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Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if no

Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if not more. Yes, Starship development has been slow and occasionally explodey, but they've successfully demonstrated all the fundamentals and it's "just" iteration from here. (They haven't gone into full orbit, but that's by choice, not lack of capability.)

ActorNightly 6mo ago
> If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, I really wonder about this psychological effect where non technical people champion people like Musk so hard without any basis for doing so. Is is some sort of wanting to belong to some ideology that makes you just make shit up in your head about how Starship is a success, despite many indicators of it clearly being a stupid idea born from Musks ketomine episodes? For the record, Starships engines are the equivalent of taking a Toyota Corolla and making it run on nitrous continously on the verge of self destructing. You may be able to do technology demonstrations here and there, but making it work reliably for actual missions is much much harder.
- deleted 6mo ago
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- junofan 6mo ago
  Bringing together the money and people to make this stuff happen is the basis. That’s the most impressive part. Debatably the only truly impressive part. There’s no ideology. You can watch a really big rocket take off every month or two and watch a smaller rocket take off every couple days. I’m sure there are better designs out there… on drawing boards.
  - ActorNightly 6mo ago
    Its not a video game where you put enough resources into "science" and stuff just works. There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand, and its ridiculous to think that he would be smart enough to account for them.
    - WalterBright 6mo ago
      > There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand Examples?
      - ActorNightly 6mo ago
        Musk thinks that if you crash things enough until it works first time, the problem is solved. Which is fine for something like Falcon. As loads get bigger and heavier, and you start running into margins of performance (for example, raptor engines are required to generate the thrust to lift it). And then, just cause it works the first time, that doesn't mean there is enough margin on the system to not fail due to an external unforseen event for which the narrow margins can't account for.
        WalterBright 6mo ago
        Musk's technology ventures have been incredibly successful. I wouldn't bet against him. In fact, I've bet on him.
        ActorNightly 6mo ago
        Pre 2018 Musk before he destroyed his mind with ketamine, sure. Apart from a few very autistic events, I would have also bet on him. But now, you wanna tell me the person that thought the Cybertruck was a good product is going to solve a very complex problem of reusable heavy launch vehicle? Much less go to Mars? Ok.
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- inglor_cz 6mo ago
  "Starships engines", also known as Raptors, are among the most extensively tested rocket engines in the world. More than 600 of them (across all variants) have been produced and tested on McGregor test stands and in flight, with relatively few explosions, and for some of that test stand explosions, we do not know if those were deliberate overload tests. Raptor is about the least problematic of all the crucial Starship components. They had a lot more problems with ullage and the gorilla in the room is the heat shield. It must be very reliable and at the same time quick to check and fix. The time to fix the heat shield will be the critical component of the total turnaround time. Personally, I don't believe in 1 hour turnaround. 1-2 days just might be plausible.
  - ActorNightly 6mo ago
    Is that why you see several engines not functioning during flight tests? The issue is that the controllers have to maintain a crazy unstable balance of the mixture to keep these things running due to the dual preburn cycle and cryogenic storage, that any unforeseen circumstance can lead to failure. In the days of Falcon, where Space X was attracting people willing to disrupt the industry, I would have been in the "its possible" camp. Nowdays, with everything going on, I would place a large chunk of money on the fact that they will never get it to be reliable enough. They haven't even gotten it to orbit yet, despite the massive experience they have.
    - WalterBright 6mo ago
      The rockets were designed to be tolerant of a couple of the engines not functioning. This is actually good engineering, as perfect reliability is very expensive.
      - ActorNightly 6mo ago
        >This is actually good engineering, Lol. First its "engines are reliable", then its "well actually they are not, but the starship can function with a few out" The Elon simps never cease to amaze me. An engine should not go out by itself. Some catastrophic event can take out an engine, and then if you design your rocket to fly with a few out, thats fine. But if the engines just are so unstable that they fizzle out, thats a huge risk because that means any non planned event can cause more engines to fizzle out, leading to loss of vehicle.

ActorNightly 6mo ago

> If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, I really wonder about this psychological effect where non technical people champion people like Musk so hard without any basis for doing so. Is is some sort of wanting to belong to some ideology that makes you just make shit up in your head about how Starship is a success, despite many indicators of it clearly being a stupid idea born from Musks ketomine episodes? For the record, Starships engines are the equivalent of taking a Toyota Corolla and making it run on nitrous continously on the verge of self destructing. You may be able to do technology demonstrations here and there, but making it work reliably for actual missions is much much harder.

deleted 6mo ago
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junofan 6mo ago
Bringing together the money and people to make this stuff happen is the basis. That’s the most impressive part. Debatably the only truly impressive part. There’s no ideology. You can watch a really big rocket take off every month or two and watch a smaller rocket take off every couple days. I’m sure there are better designs out there… on drawing boards.
- ActorNightly 6mo ago
  Its not a video game where you put enough resources into "science" and stuff just works. There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand, and its ridiculous to think that he would be smart enough to account for them.
  - WalterBright 6mo ago
    > There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand Examples?
    - ActorNightly 6mo ago
      Musk thinks that if you crash things enough until it works first time, the problem is solved. Which is fine for something like Falcon. As loads get bigger and heavier, and you start running into margins of performance (for example, raptor engines are required to generate the thrust to lift it). And then, just cause it works the first time, that doesn't mean there is enough margin on the system to not fail due to an external unforseen event for which the narrow margins can't account for.
      - WalterBright 6mo ago
        Musk's technology ventures have been incredibly successful. I wouldn't bet against him. In fact, I've bet on him.
        ActorNightly 6mo ago
        Pre 2018 Musk before he destroyed his mind with ketamine, sure. Apart from a few very autistic events, I would have also bet on him. But now, you wanna tell me the person that thought the Cybertruck was a good product is going to solve a very complex problem of reusable heavy launch vehicle? Much less go to Mars? Ok.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
inglor_cz 6mo ago
"Starships engines", also known as Raptors, are among the most extensively tested rocket engines in the world. More than 600 of them (across all variants) have been produced and tested on McGregor test stands and in flight, with relatively few explosions, and for some of that test stand explosions, we do not know if those were deliberate overload tests. Raptor is about the least problematic of all the crucial Starship components. They had a lot more problems with ullage and the gorilla in the room is the heat shield. It must be very reliable and at the same time quick to check and fix. The time to fix the heat shield will be the critical component of the total turnaround time. Personally, I don't believe in 1 hour turnaround. 1-2 days just might be plausible.
- ActorNightly 6mo ago
  Is that why you see several engines not functioning during flight tests? The issue is that the controllers have to maintain a crazy unstable balance of the mixture to keep these things running due to the dual preburn cycle and cryogenic storage, that any unforeseen circumstance can lead to failure. In the days of Falcon, where Space X was attracting people willing to disrupt the industry, I would have been in the "its possible" camp. Nowdays, with everything going on, I would place a large chunk of money on the fact that they will never get it to be reliable enough. They haven't even gotten it to orbit yet, despite the massive experience they have.
  - WalterBright 6mo ago
    The rockets were designed to be tolerant of a couple of the engines not functioning. This is actually good engineering, as perfect reliability is very expensive.
    - ActorNightly 6mo ago
      >This is actually good engineering, Lol. First its "engines are reliable", then its "well actually they are not, but the starship can function with a few out" The Elon simps never cease to amaze me. An engine should not go out by itself. Some catastrophic event can take out an engine, and then if you design your rocket to fly with a few out, thats fine. But if the engines just are so unstable that they fizzle out, thats a huge risk because that means any non planned event can cause more engines to fizzle out, leading to loss of vehicle.