With Starship Flight 10, SpaceX Prioritized Resilience Over Perfection (yahoo.com) 95
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: SpaceX has long marketed Starship as a fully and rapidly reusable rocket that's designed to deliver thousands of pounds of cargo to Mars and make life multiplanetary. But reusability at scale means a space vehicle that can tolerate mishaps and faults, so that a single failure doesn't spell a mission-ending catastrophe. The 10th test flight on Tuesday evening demonstrated SpaceX's focus on fault tolerance. In a post-flight update, SpaceX said the test stressed "the limits of vehicle capabilities." Understanding these edges will be critical for the company's plans to eventually use Starship to launch Starlink satellites, commercial payloads, and eventually astronauts.
When the massive Starship rocket lifted off on its 10th test flight Tuesday evening, SpaceX did more than achieve new milestones. It purposefully introduced several faults to test the heat shield, propulsion redundancy, and the relighting of its Raptor engine. The heat shield is among the toughest engineering challenges facing SpaceX. As Elon Musk acknowledged on X in May 2024, a reusable orbital return heat shield is the "biggest remaining problem" to 100% rocket reusability. The belly of the upper stage, also called Starship, is covered in thousands of hexagonal ceramic and metallic tiles, which make up the heat shield. Flight 10 was all about learning how much damage the ship can accept and survive when it goes through atmospheric heating. During the tenth test, engineers intentionally removed tiles from some sections of the ship, and experimented with a new type of actively cooled tile, to gather real-world data and refine designs. [...]
Propulsion redundancy was also put to the test. The Super Heavy booster's landing burn configuration appeared to be a rehearsal for engine failure. Engineers intentionally disabled one of the three center Raptor engines during the final phase of the burn and used a backup engine in its place. That was a successful rehearsal for an engine-out event. Finally, SpaceX reported the in-space relight of a Raptor engine, described on the launch broadcast as the second time SpaceX has pulled this off. Reliable engine restarts will be necessary for deep-space missions, propellant transfers, and possibly some payload deployment missions. [...] The next step is translating Flight 10 data into future hardware upgrades to move closer to routine operations and days when, as Musk envisioned, "Starship launches more than 24 times in 24 hours."
When the massive Starship rocket lifted off on its 10th test flight Tuesday evening, SpaceX did more than achieve new milestones. It purposefully introduced several faults to test the heat shield, propulsion redundancy, and the relighting of its Raptor engine. The heat shield is among the toughest engineering challenges facing SpaceX. As Elon Musk acknowledged on X in May 2024, a reusable orbital return heat shield is the "biggest remaining problem" to 100% rocket reusability. The belly of the upper stage, also called Starship, is covered in thousands of hexagonal ceramic and metallic tiles, which make up the heat shield. Flight 10 was all about learning how much damage the ship can accept and survive when it goes through atmospheric heating. During the tenth test, engineers intentionally removed tiles from some sections of the ship, and experimented with a new type of actively cooled tile, to gather real-world data and refine designs. [...]
Propulsion redundancy was also put to the test. The Super Heavy booster's landing burn configuration appeared to be a rehearsal for engine failure. Engineers intentionally disabled one of the three center Raptor engines during the final phase of the burn and used a backup engine in its place. That was a successful rehearsal for an engine-out event. Finally, SpaceX reported the in-space relight of a Raptor engine, described on the launch broadcast as the second time SpaceX has pulled this off. Reliable engine restarts will be necessary for deep-space missions, propellant transfers, and possibly some payload deployment missions. [...] The next step is translating Flight 10 data into future hardware upgrades to move closer to routine operations and days when, as Musk envisioned, "Starship launches more than 24 times in 24 hours."
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jesus, you idiots post this dreck in every goddamn thread. it wasn't even clever the first fuckin' time, it's certainly fucking stupid as hell now
Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:1)
Trolls need to eat too.
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jesus, you idiots post this dreck in every goddamn thread. it wasn't even clever the first fuckin' time, it's certainly fucking stupid as hell now
The worst thing is that the AIs are learning from it.
