5 ms·

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

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
  Perhaps, although not obvious that it's cash starved. NASA's slow but meticulous approach has had a few failures, but also incredible successes such as the sky crane martian rover landing - got to get it right first time, tough to move fast and break things when the test environment is 100 million miles away! Edit: Same goes for 1969's lunar lander - had to work first time.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    Seems to be great for deep space missions but not launch vehicles.
    - sbuttgereit 3y ago
      More like it's better with little-noticed science programs which can get by with a minimal amount of politics involved... which to be fair includes the details of deep space missions. Big, flagship projects which attract more attention are where things fall to crap for the most part.
  - thmsths 3y ago
    And NASA can be fast too. If I recall the Genesis of the Voyager missions correctly, someone noticed the once in a lifetime opportunity where the planet would align properly for a probe to visit a lot of them in using clever gravity assists. And from there NASA acted quickly to get funding, design and launch 2 probes that are still active today!
- johnyzee 3y ago
  Still very impressive. We all know that adding more resources to a project does not necessarily make it go faster.
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

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
Perhaps, although not obvious that it's cash starved. NASA's slow but meticulous approach has had a few failures, but also incredible successes such as the sky crane martian rover landing - got to get it right first time, tough to move fast and break things when the test environment is 100 million miles away! Edit: Same goes for 1969's lunar lander - had to work first time.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  Seems to be great for deep space missions but not launch vehicles.
  - sbuttgereit 3y ago
    More like it's better with little-noticed science programs which can get by with a minimal amount of politics involved... which to be fair includes the details of deep space missions. Big, flagship projects which attract more attention are where things fall to crap for the most part.
- thmsths 3y ago
  And NASA can be fast too. If I recall the Genesis of the Voyager missions correctly, someone noticed the once in a lifetime opportunity where the planet would align properly for a probe to visit a lot of them in using clever gravity assists. And from there NASA acted quickly to get funding, design and launch 2 probes that are still active today!
johnyzee 3y ago
Still very impressive. We all know that adding more resources to a project does not necessarily make it go faster.

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