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There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 su
by GMoromisato 5mo ago
There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030.
My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August.
If they can demonstrate in-space refueling by the end of 2026, then they have a shot at a lunar-landing demo in 2027 and a crewed-landing in 2028. But a lot has to go right for that to happen. Here's hoping it does.
- everyone 5mo ago[flagged]
- rpmisms 5mo agoHave you met hardware guys? This is not how they operate, in my experience.
- everyone 5mo agoI mean I might be a hardware guy myself depending on your definition. I've never dealt with rocket engineers.. Are they "hardware guys" according to you? If so it seems you are using that term incredibly broadly.
- malfist 5mo agoAre you trying to say that "hardware guys" don't care if they're working to advance the agenda from a Nazi?
- saalweachter 5mo agoI mean, rocket guys have a long history of not minding advancing the agenda of a Nazi.
- rpmisms 5mo agoHistorically, that has been true about rockets.
- roryirvine 5mo agoBut SpaceX went out of their way to define themselves against the old school defence-focussed companies. So some rocket engineers might very well have made a positive choice to "work at SpaceX to get humans to Mars" rather than to "work at Lockheed to build missiles". Anyone in that group is likely feeling rather disillusioned right now, which will inevitably lead into demotivation.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Recurecur 5mo ago[flagged]
- deanCommie 5mo ago[flagged]
- hcurtiss 5mo ago[flagged]
- everyone 5mo ago[flagged]
- dbeardsl 5mo ago[flagged]
- wonderwonder 5mo agoThat's makes a lot of sense becuase the Nazi's were notorius for not having good rocket engineers
- deanCommie 5mo ago[flagged]
- john_minsk 5mo agoquestion: what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit?
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit? No. What is the mechanism through which you suspected this could happen?
- bragr 5mo agoKessler syndrome presumably?
- hgoel 5mo agoKeeping the orbits low enough, and/or intentionally going suborbital after docking/before starting the fuel transfer, will make the chances of that being possible very low. It's also worth considering that they have demonstrated cryo propellant pumping between two tanks within a ship, so, AFAIK, transfer between two ships is more about testing the docking systems, than it is about the pumps. They could probably rig the system to first pump some inert gas to verify the quality of the docking, then try to pump propellants.
- margalabargala 5mo ago...caused by what?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- hilsdev 5mo agoColliding tanks full of oxidizer and fuel?
- 5mo ago
- NitpickLawyer 5mo ago> then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030. A crewed Moon landing before 30 is really implausible. Everyone is late, but the latest NASA OIG report put the Axiom suits very late (somewhere ~2031 if everything holds, but it notes it might not hold).
- russdill 5mo agoSmall edit, 2 V2 (not V3) successes (flights 10 and 11).
- GMoromisato 5mo agoThank you! [Wish I could edit, but for some reason I can't, or I can't see the link to edit.]
- mrec 5mo agoHN only allows editing for a fairly short period after a comment is posted.
- stephc_int13 5mo agoI am pretty sure that at least some SpaceX engineers are reading HackerNews. But I don't think I ever seen any insiders comments here, even anonymously.
- helterskelter 5mo agoI assume they'd be covered by a ludicrous NDA.
- chainingsolid 5mo agoAssumption not required. US ITAR regulations mean you're federally "encouraged" to be tight lipped. Add in the fact SpaceX is ahead of pretty much everyone else...
- brynnbee 5mo agoWere any of them actually failures? My understanding is they push limits and create intentional weak points to see where it fails, and something failing isn't a mission failure but rather part of the research process.
- GMoromisato 5mo agoThe goals of the V2 flights were to test the improved heat shield and to test satellite deployment. The first three V2 flights did not make it far enough to test either of those goals. It wasn't until Flight 10 that they could actually test that, and that was 9 months later. Effectively, SpaceX lost 9 months due to problems with V2. Sure, one could argue that it's still research (no customer was affected), and there was no way to know V2 would fail until it was tested. But watching the stream, it was clear that the SpaceX team was very disappointed with the outcome. I remember watching Flight 1, which nearly destroyed the launch pad and didn't make it to SECO, but still SpaceX was ecstatic with the results. 2025 was supposed to be the year SpaceX tested in-space refueling. The V2 failures delayed that, and whether or not a different company could have done better (my guess is no), SpaceX still felt like they failed.
- tristanj 5mo agoYour standards of success are unrealistic and don't reflect the history of spaceflight. Designing and building rockets is incredibly difficult and has always been marred by a high failure rate. The early years of the US space program had an abysmal mission failure rate. Vanguard (1957-1959) was a disaster with 9 failures out of 12 attempts. A 25% success rate. Ranger (1961–1965) had 6 failures in a row out of 9 missions. By Apollo the US cleaned up its act, but had multiple high-profile failures (Apollo 1, 6, and 13). The Soviets were not better, the Luna program failed 11 missions in a row out of 12 missions. The N1 rocket went 0 for 4 and its failure ended the Soviet lunar program. SpaceX Falcon 1 failed three of its first five launches, which nearly bankrupt the company. The rocket's successor, the Falcon 9, ended up becoming the most reliable rocket ever produced. The fact that Starship even functions with so few test flights is an engineering marvel.
- dlcarrier 5mo agoIt has a new engine design. If it can make it only a minute into launch, it'll provide a lot of useful data.
- laughing_man 5mo ago>SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. Why do you say that? I'm sure they'd love to have everything go right, but I doubt they're going to go out of business if it doesn't.
- GMoromisato 5mo agoThat's a fair point. I'm just projecting my own hopes. If it takes them too long to get V3 reliable they will not be able to land on the moon by 2028. I don't think SpaceX wants to feel responsible for China beating the US to the moon.
- dreamcompiler 5mo agoThere's not going to be a moon landing any time soon, regardless. Nobody knows how to do in-space refueling; it's a research project. And they're damn well not going to do it a dozen times in the next year. Furthermore they don't have a lander. Landing on the moon is hard. So hard that almost everybody who tries it fails, especially if the lander is top-heavy. And the SpaceX lander idea is very top-heavy. Finally, the NASA budget has been hollowed out. Even if the two big show stoppers above were easy, the lack of money would stop the project.
- stinkbeetle 5mo agoI suspect Space X has a pretty strong inkling about how to do in-space refueling. They know how to dock in orbit, they have conducted internal propellant transfer tests, they know how to offload payload from ship in orbit and keep control of it, they know how to make autonomous quick connect/disconnect couplings for propellant transfer. They haven't strung everything together yet and it's clearly much more complex than that. Still, pieces are coming together. Why couldn't they do it a dozen times in the next year? They could have an orbital ship launched in Q3 (flight 14), test a tanker and refueling in Q4, and start fueling in the next 3 months. That implies all the test flights go well which is a pretty long shot, but not out of the realm of possibility. Although I think it will ship reuse that will be the problem keeping them from that within a year, rather than in-orbit refueling which I suspect won't take them more than a couple of tries to get right. Reentry still looks like a beast of a problem. It's one thing to have enough of your vehicle hanging together to land it, quite another thing again to have it back in a condition you'd be able to start fueling it up again ready for the next launch and reentry to do it all again, even in days or weeks instead of hours like Space X are aiming for.
- everyone 5mo ago[flagged]