I wonder if a successful catch will be what accelerates the launch schedule.
I hope a failed catch doesn’t mean a six month pause…
I wonder if a successful catch will be what accelerates the launch schedule.
I hope a failed catch doesn’t mean a six month pause…
They have, and that seems to be the industry standard. I don’t expect issues. But you can’t test everything in a full gravity vacuum chamber and SpaceX has never made an EVA suit before.
I’m sure the depressurization process includes tons of safety measures and tests, but I’m still creeped out by a tourist flight being this experimental!
As far as I know these EVA suits aren’t going to be tested sans people, and that gives me the creeps!
I’m impressed by the quality of their onboard cameras, without the help of starlink.
FYI to everyone: there are several fake “ESA Official” YouTube channels running deepfaked Elon crypto scam streams that claim to be “Ariane 6 Launch Stream”.
They’re nothing new, but sharing in case anyone hasn’t seen it before. Those aren’t real streams!
IT’S SO CUTE
Why do our brains work like this…
Can’t wait to see this team, but I don’t understand why they paid this much. Wow.
Wow, the “little” max has gotten big! Going to take a while to get used to these numbers.
Musk is gross and SpaceX has some questionable marketing claims that you’ve identified, but I don’t see how anyone could claim that anything about the company’s products are a shitshow.
Falcon 9 has radically changed the economics of the space industry, and has no competition to force lower prices.
Starship has had a very successful testing campaign, and operates within a different development paradigm than Saturn. They’ve shown more progress on more technology in the last year than almost any rocket ever. It won’t be long before Starship has demonstrated all the capabilities you mentioned. While the price tag is large in absolute terms, it will be very cheap relative to the competition.
Dear Moon was not canceled by SpaceX, and no one who follows the industry has ever believed Musk’s timelines.
I guess I’m confused, because everything I know about Starship points towards it being one of the most incredible engineering accomplishments ever. There are lots of other problems with SpaceX’s leadership, environmental impact, and work culture, but aren’t the products inspiring?
This is really well done!
Commenting to boost this post, but roll again if you land on me. Thanks OP :)
Yeah that’s fair. I’m pretty low on these Mavs and would bet against them in a re-run of these playoffs, but they’ve certainly made a good case for themselves and initial odds are partly hype-based.
I’m not sure how to justify those Mavs odds. They had a great run, but will anyone be picking them over the Nuggets or Thunder (or Grizzlies?) next year? I’d expect them to be a 5 or 6 seed.
What a weird situation. I suppose it’s nice those workarounds exist, even if they’re not ideal.
I think I’ve come to a similar conclusion after IFT-4. Reusability is the top priority, not a stretch goal like with Falcon-9. As such, the expected value of testing reentry is a lot higher than that of orbital maneuvering.
What an insanely aggressive development approach!
It stands for “maximum dynamic pressure”, and is a fluid dynamics concept. It’s the moment when the spacecraft is under the most stress, and therfore where certain things are most likely to fall apart.
It’s caused by a combination of atmospheric density and velocity. To avoid issues, there’s a rough rule of “don’t accelerate too much until you’re high enough that the atmosphere thins out” during launch, and “don’t hit the atmosphere too fast” during reentry.
Here’s a chart for the IFT-3 launch. At one minute you can see that acceleration decreased for a few seconds, to minimize the strength of max-Q.
Interesting that there’s nothing special about acceleration at max-Q, unlike during launch.
Interesting! I assume it involves a smart plug and an automation script that monitors battery level?
Wow, Graphene really doesn’t have charging limits?
I assume this is the discussion you referred to, and I think it broke my trust in the project.
Edit: As far as I can tell, many of the frustrating parts of that thread are from random posters and not devs. I’m still annoyed that such a basic feature is considered controversial.
Great points. I think my concern is that a failed catch has the potential to look very dramatic, even if nothing significant goes wrong. I worry that a lengthy investigation will be triggered. But admittedly I don’t know how that process works!