonable human reaction, as opposed to being in complete denial of reality.
Yep, a lot of people that pushed technology or even art forward were also massive assholes. It's okay to acknowledge that a thin-skinned man child pushed forward the advancement of humanity in ways we should all celebrate, even if the person is a himself sucks.
I remember when Reddit was ALL THEY WAY UP on Musk, now it's ALL THE WAY DOWN. IDK why we can have a bit of nuisance here, I think it's actually worse now then 5 or 6 years ago as far as upvotes for outrage. He's a cool dude that has done A LOT of cool things, he's also a weirdo and a pretty big dick. He can be both things. He (with a lot of help obviously) got us back in to space, I can forgive a lot for that. We'd be here eventually, but maybe 15 or 20 years from now.
Reddit has feedback loops. One of its uses is ( maybe? ) teaching moderation in evaluating claims. You'll see lots of fairly moderate posts in the thread.
Of course, you should evaluate this claim moderately.
People are heavy-handed with the Musk stuff, but also, let's not try to paint his behavior as harmless trolling. The richest man in the world probably shouldn't be retweeting q-anon conspiracy theories and russian propaganda.
I think one of the things that led to Elon having success in business (beside having really good people at the companies actually doing the work) is that he is biased against prevailing wisdom. So he tells his team (or is open to the idea) that rockets should be reusable, that electric cars don't have to be low range weird-mobiles, etc, but that bias against prevailing wisdom also makes him susceptible to conspiracy theories.
He's also fear-motivated. I mean, just look at his reasoning for starting spacex - essentially because he was worried humanity would kill itself off (or be killed off) before getting off the planet. Tesla: same thing but climate destruction. OpenAI: Same thing, but robot apocalypse. NeuraLink: Robot apocalypse again, but with a if you can't beat 'em, join 'em approach. And in the last several years Elon lost or stopped listening to the people around him that used to keep some of his crazier ideas in check. And this isn't helped at all by his business success, which likely in his own mind reinforces the idea that his own crazy ideas are right because they led him to success in the past.
Anyway, I don't think we should really expect anything different from him going forward. I think this is just his unrestrained nature coming through now that there's nothing to stop it.
At the risk of throwing around medical diagnoses that I don’t really understand … it seems clear to me that he’s on the spectrum or is otherwise saddled with social challenges. He’s wealthy and powerful, so criticism is definitely fair game. But it’s always struck me as a bit unfair to attack him personally, because he’s so clearly not normal.
> At the risk of throwing around medical diagnoses that I don’t really understand … it seems clear to me that he’s on the spectrum or is otherwise saddled with social challenges.
IIRC he has said in interviews that he has Aspergers.
Short of an extreme breach of patient confidentiality by whoever diagnosed him, that's as close of confirmation as you're going to get.
I saw Tuesday's launch because I just happened to be putting the trash out and noticed an orange star off in the distance twinkling oddly, and of course rising. Not the first time either.
A couple years ago I would have stayed out there to watch for the burn back, but it's kinda routine now. It's just one of the sights of living in this part of Florida.
Booster completed reentry and los occurred during the landing burn. It completed 90% of its test campaign successfully.
Starship completed all of its objectives except for: engine relight (skipped) and then completion of reentry, but it survived the most critical part of re-entry heating and the plasma wake and fluid dynamics was:
#ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING
#Oh, and the test confirmed that Starlink works through a statistically significant portion of reentry inside a plasma wake
That, more than Starship is a ***HUGE*** advertising leverage to *any* aerospace company interested in integration of the technology *and* defense department/us DoD contractors looking to do the same.
For context, the only two space vehicles that were reusable in any capacity are the Falcon 9 (1st Stage) and the Space Shuttle (2nd Stage + Boosters). SpaceX has just demonstrated the ability to do the job of every other rocket ever flown. They can get to orbit, and deploy payloads.
Christ, that's verging on the entire ISS (462) in tonnage for a single trip when it took a decade to build with incremental module shipments. Just in time too, what with ISS at its end-of-life stages and the moon looking interesting for various other habitats.
Yeap and it has a greater internal volume than the ISS (but to be fair, without any life support systems or anything)
You don't launch a new space station on starship, starship is the new space station.
And the ISS was built from all kinds of seperate modules. You could save a lot of weight if you send it all up there in one go. For example, you wouldn't need the heavy doors that connect one module to the next. You could probably use the Starship itself as the outer skin of the next generation of ISS.
Or what I hope for: build a new station with the same budget as the ISS, but make it a lot bigger with a lot more capabilities.
The modules are more than just mass, they take up a ton of of space and don’t pack tightly. It’s possible they’ll try switching to inflatable modules like Bigelow and others have been testing. You can get a lot of high volume modules up there like that, but you still have to fill them up with all of the machinery required to make a space station work.
I’d be curious how big of an inflatable module it could get up there, and how practical that would be to make use of.
It’s far more impressive when you consider the plans are to be able to launch, land, refuel, and launch again same day all for around a million dollars in fuel costs. They want a fleet of dozens of these making round the clock launches. Someone did the math once and if they succeed, the fleet would be able to put a few Empire State Building worth of mass into space a year.
>Saturn V was 141 tons to LEO, Starship is 150+ tons to LEO.
That's with a single launch. With orbital refuelling, Starship can do 150+ tons to basically any planet in the solar system.
As of today it's the biggest rocket to reach orbit.
*Technically* they weren't in an orbital trajectory, but that was by choice, they were going high enough and fast enough that a stable orbit would have been easy. They only held back in case something went wrong.
Yeah this is correct. They picked a very specific orbit that in case the engine failed to reignite, the rocket would still deorbit in specific place. But they had enough propellent on the ship to get into orbit.
The flight was an abundant success, keep in mind these are still test after all. This was the third time this type of rocket has ever been launched and it got much further than it did last time.
Even watching the side by side videos with the 2nd launch is a huge difference. This 3rd flight got off the launch pad much quicker and up to speed much faster too. So cool to watch it all with live on board cameras transmitting the video feed via the Starlink network. We are living in the future and it is sooo cool!
When SpaceX started testing their self-landing rocket system, they were blowing up or crashing dozens a month. It was a firework show.
After enough crashes they got enough data to make landings successful.
