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Why so long? Will they need to go through another round of FAA approval? Or?
by foota 3y ago
Why so long? Will they need to go through another round of FAA approval? Or?
- belter 3y agoThey will need to find out what happened. Develop, build and test new hardware to fix what did not work. And wait on the new FAA review. This is the old one: https://www.faa.gov/media/72816 https://www.faa.gov/media/72816
- avhon1 3y agoMost of the content of that report is about the deluge system for the launch pad. Since it tentatively appears that this worked, I have high hopes for much more expedient environmental reviews of future test flights.
- idlewords 3y agoThey need to redesign the bottom half of the rocket so it doesn't blow up during staging, and figure out what happened to the top half and fix that.
- saberience 3y agoIt wont be six months. Also, your comment makes it seem like they would have redesign the whole first stage, which is highly unlikely. This is the first time they've tried to do a hot staging and it might be something relatively easy to fix related to that. For the second stage, my guess is they triggered the FTS due to the telemetry issues or just for safety's sake, i.e. they didn't want to take any risk with the lack of telemetry.
- Gare 3y ago> For the second stage, my guess is they triggered the FTS due to the telemetry issues or just for safety's sake, i.e. they didn't want to take any risk with the lack of telemetry. Most likely it was on board automatic FTS.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoThey don't necessarily have to redesign the booster. The booster completed its primary mission of boosting successfully. It survived long enough that it seems reasonable to say that if they wouldn't have attempted boost back it would successfully coasted to a splash in the ocean. So the SuperHeavy booster can likely be used as is, if they're willing to spend an extra ~$50M per mission on not recover the booster.
- idlewords 3y agoI guess it depends on the test program priorities. If Elon has promised everyone a succulent ham if they can get Starship to orbit before some deadline, then you're absolutely right. If instead they want to get the most out of every flight test, then they'll take the time to fly a fix for the "bottom half blows up" issue.
- userinanother 3y agoSo more booms by Christmas?
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI is a lot more complicated than that. There is a trade off between data per flight, total timeline, and overall cost. I dont think data per flight is the driving goal. There are lots of unknown, and if you stop completely for every problem, you are aren't learning about new problems. As long as they get the ship up and make some progress, it isnt critical if these boosters blow up or sink the bottom of the ocean as planned They have 4 boosters built and 3 more in production, and FAA license for 20 launches per year. My guess is that if the fix takes substantial time, they will work it into future production and keep going with what they have.
- hparadiz 3y agoPretty sure NASA doesn't care about losing the booster for a moonshot mission. Shuttle was 1.6 billion per flight.
- 3y ago
- Culonavirus 3y agoComplete nonsense. Which anyone with even cursory interest in Starship's development can confirm.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago6 months is very short in rocket time. just look at Ariane 6...
- panick21_ 3y agoWhat does Ariane 6 has to do with it? It has not flown even once. Starship is a hardware rich program, the next version are there and nearly ready. Unless a major redesign is required (unlikely) it can happen much faster.