Where resilience means ... (Score:1, Insightful)
... it actually works (well, still blows up, but who is counting??) and perfection means ... showing that we don't have a firm grasp on the performance aspect.
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It most likely means further reduction of the originally announced features, so that it doesn't blow up as before, which ought to pacify the Chinese Communist investors.
Happens all the time across all industries, actually.
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I find it interesting that it seems like them "deliberately" introducing flaws would make really good cover for "we found all these flaws, but fixing them would slow up the launch date".
take it easy, there... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, you probably put it there for a laugh, but "well, still blows up, but who is counting??" is not actually appropriate. Both the booster and the starship are carrying cryogenic fuel and oxidizers internally, while being red-hot metal structures when they each hovered over the ocean to simulate being caught by the tower - and at that point, there were no explosions. The tests for each stage then concluded and they were dropped into the cold seas (no tower to catch them) no-doubt causing a bunch of internal structural failures and the resultant mixing of liquid methane and LOX in the presence of glowing hot steel. The explosions AFTER THE END OF THE TEST FLIGHT were completely expected. Your complaint about the explosions, after the test was completed, was about as appropriate as complaining that toilet paper is dirty and gets destroyed after you've used it.
It always helps to know what you're looking at before deciding if it was good or bad.
As to the performance question you raised, the folks at SpaceX know what the design target is, and what the current performance is, but the rest of us are not in a position to evaluate it - the flight carried a minimal payload (just enough dummy starlink satellites to test (successfully) the deployment scheme and mechanism) so SpaceX were free to use/discard whatever quantities of methane and LOX and run the engines at whatever mixture ratios and throttle settings they wanted, consistent with the desired trajectory. In the Apollo program, we flew two full unmanned Saturn V stacks (Apollo 4 and Apollo 6) just to LEO, and yet nobody pretended that the failure to use the full potential of the Saturn V on those flights indicated some problem with the design or some shortfall that would hobble the then-future lunar landings.
When leaning-in to the snark, please maintain at least a smidgen of humanity (and humility). Remember: there are a huge number of people pouring buckets of "blood, sweat, and tears" into this program which is trying to do things humanity has never done before. They know what they're doing, to the extent it's possible for ANYBODY to know, and they're far better positioned to know how it's going than any armchair critic with no skin in the game.
Well done, to ALL the folks at SpaceX from the engineers and techs, to the electricians, pipe fitters, welders, concrete folks, janitors, etc - that's one hell of a company and workforce and it's managing to do things all the traditional big defense contractors said could not be done for ten times the price.
Re: take it easy, there... (Score:1, Informative)
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First, they don't care.
Second, why not? The only thing they haven't actually demonstrated is recovering the second stage. Nobody has demonstrated that.
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Good news, it didn't explode!
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Good news, it didn't explode!
It has also not made a full orbit yet.
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When that one gets trotted out you know you're desperate.
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The specific thing you were replying to was:
You mean besides the part that it explodes before reaching orbit?
So the fact that it hasn't actually made an orbit yet seems relevant. It did not explode this time, but it also did not go into an actual orbit. Simple as that. No desperation needed.
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First, they don't care.
They don't care in the same way that Aesop's fox didn't care about those sour grapes. They're already a decade behind Musk's original claims for when they would land humans on Mars with no chance of even an unmanned landing anywhere in the near future.
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The more important thing is he has a good track record for delivering on promised vehicles, just never on time.
His track record is not actually that great. Are we counting things that were promised that have not appeared yet as promises fulfilled, but not yet? I mean, what is the status of the affordable model 3? Or the Tesla with true full self driving? You know, the one that already exists, works 100% but just is not in full production yet? I mean, I would like to believe my various friends who borrowed money from me that they have the money ready to give to me but they just forgot it at home, etc. Of course I hav
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I guess the real point is that, at this point, Musk has worn out my tolerance. I don't give him or his companies the benefit of the doubt any more.
