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Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
- fasteddie31003 6y agoChange my mind. Elon Musk is the greatest man alive today.
- JshWright 6y agoHe's doing a lot of important things. He's a pretty lousy man, in my opinion.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoHow is he lousy?
- JshWright 6y agoHe is quick to make personal attacks if someone disagrees with him. He has repeatedly engaged in ethically questionable influencing of the stock prices of companies in which he holds a significant position. He seems pretty quick to abuse the idolatry that many of his fans seem to hold for him.
- lhoff 6y agoThe big question is imho if the behaviour is a symptom of the same underlaying character prepositions that cause his great success. Don't get me wrong i don't want to apologize his behaviour.
- ceejayoz 6y agoCan we not? His achievements and things like his public fights with cave rescuers and the SEC are both public record and exhaustively discussed.
- drcross 6y agoHe who is without sin can cast the first stone.
- ceejayoz 6y agoNo one's stoning anyone to death. It is a mistake to believe the point of that parable is "you shouldn't ever even criticize anyone unless you're perfect".
- ncallaway 6y agoIs your position that absolutely no one should be criticized for anything, because everybody is guilty of something? I don't think that was the meaning of that verse.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tidepod12 6y agoHe promotes conspiracy theories, is transphobic, put all of his workers at risk by ignoring (and actively advocating against) COVID safety protocols at his factories, is notorious for promoting a hostile work environment and overworking employees for poor pay...
- thepasswordis 6y agoHe's trying to make humanity a multiplanetary species while at the same time trying to get humanity off of fossil fuels by completely upending and dominating: 1) The space industry 2) The automotive industry 3) The solar industry 4) Some parts of the world's power grid infrastructure. He asks a LOT of his employees, and despite his companies being 15 years old at this point, asks for the type of commitment from employees that you would find at an early stage startup. His competitors are largely government contractors, and government-backed natural monopolies. Because of this, the contrast between working for a company like spacex (innovate or die) is in stark contrast to something like ULA (rest on the momentum you have built over the last 50 years. Go home every day at 5:00. Lobby your boss for 4 day work weeks). There are a LOT of people who look at the people working at SpaceX, see the insane schedule the work at, and resent them for it. They are literally trying to save the human species. It turns out that requires some pretty serious dedication, but it also turns out that there are going to be some people who hate you for it when you try. Also: there have been MASSIVE short positions taken against tesla in the last 5 years. So there has been a lot of negative stories and anecdotes shared about the working conditions of Tesla factors. However it should be noted that those working conditions are approximately the same (or better) than at most other large automobile manufacturers.
- outworlder 6y agoWhile I believe he truly wants to make humanity a multi planetary species, I doubt that's out of the goodness of his heart. You can do this without being a shitty person. Or overworking your employees. This is a long term project.
- thepasswordis 6y agoOn what basis do you doubt that? Nearly everything he does or says, every interview, every company, seems singularly focused on the goal of bettering the chance of humanity existing forever. What insight do you have that I’m missing?
- jonplackett 6y agoMy only potential line of argument is that he might be an alien.
- Diederich 6y agoI'm a huge, long time fan of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, and I've found inspiration in some of the things that Elon Musk has shared over the years. > greatest man alive today I don't think that's a characterization that can be sustained or not with any level of objectivity. What I am sure of is that for various reasons, good and bad, Elon Musk is a very polarizing figure, and his missions are best served by studiously avoiding anything akin to lionization or hero worship.
- consumer451 6y ago>> greatest man alive today > I don't think that's a characterization that can be sustained or not with any level of objectivity. Ok, but thermodynamically speaking, would you agree that he is the coolest human being to ever live?
- Diederich 6y ago> thermodynamically speaking I don't think I've ever seen that phrase before, and I don't know what it means. (: > coolest human being to ever live I tend to reflexively reject superlatives for various reasons. I'm comfortable saying that some of the stuff Musk is working on has enormous potential for positive outcomes, and I'd have a hard time coming up with a single person in recent history that had unambiguously produced more possible positive impact. There are a lot of individuals in recent history who have produced enormous positive outcomes, though typically without as much 'flare' as Musk.