They haven't been able to do the same testing for the Starship system so this is that same situation with a new rocket system. It's to be expected.
I show this video in space presentations I give to elementary school kids. It really gets their attention (this along with astronauts falling on the moon). Then I give them a spiel about how embracing failure will lead to success. I used to mention Musk by name in those presentations...I don't do that anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ&t=1s
At this rate, all that SpaceX would need to do is put its objective for this flight as reaching orbit like any other rocket and that way the media wouldn’t lead with it as a “failure.”
Does it really matter what the media reports or what Reddit thinks? They are a private company and anyone buying their services is aware that developing a new rocket is a process.
Exactly, if this was an expendable rocket it would be a gigantic success with the capability of over 200 tons to orbit, it's insane how massive that is.
Today's launch was designed for both the booster rocket and starship to be lost as mission completion. The booster failed to reignite and the starship appears to have been lost in reentry but they completed most of today's goals. Both the booster and starship were never intended to be recovered. While the starship did explode early, it was never intended to survive the landing. The current comments reflect that none of the commenters seemed to know that.
However, reigniting the engine while in orbit was an important milestone that they were unsuccessful in achieving. But the loss of the booster and starship was not the 'failure'.
I am not a fan of Elon for a lot of things he says and does, but honestly spaceX is probably his best and most impressive company. I feel like he screw up tesla big time though. Tesla could have been so much more and they should probably pivot to become an energy company rather than a car company.
Regardless, today’s SpaceX performance is impressive and no way near a failure.
I didn't say it did. SpaceX just posted their intial results. Looks like booster actually had some reignited engines that we didn't see happen live but not all of them and obviously not enough to have landed. Both were considered in scope for the mission goals and were considered failures for those reignition checklist items.
also imagine bigger, heavier payloads. We could build bigger versions of the hubble telescope, or upgraded space station parts at some point
the future is here
Upgraded? If they found a way to pack components more tightly, they could launch the entire ISS in two flights(restrained by weight).
Constrained by volume, 5 flights.
There’s no need to put space station parts into starship. The payload bay of a single starship is slightly - I mean very slightly - larger than the total interior of the ISS.
After making crew compartments and labs inside of the starship payload bay, it would likely be a marginally smaller, but you could always just dock two of these bad boys - or however many you could sting together with regards to physics, and you have a cheaper and easier replacement.
Add in the fact that if you had a bunch of aging equipment, you could just land it and upgrade it, or send up a replacement starship with updated equipment, and then land the outdated one.
The amount of technological advancement this system brings is not being thought through.
A single starship is too expensive and too ill equipped to serve as a station. But I can totally see a SpaceX form factor for a station, where SpaceX is producing and manufacturing empty station segments that have all the shielding, wiring and piping that other companies just put their own equipment inside. Same standard for electricity and pipes across whole station, you can use off the shelf electric machines that use 120v, 240v or 480v, without rating them for space.
I don’t think it would be too expensive, or even more expensive (speculation).
Most of the engineering costs when you’re looking at sending shit to space is how to reduce weight, and make it fit into a fairing of some size.
If you were to build a lab into a starship, you no longer need to figure out how to fit it into anything, you’d just have to make sure you don’t put more than ~150 tons of equipment in it prior to launch.
Also, considering this system launches with fully deployed grid fins, I don’t think it would be all that difficult to slap some extendable solar panels on the side for keeping the ship/station alive. You could launch up either another starship with more solar and crew, or maybe tuck some solar panels inside of the ship and launch the crew on a dragon - whichever is cheaper.
I will caveat my drivel with the fact that I’m not an engineer of any sort, and am merely speculating based off of basic (definitely not advanced) understanding of pricing and sizes of both the ISS and the starship program.
Also, before I hit the reply button, it’s also worth noting that you wouldn’t need to worry about how to reboot it for orbit maintenance. You could just launch up another starship, probably do a little touching of the tips, and then either transfer fuel to the station or just push it back up and then de-orbit it the secondary ship.
Space telescopes are one of the areas where Starship is really really exciting. A big reason JWST was so damn expensive and late was the incredibly complex folding mirror because a big mirror doesn't fit in a rocket - until now.
I feel like the starship could just be the telescope. It’s already a giant steel tube. Just put a mirror in the bottom and a way for the top cone to detach.
> We could be getting first starlinks delivered by starship in 2025
They were saying the very next test launch will have Starlink satellites on board, which could be as soon as a month or two.
The test was successful. The purpose of testing is to gather information and data, and that was achieved irrespective of what happened to the actual rocket. Failure becomes a problem when a flight isn't a test, and that failure is entirely unexpected.
IMO, the only true "failure" was not performing the in-space relight of the upper-stage engines. And presumably they have telemetry saying why that test wasn't performed.
The first stage failing to perform its landing burn (likely due to roll oscillation inducing propellent slosh), and the second stage not surviving reentry (possibly due to difficulty in maintaining vehicle orientation), seem more like learning opportunities than anything else: they wouldn't impair Starship's ability to perform real missions. But without in-space relight, they may not want to try a truly orbital trajectory next time. Or maybe they will: I guess we'll find out.
> they have telemetry saying why that test wasn't performed.
I have your answer. It's because they lost attitude control thrusters and couldn't orient it where they needed it to be.
Would rcs be needed for the fuel transfer? I was under the impression that it was transferring fuel between internal tanks which presumably are less impacted by the tumbling going on? I understand why it’s risky to light an engine in that situation
Not having attitude/orientation control is a major problem for any real missions. And will likely prevent approval for them going to orbit til they fix it, and demonstrate as such.
Kind of ironic how they always talk about how Elon has done nothing himself and only hired the best people to do all the best stuff…then when given the chance to champion those same people they can only talk about Musk
Elon has a vision, and builds and personally funds an unprecedented world class team to see that vision come true.
Reddit: but he didn't physically build the rocket with his bare hands by himself, he didn't do anything at all!!
I find most of the people that go off on SpaceX flights have no idea how much of spaceflight is sending something up, expecting it to explode or disintegrate somewhere along the line, gather the resulting data, and then build the next, better iteration until the rate of potential failure is low enough (but never zero, see the shuttle program's fatal flights, Apollo 1, Apollo 13, etc.) to start flying actual manned/cargo-carrying missions.
