4 ms·
I cannot wait for Starship to become a real thing, but you have to admit it's way behind schedule. The engines are awesome now.
by the_king 5mo ago
I cannot wait for Starship to become a real thing, but you have to admit it's way behind schedule. The engines are awesome now.
- eagerpace 5mo agoIt's so much further advanced than anything anyone else is working on, does it really need to be on schedule? I feel like "on schedule" only pertains to non-research-intensive projects.
- estearum 5mo agoMore bigger != more advanced != more economical != more sensical And anyway yes there are programs that are dependent on Starship working on a schedule. If it doesn't work on schedule, those programs will advance without it and the Starship program will eventually fail.
- eagerpace 5mo agoThere are so many individual features in this program that have never been done or even attempted before. That's "Advanced" in my book. Yes, they attached it to an overly ambitious program that is rife with delays (and hubris) but the program started on its own, is the best path to making the 2028 landing happen (it won't), and on its own is incredible.
- estearum 5mo agoStarship is at this point probably not even the best path to making a 2028 landing happen. How many of those things that have never been done/attempted before sit downstream of poor strategic decisions?
- eagerpace 5mo agoYou have to separate the two. There are no good options to 2028. It's just politics.
- estearum 5mo agoI don't know what "two" you're referring to, nor what politics.
- panick21_ 5mo agoThe alternative to Starship needs to solve many of the same problem and is from a less proven company. If they can do it, great but I don't think its more likely.
- estearum 5mo agoThey really don't though! Starship chose to structure the problem such that they require this groundbreaking several-things-never-before-done design.
- panick21_ 5mo agoThen tell me how to land 100t on the moon or mars without solving any of these problems. Even if you want to put less then that on the moon, anything but a tiny lander still needs refueling and reusable launch.
- estearum 5mo agoI'm perfectly comfortable with not landing 100t of material on either the moon or Mars. Have yet to hear any compelling argument for why we should except that ermygoerrdd sci-fi!!!11!!
- panick21_ 5mo agoBecause a base for humans needs lots of cargo and large areas to live in ...
- estearum 5mo agoOh! We need a base because we need a base. Okay that solves it.
- panick21_ 5mo agoOk I misunderstood your argument. The fact is, its the governments planned to build a base. If your opinion is that instead we should build a base at the bottom of the ocean, you are correct, Starship is not a good engineering solution. In fact, anything not in space wouldn't be ideal. But that's a political choice, and Moon base is what NASA and congress are working towards.
- ehsankia 5mo agoSpaceX has had 165 launches in 2025 (although admittedly 75% of those were for Starlink...) Obviously bigger isn't more economical or sensical, and most cases are served just fine with the Falcons, but there are cases we need the big boy for, and it's good that someone is working on it and has made so much progress. Obviously a semblance of a schedule is good to have, but realistically, that's not really how research works. Look at James Webb telescope, it was originally scheduled for 2007, and ended up launching 14 years later. It's still an amazing piece of engineer/science, and it's amazing that it's up there now, even if it was very late to it. It's much better to be late and successful than early and failing.
- estearum 5mo ago> but there are cases we need the big boy for, and it's good that someone is working on it and has made so much progress. I am taking issue with this claim. Are there cases where the cost/benefit actually come out favorably for Starship as it is actually turning out? Are they cases anyone should actually care about beyond sci-fi fantasies (i.e. not "colonize Mars")?
- xiphias2 5mo agoSure, I have crappy mobile reception a lot of times on my travels, so I'll be the first when finally Starship can launch satellites with antennas big enough so that my mobile phone can directly be used for internet access.
- 7e 5mo agoIf my rocket doesn’t need to deliver any results on any timeline, it can be infinitely advanced. Convenient, right?
- throwaway27448 5mo agoIs it? It seems mostly similar to what we had fifty years ago.
- refulgentis 5mo agoIt does need to work at some point and I have a feeling it won't. Travelled from doubter => hyped => doubter. Something is very wrong.
- SecretDreams 5mo agoOn schedule pertains to anything where extraordinary schedule claims are unnecessarily made. Nobody would have to think about a schedule in this context if somebody did not regularly make bold schedule claims.
- 7e 5mo agoThe engines are so awesome that test flights are loaded with 10% of the promised capacity of the rocket. Someone is blowing smoke up your ass.
- SecretDreams 5mo ago> but you have to admit it's way behind schedule Shouldn't even be phrased like this. We can cheer for progress without simping so badly that we can't acknowledge failures and missteps. Space is hard and over promising and under delivering are real possibilities that a hype-person cannot run from. Just moderate the hype and let the engineers cook - is that so hard??
- consumer451 5mo agoThe issue is cadence. SpaceX is the king of cadence with Falcon 9, but if it takes >10 Starship Tanker launches to get all that excess mass of Starship HLS to the moon... prior to boil-off of the Starship HLS... holy crap, this is really hand wavy. Even SpaceX will have a really hard time launching ~10 Tankers in the time required. What are the lower and upper bounds of that time required? Nobody knows. But, if it's less than many weeks, it's gonna be tough. That's ~weeks of HLS on orbit, getting refueled, with boil-off occurring. SpaceX has many things correct, except for the vehicle size and design, as far as HLS goes.
- kevin_thibedeau 5mo agoThat's why BO will ultimately be landing before SpaceX gets the chance and likely after the Chinese.
- consumer451 5mo agoI don't know about the CCP program at all. However, Blue's HLS plan for winning the USA race to the moon is far simpler than Spacex's plan. Even at Blue's relative glacial pace, that is actually possible. Starship is designed for atmospheric entry to Mars. Ain't no atmosphere on the moon. Wrong design for the moon. I am a huge space nerd, therefore I have a lot of respect for SpaceX, and I have been hating on Blue for years. As weird as it is, Blue might actually beat SpaceX to the moon. Just the real chance of that is crazy, and if you look at the logistics, there's a real chance. In the long term, aside from HLS, Stoke Aerospace has the coolest design. Late mover advantage.
- kevin_thibedeau 5mo agoLanding Flash Gordon style with exposed ascent engines on an unprepared dirt and rock surface is not a recipe for success regardless of the gravity involved. Until they come up with some Marston matting style deployable landing surface, their system will never work. Furthermore, Apollo 15 was tilted 10° with a relatively squat design to the LEM. A skinny tower would not have survived that.
- gregjor 5mo agoThe warp drives in Star Trek seem awesome too, we're just behind schedule. Starship excels at funneling tax money into Musk's various enterprises. Whether it actually reaches orbit, much less the moon or Mars, merely incidental, the sexy marketing photos for an imaginary island resort. By the time Starship does actually achieve orbit it will likely get damaged by all of the debris SpaceX has parked around the planet.
- wolvoleo 5mo ago> The warp drives in Star Trek seem awesome too, we're just behind schedule. They're not scheduled until 2063 :)
- croddin 5mo agoNah we're good Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight wasn't till 2063 ;-)
- eagerpace 5mo agoThink of all the childcare and hospice centers we could fund with it!