I can’t believe how little news coverage there has been about this. Seeing that thing land was probably the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen.
It’s difficult for the average person to really understand why this is a major innovation. Showed this to my parents and my dad’s comment was “haven’t they already done this?”. If you don’t realize it’s a different rocket it does look basically the same as what they’ve been doing for years now.
I think the average person gets it right. It’s a nice feat to catch the booster and it will save money. But that’s a side quest. The main quest of getting an actual load to orbit and beyond is still pretty far away. At least compared with the official time line where they wanted to achieve much more than that three years ago.
It’s not just saving a little money. If this works, it will drop costs by another order of magnitude. Falcon 9 already dropped a zero, Starship will likely drop it by another zero even without this, and consistently being able to do this catch would mean another zero. That’s getting to $20/kg to LEO, vs $150/kg without it on Starship.
That kind of cost will enable things that were completely infeasible before.
I didn’t say “a little” money. It may be important or critical for the business but from a technical perspective, demonstrating how it can safely bring loads up and down decides whether the whole concept is actually feasible. That’s when people will start to get excited.
Um, no?
The rocket has been to orbit twice now, they’ve already demonstrated that. They’re working on the bonus mission, landing everything and perfecting the hardware to the point where it doesn’t need major refurbishment between flights.
As far as I understood it, SpaceX uses the word “orbit” liberally. If it reaches the hight where an orbit would be possible, that’s “being in orbit” for them. In an actual orbit, the rocket would not fall back down again in an hour or so without active breaking. If my understanding is incorrect, I’m happy to be corrected. And even of that was achieved soon, it’s still all without demonstrating that the starship could actually carry a load and return it safely. Not even an inexpensive dummy load. All SpaceX is showing in their live feeds are empty cargo holds that fill up with hot gases and fumes during reentry.
As far as I understood it, SpaceX uses the word “orbit” liberally.
No, that’s not really right at all. With this last flight they brought the starship above 200km (100km is generally considered the point at which you’re in space), so they definitely went much higher than they needed. In low earth orbit, the velocity needed to hold that orbit is about 28000 KM/H, they kept their velocity below 27000 KM/H for safety/responsibility reasons. That way, if something failed and they couldn’t relight their engines, it would naturally come down anyway in a predictable manner. The closer you get to actual orbital speeds, the less predictable the re-entry and impact location will be, so 27000 KM/H is really as high as you want to go if you want to ensure predictable re-entry. It looks like they maxed out at 26750 kmh.
Also, after they reached 95% of orbital speeds, we know they still had lots of fuel in the tank because it had enough to slow down and land exactly where they wanted it to. And then… it still had enough to explode in a huge fireball, so clearly the rocket could have gone further. Or to look at it differently, all the propellant mass that got used up in that huge explosion at the end, that could have been payload mass. So clearly it has the capacity to put up a payload as well. I think the reason they haven’t yet is that mastering the reusability aspects are just a higher priority than the payload bays, I think we all trust they can design a payload bay when it comes time for that.
In that case I stand corrected on the whole orbit bit. Thanks for taking the time.
Well I love talking about space, thanks for reading all that ;-)
So what you’re saying is that SpaceX deliberatly doesn’t let Starship orbit, to keep reentry predictable. Which is what Lichtblitz@discuss.tchncs.de said; they don’t actually orbit.
Also note that 100km is the minimum height to be “in space”, not the minimum height for achieving orbit.
Finally, I disagree with the note that having “enough fuel” to reach orbit means they have demonstrated such capability; I believe they easily could achieve this, but they haven’t actually demonstrated it yet.
Lictblitz is saying they aren’t capable of orbit. Which is very different from simply choosing not to.
Also note that 100km is the minimum height to be “in space”, not the minimum height for achieving orbit.
That doesn’t really mean anything. You could achieve an orbit at a lower altitude if you wanted to, it would decay faster, but you could do it. The 100km karman line is an arbitrary thing, there is no solid line where on one side you can orbit and on the other side you can’t.
Finally, I disagree with the note that having “enough fuel” to reach orbit means they have demonstrated such capability
Well this seems like a bad semantic argument to me. I guess the question is, what does it mean to you to “demonstrate capability”. Like, for you, what would be the difference between demonstrating a capability to do something and actually doing that thing? How would those two things look different? Or in this specific case, how could they have demonstrated that capability without putting their rocket into a stable orbit (because it would be negligent to do that with this prototype rocket)?
