Starship maybe about to go up

T minus 3 assuming no holds.

https://www.youtube.com/live/-1wcilQ58hI?feature=share

Could you warn us before linking to Elon's for profit youtube propaganda? There is a way to link youtube threads so we can see who is profiting before clicking the link.

Some us do not like giving views to the king of twitter. At least the boy links properly to joe rogan and does not try to rick roll us into contributing to his bullshit.

who else did you think was sending up a rocket referring to "Starship"?

The Twitter of space travel.

As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1649045802332073986

At least they have a sense of humor about it.

It sounded very much by how they were speaking prior to launch that this kind of thing was not at all unexpected.

It's intriguing though. Does someone with some knowledge care to explain the basic economics of this to me? Is it true that they've reduced the costs by an order of magnitude compared to historical rocket launches? How?

Thread title is now a cause to investigate the OP as an industrial saboteur or a witch.

Damned Aussies

So I have been hearing about how this is a great success. I guess like a Tesla running into a tree.

I want to get a job working for the space Tesla people. I can blow things up and call that a great success. I guess when I was told it was not rocket science for all those years was because I actually did the work without blowing up millions of dollars of equipment. It is not rocket science because you get fired when you blow up your project.

Way back when I played hookey and watched the space shuttle blow the fuck up with the teacher on it, and later on again, no idiot called that a great success, but when Elon's slave labor over at spaceX does it they we all cheer.

So I guess this means Elon is a greats success over at Twitter for blowing up things others accomplished, and I now better understand republican winning and yes I am fucking sick and tired of being such a bunch of successful people. Fucking christ, it isn't like we have not done any of this before.

We could have fed, clothed, and gotten medical care for somke people here on earth if we just taxed people like Elon at 90 percent and left things like this to NASA.

The best news is that it didn't blow up on the pad. But boy did it do a lot of damage on the way up. It excavated a LARGE crater underneath the launch mount (hey Elon, maybe rethink the lack of flame trench), the flying concrete from which did severe damage to multiple water tanks, and punctured the outer insulation jacket on a LOX tank. I don't think they'll be flying from there for months. They're going to not only need to rebuild, but to make sure that excavation doesn't happen again.

There were 3 engines out initially and 2 more shut off in flight (the fact that it could launch and not hit the tower on the way up, with 3 unbalanced engines out, is a testament to SpaceX's engineers' skill). It's not clear whether the 2 subsequent engines failed or were turned off; could be either one. Then it lost both hydraulic power units. That's believed to be why stage separation didn't happen. Then the flight termination system engaged and it blew up.

The good news is that the next boosters have eschewed hydraulics for electrics, so those systems should be less failure-prone. Starship also survived max Q, albeit probably a lower max Q than if it had had all 33 engines firing.

Figuring out how to safely land boosters and recycle them was his big breakthrough. He did it through destructive testing: try something knowing it could fail. When it does, figure out why, fix it and try again. Wash, rinse repeat. Toyota did pretty much the same thing with cars. The Japanese call it “continuous improvement.” Musk was willing to risk the occasional spectacular public failure to get where he wanted to go. During the Cold War, the space race was a matter of national prestige and public failures were something to be avoided (we’ve all seen the the early American rocket explosions), so the emphasis was on zero defects, which isn’t possible with new technology, but that was the very expensive goal. Musk just says we’ll shoot it and fix it. Not that I’m a fan of his, but gotta give credit where it’s due…

It's the reusability of the boosters. Once they land they can be refurbished and used again. The SpaceX press junket says that this makes them '97% cheaper than the Soyuz rockets in the 60s.'

Of course, this is Musk, so he might be totally full of shit. The problem with the 'reusable' space shuttle is that it ended up not being nearly as reusable as claimed.

If we are sending astronauts up on boosters that have been refurbished multiple times I have a hard time believing that we aren't increasing the risk.

Grace Slick

Isn’t she dead?