- consumer451 6y agoWhile tongue in cheek, I do entertain this idea sometimes. What I meant was, if one could quantify the minimizing of the output of CO2 by greatly accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles, and largely credit that to Musk, would that make him the “coolest?”
- xiphias2 6y agoWhy would I? The pain and sacrifice he went through to get where he is right now is just crazy....sacrificing the multimillionaire lifestyle is not easy. I loved Lex's interview with Jason, he was talking about it as well.
- andbberger 6y agoyes i'm sure the richest person in the world is really suffering. get outta here
- xiphias2 6y agoYou know if you think his life was so easy, I have an idea for you to have an even easier life: build a car company that's 10x better and more valuable then Tesla, and a space company that's 10x better than SpaceX. You'll have the easiest life in the world :)
- prawnsalad 6y agoI don’t understand this view. Do you think that the moment you become wealthy then you’re not entitled to feel any type of suffering in life?
- andbberger 6y agoIt's just a little a lot tone deaf to talk about Musk's 'sacrifices' when so much of the US and the world is going through acute material crises. Sure you can still suffer when you're wealthy. But also dude could just up and go to the bahamas for the rest of his life no problem. Most of us don't have that choice.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. They're repetitive and usually turn nasty. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hirundo 6y agoCongrats to SpaceX for sticking the landing. The most important launch of a reusable craft may be its second. Looking forward to SN10 flying again.
- JshWright 6y agoI doubt there's any plan to fly SN10 again. The point of this vehicle was to learn about controlling the flight with the flaps. The landing was a bonus, and reuse isn't part of the plan for the early prototypes (they already have several more in the pipeline, including SN11 which is pretty much ready to go) EDIT: I take that back... It did fly again...
- esotericsean 6y agoThey cut the stream off just moments too early. It exploded! But hopefully a second flight using SN11.
- lpellis 6y agoThat was awesome to watch, one step closer to mars!
- ninjamayo 6y agoIncredible to watch although landing was a bit rough and Starship is leaning. What an achievement SpaceX! Next test?
- simonh 6y agoI think the lean is expected, I’ve been predicting it. The vehicle lands on only one engine at the end which is off centre, so the landing legs are going to get asymmetric forces on landing. Also these are only interim leg designs. Oh, keeblewey!
- snoshy 6y agoI very highly doubt the lean is expected. The fact is that 2-3 of the landing legs deployed but did not lock into their extended position, which resulted in the lean this time. This also caused structural damage to the engines and tanks, causing the rupture and kaboom.
- ctdonath 6y agoYou know these facts how?
- snoshy 6y agoTons of amateur space nerds are analyzing every frame of video that's been gathered about the incident. Here's a gif [1] posted on NASASpaceFlight but originally shot by LabPadre that shows that some of the legs on the left extended and then flopped back and forth a bit, whereas the ones on the right extended and stayed that way. Commenters on Twitter have also pointed out the same [2]. [1] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=52924.0;attach=2015950;image https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;... [2] https://twitter.com/TerminalCount/status/1367261799293272068 https://twitter.com/TerminalCount/status/1367261799293272068
- simonh 6y agoFair enough, I know the test hops resulted in a lean but didn't know they had a significantly improved leg design.
- Diederich 6y agoI'm so pumped watching this stuff. Everything looked perfect, except perhaps it set down a little hard. I think I saw it bounce a bit, and it might be leaning a little bit. One way or another, a spectacularly successful test. Well done SpaceX! I'm keenly looking forward to seeing the first video of a Starship sitting on the surface of the moon and Mars.
- jonplackett 6y agoImpressive how they seemed to have a bit of time in-hand too. It came in very gently to begin with at least.
