3 ms·
> Most importantly, we can tune risk and and reward across the production line; the crewed Falcon 9/Dragon launches are far more conservative than their Starlin
by mft_ 2y ago
> Most importantly, we can tune risk and and reward across the production line; the crewed Falcon 9/Dragon launches are far more conservative than their Starlink + rideshare ones.
Do you have any details about how this is achieved? What changes?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Do you have any details about how this is achieved? What changes? Wider margins of safety. More frequent fallback plana/turnouts. But for the most part: less. Fewer changes. You go back to a proven model that’s flown more. It won’t have the latest kit. But that’s the point.
- canadianfella 2y ago[dead]
- avmich 2y ago> but the leading edge advances so quickly that learning curves have limited runtime. > It won’t have the latest kit. So does the SOTA advances too quickly or not?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> So does the SOTA advances too quickly or not? By SOTA, do you mean anti-collision kit?
- rozab 2y agoOne part of it is using fresher boosters
- sitkack 2y agoBut not too fresh, you want to be in the flat spot of the bathtub curve. This failure was in an upper stage no ?
- justin66 2y agoThere's a whole bunch of reading you could do on "man rating" of rocket boosters. Nothing SpaceX does is unique in this area (except reusing some of the boosters). I mean, more testing, more QC, more caution and less pushing of limits, etc. I don't think it's something where you'll find a really clear, single answer about specific changes that need to be done to rate a spacecraft. [0] Russia's Soyuz-U has a long history as a reliable booster. They flew it for over four decades, and some blew up, but they never lost a crew. (They did send one crew downrange on a ballistic flight path after a safe abort, which I bet was exciting for everyone concerned [1]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-rating_certification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-rating_certification [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-10
- bradgessler 2y agoThere’s an interview Tim Dodd did with Elon where they talk about the difference of approach between Falcon and Starship. Falcon had to be built on simple and proven hardware concepts because private commercial space flight was unproven and considered very risky. Now that SpaceX has proven the impossible is indeed possible to the world many times with reusable rockets, private manned space flight, and an affordable satellite data network—they can raise the capital and field the team needed to build a proper space launch system, which we now know as Starship.