Given what they have done, is there any reason to doubt they could have gone a little bit further? And conversely, was there a good reason to stop where they were, or do you think they would have gone further if they could have?
They’ve already demonstrated they can get it in orbit. The fact that they’ve not done it for this mission was intentional, not a limitation. They wanted the ship back, they didn’t want it sitting around in orbit doing nothing being in the way. They don’t actually have a mission for it yet, its mission is to prove that it works, so if they put it in orbit then what?
The whole point is that once it’s in orbit it has virtually no fuel on board, because that’s how they get around the rocket equation, they do fuel transfer on orbit. So in the testing scenario they would have a vehicle with virtually no maneuvering capabilities parked in a stable orbit more or less forever. Eventually its orbit would decay and it would uncontrollably into the Earth, which I think we can all agree is a bad thing.
You’re not really wrong, but I think you are missing a few things. If you can get your rocket on a ballistic trajectory with a height above the Kármán line (~100km), then going into LEO from there is just a matter of having enough fuel. Nobody doubts that Starship could carry enough fuel to do that.
They haven’t bothered doing that in testing yet, because they wouldn’t learn anything. Knowing how the heat shield survives reentry is far more important. The upper stage still hasn’t been able to come down in a safe, controlled manner yet. Test 4 managed to splash down, but the heat shield took a lot more damage than anybody is comfortable with (if you watch the videos of it, you’ll see why it was amazing it survived at all). This one was Test 5, and while the heat shield survived better, the upper stage blew up when it hit the water.
I thought it blew up because after tipping over the tanks ruptured - a normal result of a rocket tip-over. Am I mistaken?
It shouldn’t rupture a tank just because of a splashdown, no. Even if they’re able to chopstick catch the upper stage, or land it like Falcon 9’s boosters, a splashdown may be needed in emergencies.
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The efficiency gained over time is based in the accumulation of a bunch if small steps like this. Its the compound interest at work.
The average person is right because this has zero impact on anything consequential. We don’t need more of Elongs internet satellites cluttering up space
Didn’t help that Elon announced the Robotaxi just before. That thing sucked away all his headlines, and none of them were positive about that stupid thing.
SpaceX seems to be the Musk company that’s most able to manage its idiot CEO, but they still can’t rid themselves completely of his antics.
This is because Gwynne runs the show. Not Elon
On right wing social media, there was tons of posts about this but nothing about the robo taxis.
It’s kind of like know your audience. Right wing people would love to praise Musk, left wing people don’t (for good reason imo).
I’m actually proud of lemmy cause I saw multiple posts for the rocket (as in, it seems to try to cover everything) and many people in the comment pointed out that a lot of great engineers worked on this and this is a human achievement.
I know they market mars hard, but the more relevant thing this is enabling is the starships that will be used for the NASA Artemis missions and upcoming moon base efforts. Those missions are going to need a few heavy flights each for the lander and a re-fueling ship, in addition to the SLS + Orion capsule for the actual astronauts.
Still wish the money was being invested in NASA to do themselves, and that it was being done without all the waste and environment destruction SpaceX so enjoys, but this is still a big deal to ensure Artemis happens.
Curious, how is SpaceX being wasteful? Aren’t they operating significantly more efficiently than NASA has in the last like half century? Even if you’re counting material waste, they’re hardly the worst offenders; have you seen the plastics industry? Let alone consumer packaging
NASA does a hell of a lot more work than just build rockets lol. SpaceX and all the other private space companies focus on a few of the wide array of programs and services NASA does. They certinally have some poor decisions in their history (as does every space program of the 20th century) but comparing SpaceX’s spending with an appropriate context of NASA’s spending is ludicrous. Its not something you can just put into numbers and any comparisons I’ve seen thus far have been wildly skewed in SpaceX’s favor for marketing reasons.
NASA (and ESA, RosCosmos, others) funding provided decades of R&D SpaceX uses to build its products with and the university curriculums all the engineers at SpaceX learned at.