Not to my knowledge. Her website has this up as 'recent work': https://graceslick.com/portfolio/

Wait what? You mean all these idiots have been doing this for how fucking long and didn't do this basic thing anyone with the smallest understanding of physics or ability to do research would have done to save costs and as a safety thing?

OK, this guy should not be launching things into space and all of the supervisors and planners need to be fired and someone with a basic understanding of physics needs to be planning this. The graduates from wrenchmuller space launch academy of put some explosives under it and watch out physics class should not be doing this shit.

Elon is a fucking moron, and he hires morons. This was not an accomplishment, this was pure luck no one was killed.

We cannot have Elon Musk doing this. He is clearly not a smart guy. He is not a safety oriented man. We cannot have him half assed putting shit into space making a debris field we will have to deal with, and blowing shit up. How the fuck is he going to get to mars when we cannot trust his space junk not to make a giant garbage patch that covers the earth?

He has smart people working for him.

It’s called “rapid iteration,” and it’s why SpaceX has been able to make such progress.

Oopsie poopsie.

It isn't a bug it is a great success of our new feature. You will be so tired of success because it makes you dodge debris.

I think we might be able to find some better and safer people to do this shit.

Maybe we can get Elon to bring his genius to the nuclear power industry.

Still just as arrogant as ever.

The Space Shuttle had to survive reentry, landing on a runway, like a plane. The Falcon 9 first stage doesn't get up to orbital velocity, so it just has to fall and then burn to a stop. While this is comparable to the SRBs on the Shuttle, those landed in the ocean (without relighting, obviously) and required a much more thorough cleaning than the Falcon 9, which lands on land or on a barge. Much, much easier to deal with than any part of a shuttle refurbishment. The Dragon capsule has to reenter, and while it's also reused, it gets a refurbishment much like the shuttle, but obviously easier because it's smaller. Since the start of regular recoveries, boosters have been reflown over a dozen times (I think 16 or 17 is the record so far), totaling over 160 flights.

I don't think NASA would human-rate Falcon 9/Dragon (for up to 15 flights per booster; some are awaiting recertification) if they didn't think it was safe enough.

Bear in mind, Musk originally pitched Falcon 9 as completely reusable. That obviously failed because the second stage would have been reentering from orbital velocity (and altitude. It would have needed a heat shield. He may have his own RDF a la Steve Jobs, but the actual reality is still damn impressive.

Other terms - like "throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks" - are available.

I'm only kidding in SpaceX's terms, but given Elon's tenure at Twitter it does appear to be his default mindset.

Rather than refurbished/reused have seen them referred to as flight tested.

To use an aviation analogy, would you feel safer flying on a 747 the first time it leaves the ground, or the 100th?

Musk's engineers obviously used this as their blueprint. If you can average a rocket launch a day, even using disposable rockets, you're looking at dirt-cheap costs. SpaceX isn't doing that many launches, but they are averaging about one a week now, and their rockets are largely reusable.

And unlike NASA or a publicly traded company, Musk doesn't have to worry so much about shit going *boom* on him. With NASA or a publicly traded company people expect shit to work right out of the gate. SpaceX is a private company, and Musk still has some of the "bold visionary" glow about him when it comes to SpaceX so folks don't think too much when he blows something up.

The real question is: How long can Musk keep this up? For Musk to be able to unfold his vision for space, he's going to have to keep increasing the number of launches. Get them up to about one a day, and he can sell flights (for either humans or machines) cheap. If he doesn't hit that number and keep at it, then the cost of all of this is going to get to him.

As far as I can see Elon has a premature ejaculation problem with his space dick. However, with everyone fluffing him like this he will be back again soon because he needs to distract from his other obvious failures.

I just do not get why people have not learned about this guy, but keep saying it was a great try and maybe the rich guy will get some space rock money for himself at our expense. Or we could feed some people and get some more teachers, but that might be socialism and it is better to pretend elong is on our side than to actually do things on our side.

On this page you're the only one who keeps mentioning Elon.

O2C did one, to criticize a decision it's suggested Elon made, and Matthunter did to criticise him.

ok boomer