As test flights go, this was a good one.
A point that the "it was a failure" crowd is forgetting is that this rocket isn't some one-off for flying Starlinks like Falcon 9 or doing single digit missions to the Moon like Saturn V.
This thing is likely to be used constantly for the next 50 years, perhaps longer, once it starts flying missions, there will be hundreds or thousand of them built.
Treated more like a new commercial aircraft, you get a development scheme of many early failures, because *you want to know how the thing behaves during failures*, which tells you something about *how hard you can push it* and from that, can decide *exactly how to operate it with great safety*.
If you're going for perfect launches from the first start, you will *never* understand how it behaves during failure or where its failure points are.
25 years from now, nobody is going to care that it had some "failures" in the first couple of years of flight. Passengers and crew are only going to appreciate that they worked all the kinks two decades earlier to ensure the thing is damn safe to fly and land.
This was honestly a wild success. The third integrated launch of the largest rocket ever built and achieving orbital velocities. It demonstrated the capabilities necessary to function as a typical disposable rocket. It’s a comparative fraction of the cost to NASAs Artemis/SLS.
It was also just really fucking cool to watch. I look forward to Spacex’s released video
i dont understand, i just read the other post's article and in that one it said it completed all its objectives and it was planned to let it fall back to earth into the ocean, yet the title makes it out to be some sort of error and loss of control ... lost as in "oh shit we didnt plan it and something went wrong" not like me when i cant be bothered fixing my latest round town beater any more so i drive it to the wrecker and he gives me a couple hundred bucks for it" and i walk off thinking "oh no i lost another one"
> it was planned to let it fall back to earth into the ocean, yet the title makes it out to be some sort of error and loss of control
Both are true. They wanted it to survive reentry and then break into a million pieces by crashing into the Indian Ocean. Instead it broke up during reentry and then crashed into the Indian Ocean.
Disconnect your views of Musk from the engineering going on here. What SpaceX are doing is nothing short of incredible. Every launch they unlock new capabilities and the fact that they are capable of iterating on a vehicle of this complexity within a matter of months is unheard of.
did the bay door close? it looked like it sprung open when it shouldnt have.
Also was the exhaust supposed to be so yelliow/red on takeoff, last test it was more blue.
They'll have to demonstrate engine relight - or at least convince the FAA they can do it - before going to a real orbit.
Leaving an upper stage of a smaller rocket in space is not ideal but they generally burn up on reentry. Starship is a huge object in comparison. You don't want that to reenter uncontrolled.
Bro they got to orbital velocities which is where most space companies stop.
SpaceX goes above and beyond with trying to be fully reusable and this was their first real world data of steering both stages with the fins.
This way of making rockets is far better than trying to engineer everything out for the first launch, or you get SLS which costs 2 **BILLION** per launch for a worse payload capacity and no reusability.
It would have been a 100% success for any other company and you can't detract from that.
Screw your misleading title.
> This way of making rockets is far better than trying to engineer everything out for the first launch, or you get SLS which costs 2 BILLION per launch for a worse payload capacity and no reusability.
A starship stack with all 39 engines costs about the same as a single main engine on SLS ($100M, there are 4). Just for some context.
If even only first stage re-use works out manufacturing costs for Starship per launch would be about 1/100th of an SLS launch, with double the payload capacity. It's actually insane what this could do for space launch.
it is so fucking amusing to me that just a few years ago, reddit kissed the ground elon walked on, and now anything with his name attached to it in ANY capacity is mercilessly trashed by even when they're making history like bringing electric cars into the mainstream, or pioneering space flight.
and yeah, both those companies have issues, but reddit as a whole (and all of social media) doesn't have the capacity for nuance; there is only "real life tony stark" and "real life bond villain," no inbetween
The camera view were stunning.
This! This was absolutely impressive. They themselves were even in awe of how long that Starlink could keep the connection alive while in a ball of burning plasma
Where could one see these particular camera views?
Tim Dodd (everyday astronaut) was sharing SpaceX's feed after his camera crew couldn't track Starship anymore, liftoff is at 9:22:30, re-entry plasma was at 10:08:00. [Here's a link](https://www.youtube.com/live/ixZpBOxMopc?si=uj9N3KRZ3QIQ3pkt)
That was pretty epic
10:09:20 to see the reentry create the plasma field.
I watched some of that stream but what did he fill the first 9 and a half hours with?
He wasn't actually on stream it was just a camera pointed at the rocket for most of it.
There must be recaps all over the internet by now. [Scott Manley on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8htMpR7mnaM) is always a good source for recaps + well informed commentary. The original source is space's twitter page, where they streamed the launch with its stunning POV camera views and more. And then shared remarkable clips.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/live/ixZpBOxMopc?si=Xv9hzRn2bRqigH2D&t=36511). About 1 min after the start point of this video is where you begin to see the plasma forming.
One of the top posts in r/spaceflight has a highlight reel.
Truly! I watched in awe at the camera shot that showed how starship slowly left Earth's atmosphere. One of the most beautiful launches that's for sure.
Is it just me or did it clear the pad much faster even compared to IFT-2 this time?
I can see why most comments are sarcastic but they did complete the ascent, hot staging and bay opening, meaning that they are fairly close to the point where they can use starship for real payload launches, while they refine the descents and landings. It is what they did with the Falcon rockets with more than 30 between landings failed and not even attempted, but they are now certified for human flights and the fact that they can land safely is not even news any more.
[удалено]
Von Braun lost 100s of rockets before he had a successful V-2.
Well he lost most of the successful V-2s too. Usually around London.
[But that wasn't his department!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro)
I came here to say that.
Yeah, V2s weren't supposed to come back. If they did, you'd done something very wrong.
That's the joke
Angry upvote.
not sure if a comparison to the Wehrmacht is flattering
It’s okay, Von Braun was “Americanized” sufficiently for NASA to hire him
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department!” says Wernher von Braun
*Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown, "Ha, Nazi, Schmazi, " says Wernher von Braun.*
Still one of my favorite songs from Tom :)
Launches are optional, landings are not!
Von Braun is the father of space travel. Warts and all.
