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For all the humanity's challenges and flaws, Starship is its most inspiring expression, in steel and fire.
by d_silin 1y ago
For all the humanity's challenges and flaws, Starship is its most inspiring expression, in steel and fire.
- bigyabai 1y agoI'll always be more impressed by the Space Shuttle, to each their own I suppose.
- vFunct 1y agoSeriously. NASA had a reusable orbital rocket 40 years ago. Space-X still only has reusable boosters. I was mostly impressed by the materials science of the space shuttle tiles, even though they’re expensive.
- jiggawatts 1y agoSure, but it was burning congressional pork as fuel and cost only the occasional human sacrifice.
- sdenton4 1y agoThe only reason starship hasn't involved human sacrifice thus far is that they haven't put humans in it. It remains to be seen whether the engineers will manage to make something usable from musk's 'Cybertruck - space edition' fever dream.
- jiggawatts 1y agoTrue, but they're doing it on a far lower budget than the Space Shuttle. A single RS-9 engine -- one of five used in the SLS -- costs more than an entire Falcon 9 launch with payload, taxes, and profit! Starship is similarly frugal. Its construction is simpler, it is made of cheaper materials, it uses a cheaper fuel, etc, etc... “Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”
- poslathian 1y agoI love this quote. mankind having been to space already, the rockets are the sideshow to the way they designed and grew an org that delivered them along with a great business, starting from an amount of capital loads of nobodies have had but failed to do anything interesting with.
- laughing_man 1y agoI'm not sure why you would call Starship a "fever dream". The numbers work. It's in testing. I could see calling the Saudi "Line City" a fever dream, or California's HSR. But not Starship.
- kemotep 1y agoWhat numbers work specifically? Because we haven’t seen a single re-use of a starship yet nor any significant payload brought to orbit, or the orbital refueling turn around and launch cadence necessary to even achieve 1/10th of what Musk suggests is “possible on paper”. Super-heavy is being wasted on a potential dead end 2nd stage in my opinion.
- itishappy 1y agoOnly because they haven't honestly tried (for reuse). We've seen Superheavy caught successfully with engines that could probably be reused, and we've seen Starships lightly splashdown with engines that could potentially be reused if they weren't filled with saltwater. I'd agree that they're way behind schedule and that recent launches have been disappointing but they've demonstrated their components. I believe reliability will come in time, the question is how much time.
- laughing_man 1y agoBy "numbers" I mean the rocket equation. There should be plenty of fuel to put Starship in orbit with a nontrivial payload and have it land again. Yes, the entire system doesn't work yet, but we're already into the refinement stage.
- sdenton4 1y ago...Or full driverless mode in Tesla cars. That also works in theory - waymo is doing fine - but the Tesla execution has been hampered for years by musk's misguided idea that only camera should be necessary. Likewise, I only expect starship to successfully execute to the extent that musk can be kept out of the decision-making process.
- 1y ago
- gridspy 1y agoAnd isn't that decision to leave humans behind on the ground an inspired piece of mission planning. It's wonderful that computers and telemetry has progressed so far.
- whycome 1y agoDon’t forget the investigation documentation as an unexpected byproduct.
- thinkingkong 1y agoThe shuttle itself was reusable but the two solid rocket boosters and the external fuel tank were all disposable components.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- vFunct 1y agoThe space shuttles boosters were reused. So, literally every engine in the shuttle was reused. Wild what NASA did 40 years ago…
- DarmokJalad1701 1y ago> Wild what NASA did 40 years ago… You can do that when you have $1b/flight to spend on refurbishing.
- ricardobeat 1y agoThe parts were reused but they rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, everytime. Reusability means something like a plane: refuel + safety checks and you’re good to go again
- vFunct 1y agoYes the boosters were fully reused. Thanks.
- panick21_ 1y agoThat's kind of ridiculous and pedantic. In a solid fuel rocket, the solid fuel is most of the complexity and most of the cost. The rocket flys because of how the solid fuel is shaped and engineered. Reflying the booster cases doesn't change the fact that an essentially new solid booster has to be manufactured. In fact it didn't even financially make sense to reuse the boosters, so it was actually worse then not being reusable at all. As with everything with Shuttle, it all sounds cool when you imagine it, but then if you look at the actual program its basically a 40 shit-show that started very badly and basically never got better. In actual fact, it failed completely as an industrial program for the US.
- rockemsockem 1y agoThe space shuttle was an awesome feat of engineering, but in practical terms, it cost a lot for every launch, so it really didn't deliver well on the most important piece of what reusability is supposed to get you. The tiles themselves were apparently a big source of the problems on the shuttle too. If they can figure out reusable tiles with starship, with quick turnaround and low-cost for maintenance, that'd be a huge engineering accomplishment. They've gotta consistently re-enter it first though.
- mgfist 1y agoThe innovation is not making a reusable rocket, it's making a reusable rocket that is cheap and rapidly reusable.
