4 ms·

I can't wait for the next one. How many tests are we expecting? 7-8? Seems to be too long! I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo.

T-A 3y ago
> I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo Careful what you wish for. The Saturn test program peaked at 3 tests / year (unless you want to count the separately tested launch escape system for the crew capsule), and the fully stacked Saturn V was only tested twice (in 1967 and 1968) before crewed missions. For all its speed, Apollo was not a SpaceX-style rapid iteration program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Uncrewed_test_flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Uncrew...
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
  Tortoise and hare, perhaps. Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit. Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in 1969 - with 60's tech.
  - newsclues 3y ago
    Apollo was also dual use military technology to accelerate the development
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - mrec 3y ago
    To be fair, Apollo also had government funding to the tune of approximately 2.5% of GDP. Starship would probably go a bit faster too with an annual budget of half a trillion.
    - mft_ 3y ago
      I suspect Starship would also go a lot faster with the weight of the President directly behind it, helping to remove those pesky regulatory issues :)
      - inglor_cz 3y ago
        Start of the Apollo program literally precedes the Clean Air Act, establishment of EPA etc. When the government decided to build Kennedy Space Center in Florida wilderness, they just did. No lengthy environmental impact assessment process in the way.
        HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
        Sure, but most of the (anyways rapid) turnaround time from Starship launch #1 to #2 was rebuilding and deluge system .. can't be more than a month or two max delay attributed to regulations.
        inglor_cz 3y ago
        True, this was a major engineering obstacle that had to be overcome.
        mft_ 3y ago
        The pad rebuild and deluge system install was in parallel with the other work. Give or take, it was complete by the end of July [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOtw3ucIKng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOtw3ucIKng
        vibrolax 3y ago
        Well we have the Canaveral National Seashore to enjoy today, which was constituted from the undeveloped portion of the space program reservation. Otherwise, that area today might be a wall of hirise condos instead of a pristine coastal barrier island.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
  - icegreentea2 3y ago
    Measuring Apollo's start point in 1961 can be very misleading. Apollo was the culmination of a more or less continuous development process stretching back to the early 50s with the start of the ICBM programs. For example, the F-1 engines that powered Saturn V first stage actually began development in the late 50s, with the first static firing happening in 1959. The (in)famous combustion instability challenges of the engine were solved by 1961. Apollo had a tremendous running start in many areas - to say nothing of having the resources and know-how of the entire US military-aerospace-industrial complex at it's disposal. This isn't to minimize what an accomplishment Apollo was. I just don't think you can meaningfully compare the timelines of what SpaceX is trying to do with Starship, and what Apollo accomplished.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
      True, but in same way SpaceX has also been in the rocket business for over 20 years, and building upon know how and organizational expertise gained from the Falcon 9.
      - FeepingCreature 3y ago
        Wiki says Raptor development started in 2009-2012 with no predecessor, with first test firing in 2016.
        jholman 3y ago
        Since this is a thread about pedantry (rocketry pedantry), I'll allow myself to be pedantic about words. "A wiki" is a type of software. But when you use "Wiki" as a proper noun, referring to one specific instance, that's the name of Ward's Wiki, the original wiki, also known as wikiwikiweb, available at wiki.c2.com . I'm guessing that you were not citing Ward's Wiki, but were rather citing some other site, in particular the site that contains this advice on citing it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_abbreviate_%22Wikipedia%22_as_%22Wiki%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_abbreviate_%...!