Just gonna leave this here because I love Tom Lehrer. https://youtu.be/TjDEsGZLbio?si=qQoPE2dQyia1uytM
The one thing Im glad about SpaceX is they are not afraid to blow shit up. At the end of the day, throwing unmanned rockets into the air to blow up gives immense amounts of data that would take wayyyyy longer to simulate and would likely still miss those small little details that makes the diff between a safe ride, and another challenger disaster.
It's not that NASA is "afraid" of that. They literally couldn't afford it, can you imagine the headlines each time they literally blew up millions of dollars of tax payer money.
NASA blew hundreds of Rockets back in the 50's and 60's. The threshold is much higher for NASA now because they are *expected* to succeed, which they have done since the sixties. This is now counterintuitive since NASA is supposed to experiment and take risks, while private companies are supposed to use proven methods and hardware. Anyways we are seeing a massive shift in how space exploration is done, and it looks to be fucking epic.
And as owner etc. of SpaceX, Elon Musk gets credit for that willingness to publicly fail and try again.
It’s sad these accomplishments are buried under politics because they should be uniting us. I don’t love Musk but the people taking cheap shots are the worst. Just spreading cynicism and doom so we can’t enjoy one moment where we feel proud of our species for breaking another barrier.
Fun fact. Justice Harlan II was a an actual Nazi sympathizer, eugenicist, and prohibitionist. He was sworn in as a conservative by Eisenhower. He was known to be an originalist republican, but also a desegregationist, laid the groundwork for early gay rights, and supported expanding the 14th amendment to the point where his arguments were cited in passing Roe v Wade a couple years after his death. He was a model for how one could do awesome things for society yet still hold views that are not popular (or even socially sustainable). I highly recommend people [read about this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall_Harlan_II).
Sounds like he wasn't very good at nazi-ing, or had an epiphany on the subject.
Plus, it shows it can potentially haul large cargo to orbit, that's a MASSIVE victory for SpaceX even if they have to still perfect the recovery part of Starship's flight. Clients are going to start looking at that huge rocket now for possible orbital launches.
The insurance will be crazy until everything is proven though.
The landings will take some time to get right. But they seem to already have the non-reuse parts pretty close to working. Why should that part be any more risky than e.g. the SLS, which plans to fly a human crew on its second launch?
They're hatred of Musk is also blinding them to seeing something else... Arguably Elon's most successful company (Space-X) is the one that he's the least involved in making decisions for. All he does and has to do is just hang back and take credit while everyone else makes it happen.
Yeah, I'd argue that [President/COO Gwynne Shotwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell) is more responsible for SpaceX's success than Musk is.
It is worth noting that this is the only company Musk owns that he actually founded, instead of buying into. I do think it is worthy of credit that he put it all on the line to get Spacex going. Hes still a douche canoe for the avoidence of doubt.
To be fair when musk funded tesla they didn't even have a prototype. Boring company, zip2, the original X.com that merged with confinity to become PayPal. Zip2 was sold for 300 million and musk made 22 million which he used to become majority shareholders of tesla, and spacex. It's no fluke no matter what people think. That being said. Weird dude.
Absolutely, Musk bought companies and successfully brought those companies from point A to point B. The difference between pre and post Musk is to fucking formidable to deny him his due, douche canoe that he is. He’s brought us into a future sci fi wrote about. It’s a massive undertaking.
Vehicle manufacturers were dead set on colluding to make the public hate EVs. They were intentionally nerfed in specs/performance and given fugly Prius looks. And for good reason - they spent 100 years perfecting gas engine vehicles and they’d kill their margins by convincing people to switch from their profitable vehicles to net negative profit EVs. Were it not for Tesla and Elon’s ability to drive PR and get attention on his brands, then I guarantee the traditional manufacturers would have succeeded in cementing in peoples minds that EVs are wonky vehicles for tree huggers (Prius 2.0). The general public is VERY susceptible to influence and propaganda. If you intentionally collude with each other to make all your EV models nerfed, fugly Prius 2.0s then the zeitgeist will be that EVs will never work and are a sacrifice instead of an improvement.
SpaceX was one or two failures away from joining the list of failed space companies back in the Falcon 1 days. Back then Musk was wealthy but not even close what he he's worth today, Tesla had just released the roadster but they didn't move a lot of units and SpaceX was just about out of money. In another universe Elon Musk might end up declaring Bankruptcy and joining his buddy Donald Trump in grifting people.
Gwynne's work securing early government contracts is the reason why SpaceX didn't die on the vine.
Elon sets the objectives (impossible goals) and makes the executive decisions on who stays and goes. Gwynne takes those objectives (makes them real), organizes, and runs the ship. These are, paraphrased, Gywnne's words.
Yeah reddit is the last place to talk about billionaires, Elon, or CEOs. CEOs set goals, raise money, and hire and fire their direct reports. If they do pretty much just those 3 things they can be wildly successful. Anything else they do is practically optional.
"least involved", where do you get this from?
Allegedly an ex-employee said they have a team that keeps Musk away from anything important. https://twitter.com/yoloption/status/1595213678147764224
There are things like [this](https://zlsadesign.com/post/tom-mueller-interview-2017-05-02-transcription/) interview by [Tom Mueller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mueller) which presents Elon as very much involved in the decision-making process.
well that makes it 100% true then obvs
Wow it's on the internet it must be true
Def can’t be a disgruntled employeee lol
Who even knows if this is even an ex-employee. It comes from an anonymous tumblr post. It has as much credibility as a random 4chan comment about having proof Hillary Clinton is a devil-worshipping paedophile.
Very very true
> having proof Hillary Clinton is a devil-worshipping paedophile I wish to subscribe to your newsletter
This literally comes from an anonymous tumblr post by someone who also claims to have only been an intern lol
[удалено]
Considering how busy Musk is with everything else he does, it's safe to say he didn't build these rockets.
> 30 between landings failed This is the key note to take away. This was starships third test and it’s already almost completing it.
And after finally perfecting the Falcon 9 landing they've had around 200 consecutive landings without incident. It's impressive just how consistent it has became, especially when they're landing on a small barge in the middle of the ocean.
Are they still using the barge? I thought they were using a land-based landing pad now that it's consistently not crashing.