- ChocolateGod 1y ago> Seriously. NASA had a reusable orbital rocket 40 years ago. Space-X still only has reusable boosters. Reusable but had to spend 2 months after use being repaired/having parts replaced, meanwhile Falcon 9 has turn around times in days and Starship is aiming for hours. Whilst the the achievements and technological marvels by NASA should never be understated, Starship is aiming for a target significantly more difficult than the space shuttle.
- vFunct 1y agoGreat. Glad we agree that the Space shuttle was a stellar achievement in reusable rockets and every andvancement afterward is marginal.
- panick21_ 1y agoIf you go buy actual objective measure of what people tried to achieve, Shuttle is a failure. They literally drop an architecture, Apollo, that was perfectly achieving what needed to be achieved, namely, facilitate humans to LEO, extreme large payload to LEO and large payload to LEO, very fast payloads for outside of LEO and single shot space stations. All of that existed and was able to be build of the shelf. Shuttle then took all that money, in turn losing the US the capability to do all this amazing stuff. With the promise that it could then do all those things again but actually do it cheaper. In that aspect, Shuttle completely failed. Not only did the US lose most of its capability for the next 40 years, some we still have not gotten back. And it did that while costing absurd amounts to develop and then a huge amount to operate, so much that NASA barely had a budget to actually do anything useful with Shuttle. And of course it also took so much time to develop that a whole space station had to be scarified for it. So really the whole Shuttle program is an anti-achievement, it literally directly reduced the technical capability of a nation and turned it from the best space nation in the world into the second best to arguable being second best. Technical complexity by itself is not a mark of great engineering, and that's all Shuttle was. In terms of actual objective measure, Shuttle is a failure pretty much every way you look at it. Failure on cost, failure on safety, failure on ecosystem, failure of evolution, failure operational reliability and so on. Soviets could launch payload and human cheaper to LEO for the next 40 years and only SpaceX brought this back to the US.
- sneak 1y agoIt was only reusable if you keep building new ones after they explode and kill everyone inside. Did we all forget that the Space Shuttle is a failed program because it was unacceptably deadly due to a high failure rate?
- kemotep 1y agoIt was only recently surpassed by Falcon 9 as the most reliable rocket program in human history with something like a 98% success rate. All other rocket programs, including Starship are significantly worst in terms of failure rates than Shuttle.
- ggreer 1y agoThere were 135 space shuttle missions over 30 years, with 2 failures resulting in 14 lives lost, giving a success rate of 98.5%. The second failure happened when the program was mature, which means that either NASA didn't analyze certain failure modes or they didn't take steps to address them. The Space Shuttle's design is inherently less safe than a normal capsule on top. With the orbiter on the side of the stack, any debris from other components is more likely to damage it. The orbiter also had no launch escape system or ability for crew to eject. Also, the solid boosters could not be throttled or shut down early if they malfunctioned. In contrast, capsules like Dragon and Soyuz are above the booster stages, reducing the chance of damage from any malfunctions in the stages, and allowing a launch escape system to get the crew away in the event of an emergency. Falcon 9 has had 531 launches over 15 years (394 of them have happened since January of 2022), with 3 failures (one on the pad before launch, two during launch), for a success rate of 99.4%. Had these failures occurred during manned missions, the Dragon capsule's launch escape system would have likely saved the crew. The mature version of Falcon 9 (block 5) has had 466 successful landings out of 472 attempts, giving it a success rate of 98.7%. This likely means that riding on a Falcon 9 first stage with no additional safety devices (such as a parachute or a launch escape system) is safer than riding in the Shuttle.
- kemotep 1y agoThanks for providing this to other users but my point was about other rocket programs beyond Falcon 9 and Space Shuttle such as Starship. Starship is behind where Falcon 9 was at this point. By the same timelines Apollo was sending people to the moon too.
- HPsquared 1y agoReusable first stage (which is the largest, most expensive part), expendable second stage (only one engine vs nine on the first stage), and reusable spacecraft. I'd be surprised if the Falcon second stage cost more than the Shuttle's external tank. (Though, to be fair, they are decades apart)
- prasadjoglekar 1y agoIt was reusable, but way over promised. Don't take my word for it. Richard Feynman served on the Challenger commission and very nicely summarizes the difference between Apollo and Space Shuttle. https://youtu.be/4kpDg7MjHps https://youtu.be/4kpDg7MjHps SpaceX is doing stuff that's just beyond the scope of what's deemed conventionally realistic. That's achievable and pushes us forward.
- rockemsockem 1y agoWhy?
- itishappy 1y agoStarship is big rocket, but Space Shuttle is cool plane. Big fan of both!
- pantalaimon 1y agoBut that never allowed for cheap and easy access to space, it was way too expensive even compared to expendible rockets.
- bamboozled 1y agoOn the other hand, I doubt half of what's going on would be possible or desirable without the learning and expertise gained from the past. Sometimes you have to know what you shouldn't do.
- vessenes 1y agoCost to develop in today's dollars: $50bn (more if you consider it as a % of GDP). Cost per kg to launch something with it: roughly $70k. Cost to launch on falcon per kg: $2-3k. Wait, that's price. SpaceX is profitable. It's roughly 100x cheaper.