Fair enough, I like what his companies have achieved, but at a personal level there is a lot I don't like about him, so respect your view point.
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So? The OPs claim was about commercial payloads. This might come as a yuuuuge surprise, but there's not a lot of commercial market for payloads to Mars.
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The deal with this launch system is that it was supposed to be a game changer both for payloads to Mars and for basically everything else. Sure, Musk is a huge liar, so he could have been lying about all of the things he said it would do, like take over all satellite payloads to any orbit, or replace commercial airliners on long distance flights, etc. Saying that other payloads don't matter because it was always actually just about getting to Mars is a perfect example of the sour grapes I was talking about.
Re: take it easy, there... (Score:2)
It's not that at all. Experimental craft doesn't mean not intended for flight. Recent testing has been intended to push it beyond its intended operational limits.
You might recall a different company who outright refused to do destructive testing in it's flagship vehicle at all. They tested it only within the intended operational parameters and declared it safe. There's one very implosive reason nobody else does that. Perhaps you share this philosophy, perhaps you're related to Mike Hughes, I don't know. But
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On this flight they demonstrated relight of 2nd stage engine to de-orbit and test payload deployment
This clears path for going orbital, and deploying starlink sats on next mission, whether or not they catch the 2nd stage
SpaceX is the primary customer for SS, with Starlink payloads already built and waiting for deployment
They will have dozens of flights under their belt before other customers like NASA move to SS from Falcon9
Something tells me you are well aware that you are a fool
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All good points. Thank you.
It just would have been nice for them to not drop the thing right on top of MH370.
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TL:DR They didn't expect a ship, that is designed to carry people to another planet, to explode. There is no excuse for that. Stop making excuses for something that will kill people, unless they are held to higher standards.
Sorry... but isn't their goal to go to Mars? Which involves landing with people, and not exploding?
Sure, say "We did the thing in orbit etc etc, but haven't worked out the landing without incinerating the occupants" and I'd be fine with that.
Making excuses doesn't help. Iterative failure
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TL:DR They didn't expect a ship, that is designed to carry people to another planet, to explode.
None of the prototypes launched were designed to carry people to another planet. They were all designed to test various ideas about how to design a ship to carry people to another planet. Some explosions are inevitable when you're pushing the leading edges of rocket design.
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I see your point. It is still concerning that each time they get a little further, they still end up with ships exploding.
Yes, this may be completely fine in the "testing" process, but if it becomes a regular occurrence (as it is currently), then I would reasonably expect it to explode when it is exposed to something it hasn't done yet. Like land on another planet.
Obviously if they plan on sending unmanned (unpeopled?) ships to Mars and only send people once they have successfully landed... some times? then
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It sounds to me like the flight was successful, nothing blew up that they did not intend to. They did intend for it to crash into the ocean as It did.
I'm not sure why they didn't catch the booster however, as they seem to have figured that out and done it many times.
Lack of information.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed a lot of movement of the Ship flaps during the video, but then I saw this which captured the ship attitude angle-of-attack (attitude) during the flight. This is the kind of testing that they did, even on a flight where they desperately needed success:
https://twitter.com/mcrs987/status/1960724698825707659 [twitter.com]
No, that's not unintended tumbling - that's the flight profile that they intended to fly.
The fact that it survived that, with intentionally missing tiles and some flap damage, is a true testament to it's resilience....
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Re: Lack of information.... (Score:2)
The flaps are interesting. If you notice during the test, they got pretty singed, almost as if they were about to fail. But they held up anyways. Designed to help get the ship home safely, even if other components failed. Sure, they won't be reused after such an event, but the ship and its potential cargo returned in one piece instead of several.
Full reusability, crewed and rapid turn-around (Score:2)
Full reusability, crew rated and rapid turn-around / low price - pick any two? The STS system aimed for all, but ended up with partial reusability and crew rating. With lots of inspection of ceramic tiles and other parts, probably not unreasonable given the documented risk profiles.