Also, we dont know how a NASA that wasnt so de-funded since the 80s would have operated, but it’s well established that the budget cuts and uncertainty those created have been a major factor in its ability to build new programs like Artemis, Orion, SLS, etc. in a manner that would be efficient. SLS was bogged down for years waiting for congressional approval that was repeatedly blocked or maliciously modified last minute by congressional and senate republicans, a form of efficiency knee-capping that the agency never faced in the Apollo or Space Shuttle days.
have you seen the plastics industry? Let alone consumer packaging
Not an apples to apples comparison. Check out the many lawsuits and reported criticism of the more careless Starship test flights
SLS was bogged down for years waiting for congressional approval that was repeatedly blocked or maliciously modified last minute by congressional and senate republicans, a form of efficiency knee-capping that the agency never faced in the Apollo or Space Shuttle days.
You can complain about that, but it’s not a factor that’s going away any time soon. It’s built into how NASA works and our system of government.
Space X would not exist without NASA. It only appears remotely “efficient,” because they get to use decades of taxpayer funded research
Why is the moon more relevant than mars?
How is SpaceX destructive compared to other rocket companies? Also, do you know who built the Saturn V?
Because there are actual plans to go back to the moon?
They didn’t say spacex was more destructive than other rocket companies. It’s been widely reported that SpaceX has been bad for the local environment.
Also, do you know who built the Saturn V?
I’m not even going to get into a discussion of NASA competence. There are more than enough records available through widely accepted reporting and media to disprove any of the nonsense Elon cultists spew. Whether you subscribe to the Elon cult mindset or not is your prerogative and not an accusation I’m making…
Additionally, a significant amount of the funding for starship is coming from NASA, specifically from the Artemis program, to the tune of nearly $4 billion.
Elon can scream “mars” all he wants but he has virtually zero progress to report other than some wild plans to just throw people in tubes in the general direction. Last I checked, unless I’ve missed something, SpaceX has not put any amount of work into what is required to keep people alive on mars, much less alive on the trip to mars, and seeing as Elon’s track record on delivering promises by self-imposed deadlines is basically 0%… We’ll see if it ever even happens. Especially since he changes the goal post upon “delivery” (see: full self-driving basically never happening on top of killing more people per car than any other self-driving technology, cybertruck having a fraction of the features and capabilities that were promised on top of being extremely unsafe, semi being a massive failure, that ridiculous re-invention of the subway but for cars that makes 0 financial sense, and probably many more items I’m not thinking of at this moment)
idk about the Tesla Semi being a failure, PepsiCo seems to like them
The problem with NASA isn’t money. It’s having to play pork barrel politics where every state gets to do a little something in order for it all to work. In theory, deriving SLS from old shuttle hardware should have been quick and easy. In practice, its budget is ridiculous compared to what’s been put into Starship.
The real problem is that SpaceX is quickly becoming the only game in town. The ULA can’t match the Falcon 9 on cost, and they have the stench of Boeing around them. Blue Origin is standing in a corner and appears to be wanking itself. Virgin Galactic is only interested in space tourisim. There are some smaller up and coming companies, but few that are beyond basic R&D. NASA is giving ULA money just so SpaceX doesn’t become a de facto monopoly, but it’s not looking good.
A lot of rockets will probably be needed for the new space station being planned by Vast. That starts launching modules in 2028.
Edit: Vera -> Vast
For a company with plans so ambitious, they only have a marketing site, a YouTube channel, and some news articles from 2+ years ago, much less a partnership with SpaceX.
News article from a few days ago
https://spacenews.com/vast-releases-design-of-haven-2-commercial-space-station/
“Vast” would be a different company from the one marketing the Vera station, no?
My bad, I got Vast mixed up with Vera.
I edited my original comment.
I could be mistaken on this: don’t they get just one try?
For that particular booster, sure. For boosters in general, not really.
They could have tried again with another booster and landing pad.
The landing pad wasn’t really at risk. If they had hit it it would have been relatively low speed, by the time it was at the catch attempt it was at like 30 km/h or something. Hitting a big steel object at that speed would have probably done more damage to the booster than anything else
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I think you’ve got too many zeros on your price estimate, no? The tower is huge, but there’s no way it costs five hundred million dollars.
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Are you including the R&D costs? Best estimates I’ve seen for a mechzilla put labour and materials between 65-95 million USD
Trying again doesn’t necessarily mean trying again right away.
It wasn’t the first starship launch but it was the first where they tried to land onto the chopsticks. Last time I believe they simulated the same thing but landed in the ocean instead. They did get just one try with this particular rocket since if it was unsuccesfull the rocket would now be in a million pieces.
