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"Starship's fifth flight test is targeted to launch on Sunday, October 13. The 30-minute launch window opens at 7 a.m. CT.", https://www.spacex.com/launches/mi
by _Microft 2y ago
"Starship's fifth flight test is targeted to launch on Sunday, October 13. The 30-minute launch window opens at 7 a.m. CT.",
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-5 https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
Edit: that's 12p.m. UTC, I think.
- dwaltrip 2y agoTomorrow? It was issued only one day in advance?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 2y agoSpaceX has claimed they'd been ready to fly since August. It's not a surprise they'll launch very quickly after receiving the license.
- jdiez17 2y agoTake that with a BIG grain of salt. When SpaceX says they are ready and the FAA is holding them up, it is actually Elon saying they are ready. For example, take a look at the "Starships are meant to fly" post from September: https://www.spacex.com/updates/ https://www.spacex.com/updates/ As someone who has been following these developments for a while, I can 100% detect Elon's fingerprints all over this post. They are basically completely dismissing government oversight as "unnecessary obstacles to progress". Keep in mind, the area where SpaceX operates Starship is a wildlife sanctuary and was only chosen because it is one of the few undeveloped, southernmost points of the US, which matters because the closer you are to the equator, the more advantage you can take of the Earth's rotational velocity.
- decremental 2y ago[dead]
- bryanlarsen 2y agoEvery launch pad in the US is a de jure or de facto wildlife sanctuary. Launch pads need a large human keep-out zone. Keeping out humans is great for wildlife. The site was chosen because it was it could launch East over water. The rotation of the earth gives a boost to easterly launches. Boca Chica isn't a great launch location because there's a fairly narrow window of directions it can launch in without overflying land, requiring expensive dog legs to hit different inclinations. They might have been better off with a piece of coastline in Maine, but try and find a piece of Eastern coastline in the US without any development in a 4 mile radius around the site...
- panick21_ 2y agoBeing so far South is quite nice, gives you quite the performance boost, do you have any analysis on what the dog legs cost compared to more Northern launch sites? Would be interesting to consider. Clearly Florida was the right place to do this for the US in the 1960s.
- eastbound 2y agoNoob question: How comes hurricanes aren’t a problem?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> How comes hurricanes aren’t a problem? They're slow and unsurprising. You don't launch in a hurricane.
- dylan604 2y agoYou just launch the day before... https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/european-mission-departs-earth-to-investigate-an-asteroid-wrecked-by-nasa/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/european-mission-depar...
- euroderf 2y agoYou launch in the eye of the hurricane: "Marooned" m.imdb.com/title/tt0064639/
- RecycledEle 2y agoBoca Chica is not the Southernmost point in the US. One if the Florida Keys is. The main reason that area was a wildlife sanctuary was that nobody wanted it for anything else, so it was a cheap political move to make it "protected." A launch site needs more than latitude. It needs possible launch trajectories that star by going over water to avoid possible debis falling in people or property. Launch sites at higher altitude are better than those at lower altitude.
- jdiez17 2y agoTrue. Updated my comment.
- 7952 2y agoRegardless of how it was preserved it is still a valuable habitat for some vulnerable species. And a recreational amenity for people. Nor would the absence of a sanctuary make it automatically ok to kill wildlife or cause pollution.
- chgs 2y agoHonolulu is like 100 miles further south than the Florida keys
- throwawaymaths 2y agoEver tried shipping anything to Hawaii?
- ahazred8ta 2y agoBoca Chica at 25°59′49″N is within 50 N/S miles of Cape Sable, Florida 25°7′6″N the southernmost point on the U.S. mainland. It's just about the southernmost place not near a town. -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_th...
- modeless 2y agoAs recently as last week FAA was saying no launch license before late November, and even if you don't believe SpaceX was ready in August they are clearly ready today. That's what SpaceX complained about, and it got fixed. What more proof do you need that the FAA was the holdup here? https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fupkny/the_faa_confirms_that_the_statement_from/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fupkny/the_f...