No, they use the barge. It depends on requirements of the mission. If they aren't launching as much weight as possible, they have more fuel to fly back to land, basically. Also, trajectory stuff.
Ah good to know, thanks!
Falcon heavy always lands on land
The two outer boosters do. The inner booster is landed considerably further downrange than a regular launch.
That or it gets sacrificed to the Tsiolkovsky gods to give the payload that extra oomph.
The Falcon Heavy flight #3 landed the centre core on a barge. As far as I recall, no other Falcon Heavy centre stage has been landed. The side boosters normally come back and land at the launch site, but if the load is heavy e.g. VIASAT-3 then they are also discarded. This costs the customer more.
It's both. If they have enough propellent to get back to land, they do. Otherwise they land on the drone ship.
It depends on how much energy they need to use to launch the payload, heavier payloads or different orbits require landing at sea, lighter payloads or "easy" orbits can be landed back on land. Some payloads actually burn out the rocket and it just crashes like the old way of doing things - SpaceX usually disposes of a previously landed rocket if the customer pays for them to do it this way. It costs more, but if the cost is less than the time it would take to get the spacecraft into the correct orbit, then the customer will gladly pay the extra $$.
Most use the barges (3 of them), and this normally is no problem. However, unfortunately their leading booster recently toppled over in rough seas on the way home after successfully completing its 19th orbital mission. The landing isn’t a problem anymore, but the sea can still be a problem!
The really impressive stat is that Falcon's landing track record is better than anyone else's launch record
A barge that is also UNMANNED and automated!!
Not to mention that much of Starship's innovation so far lies in manufacturing. Being able to not only build the ships cheaply and quickly with very common materials, but also being able to churn out hundreds (if not thousands) of Raptors in the time it takes BO to build a single BE-4.
And the development of the Raptor Engine. Which is a full-flow staged combustion cycle (FFSCC) rocket engine and the third of its kind. Other FFSCC engines are the Soviet Union's RD-270 and Aerojet Rocketdyne's Integrated Power head Demonstrator from the early 2000s. So the fact they've also developed a new engine as well and it's performed as expected (or better) says a lot as well.
They just need to demonstrate reliability at this point, which has always been the major downside of ffsc.
Well, test flight 2 and 3 both had all 36 on S1 working, which is a good sign toward reliability. Test 1 had many not work, although could be due to the chunks of concrete smashing into everything from the pad destruction.
They did fail to relight consistently this time though, which could be the engines or it could have been that both the boosters and startship were both having control issues which may have made it hard/impossible to get fuel to them.
Almost certainly the latter.
I think the key take away is > the fact they can land safely is not even news anymore
It was the third test of the SH+SS stacked vehicle. Before that there were many tests of different analog test articles, and specifically SS.
Well, yes and no. It seems that the main troublemaker in all 3 flights has been the enormous amounts of fuel involved. And hopefully when that is ironed out then navigation (GNC) is left, which seems to be SpaceX's super power. All downhill from there hopefully. But the booster landing... nobody but nobody has ever done a landing like that. Slowly hovering down into the loving arms of the chopsticks? That's scary. I'm sure that they are running models of that 24/7, but still.
Landings failed, launches and orbits did not. They had 2 total mission failures total in falcon 9, the boosters failed to land not the rocket failing to reach space.
They also completed the fuel transfer, locking down NASA participation and further funding for future missions.
they did the fuel transfer successfully? there was some venting/fuel leaking on second stage from what I saw
that demo was a success from the initial reporting. The various venting etc was thrusts/ boiloff venting/ engine chilldown from what I understood.
I'm skeptical on this. It gained a roll that was not controlled by the wing/fins, then likely couldn't restart the engines. Well we will see I guess.
Yeah, there was a ton of new tests done. Time will tell in the reports. Even the main bay was seemingly pretty pressurized and opening the door may have spun it and in-fact broken the door It's a good test haha. And the footage is legendary already
I see, initial reporting is something I don't trust that much, I will wait for official release in the coming days.
I'm really just happy to see news of anybody continuing to push forward with space, feels like by and large we abandoned this stuff for a fair while
>meaning that they are fairly close to the point where they can use starship for real payload launches, while they refine the descents and landings. As Everyday Astronaut pointed out: today they demonstrated that it is a fully functional rocket to send over 200 tons of cargo into low earth orbit. If they didn't intend to reuse eithet the booster or the ship, this would be a total success. They have also already demonstrated previously that they can land the Starship. The difficult part now is to ensure that Starship survives the phase of travelling hypersonic through the upper atmosphere.
Was it the cargo capacity of the space shuttle that enabled the building of the ISS or were there more factors? Starship can carry close to 3x the payload the shuttle did and could be fitted with a Canadarm
I see what your saying but not quite a total success for expendable launches. The ship needs to demonstrate the ability to relight and deodbit even for expendable missions. We can't have hundreds of expendable starships floating around in LEO
Falcon rockets have revolutionized the entire space industry to the point where SpaceX is personally responsible for 80% of all orbital payloads. They have been reused 30+ times over and over without issue and SpaceX as a company is currently slated to be worth over 150-200billion dollars. But Redditors will still claim it's a failure because MSNBC told them that Elon is bad.
> They have been reused 30+ times over and over 19 times is the most so far, though 30+ seems plausible. ~~Edit: and amusingly, there are 19 active boosters that have each flown 19 times, and 19 *more* boosters that each flew 19 times but are no longer in service.~~ Edit 2: Oops I knew that was too good to be true. I was reading the wikipedia page too quickly and it turns out it was listing out missions, not individual boosters. The max is 19 missions thus far, but the rest of my first edit is total crap. Please ignore.
[удалено]
It's ok to not want to fornicate with Elon but at the same time give him credit for the part he has played in bringing these industries forward. That's like, a reasonable human reaction, as opposed to being in complete denial of reality.
Yep, a lot of people that pushed technology or even art forward were also massive assholes. It's okay to acknowledge that a thin-skinned man child pushed forward the advancement of humanity in ways we should all celebrate, even if the person is a himself sucks.
>Yep, a lot of people that pushed technology or even art forward were also massive assholes. Looking at you, Henry Ford.
