4 ms·

Why does anyone give a damn about what this person says? Not at expert, not a professional working in the field, just some rando. It's like asking, who, Miss U

by tekla 2y ago

Why does anyone give a damn about what this person says? Not at expert, not a professional working in the field, just some rando. It's like asking, who, Miss Universe what her opinion on the US Space Program is.

dotnet00 2y ago
To an extent I concur that people are giving his opinion a weirdly large amount of attention relative to its value. They're all worn out arguments in rocketry circles, very reminiscent of all the dumb claims Blue Origin made when they lost the first HLS contract, only to settle on a very similar architecture for the second one. However, IIRC he has an aerospace masters, is currently pursuing a PhD and used to work on testing missiles, so he's not a complete rando.
- avmich 2y ago
  When a child remarks about an emperor's clothes, that child doesn't need to be a tailor.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    By 'giving his opinion a weirdly large amount of attention relative to its value' I'm not saying that his opinion has little value due to his lack of specific space credentials (else my opinion wouldn't matter either lol). I'm saying his opinion has little value because the issues he's pointing to have been discussed to death already by other rocketry enthusiasts and anyone interested would've found those discussions easily. Sure, the debates aren't fully settled yet, but they're certainly comprehensive enough to make it obvious that the criticisms are kind of weak, such that even if Starship isn't the one to establish all the necessary tech for meeting Artemis' stated goals, it's by far the most promising attempt to do it, as the others weren't even trying.
    - avmich 2y ago
      My comment was more of an agreement, I do think that good points can come from various sides, not only "certified by the upper levels of government". Starship is in testing, which was chosen to be done with test flights. Those test flights are of course something very different than assumed regular launches later on, after the system would be complete in design, development and testing. Right now Starship isn't even planned to immediately come back to Mechazilla. Starship is obviously incomplete now, but that doesn't mean it can't be completed and successfully used. Comparing to that the existing plans and results with NASA's Artemis parts are more bleak. Expensive, slow, underperforming - and even dangerous. Smarter Every Day's video points to gaping problems, and he's even explaining why he chose to talk about it - there and then. It shouldn't matter much that he's an engineer - though he couldn't perhaps to talk about it without enough understanding. In his case, it was more important to articulate important points aloud.
avmich 2y ago
> It's like asking, who, Miss Universe what her opinion on the US Space Program is. I wonder what would happen if this Hollywood star - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr - would be asked about, say, spread spectrum communications. Or a certain patent bureau clerk - about the world-filling ether.
Zigurd 2y ago
I'm not a rocket scientist but I am very experienced at project management and I can say fairly certainly that an iterative engineering approach to something and complex and full of hard dependencies as Starship will achieve rapid reusability sometime between much later than promised and never. This is a project with an unknowable worst-case completion date because there are way too many issues with too many unknowable times to resolve issues, many of which can only be worked on once previous issues are resolved, and way too many issues continue to be discovered. Converging on completion is not in sight. Some indicators are that starship's payload capacity keeps getting revised down, and the launch system still needing weeks of repairs between launches, which means even pessimistic estimates of the number of tanker launches and their cadence are probably too optimistic.
- avmich 2y ago
  I strongly disagree. > iterative engineering approach to something and complex and full of hard dependencies as Starship will achieve rapid reusability sometime between much later than promised and never To the opposite, you can't have a complex system working without having first simpler system working, and then iterating from that. Let me know if you need the quote. For rockets in particular, the approach "build a little, test a little" is the current best practice. Starship complexity of course is splittable into engine complexity, set of engines, body, simple control and then other functions - actually, with the exception of Raptors, it's quite an iterateable system. > This is a project with an unknowable worst-case completion date because there are way too many issues with too many unknowable times to resolve issues, many of which can only be worked on once previous issues are resolved, and way too many issues continue to be discovered. No, this is totally wrong. And the current pace of existing testing shows just that. "unknowable worst-case completion date" - strictly speaking, you can never be sure 100% about anything, and if you understand this statement "reasonably", then it's just wrong. Starship will be flying more or less successfully in 3 years, that's rather conservative, and in this decade, very conservatively. Otherwise it will probably be dropped, but chances for that are really low. "there are way too many issues with too many unknowable times to resolve issues" - no, there are just several rather well-known areas - like, attitude control on the orbit (done with somewhat smaller orbiting bodies), thermal protection during return (done with similar materials, spaceplanes, so both materials and aerodynamics are not completely new), active bracking with engines (done extensively with Falcon-9 first stages), getting caught with Mechazilla (fine controls for Falcon-9 landings and even helicopter catches of payloads from space are relevant) and then quite a number of progressively smaller issues. Will work no problem in the end, high probability. "many of which can only be worked on once previous issues are resolved" - not exactly. While you can't return with orbital speed unless you got that speed in the first place, other issues could be tested - and Starship flights to 10 km altitude a few years ago were just that, tests for the last 10 km of flight. Not exactly identical to how it's going to happen according to today's plans, but not irrelevant either. "way too many issues continue to be discovered" - why do you think that? Rockets are something which was done with 50+ years old technology, which for this area is quite a bit; there's just not too much of complexity here. "Rocket science is not a rocket science", as they say in the industry. "Converging on completion is not in sight." - again, where did you get this from? You're way off in your estimates. It's not known about number of tankers needed to refuel one Starship. But this is not a particularly important question. Even with 30 tankers required the system still could be made to work. And likely there will be much less of tanker flights than that, so what's the problem?