- jdiez17 2y agoI would guess SpaceX decided to provide everything the FAA/other agencies were asking for and thus their launch license was issued.
- modeless 2y agoSpaceX already provided all the required information. FAA was not waiting for anything from SpaceX. They had inexplicably decided a new environmental review was required for trivial changes to the launch license, and today they reversed that decision in a "written re-evaluation" which as far as I can tell is not based on any new information.
- jdiez17 2y agoSo in your opinion, as soon as SpaceX uploads a PDF, the launch license should be issued immediately? P.S.: I wish SpaceX succeeds in bringing down the cost of access to space.
- kortilla 2y agoStop willfully misinterpreting it. The new 60 day window was something newly added this time just to give other agencies time to complain if they wanted. The FAA did their normal review like they’ve done for every other starship and falcon launch in a timely manner.
- jdiez17 2y agoOkay, I read the FAA's written reevaluation (source: https://www.faa.gov/media/85696 https://www.faa.gov/media/85696). My notes: - SpaceX requested to amend its existing "Programmatic Environmental Assesment" of 2022 to support jettisoning the interstage heat shield and (importantly) using an updating sonic boom model based on flight data. In my opinion, this is the critical point of this assessment. - The impact on endangered wildlife is reassessed based on a report submitted by SpaceX. - There are other points like concerns about waterway closures, and the water discharged by the deluge system. I know there was some controversy about the deluge system and the cleanliness of that water, but according to this report, it's all good. The new evaluation of the sonic boom using flight data shows that SpaceX's original assessment was way off and the intensity and area affected by these sonic booms is much larger in reality. The FAA then goes through a significant amount of rationalizations (with sources, to be fair) to justify that the predictions of the new sonic boom model are still acceptable. The biological resources section also shows that SpaceX underestimated the effects of their launch operations on local wildlife, but some research and monitoring measures are proposed to counteract this. All in all, my opinion is that the FAA is doing everything it can to not be an obstacle. But they do have to analyze this stuff much more rigorously than SpaceX does. That is quite literally their job after all.
- 0xedd 2y ago[dead]
- mlindner 2y ago> They are basically completely dismissing government oversight as "unnecessary obstacles to progress". SpaceX works quite well with the government and doesn't mind oversight with regards to safety at all. What they don't care for is frivolous oversight/bureaucratic rubber stamping without looking at the intention behind the rules. They also don't like being surprised last minute. All of which happened in the prelude to that update post you referenced. I know a lot of people on this site are from Europe or have European sentiments, but the two places really function quite differently normally. The job of regulators isn't to be obstructionist for the sake of it. It's to create rules that actually improve safety and overall move society forward.
- jdiez17 2y agoI understand the US and Europe work differently. Although I am European, I also have a strong dislike of bureaucracy and am sympathetic to advancing society through technological progress. But there should be some oversight. You cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress We don't. The question was why the FAA was enforcing rules that have nothing to do with its remit. There is protocol of regulatory agencies having each others' backs. But it was silly in this situation—it probably calls for reviewing the regime.
- mlindner 2y ago> But there should be some oversight. You cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress. Then we're in agreement as is SpaceX and even Elon Musk. He's previously stated he's in favor of regulations in general. He just is against an overwhelming overbearing quantity of them that just exist because they've always been there.
- jaywee 2y ago
- fallingknife 2y agoHave you been to that "wildlife sanctuary." I have. People are driving cars up and down that beach all day. Best thing that could happen to the wildlife is if it were shut down permanently for rocket launches.
- jdiez17 2y agoI have. Really enjoyed my time there. But obviously, there are no roads to the places where the endangered species live.
- steveoscaro 2y agoYeah except for the beach that people drive on all the time.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoAnd lack of roads is an attraction for all those people riding their quad bikes and other off road vehicles.