- ALittleLight 6y agoThis must've been the perfect one to see live. You got to see it launch, fly, land, AND explode. Nice!
- enraged_camel 6y agoIt just blew up! Landing legs didn't deploy so it landed on its body, and fire suppression kicked in, but I guess there was a leak.
- Diederich 6y agoI haven't looked at the replays, but I do believe the landing legs did deploy. They're pretty short and stubby.
- the_duke 6y agoOn one of the unofficial cams (Labpadre) it looked like they deployed but didn't lock in place. But it looks like the engine gave out early. The rocket was way too fast, so the legs probably wouldn't have made much difference.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoThey did deploy on video, they probably were coming in slightly too fast and at least one crumpled
- baking 6y agoI saw at least three legs deploy normally and one that was stuck partly deployed. Waiting for Scott Manley to give the final verdict. Edit: This video shows six legs deploying, but two failing to latch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLdDvt6wS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLdDvt6wS0
- tpmx 6y agoTwo of the three engines flaming out in the last few seconds, was that intentional? Something similar happened last time too, but at least this time it landed.
- protoax 6y agoI believe so.
- eightysixfour 6y agoYes, they can't throttle the engines down that much, so it turns them off once their thrust is no longer needed.
- midasuni 6y agoYes. They need 1 to land - more than one means too much thrust. Last time they only lit one, it failed to light, and boom. This time they lit all three hoping at least one would work, then turned off the ones they didn’t need. I assume they had the idea independently of the guy who asked musk why they didn’t light more than one and shut down — musk replied “because we’re dumb”, but I guess that tweeter could claim to be a rocket scientist now.
- eightysixfour 6y agoQuick edit to this - they need two for the rotation to happen. Last time they lit two and one failed, so they did not have enough thrust to rotate it. This time they lit three and turned off one for the rotation, then turned off a second once it was rotated.
- GeneralAntilles 6y agoIt was three engines through the whole rotation. They turned off two within about a second of one another after transitioning out of rotation.
- eightysixfour 6y ago
- jonplackett 6y agoThat camera angle for the flip was epic. Like watching real life Sci-Fi
- johnghanks 6y agoI genuinely thought they switched to a CGI animation of the landing sequence in that shot. I'm still not 100% sure either way.
- francoi8 6y agoIt felt like CGI
- jonplackett 6y agoI know what you mean - it was almost the same camera angle they use in The Expanse when The Roci does it's evasive flip thing.
- bingojess 6y agoI skipped to that part and almost closed the stream thinking I had clicked the wrong link, I was kinda annoyed someone passing of CG for the real stream, then I realised it was real
- lpellis 6y agoIt just blew up ha, but did its job.
- climech 6y agoHistoric milestone for spaceflight, I don't know what to say. Very exciting times.
- pmontra 6y agoIt did land, then exploded right now. There was a fire at the base of the SN10 and apparently got to the tank after a few minutes. 99% success. Next time for 100% hopefully.
- tppiotrowski 6y agoCan you share a link to the explosion? The Twitter video cut out with rocket intact.
- themgt 6y agohttps://twitter.com/spacex360/status/1367256299923247109 https://twitter.com/spacex360/status/1367256299923247109
- tpmx 6y agoThat's a novel way to explode.
- jskrablin 6y agoIt was actually an unscheduled Hopper test.
- andrewflnr 6y ago"Celebratory backflip" was my favorite descriptor from the NASASpaceflight stream.
- ceejayoz 6y agoCan we count it as a reflight? It got pretty decent airtime.
- dmix 6y agoAlmost a 2nd belly flop too.
- herodoturtle 6y agoKABOOM! "That. Was. AWESOME!" - NASA Spaceflight guy
- jonplackett 6y agoI think they just wanted to give us a good show. "You liked the landing? Cool. Here's an explosion anyway."