        3y ago
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Starship didn't really start in a meaningful way in 2012. In 2012 there were at best some vague concepts of a large rocket and some initial concept ideas for Raptor. But at that time for Raptor they were still thinking about Hydrolox. SpaceX simply didn't have the resource to fully invest in Starship until much later. Even by the early presentations around 2016 it was a tiny part of SpaceX and was prototyping with limited resources. Real ramp up of spending happened significantly later. Your understanding of Apollo is also flawed. The F-1 engine started development as early as 1955, not 1961. So if anything your 2012 date would be more like 1955. Starship is also twice as powerful as Saturn V and designed to be reusable in both stages. That's a significantly harder task. Had SpaceX just wanted to match Saturn V, that would have been significantly easier.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
      Well, whether you want to call it 8/9 years ('61-'69) or 14 ('55-'69), I don't think NASA looks too shabby landing men on the moon in that time frame without the decades of experience we have to draw on today, and with 1950's/60's technology, and so far no-one else has done it.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        The Apollo missions were certainly an achievement worthy of getting memorialised. I also think that, given the size of the Apollo landers, if SpaceX had actually wanted to they could've redone those missions years ago with a Falcon Heavy and a variant of the Crew Dragon design.
      - electriclove 3y ago
        The NASA of that time has been long gone for decades
      - panick21_ 3y ago
        Nobody said it was 'shabby'.
      - chrisco255 3y ago
        Yeah they did less than 20 launches, had 6 successful missions, and then had to kill the program because the costs were too high at a $500B equivalent annual budget. Apollo 1 also burnt up and killed 3 astronauts on the ground. Modern day NASA could not redo the Saturn V missions again. They lost the talent that achieved those missions a long time ago.
  - tempaway215751 3y ago
    Where did you get 2012 from? BFR wasn't announced until 2016
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Apollo also killed three astronauts on the ground in the posthumously named Apollo 1, and almost killed at least three more with Apollo 13. Apollo 6 (the final uncrewed test) suffered from pogo oscillations and also had two engines go out in the second stage. Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill. This is all to say, Apollo was an extremely risky program.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    > Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill. This is a common misconception but mixes up at least three things. 1) Yes, Eagle was long, but not because of a software bug. The exact reason is unclear and there may have been multiple factors. 2) Yes, there were unexpected computer alarms but these were caused by a hardware bug that manifested because a switch was in an unexpected position. The software handled this appropriately. Margaret Hamilton said: “To blame the computer for the Apollo 11 problems is like blaming the person who spots a fire and calls the fire department. Actually, the computer was programmed to do more than recognize error conditions. A complete set of recovery programs was incorporated into the software. The software's action, in this case, was to eliminate lower priority tasks and re-establish the more important ones. The computer, rather than almost forcing an abort, prevented an abort. If the computer hadn't recognized this problem and taken recovery action, I doubt if Apollo 11 would have been the successful Moon landing it was.” 3) Neil Armstrong did adjust the landing point late in the descent after noticing rough terrain. He utilized semi-automatic control to do this. Essentially adjusting the target point for the autopilot. Eagle wasn’t directly flown like an aircraft. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 A great video on the AGC and Apollo 11 landing: https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM?si=Ypn6Gtp16_DEkpK9 https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM?si=Ypn6Gtp16_DEkpK9