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I think you need to add "high payload" to your picking pot, because the latest Starship only managed to put 16 tonnes of payload into low earth orbit, whereas the ancient low tech Saturn V regularly did 140 tonnes, more than 8 times as much.
Re: Full reusability, crewed and rapid turn-around (Score:3)
Re: Full reusability, crewed and rapid turn-around (Score:2)
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That's just the point. It's not clear that Starship will ever be a cost effective means of delivering mass to orbit. Too much baggage.
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That's just the point. It's not clear that Starship will ever be a cost effective means of delivering mass to orbit. Too much baggage.
If Starship achieves full and rapid reusability, then it will be highly cost-effective even with a 16-ton payload. The only marginal material cost is the fuel itself, which is about $1M per Super Heavy launch. Contrast this with $10M simply to manufacture each new Falcon 9 upper stage, which is expended after each and every flight, and Falcon 9's payload to LEO is only about 18 tons. Not to mention, Starship supports a much more flexible payload form factor, to accommodate e.g. Starlink v3 satellites; no ot
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I bet you're glossing over at least another $9 million costs per launch. Never mind the blowup risk. Also sounds like you're reading straight off an Elon Musk talking points card. "Launch costs will soon be no more than the fuel!" Glib. Doubtful.
Launches will cost only as much as the gas as soon as robotaxi makes a trillion dollars and optimum prime is operating vacuum cleaners in every living room.
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$9 million for what? With Starship, there's no downrange retrieval of booster/fairing, no remanufacturing of an entirely new second stage for each flight, and minimal refurbishment (implied by the first sentence of my above post). Perhaps $2-$3 million for operating costs around Starbase, sure, but not $9 million. Not once the launch cadence approaches and then quickly dwarfs Falcon 9 levels, at any rate.
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Give me a break. $9 million of non-fuel costs per launch is actually a big underestimate. Please knock off your embarrassing brownnosing.
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Never mind the blowup risk
You should look at the Falcon 9 development and operations history to see how this plays out. They blew up a lot of Falcon 9 hardware during development, just like they are doing now with Starship development. They learnt from that and now the idea of a Falcon 9 blowing up is a very rare event. Given that history I think it is reasonable to assume that when Starship moves from development to being an operational lift provider that blowing up will be a low risk.
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Nonzero risk. Risk that exponentiates with number of reuses. Failing to factor that into launch costs is, in a word, fraud.
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Your hatred seems to be clouding your judgement, Mr TL.
Not everything needs to work at once. Starship with an expendable upper stage should be more cost effective than anything else out there, including Falcon 9. ...
An expendable upper stage would be cheaper and lighter - no heatshield, no flaps. Raptor engines will be cheaper than Merlin, much cheaper than BE-4, or RS-25 (hahah!) Stainless steel hull ,
You may well be skeptical of full reusability, but that isn't needed for Starship
Re: Full reusability, crewed and rapid turn-aroun (Score:2)
the 140 tonnes included the fuel, not only actual payload.
Well that is a lie. The Saturn V payload was 140,000 kg or 155 short tons to LEO and 50 tons to lunar orbit. So, yes, the Saturn V could bring 140 tons to orbit.
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Well that is a lie. The Saturn V payload was 140,000 kg or 155 short tons to LEO and 50 tons to lunar orbit. So, yes, the Saturn V could bring 140 tons to orbit.
So the 140 tons has no fuel to adjust its trajectory into lunar orbit. None to land the LEM and return the LEM crew module to orbit and match with the command module. Also no fuel to send that command module back to Earth orbit (and enter that orbit) or to deorbit the capsule. Poor astronauts could never come home.
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So, you're including the fuel for other craft that were part of the payload as the Saturn V's fuel and not part of it's payload... That seems pretty disingenuous to me.
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"regularly?" Saturn V only flew 13 times.