- NotSammyHagar 6y agoFrom the non-vertical look after it landed, and the known weak landing legs, I am guessing it damaged the structure at the bottom. It doesn't seem like they actually plan to fly them more than once (once they make their objectives). Is that correct?
- waiseristy 6y agoI think they have a bunch of upgrades for SN15, reflying the older prototypes might not have as much value opposed to just flying the new ones
- jonplackett 6y agoIt's pretty crazy they already have 5 SNs better than what we just saw...
- baking 6y agoSN12 was scrapped and SN13 and SN14 were never built, to allow for SN15, the new design, to jump the queue. SN11 is next followed by SN15 and then possibly BN1, the first booster.
- pixl97 6y agoAt this point it is very unlikely they'll fly them more than once, at some point in the future that is the total reason why they are designing this rocket. I think fire control is what needs to be worked on at this point. After it landed there was an uncontrolled fire, probably from leaking methane that burned for a bit and, my guess, weakend the steel leading to warping and finally a rupture. With that said, design tests at this point were really focusing on landing so now they have the next series of design iterations figure out how to keep fuel out of the fire.
- ninjamayo 6y agoSpaceX seems to have mastered the belly flop. Landing is getting there.
- Diederich 6y ago> seems to have mastered the belly flop Seriously! They nailed that part on the first and every attempt. That by itself is pretty amazing.
- emkoemko 6y agodidn't the NASA have a rocket doing these type of manoeuvres multiple times a day? in like the early 90's?
- Diederich 6y agoThat sounds pretty neat; I'd love to read more about it if you recall the name.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoThe shuttle technically does a flop (it flies backward in orbit) and comes down via active control w/ aerodynamic surfaces. Not sure if that what poster means tho.
- Game_Ender 6y agoIt was the Delta Clipper (DC-X) [0] and that was actually like the SpaceX, grasshopper. It stayed upright, translated hovered and came back to land. Starship has flaps, a low terminal velocity belly flop maneuver, and then a rotation up to landing only a few hundred meters up. They definitely build on each other, but this is more impressive. 0 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
- imglorp 6y agoHere's flight 8 from 1995. Up, translate, suicide burn, stuck the landing. I feel we missed a serious opportunity with DC-X.
- dwaltrip 6y agoThis is a huge stepping stone to the world's first fully reusable orbital rocket. Incredibly exciting!
- olliej 6y agoAnd it just popped :-D
- lambda_dn 6y agoNASA would have spent 2 trillion and 50 years to get to this stage. SpaceX's rapid iterations and fail fast methodology might save the human species
- jonplackett 6y agoReminds me of this story: The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay. EDIT: This is taken from an article about fear while making art. I think that's what's happening here - The SLS team are probably not allowed to blow up their space ship (because it is too expensive). SpaceX are allowed to blow theirs up, and in doing so they can learn a lot more a lot more quickly, and try more daring things to begin with.
- Someone 6y ago“It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes” Why would they care about quality? If they learned from their mistakes, they would make two or three pots, each one heavier than the rest (smart students would just make one item, making sure it weighed at least 50 kgs). This probably would work if the teacher promised them 1 point for each mediocre item produced, 2 for each slightly less mediocre one, etc. with scores such that producing mediocre items at full speed at best gives them a low grade. That gives the students both an incentive to start producing items soon (so that that can produce, as a safeguard, lots of mediocre items and get a decent grade) and to improve their technique (so that they can reach a higher grade, or finish earlier their work earlier)
- tectonic 6y agoWe just wrote a piece this morning in Orbital Index about the iteration speeds of SLS, New Glenn, and Starship. SpaceX is putting everyone else to shame. https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-03-03-Issue-106/#heavy-delays https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-03-03-Issue-106/#heavy... Reminds me of this quote from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in 2014: "Let's be very honest again. We don't have a commercially available heavy lift vehicle. Falcon 9 Heavy may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real."