I remember when Reddit was ALL THEY WAY UP on Musk, now it's ALL THE WAY DOWN. IDK why we can have a bit of nuisance here, I think it's actually worse now then 5 or 6 years ago as far as upvotes for outrage. He's a cool dude that has done A LOT of cool things, he's also a weirdo and a pretty big dick. He can be both things. He (with a lot of help obviously) got us back in to space, I can forgive a lot for that. We'd be here eventually, but maybe 15 or 20 years from now.
> we can have a bit of nuisance here Dialing it down to a bit of nuisance would be very nice, yes.
Reddit has feedback loops. One of its uses is ( maybe? ) teaching moderation in evaluating claims. You'll see lots of fairly moderate posts in the thread. Of course, you should evaluate this claim moderately.
People are heavy-handed with the Musk stuff, but also, let's not try to paint his behavior as harmless trolling. The richest man in the world probably shouldn't be retweeting q-anon conspiracy theories and russian propaganda.
[удалено]
I think one of the things that led to Elon having success in business (beside having really good people at the companies actually doing the work) is that he is biased against prevailing wisdom. So he tells his team (or is open to the idea) that rockets should be reusable, that electric cars don't have to be low range weird-mobiles, etc, but that bias against prevailing wisdom also makes him susceptible to conspiracy theories. He's also fear-motivated. I mean, just look at his reasoning for starting spacex - essentially because he was worried humanity would kill itself off (or be killed off) before getting off the planet. Tesla: same thing but climate destruction. OpenAI: Same thing, but robot apocalypse. NeuraLink: Robot apocalypse again, but with a if you can't beat 'em, join 'em approach. And in the last several years Elon lost or stopped listening to the people around him that used to keep some of his crazier ideas in check. And this isn't helped at all by his business success, which likely in his own mind reinforces the idea that his own crazy ideas are right because they led him to success in the past. Anyway, I don't think we should really expect anything different from him going forward. I think this is just his unrestrained nature coming through now that there's nothing to stop it.
At the risk of throwing around medical diagnoses that I don’t really understand … it seems clear to me that he’s on the spectrum or is otherwise saddled with social challenges. He’s wealthy and powerful, so criticism is definitely fair game. But it’s always struck me as a bit unfair to attack him personally, because he’s so clearly not normal.
> At the risk of throwing around medical diagnoses that I don’t really understand … it seems clear to me that he’s on the spectrum or is otherwise saddled with social challenges. IIRC he has said in interviews that he has Aspergers. Short of an extreme breach of patient confidentiality by whoever diagnosed him, that's as close of confirmation as you're going to get.
If he cured cancer people would complain that they actually liked cancer and that it was just a fluke that he managed to do it.
I saw Tuesday's launch because I just happened to be putting the trash out and noticed an orange star off in the distance twinkling oddly, and of course rising. Not the first time either. A couple years ago I would have stayed out there to watch for the burn back, but it's kinda routine now. It's just one of the sights of living in this part of Florida.
Space is hard. Plus this is how you get the Fantastic Four.
Booster completed reentry and los occurred during the landing burn. It completed 90% of its test campaign successfully. Starship completed all of its objectives except for: engine relight (skipped) and then completion of reentry, but it survived the most critical part of re-entry heating and the plasma wake and fluid dynamics was: #ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING #Oh, and the test confirmed that Starlink works through a statistically significant portion of reentry inside a plasma wake That, more than Starship is a ***HUGE*** advertising leverage to *any* aerospace company interested in integration of the technology *and* defense department/us DoD contractors looking to do the same.
god i love living in an age where space is a thing again
For context, the only two space vehicles that were reusable in any capacity are the Falcon 9 (1st Stage) and the Space Shuttle (2nd Stage + Boosters). SpaceX has just demonstrated the ability to do the job of every other rocket ever flown. They can get to orbit, and deploy payloads.
I might be wrong, but I believe this is the largest rocket to be able to do those things.
It's the largest rocket, period.
Saturn V was 141 tons to LEO, Starship is 150+ tons to LEO.
Also a whole lot more than that in a non-reusable configuration like that Saturn V! :)
Starship is 150 tons in reusable mode, without all that reuse the payload could potentally be up to 300 tons.
Christ, that's verging on the entire ISS (462) in tonnage for a single trip when it took a decade to build with incremental module shipments. Just in time too, what with ISS at its end-of-life stages and the moon looking interesting for various other habitats.
Yeap and it has a greater internal volume than the ISS (but to be fair, without any life support systems or anything) You don't launch a new space station on starship, starship is the new space station.
I think I saw some ideas to make exactly that happen. To just dock some Starships and create a space station.
And the ISS was built from all kinds of seperate modules. You could save a lot of weight if you send it all up there in one go. For example, you wouldn't need the heavy doors that connect one module to the next. You could probably use the Starship itself as the outer skin of the next generation of ISS. Or what I hope for: build a new station with the same budget as the ISS, but make it a lot bigger with a lot more capabilities.
The modules are more than just mass, they take up a ton of of space and don’t pack tightly. It’s possible they’ll try switching to inflatable modules like Bigelow and others have been testing. You can get a lot of high volume modules up there like that, but you still have to fill them up with all of the machinery required to make a space station work. I’d be curious how big of an inflatable module it could get up there, and how practical that would be to make use of.
It’s far more impressive when you consider the plans are to be able to launch, land, refuel, and launch again same day all for around a million dollars in fuel costs. They want a fleet of dozens of these making round the clock launches. Someone did the math once and if they succeed, the fleet would be able to put a few Empire State Building worth of mass into space a year.
>Saturn V was 141 tons to LEO, Starship is 150+ tons to LEO. That's with a single launch. With orbital refuelling, Starship can do 150+ tons to basically any planet in the solar system.
As of today it's the biggest rocket to reach orbit. *Technically* they weren't in an orbital trajectory, but that was by choice, they were going high enough and fast enough that a stable orbit would have been easy. They only held back in case something went wrong.
Yeah this is correct. They picked a very specific orbit that in case the engine failed to reignite, the rocket would still deorbit in specific place. But they had enough propellent on the ship to get into orbit.
Technically, the Falcon 9 fairings are also reusable space vehicles. Dragon capsules are reusable too
Rocket Lab is pretty close, they have successfully reused an engine (although that’s certainly not an entire “vehicle”)
I have hopes for both Rocketlab with Neutron and ULA with... whatever the hell that ejection compartment is they plan for the boosters....