About the STS... (Score:5, Interesting)
STS not achieving full reusability was not a failure of the design or the people who built and operated the system; none of the fully-reusable designs were selected back in the early seventies when the Nixon administration made the choice. That administration opted for a design that traded away full reusability for a faster and cheaper DEVELOPMENT process (with the penalty coming later with higher operating costs that would be borne by later administrations (politicians in BOTH parties are really good at choosing THAT short-sighted path, sadly)).
Rapid turn-around was lost partly due to the design selected, but also because this was the very first reusable spacecraft and it involved a huge pile of new technology that was not yet mature enough for anybody to know how it would work out. We SHOULD have operated perhaps two shuttles for a few years and then begun the design and construction of a second generation of shuttles using all the lessons learned. Government programs, however, are run by politicians who tend to focus on politics and have little understanding of cutting-edge tech... so we flew the initial STS design for three decades. Just imagine if we had been that bone-headed with aviation: World War II in the skies over Europe would have been fought with Wright Flyers.
Additionally, people forget that in the 1970s NASA did not get a big enough budget from congress to develop and build the STS program; NASA had to go and make deals with the Air Force to get some pentagon money. Part of the deal was that the STS would become the primary launcher for a class of large spy sats and be prepared for some rather hush-hush missions. The USAF required a huge payload bay, and they planned to launch orbiters from Vandenburg, go once-around the planet, and then land the orbiter back on a strip at Vandenburg. This meant the orbiter needed about a thousand miles of cross-range glide on reentry (Earth would be rotating east under the orbiter during that once-around) and with less than a thousand miles of cross-range capability, the orbiter wound end up in the Pacific Ocean. These USAF requirements drove the size of the orbiter, and required its delta wing and even affected things like the design of the thermal protection.
The Wright Flyer was a miserable poor excuse for an airplane with terrible performance and almost no capability, but it was nearly perfect for the time and place where it initially flew. It got mankind into the air using the tech available at the time, proved flight in heavier-than-air vehicles was possible, and paved the way for all planes that followed.
Similarly, the STS was a dangerous and rather marginal system that never lived up to the hopes of its designers, but it was glorious for the time and place where it initially flew. It proved re-usable spacecraft and routine space operations, including with non-test-pilot non-nearly-perfect-human-specimens civilian PASSENGERS was possible and it paved the way for everything that will follow. We just SHOULD have only operated them within the design limits (would have saved lives) and SHOULD have not operated them for three decades.
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STS is what you get when you let lawyers and generals run an engineering program.
I hear Musk is planning a major reliability test (Score:2)
He's scheduled the launch for July 4. ;-),P>
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ICE has been given instructions to guarantee Musk is on that rocket.
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I hear ICE has also requested that the rocket use Tesla's famous self-driving technology.
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Why not January 6th?
Doesn't cost billions... (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's an interesting race between SpaceX's method of rapid prototyping and failing, and the Chinese who are taking a more traditional approach. At this point it's probably close to 50/50 who will get to the moon first. Both are using the same mission profile - two launches, rendezvous in orbit of the moon. CNSA already has the rockets they need and their lander seems to be on track for a possible unmanned demonstration landing in the next few years.
Re: Doesn't cost billions... (Score:2)
Re: Doesn't cost billions... (Score:2)
Re: Doesn't cost billions... (Score:3)
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Agreed that Pica probably makes the most sense for Starships returning to Earth from Mars; I expect there will be very few of these, due to the exorbitant cost and complexity (for the next few decades at least) of ISPP on Mars, thus there would be minimal economic benefit for being able to reuse them without refurbishment. And it's not clear at all whether the ceramic tile design will be able to withstand a MUCH higher-energy reentry, returning from Mars (or even from the Moon, for that matter).
Another ques
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1) hydrogen instead of methane for 2nd stage.