- dmix 6y agoI love the ¶ paragraph indicators - Google says it's called Pilcrow? [1] - at the beginning of each section. It's a great typographic choice. Reminds me of those legal documents where they obsess about formatting and labelling the sections. And by they I mean usually the junior/intern staff at the law firms who are stuck in the 80s with paper and faxes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilcrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilcrow
- tectonic 6y agoThanks!
- breck 6y agoAh, never knew what ¶ was called. Thanks for calling attention to the typography of that site. Neat stuff!
- blach 6y agoThanks! I love using less known typographic marks like pilcrows for stuff like permalinks, etc. hope you enjoy the newsletter :-)
- ilaksh 6y agoI used to do legal word processing back in the late 1990s. It was a real career for a lot of people who were not junior lawyers but actually legal word processors. Most of them had other things going on also alike acting or something. But yeah turning on the display of things like paragraphs was critical if you were trying to clean up a Word document. I just did a search and apparently legal word processor is still a real job.
- walrus01 6y agoIt looks like it used up the crumple zones on the legs, and then some. It was tilted over to the side a bit before it exploded. Leg close-up from a previous craft: https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Starship-Boca-Chica-080720-NASASpaceflight-bocachicagal-SN5-leg-work-2-crop-c.jpg https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Starshi...
- Taniwha 6y agoBut they failed the parking test
- xvf22 6y agoIt wanted to fly again... ;)
- neolog 6y agoNASA landed a rocket in 1996. > The original DC-X was built in 21 months for a cost of $60 million.[18] This is equivalent to $101 million in present-day terms.[19]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X#Flight_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X#Flight_...
- Pfhreak 6y agoYes, they did fly a rocket up to 3km and land it. That's not nothing, but it's also a totally different accomplishment to Starship.
- neolog 6y agoLooks like Starship got to 10 km. It's not that different.
- jiofih 6y agoThe DC-X was a billion dollar research project. SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 first stage back in 2015 and now does it every other week as a commercial operator. The idea is not new either, you’ll see rockets landing upright in 1950 cartoons. The truth is that the “landing a rocket” part is the least interesting here, Starship is a 150t capacity reusable space vehicle that will reduce launch costs by a factor of 100x, and is to be produced en masse like airplanes.
- Nekhrimah 6y agoThe height is almost irrelevant, as long as Starship is at terminal velocity prior to the re-ignition sequence. It's the landing sequence of belly-flop, flip and land that has never been tried before Starship.
- nickik 6y agoThe DC-X was a tiny compared to Starship. Starship uses revolutionary new Full-Flow Staged Combustion engines that have never flown. Starship is testing a never used before method of reentry and guidence. Starship is testing a never used before method of landing. Starship is testing never used before method of heat shielding tiles and how to attach them. Starship is not just testing the ship itself, but also the mass manufacturing line for Starship. Its not a test mule, its a mass production pipeline that is being designed at the same time as the product it produces. Will likely be the first Orbital rocket to use Methlox fuel. The DC-X was a fundamental dead-end, many of its engineers went to BlueOrigin and worked on New Shepard, a sub-orbital only hopper. SpaceX Grasshopper is more comparable to the DC-X then the DC-X to Starship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4 That program likely cost less then $60 million.
- chasd00 6y agoI wasn’t watching a very high res stream but did anyone else notice what looked like a blackish/sooty exhaust on the way up from one engine? Maybe it was just the video feed... My hunch is at least one engine wasn’t performing 100% but the flight control software was able to compensate pretty freaking well.
- grecy 6y agoI agree. On the SpaceX stream from inside the engine shroud it was very clear that one engine had a blue flame-exhaust, while the other was noticeably yellow. My laymen rocket skills makes me think the yellow one wasn't performing very well.