by tekla 2y ago

dotnet00 2y ago

To an extent I concur that people are giving his opinion a weirdly large amount of attention relative to its value. They're all worn out arguments in rocketry circles, very reminiscent of all the dumb claims Blue Origin made when they lost the first HLS contract, only to settle on a very similar architecture for the second one. However, IIRC he has an aerospace masters, is currently pursuing a PhD and used to work on testing missiles, so he's not a complete rando.

avmich 2y ago
When a child remarks about an emperor's clothes, that child doesn't need to be a tailor.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  By 'giving his opinion a weirdly large amount of attention relative to its value' I'm not saying that his opinion has little value due to his lack of specific space credentials (else my opinion wouldn't matter either lol). I'm saying his opinion has little value because the issues he's pointing to have been discussed to death already by other rocketry enthusiasts and anyone interested would've found those discussions easily. Sure, the debates aren't fully settled yet, but they're certainly comprehensive enough to make it obvious that the criticisms are kind of weak, such that even if Starship isn't the one to establish all the necessary tech for meeting Artemis' stated goals, it's by far the most promising attempt to do it, as the others weren't even trying.
  - avmich 2y ago
    My comment was more of an agreement, I do think that good points can come from various sides, not only "certified by the upper levels of government". Starship is in testing, which was chosen to be done with test flights. Those test flights are of course something very different than assumed regular launches later on, after the system would be complete in design, development and testing. Right now Starship isn't even planned to immediately come back to Mechazilla. Starship is obviously incomplete now, but that doesn't mean it can't be completed and successfully used. Comparing to that the existing plans and results with NASA's Artemis parts are more bleak. Expensive, slow, underperforming - and even dangerous. Smarter Every Day's video points to gaping problems, and he's even explaining why he chose to talk about it - there and then. It shouldn't matter much that he's an engineer - though he couldn't perhaps to talk about it without enough understanding. In his case, it was more important to articulate important points aloud.

avmich 2y ago

> It's like asking, who, Miss Universe what her opinion on the US Space Program is. I wonder what would happen if this Hollywood star - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr - would be asked about, say, spread spectrum communications. Or a certain patent bureau clerk - about the world-filling ether.

Zigurd 2y ago

I'm not a rocket scientist but I am very experienced at project management and I can say fairly certainly that an iterative engineering approach to something and complex and full of hard dependencies as Starship will achieve rapid reusability sometime between much later than promised and never. This is a project with an unknowable worst-case completion date because there are way too many issues with too many unknowable times to resolve issues, many of which can only be worked on once previous issues are resolved, and way too many issues continue to be discovered. Converging on completion is not in sight. Some indicators are that starship's payload capacity keeps getting revised down, and the launch system still needing weeks of repairs between launches, which means even pessimistic estimates of the number of tanker launches and their cadence are probably too optimistic.

avmich 2y ago
I strongly disagree. > iterative engineering approach to something and complex and full of hard dependencies as Starship will achieve rapid reusability sometime between much later than promised and never To the opposite, you can't have a complex system working without having first simpler system working, and then iterating from that. Let me know if you need the quote. For rockets in particular, the approach "build a little, test a little" is the current best practice. Starship complexity of course is splittable into engine complexity, set of engines, body, simple control and then other functions - actually, with the exception of Raptors, it's quite an iterateable system. > This is a project with an unknowable worst-case completion date because there are way too many issues with too many unknowable times to resolve issues, many of which can only be worked on once previous issues are resolved, and way too many issues continue to be discovered. No, this is totally wrong. And the current pace of existing testing shows just that. "unknowable worst-case completion date" - strictly speaking, you can never be sure 100% about anything, and if you understand this statement "reasonably", then it's just wrong. Starship will be flying more or less successfully in 3 years, that's rather conservative, and in this decade, very conservatively. Otherwise it will probably be dropped, but chances for that are really low. "there are way too many issues with too many unknowable times to resolve issues" - no, there are just several rather well-known areas - like, attitude control on the orbit (done with somewhat smaller orbiting bodies), thermal protection during return (done with similar materials, spaceplanes, so both materials and aerodynamics are not completely new), active bracking with engines (done extensively with Falcon-9 first stages), getting caught with Mechazilla (fine controls for Falcon-9 landings and even helicopter catches of payloads from space are relevant) and then quite a number of progressively smaller issues. Will work no problem in the end, high probability. "many of which can only be worked on once previous issues are resolved" - not exactly. While you can't return with orbital speed unless you got that speed in the first place, other issues could be tested - and Starship flights to 10 km altitude a few years ago were just that, tests for the last 10 km of flight. Not exactly identical to how it's going to happen according to today's plans, but not irrelevant either. "way too many issues continue to be discovered" - why do you think that? Rockets are something which was done with 50+ years old technology, which for this area is quite a bit; there's just not too much of complexity here. "Rocket science is not a rocket science", as they say in the industry. "Converging on completion is not in sight." - again, where did you get this from? You're way off in your estimates. It's not known about number of tankers needed to refuel one Starship. But this is not a particularly important question. Even with 30 tankers required the system still could be made to work. And likely there will be much less of tanker flights than that, so what's the problem?