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Starship might honestly have a similar payload issue with the weird door design, the way it hinges up means you need a more complex release plan than most which
by rtkwe 2y ago
Starship might honestly have a similar payload issue with the weird door design, the way it hinges up means you need a more complex release plan than most which just pop straight off the front of the booster.
During the third test flight they also tested their weird side eject design for Starlink (or other flat pack style satellites) and the video looks like the door completely ripped itself apart.
- creshal 2y agoThe door design isn't final yet, there's no point in whining about it. They need tankers and landers for NASA contracts short term (neither of which require payload deployment), anything else is a nice to have that can be tinkered with on the side until it works.
- macintux 2y ago> The door design isn't final yet, there's no point in whining about it. Your first clause is correct, the second is unnecessarily hostile.
- creshal 2y agoI'm just getting really irritated by the amount of concern trolling surrounding SpaceX. Everything they do "must" have a gotcha, because clearly they cannot be as far ahead of the competition as they daily prove to be.
- mrandish 2y agoYeah, I agree with you. Healthy skepticism is generally a good thing but now SpaceX has clearly demonstrated an unprecedented ability to solve a large number of insanely difficult problems. At some point, it becomes unreasonable to "yeah, but..." less difficult things like cargo doors.
- ordu 2y ago> Healthy skepticism is generally a good thing but now SpaceX has clearly demonstrated an unprecedented ability to solve a large number of insanely difficult problems. I'd add "again" into your sentence. They already did it before. Now they proved that they hadn't lost that ability yet.
- rtkwe 2y agoThe door is a major issue to using super heavy to deliver other payloads which is a goal long term and the need for a heat shield on the bottom makes it hard to make it fully open towards the front. Kind of need to have this fairly well sorted from the beginning because new designs mean new testing and certification which are expensive.
- creshal 2y agoNo. That's the whole point of SpaceX's development model, testing done right is absurdly cheap.