- snoshy 6y agoThis is actually normal, and expected. The issue with these specific Starship tests is that the flight plan calls for 1) a height of ~10 km, 2) not going supersonic. The second one is quite critical, because supersonic flight introduces much greater stresses on the craft. Given these two limitations, Starship currently carries very little fuel. Think of it like a mostly empty soda can with a few sips sloshing about the bottom. Adding 3 Raptor engines to such a tank makes them way too powerful to run at 100% thrust the whole time. On the launchpad, all 3 Raptors start off at full thrust until well clear of the pad. At that point, one engine at a time starts throttling down gradually, so as not to go supersonic or exceed the 10 km flight plan. A throttled engine does not burn as cleanly or efficiently, which is what results in the orange exhaust plume. Same as your campfire, blue flame is hotter than orange/red flame, and the bluer exhaust engine is therefore burning hotter and providing more thrust. As Starship gets closer to the 10 km peak, it shuts off one engine at a time, and finally throttles the final Raptor down as low as it can go. Note that Raptor engines have a minimum throttle that is ~20% of max thrust, below which the only option is to shut down.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hsuduebc2 6y agoKaboom. <3
- gremlinsinc 6y agoI'm not an engineer (well not that kind), but it seems to me relying wholly on thrusters seems kind of iffy on being fully stable... wouldn't maybe having the rockets slow down the craft to the point where drones could lasso it, or connect to it, or even built in wings could expand with copter blades to steady it and lower it down more gentle? I mean early space-flight used parachutes, that's an option too though I'd imagine a space capsule weighs a shit ton less.... I just wouldn't trust my family on a rocket like this, feels very pre-mature. Like there's something missing to ensure it doesn't do a back flip at the end...per se.
- Nekhrimah 6y agoStarship is being designed to land on Mars. Therefore it needs to land safely with only what comes with the vehicle. Note Mars atmosphere is 1% pressure of Earth.
- NortySpock 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIuGfXp-Ok8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIuGfXp-Ok8 Helicopter blades have been proposed and tested, but apparently Roton, an early space company, did not have nearly enough money. Also they pursued a SSTO platform that they didn't have the efficiency margins to pull off.
- colordrops 6y agoHoly crap, so that's what the craft in Kin Dza Kza are based on: https://medium.com/@andreifyodorov_65581/kin-dza-dza-was-directed-by-soviet-georgian-filmmaker-georgy-danelia-in-1986-7dc95f08c7ef https://medium.com/@andreifyodorov_65581/kin-dza-dza-was-dir... Amazing movie by the way.
- mLuby 6y ago(I don't understand the downvotes; you're asking the same reasonable questions that I'm sure Elon asked too.) From what I've read, passive landing solutions like parachutes, wings, rotors, air bags, etc. are feasible only for smaller payloads. Think Apollo/Soyuz capsules, or the first couple Mars landers, or RocketLab's Electron rocket with a parachute. I'm sure the JPL engineers would have preferred a tried-and-tested passive parachute (and maybe some airbags) over a sky-crane, but the latest rovers are just too heavy for safe parachute landing. I believe it's the same situation with Falcon 9 and Starship recovery. And remember that SpaceX's Dragon capsule demonstrated an impressive propulsive landing, but NASA said no thanks and required parachutes.
- AYBABTME 6y agoAlright. It's getting real! What kind of math should I study to be able to play in that space?
- colordrops 6y agoDepends on what you want to do. There are several disciplines involved in orbital rocketry.
- AYBABTME 6y agoLet's say the control system gets input from sensors and that actuates the effectors?
- fallingfrog 6y agoIncredible accomplishment! It definitely lifts my spirit to see human beings doing amazing things.
- wrongdonf 6y agoI was there. I have been following spacex for a decade. I watched all the most important launches on livestream. I watched the first dragon cargo mission launch live. But this was the first time actually being present at the launch. Despite all my experience, it was totally unexpected. I had no idea how surreal it feels to watch something that big float slowly towards the sky. The sound physically shakes you. It was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.
- tamaharbor 6y agoI hope my Tesla doesn’t get any ideas.