Wouldn't have gone that way. Falcon 9 and Starship both use the same engines for both stages. Cheaper development as you only need to worry about ONE design failing to work out not TWO which either one failing puts your program years behind. Simplifying the launch system by using 1 type of fuel not multiple types (Vulcan uses THREE counting the SRBs). You can use the same construction materials for all stages not different ones for each stage. They don't need insulation between the Methane and LOX tank
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Also, hydrogen's specific impulse advantage comes with major disadvantages. If you just took Starship and gave it hydrolox engines, it wouldn't have the performance needed to reach orbit, because you simply wouldn't be able to fit enough LH2 in the available tank volume. Despite the higher specific impulse, you need a far larger tank volume just to match the performance of denser propellants. And now you've got a lot more surface area to shield against reentry, and it also has to be insulated to keep the LH
Re: Doesn't cost billions... (Score:2)
It's meant for a lot more than that even. It's engineered for mass production, reusability, and low cost. This isn't like Apollo where they built just a few of them like money is no object and pulled the plug after. This is intended to be more like a commercial airliner, only for space.
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The Apollo and Shuttle program each cost over $250B in current dollars.
So like $2B per shuttle flight, $30B per moon flight. Even the marginal cost of Shuttle launches was probably $1B. Ditto for SLS.
Total cost of Starship program to date is $5B to $10B. Still a lot of money, but totally funded from Starlink.
Even if Starship upper stage is expendable, launch costs are estimated at $100M, making it economically viable.
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Still a lot of money, but totally funded from Starlink.
Umm... what about the $4 billion from NASA? [payloadspace.com]
Starlink only turned cash flow positive last year.
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What about it? Nobody said Starship/SH was profitable yet, and nobody said they weren't generating revenue. What was said was that it was the program was privately funded. No cost-plus or grants. Deliverables on contract.
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Umm... what about the $4 billion from NASA? [payloadspace.com]
Starlink only turned cash flow positive last year.
More accurately Starship and Starlink were funded by private stock sales to raise capital and income from Falcon 9 and NOW Starlink is helping the funding while selling more stock privately hasn't been needed for some time.
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Why concerned? (Not trolling; I'm genuinely curious.) If each of these fireworks displays costs $10M or $1B, what does it matter to you? If I was the CFO of SpaceX, sure, I'd be concerned. But why should the average person out in the world care? It's a privately-held company, backed by the wealthiest person on the planet. They've gotten taxpayer money, but the development of Starship (specifically, the variants associated with Artemis
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Because if you burn a billion each test that means a lot fewer tests than if it's $10 million.
Two or three failures doom a lot of rocket development programs. One of the first comments on this story currently is someone casually asserting that SpaceX "desperately needed" this flight to succeed, while at the same time crediting them for having the balls to leave off heat shield tiles and test the limits of controllability during reentry.
They can do that because they don't "desperately need" their test flight
Sounds familiar (Score:1)
> Elon Musk acknowledged on X in May 2024, a reusable orbital return heat shield is the "biggest remaining problem" to 100% rocket reusability.
The ghost of the Space Shuttle.
Re: Sounds familiar (Score:4, Insightful)
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Tie politicians to it.
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The ghost of the space shuttle. Not the happy memory of the space shuttle's greatest success.
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but I'll bet we won't see that until new materials have been discovered or an active heatshield is developed.
It has been over 30 years since the shuttle heat shield was developed. Pretty sure a lot of new materials have been developed since.
No, the majority of tiles were not replaced.. (Score:2)
Now, all tiles were inspected between flights, which did take forever, but they were not all replaced.
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No, the majority of tiles were not replaced between flights of the shuttles. The shuttles had 24,000+ tiles on each of them. Typically between 30 to 100 [smithsonianmag.com] tiles were replaced and/or repaired before each flight (less than 0.5%). Now, all tiles were inspected between flights, which did take forever, but they were not all replaced.
That's not really what matters, though. What matters is the turnaround time and cost. Shuttle flights cost about a billion dollars per launch, not including development and construction costs, and the quickest turnaround ever achieved was three months.