- bewaretheirs 2y agoIn August, they said the rocket was ready to fly .. but they were quite visibly still doing significant work to the catch mechanism on the launch tower.
- dylan604 2y agobeing ready to launch is one thing, being ready to catch/land is another. so technically, they weren't wrong
- rpmisms 2y agoThe perfect is the enemy of the good, and SpaceX lives by this. If they have time to spare, why not spend it improving nice-to-haves?
- kortilla 2y agoSpaceX operates on a rapid iterative cycle where they will knowingly test with deficiencies to improve later. If they get delayed for a massive chunk of time, they are definitely going to use it to make all of the known improvements they can.
- hughes 2y agoFlight 3 license was also issued only one day in advance.
- bewaretheirs 2y agoNot much different from the prior flights. Flight 4 was licensed on June 4th, was originally scheduled to launch on June 5th, and actually launched on the 6th. Flight 3 received its license on March 13th and launched on March 14th. Flight 2 received its license on November 15th 2023, and launched on November 18th. Flight 1 received its license on April 14th; it launched on April 20th.
- LorenDB 2y agoThe main difference here is that up until just a few days ago, the FAA was saying that they didn't plan to issue a license until late November. https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-five-late-november https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-five-late-novem...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> up until just a few days ago, the FAA was saying that they didn't plan to issue a license until late November This might be a case where the FAA's PR department should link to a press release instead of repeatig it contemporaneously.
- dotnet00 2y agoThere was a letter circulating around on X recently, showing that the FAA asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to do their thing faster. Assuming that was real, things got moving after the pressure from Congress.
- mlindner 2y agoShould also be noted that Flight 1 was originally attempted to launch on April 17th.
- BurningFrog 2y agoI think it's more that they launch as soon as they get the permit.
- rvnx 2y agoSpaceX provided information about the flight profile and its impact only in mid-August to FAA. The FAA forwarded the requests to the related agencies and had to wait (for example, what happens to the polluted water). According to 50 CFR § 402.13, the other agencies have 60 days to give back their answers to the FAA. 15 August + 60 days = now. The FAA mentioned they positively collaborate with SpaceX despite "upper stage failure in July and unsuccessful landing in August". Quite exciting to see!
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> 15 August + 60 days = now Close enough. Sixty days is October 14. Today is the twelfth. Tomorrow, 13 October, is the launch.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago"End of day" shenanigans?
- dmix 2y agoInteresting how it took exactly the maximum limit they are alloted. I wonder if the people in these agencies treat it like school projects where you use deadlines as a framework for how long you can screw around before it's absolutely necessary to get started. Where it's not treated as a worst case upper maximum.
- bandyaboot 2y agoAlternatively, one or more agency may not have responded at all and so the FAA was obligated to wait the 60 days. Just speculation.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y agoSounds like a great way to get politicians to give the agency 3 days next time, under the guise of optimization but with the actual intent and effect to completely neuter the agency...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> It was issued only one day in advance? Officially, yes. Practically, I was hearing earlier this week that this was coming, as obviously was SpaceX given they're ready to attempt.
- azernik 2y agoOther way around - with foreknowledge of how fast the FAA was working, SpaceX scheduled the launch last week to be one day after the expected license issue.
- zizee 2y agoAs I write this comment, it is Oct 12, 3:30 pm Central time. So the launch window starts in 15 and a half hours. https://mytime.io/7am/CT https://mytime.io/7am/CT
- justinclift 2y agoHmmm, that mytime.io place doesn't seem super accurate. It's using the wrong time zone for my location anyway, and therefore the gives the wrong local time.
- zizee 2y agoHow frustrating. Hopefully my comment above didn't lead anyone to miss any part of that historic event yesterday. Mea culpa!
- justinclift 2y agoNah, I had already looked everything up some time before. The "timeanddate" meeting planner is my go-to these days for figuring out cross tz stuff: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html Not always super intuitive, but I have yet (heh!) seen it give wrong time info. :)