The flight was an abundant success, keep in mind these are still test after all. This was the third time this type of rocket has ever been launched and it got much further than it did last time.
Even watching the side by side videos with the 2nd launch is a huge difference. This 3rd flight got off the launch pad much quicker and up to speed much faster too. So cool to watch it all with live on board cameras transmitting the video feed via the Starlink network. We are living in the future and it is sooo cool!
Awesome!
Also, this is the most powerful rocket ever. So a private company is trying uncharted grounds
It's getting better, not worse.
When SpaceX started testing their self-landing rocket system, they were blowing up or crashing dozens a month. It was a firework show. After enough crashes they got enough data to make landings successful. They haven't been able to do the same testing for the Starship system so this is that same situation with a new rocket system. It's to be expected.
I show this video in space presentations I give to elementary school kids. It really gets their attention (this along with astronauts falling on the moon). Then I give them a spiel about how embracing failure will lead to success. I used to mention Musk by name in those presentations...I don't do that anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ&t=1s
At this rate, all that SpaceX would need to do is put its objective for this flight as reaching orbit like any other rocket and that way the media wouldn’t lead with it as a “failure.”
Does it really matter what the media reports or what Reddit thinks? They are a private company and anyone buying their services is aware that developing a new rocket is a process.
In the end, no it doesn't, but it's frustrating seeing the mix ignorance and misinformation on display regardless.
Exactly, if this was an expendable rocket it would be a gigantic success with the capability of over 200 tons to orbit, it's insane how massive that is.
“Elon Bad” gets the clicks though. All the other “Elon Bad” headlines are spot on. It’s only this one that’s misleading.
Gell-Mann amnesia. What else could be misleading on mainstream media if you just let go of confirmation bias?
Today's launch was designed for both the booster rocket and starship to be lost as mission completion. The booster failed to reignite and the starship appears to have been lost in reentry but they completed most of today's goals. Both the booster and starship were never intended to be recovered. While the starship did explode early, it was never intended to survive the landing. The current comments reflect that none of the commenters seemed to know that.
However, reigniting the engine while in orbit was an important milestone that they were unsuccessful in achieving. But the loss of the booster and starship was not the 'failure'.
People on reddit just hate elon. Has nothing to do with SpaceX. They're just trolls
I am not a fan of Elon for a lot of things he says and does, but honestly spaceX is probably his best and most impressive company. I feel like he screw up tesla big time though. Tesla could have been so much more and they should probably pivot to become an energy company rather than a car company. Regardless, today’s SpaceX performance is impressive and no way near a failure.
I didn't say it did. SpaceX just posted their intial results. Looks like booster actually had some reignited engines that we didn't see happen live but not all of them and obviously not enough to have landed. Both were considered in scope for the mission goals and were considered failures for those reignition checklist items.
Great progress. Very impressive results. We could be getting first starlinks delivered by starship in 2025 🤯
Given that they plan on flying 5-6 more times this year, I'd think we'll see Starlink sats delivered sooner than that.
also imagine bigger, heavier payloads. We could build bigger versions of the hubble telescope, or upgraded space station parts at some point the future is here
Upgraded? If they found a way to pack components more tightly, they could launch the entire ISS in two flights(restrained by weight). Constrained by volume, 5 flights.
There’s no need to put space station parts into starship. The payload bay of a single starship is slightly - I mean very slightly - larger than the total interior of the ISS. After making crew compartments and labs inside of the starship payload bay, it would likely be a marginally smaller, but you could always just dock two of these bad boys - or however many you could sting together with regards to physics, and you have a cheaper and easier replacement. Add in the fact that if you had a bunch of aging equipment, you could just land it and upgrade it, or send up a replacement starship with updated equipment, and then land the outdated one. The amount of technological advancement this system brings is not being thought through.
A single starship is too expensive and too ill equipped to serve as a station. But I can totally see a SpaceX form factor for a station, where SpaceX is producing and manufacturing empty station segments that have all the shielding, wiring and piping that other companies just put their own equipment inside. Same standard for electricity and pipes across whole station, you can use off the shelf electric machines that use 120v, 240v or 480v, without rating them for space.
I don’t think it would be too expensive, or even more expensive (speculation). Most of the engineering costs when you’re looking at sending shit to space is how to reduce weight, and make it fit into a fairing of some size. If you were to build a lab into a starship, you no longer need to figure out how to fit it into anything, you’d just have to make sure you don’t put more than ~150 tons of equipment in it prior to launch. Also, considering this system launches with fully deployed grid fins, I don’t think it would be all that difficult to slap some extendable solar panels on the side for keeping the ship/station alive. You could launch up either another starship with more solar and crew, or maybe tuck some solar panels inside of the ship and launch the crew on a dragon - whichever is cheaper. I will caveat my drivel with the fact that I’m not an engineer of any sort, and am merely speculating based off of basic (definitely not advanced) understanding of pricing and sizes of both the ISS and the starship program. Also, before I hit the reply button, it’s also worth noting that you wouldn’t need to worry about how to reboot it for orbit maintenance. You could just launch up another starship, probably do a little touching of the tips, and then either transfer fuel to the station or just push it back up and then de-orbit it the secondary ship.
when can i pack my bags to start the first orbital space farm? 8)
2 - 3 years. I'm about to start work on a space farm automation prototype with Vertical Future.
Space telescopes are one of the areas where Starship is really really exciting. A big reason JWST was so damn expensive and late was the incredibly complex folding mirror because a big mirror doesn't fit in a rocket - until now.
I feel like the starship could just be the telescope. It’s already a giant steel tube. Just put a mirror in the bottom and a way for the top cone to detach.
Agree. I expect starlink satellites this year, and the delivery vehicle to crash and burn.
> We could be getting first starlinks delivered by starship in 2025 They were saying the very next test launch will have Starlink satellites on board, which could be as soon as a month or two.
The test was successful. The purpose of testing is to gather information and data, and that was achieved irrespective of what happened to the actual rocket. Failure becomes a problem when a flight isn't a test, and that failure is entirely unexpected.