- ac29 1y ago> Cost to launch on falcon per kg: $2-3k. Wait, that's price. SpaceX is profitable. It's roughly 100x cheaper. A fully loaded falcon costs less than $500k to launch?
- stavros 1y agoA fully loaded falcon can only carry 250kg?
- amluto 1y agoCheck your math. The capacity to LEO is around 17500 kg.
- hdgvhicv 1y agoIf the cost is 100 times cheaper than 2-3k per kilo that’s $20-30 per kilo, or 500k. Maths checks out, whether the cost per launch is really that low is another thing.
- mkl 1y agoYou have misunderstood; SpaceX obviously doesn't have a profit margin of 99%. The 100x comparison was with the space shuttle.
- mynameisvlad 1y agoThen it really shouldn't have been written immediately after "Wait, that's price. SpaceX is profitable." The two statements have literally nothing to do with one another and it's easy to see why one would assume that the final sentence is talking about the sentence immediately before it.
- imoverclocked 1y agoSame. If for no other reason than it had never been done before then for the technology they had to accomplish the feat with at the time.
- xenocratus 1y agoKoyaanisqatsi https://youtu.be/OA7lzJSqeU4?si=gje1xvgAiidAAu3N https://youtu.be/OA7lzJSqeU4?si=gje1xvgAiidAAu3N
- sneak 1y agoFor a film with no narrative it sure does seem sad (and wrong) to claim our modern life is “out of balance”. Still one of my favorite works of music and cinematography both; I just don’t agree at all with the implicit message. We are destined for the stars. That end scene with the Atlas missile that you linked is def the best though (and Prophecies is the best song/track too).
- xenocratus 1y agoFor sure, don't know if I agree with the central "message" of that title / song. But I can see the complaints raised therein. I'm just a bit of a contrarian, and couldn't resist the appeal of that reply :@)
- slipperydippery 1y ago> We are destined for the stars. The stars suck, though. Even Mars is entirely awful. Like, that's not very different from "we're destined for Hell". Not an inspiring sentiment, right? It's really bad. How awful it is aside, it's also roughly as realistic as "we're destined for Tolkien's Middle Earth". Only marginally less fantastical.
- idiotsecant 1y agoFirst orbit, then mars, then the stars.
- nativeit 1y agoFirst orbit, then piss money away for 70-years with no discernible progress, then maybe Mars (for "reasons"), then we probably ruin the habitability of Earth long before "stars". I grant that's not as pithy as yours...
- m3sta 1y agoScience made it possible. Remember this when you see anti-scientific sentiment online.
- antithesizer 1y ago[flagged]
- gooseus 1y agoFunny, I'd say that for all of SpaceX's innovation and successes, Starship and its owner represent of some of the greatest expressions of humanity's flaws and challenges.
- gnarlouse 1y agoYin and yang, I can see both you and OP's comments as a bit of true.
- sneak 1y agoStarship is SpaceX’s greatest technological achievement already, even if it never reaches orbit reliably (with the potential exception of the inter-satellite Starlink laser links). Did you not see the booster catch work on the first try? The partially successful re-entry even with half the control surface melting away? The hundreds at SpaceX are doing Apollo-level breakthrough work, and it should not in any way be minimized due to tangential Elon-hate.
- djeastm 1y ago>The hundreds at SpaceX are doing Apollo-level breakthrough work, and it should not in any way be minimized due to tangential Elon-hate. You're right. It shouldn't be. And yet here we are wasting our digital breaths talking about the man. And there's really only one person responsible for that.
- monkeywork 1y agoyup - it's the users gooseus fault. If you're wasting your breath talking about someone, it's not on them, it's on you. We live in a world where everyone should have realized by now that attention is the most valuable currency you have ... and yet people continue to use that currency on things they claim to dislike ... I have a hard time feeling bad for them.
- Terr_ 1y ago> attention is the most valuable currency "Grass-fed body mass is the most valuable currency", said the rancher to the fenced-in herd of beef-cows. Nah, that's what someone with power says in order to distract you from realizing you don't actually have nearly as much. Attention has never been a good substitute for power, or thousands of years of human civilization would be very very different. There's a fine line between stoicism and self-defeating tactics.
- loeg 1y agoEven among SpaceX's creations, I find the Falcon rockets more inspiring personally.
- amelius 1y agoMeh, rocket science is just Newtonian physics mostly. SpaceX is just the commercialization of stuff that was invented by our parents and grandparents in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
- idiotsecant 1y agoHow to spot someone who has never designed a complex system in their life.
- nativeit 1y agoLet me know when Starship's complex systems, y'know, work.
- panick21_ 1y agoFunny we were talking about SpaceX and you have to pivot your comment to Starship because otherwise you didn't actually have a comeback. SpaceX has build complex systems, very successfully so. Starship not being finish with development isn't exactly a 'dunk'.
- amelius 1y agoBe reasonable here. The complexity is within reach of high schoolers: https://youtu.be/SH3lR2GLgT0 https://youtu.be/SH3lR2GLgT0
- nativeit 1y agoHm...no thanks. xoxo <3 Humanity