T-A 3y ago

> I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo Careful what you wish for. The Saturn test program peaked at 3 tests / year (unless you want to count the separately tested launch escape system for the crew capsule), and the fully stacked Saturn V was only tested twice (in 1967 and 1968) before crewed missions. For all its speed, Apollo was not a SpaceX-style rapid iteration program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Uncrewed_test_flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Uncrew...

HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
Tortoise and hare, perhaps. Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit. Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in 1969 - with 60's tech.
- newsclues 3y ago
  Apollo was also dual use military technology to accelerate the development
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- mrec 3y ago
  To be fair, Apollo also had government funding to the tune of approximately 2.5% of GDP. Starship would probably go a bit faster too with an annual budget of half a trillion.
  - mft_ 3y ago
    I suspect Starship would also go a lot faster with the weight of the President directly behind it, helping to remove those pesky regulatory issues :)
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      Start of the Apollo program literally precedes the Clean Air Act, establishment of EPA etc. When the government decided to build Kennedy Space Center in Florida wilderness, they just did. No lengthy environmental impact assessment process in the way.
      - HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
        Sure, but most of the (anyways rapid) turnaround time from Starship launch #1 to #2 was rebuilding and deluge system .. can't be more than a month or two max delay attributed to regulations.
        inglor_cz 3y ago
        True, this was a major engineering obstacle that had to be overcome.
        mft_ 3y ago
        The pad rebuild and deluge system install was in parallel with the other work. Give or take, it was complete by the end of July [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOtw3ucIKng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOtw3ucIKng
      - vibrolax 3y ago
        Well we have the Canaveral National Seashore to enjoy today, which was constituted from the undeveloped portion of the space program reservation. Otherwise, that area today might be a wall of hirise condos instead of a pristine coastal barrier island.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  Measuring Apollo's start point in 1961 can be very misleading. Apollo was the culmination of a more or less continuous development process stretching back to the early 50s with the start of the ICBM programs. For example, the F-1 engines that powered Saturn V first stage actually began development in the late 50s, with the first static firing happening in 1959. The (in)famous combustion instability challenges of the engine were solved by 1961. Apollo had a tremendous running start in many areas - to say nothing of having the resources and know-how of the entire US military-aerospace-industrial complex at it's disposal. This isn't to minimize what an accomplishment Apollo was. I just don't think you can meaningfully compare the timelines of what SpaceX is trying to do with Starship, and what Apollo accomplished.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
    True, but in same way SpaceX has also been in the rocket business for over 20 years, and building upon know how and organizational expertise gained from the Falcon 9.
    - FeepingCreature 3y ago
      Wiki says Raptor development started in 2009-2012 with no predecessor, with first test firing in 2016.
      - jholman 3y ago
        Since this is a thread about pedantry (rocketry pedantry), I'll allow myself to be pedantic about words. "A wiki" is a type of software. But when you use "Wiki" as a proper noun, referring to one specific instance, that's the name of Ward's Wiki, the original wiki, also known as wikiwikiweb, available at wiki.c2.com . I'm guessing that you were not citing Ward's Wiki, but were rather citing some other site, in particular the site that contains this advice on citing it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_abbreviate_%22Wikipedia%22_as_%22Wiki%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_abbreviate_%...!
        3y ago
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Starship didn't really start in a meaningful way in 2012. In 2012 there were at best some vague concepts of a large rocket and some initial concept ideas for Raptor. But at that time for Raptor they were still thinking about Hydrolox. SpaceX simply didn't have the resource to fully invest in Starship until much later. Even by the early presentations around 2016 it was a tiny part of SpaceX and was prototyping with limited resources. Real ramp up of spending happened significantly later. Your understanding of Apollo is also flawed. The F-1 engine started development as early as 1955, not 1961. So if anything your 2012 date would be more like 1955. Starship is also twice as powerful as Saturn V and designed to be reusable in both stages. That's a significantly harder task. Had SpaceX just wanted to match Saturn V, that would have been significantly easier.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
    Well, whether you want to call it 8/9 years ('61-'69) or 14 ('55-'69), I don't think NASA looks too shabby landing men on the moon in that time frame without the decades of experience we have to draw on today, and with 1950's/60's technology, and so far no-one else has done it.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      The Apollo missions were certainly an achievement worthy of getting memorialised. I also think that, given the size of the Apollo landers, if SpaceX had actually wanted to they could've redone those missions years ago with a Falcon Heavy and a variant of the Crew Dragon design.
    - electriclove 3y ago
      The NASA of that time has been long gone for decades
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      Nobody said it was 'shabby'.
    - chrisco255 3y ago
      Yeah they did less than 20 launches, had 6 successful missions, and then had to kill the program because the costs were too high at a $500B equivalent annual budget. Apollo 1 also burnt up and killed 3 astronauts on the ground. Modern day NASA could not redo the Saturn V missions again. They lost the talent that achieved those missions a long time ago.
- tempaway215751 3y ago
  Where did you get 2012 from? BFR wasn't announced until 2016
mcpackieh 3y ago
Apollo also killed three astronauts on the ground in the posthumously named Apollo 1, and almost killed at least three more with Apollo 13. Apollo 6 (the final uncrewed test) suffered from pogo oscillations and also had two engines go out in the second stage. Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill. This is all to say, Apollo was an extremely risky program.
- mulmen 3y ago
  > Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill. This is a common misconception but mixes up at least three things. 1) Yes, Eagle was long, but not because of a software bug. The exact reason is unclear and there may have been multiple factors. 2) Yes, there were unexpected computer alarms but these were caused by a hardware bug that manifested because a switch was in an unexpected position. The software handled this appropriately. Margaret Hamilton said: “To blame the computer for the Apollo 11 problems is like blaming the person who spots a fire and calls the fire department. Actually, the computer was programmed to do more than recognize error conditions. A complete set of recovery programs was incorporated into the software. The software's action, in this case, was to eliminate lower priority tasks and re-establish the more important ones. The computer, rather than almost forcing an abort, prevented an abort. If the computer hadn't recognized this problem and taken recovery action, I doubt if Apollo 11 would have been the successful Moon landing it was.” 3) Neil Armstrong did adjust the landing point late in the descent after noticing rough terrain. He utilized semi-automatic control to do this. Essentially adjusting the target point for the autopilot. Eagle wasn’t directly flown like an aircraft. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11 A great video on the AGC and Apollo 11 landing: https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM?si=Ypn6Gtp16_DEkpK9 https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM?si=Ypn6Gtp16_DEkpK9