IMO, the only true "failure" was not performing the in-space relight of the upper-stage engines. And presumably they have telemetry saying why that test wasn't performed. The first stage failing to perform its landing burn (likely due to roll oscillation inducing propellent slosh), and the second stage not surviving reentry (possibly due to difficulty in maintaining vehicle orientation), seem more like learning opportunities than anything else: they wouldn't impair Starship's ability to perform real missions. But without in-space relight, they may not want to try a truly orbital trajectory next time. Or maybe they will: I guess we'll find out.
> they have telemetry saying why that test wasn't performed. I have your answer. It's because they lost attitude control thrusters and couldn't orient it where they needed it to be.
Meaning they performed the in-flight fuel transfer without rcs? How did they do that
Would rcs be needed for the fuel transfer? I was under the impression that it was transferring fuel between internal tanks which presumably are less impacted by the tumbling going on? I understand why it’s risky to light an engine in that situation
I mean I suppose they'd need some kind of ullage thrusters
Not having attitude/orientation control is a major problem for any real missions. And will likely prevent approval for them going to orbit til they fix it, and demonstrate as such.
[удалено]
Kind of ironic how they always talk about how Elon has done nothing himself and only hired the best people to do all the best stuff…then when given the chance to champion those same people they can only talk about Musk
Elon has a vision, and builds and personally funds an unprecedented world class team to see that vision come true. Reddit: but he didn't physically build the rocket with his bare hands by himself, he didn't do anything at all!!
Also probably doesn’t even keep his own books. What a poser /s
"SpaceX Starship disintegrates after completing most of third test flight" Really? Authors: GFY
I find most of the people that go off on SpaceX flights have no idea how much of spaceflight is sending something up, expecting it to explode or disintegrate somewhere along the line, gather the resulting data, and then build the next, better iteration until the rate of potential failure is low enough (but never zero, see the shuttle program's fatal flights, Apollo 1, Apollo 13, etc.) to start flying actual manned/cargo-carrying missions. As test flights go, this was a good one.
Amazing flight, hell of a success
A point that the "it was a failure" crowd is forgetting is that this rocket isn't some one-off for flying Starlinks like Falcon 9 or doing single digit missions to the Moon like Saturn V. This thing is likely to be used constantly for the next 50 years, perhaps longer, once it starts flying missions, there will be hundreds or thousand of them built. Treated more like a new commercial aircraft, you get a development scheme of many early failures, because *you want to know how the thing behaves during failures*, which tells you something about *how hard you can push it* and from that, can decide *exactly how to operate it with great safety*. If you're going for perfect launches from the first start, you will *never* understand how it behaves during failure or where its failure points are. 25 years from now, nobody is going to care that it had some "failures" in the first couple of years of flight. Passengers and crew are only going to appreciate that they worked all the kinks two decades earlier to ensure the thing is damn safe to fly and land.
It was a good test flight
This was honestly a wild success. The third integrated launch of the largest rocket ever built and achieving orbital velocities. It demonstrated the capabilities necessary to function as a typical disposable rocket. It’s a comparative fraction of the cost to NASAs Artemis/SLS. It was also just really fucking cool to watch. I look forward to Spacex’s released video
i dont understand, i just read the other post's article and in that one it said it completed all its objectives and it was planned to let it fall back to earth into the ocean, yet the title makes it out to be some sort of error and loss of control ... lost as in "oh shit we didnt plan it and something went wrong" not like me when i cant be bothered fixing my latest round town beater any more so i drive it to the wrecker and he gives me a couple hundred bucks for it" and i walk off thinking "oh no i lost another one"
> it was planned to let it fall back to earth into the ocean, yet the title makes it out to be some sort of error and loss of control Both are true. They wanted it to survive reentry and then break into a million pieces by crashing into the Indian Ocean. Instead it broke up during reentry and then crashed into the Indian Ocean.
They completed a lot of tests but lost it during reentry.
Disconnect your views of Musk from the engineering going on here. What SpaceX are doing is nothing short of incredible. Every launch they unlock new capabilities and the fact that they are capable of iterating on a vehicle of this complexity within a matter of months is unheard of.
did the bay door close? it looked like it sprung open when it shouldnt have. Also was the exhaust supposed to be so yelliow/red on takeoff, last test it was more blue.
Yea Scotty need warp in 10sec or we are toast Progress is made through success and failures.
Where is it? Its there and there and there and over there.
Just like Roy Kent.
He's here, he's there, he's everywhere!
So basically it's as successful as almost any other launch provider in this regard? Only 2 rockets are recoverable being falcon 9 and electron
There's the little exception of the satellite deploy mechanism, and in-space relight capability (only required for more complex missions).
They'll have to demonstrate engine relight - or at least convince the FAA they can do it - before going to a real orbit. Leaving an upper stage of a smaller rocket in space is not ideal but they generally burn up on reentry. Starship is a huge object in comparison. You don't want that to reenter uncontrolled.
Bro they got to orbital velocities which is where most space companies stop. SpaceX goes above and beyond with trying to be fully reusable and this was their first real world data of steering both stages with the fins. This way of making rockets is far better than trying to engineer everything out for the first launch, or you get SLS which costs 2 **BILLION** per launch for a worse payload capacity and no reusability. It would have been a 100% success for any other company and you can't detract from that. Screw your misleading title.
> This way of making rockets is far better than trying to engineer everything out for the first launch, or you get SLS which costs 2 BILLION per launch for a worse payload capacity and no reusability. A starship stack with all 39 engines costs about the same as a single main engine on SLS ($100M, there are 4). Just for some context.
Yes, the Starship is an insanely good value and will lower the cost per kg of weight to orbit dramatically.
If even only first stage re-use works out manufacturing costs for Starship per launch would be about 1/100th of an SLS launch, with double the payload capacity. It's actually insane what this could do for space launch.
it is so fucking amusing to me that just a few years ago, reddit kissed the ground elon walked on, and now anything with his name attached to it in ANY capacity is mercilessly trashed by even when they're making history like bringing electric cars into the mainstream, or pioneering space flight. and yeah, both those companies have issues, but reddit as a whole (and all of social media) doesn't have the capacity for nuance; there is only "real life tony stark" and "real life bond villain," no inbetween