Of course, we don't yet know what the comparable numbers for Starship will be, but what SpaceX is aiming for is complete reusability (no refurbishing) and rapid turnaround (which precludes an intensive post-flight inspection), not just similar to but bette
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A notable difference is that replacing a single Shuttle tile could take three days. Most of Starship's tiles are attached with metal clips and can be replaced in seconds, they can largely re-tile a ship in a day. The vast majority of the tiles are also a few uniform shapes...each Shuttle tile was unique, made for a specific location. So even if not perfect, it's already a huge improvement.
Why tiles? (Score:2)
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A thought that just struck me: why tiles, and not, say, strips?
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A thought that just struck me: why tiles, and not, say, strips?
Thermal expansion. Long strips would warp and buckle as they expand. Small tiles have slight gaps in between to accommodate the expansion.
what's it for? (Score:2)
Is this spaceship needed for the moon, or only for Mars? Seems like maybe this is too large a leap to do in one bite.
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Is this spaceship needed for the moon, or only for Mars? Seems like maybe this is too large a leap to do in one bite.
The same booster is used for LEO, Moon and Mars. The 2nd stage will have specialized variants for all of the above (most for Earth Orbit). For the moon they need the LEO tankers and HLS. The current 2nd stage is cargo to LEO and prototypes for both tanker and HLS. (HLS is the Lunar craft).
A good principle for all of engineering (Score:3)
Perfection is brittle, it doesn't take much to make it no longer perfect, if perfection could be achieved at all.
Resilience assumes that flaws will occur, and accounts for those flaws intentionally.
Resilience beats perfection every time.
This is a good life principle as well. If you live your life assuming nothing will go wrong, you're in for a "failure to launch." If you instead live assuming that problems will happen (you know, like setting aside money for an unplanned emergency), you'll have a much higher chance of success.
Trying to confirm (Score:2)
If this craft has completed a full orbit. They refer to reaching orbital velocity or altitude, but I cannot find any reference to completing a full orbit of the earth. Ten launches without completing an orbit seems like a lot for something that is supposed to use 3 or 4 of these things rendezvousing in orbit to get to the moon and back in 2027.
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If this craft has completed a full orbit. They refer to reaching orbital velocity or altitude, but I cannot find any reference to completing a full orbit of the earth. Ten launches without completing an orbit seems like a lot for something that is supposed to use 3 or 4 of these things rendezvousing in orbit to get to the moon and back in 2027.
It intentionally flew a just-barely-suborbital trajectory, because the in-flight relight of the Raptor engine (required for deorbit burn) is still in the testing phase. The relight succeeded, so they may be cleared for a full orbital trajectory on upcoming flights. Note that Starship achieved the near-orbital trajectory with a significant amount of fuel still onboard, which was intentionally vented before reentry, rather than burning it for a few extra seconds to achieve full orbit. The difference is neglig
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If this craft has completed a full orbit. They refer to reaching orbital velocity or altitude, but I cannot find any reference to completing a full orbit of the earth. Ten launches without completing an orbit seems like a lot for something that is supposed to use 3 or 4 of these things rendezvousing in orbit to get to the moon and back in 2027.
It intentionally flew a just-barely-suborbital trajectory, because the in-flight relight of the Raptor engine (required for deorbit burn) is still in the testing phase. The relight succeeded, so they may be cleared for a full orbital trajectory on upcoming flights. Note that Starship achieved the near-orbital trajectory with a significant amount of fuel still onboard, which was intentionally vented before reentry, rather than burning it for a few extra seconds to achieve full orbit. The difference is negligible from a difficulty perspective.
In-flight relight is almost a requirement for achieving orbit at all, and definitely a requirement for achieving a nice, circular orbit without wasting a lot of delta-v, because of how orbital mechanics works. Thrusting pro-grade (forward) raises the height of your orbital trajectory on the other side of the planet, so you launch and thrust pro-grade to raise the highest part of your trajectory on the other side of the planet, then when that's high enough (above the atmosphere, ish) you shut off the engine