SpaceX's Starship Completes Fifth Test Flight - and Lands Booster Back at Launch Tower (cnbc.com) 202
Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched its Starship rocket on its fifth test flight. But more importantly, CNBC points out, SpaceX "made a dramatic first catch of the rocket's more than 20-story tall booster."
Watch the footage here. It's pretty exciting... The achievement marks a major milestone toward SpaceX's goal of making Starship a fully reusable rocket system... The rocket's "Super Heavy" booster returned to land on the arms of the company's launch tower nearly seven minutes after launch.
"Are you kidding me?" SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the company's webcast. "What we just saw, that looked like magic," Huot added...
Starship separated and continued on to space, traveling halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean as intended to complete the test. There were no people on board the fifth Starship flight. The company's leadership has said SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew...
With the booster catch, SpaceX has surpassed the fourth test flight's milestones... The company sees the ambitious catch approach as critical to its goal of making the rocket fully reusable. "SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success," the company wrote on its website.
Watch the footage here. It's pretty exciting... The achievement marks a major milestone toward SpaceX's goal of making Starship a fully reusable rocket system... The rocket's "Super Heavy" booster returned to land on the arms of the company's launch tower nearly seven minutes after launch.
"Are you kidding me?" SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the company's webcast. "What we just saw, that looked like magic," Huot added...
Starship separated and continued on to space, traveling halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean as intended to complete the test. There were no people on board the fifth Starship flight. The company's leadership has said SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew...
With the booster catch, SpaceX has surpassed the fourth test flight's milestones... The company sees the ambitious catch approach as critical to its goal of making the rocket fully reusable. "SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success," the company wrote on its website.
Congradulations (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Congradulations (Score:2)
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The grandchildren, if there are any, will be wondering how to pay the rent and where the next meal is coming from. It won't be dropping from space.
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Suck it, Musk haters! A few years from now nobody will remember who that Brazilian judge was, but our grandchildren will remember today.
There's no issue with people strongly disliking Elon, and still cheering for what SpaceX is accomplishing. It's not like you have to pick one or the other.
As for being remembered, both SpaceX and Elon certainly will. The question is whether Elon will be remembered primarily for SpaceX or his.. less savory ventures.
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Between SpaceX and Tesla, Musk is clearly the greatest industrial businessman of his generation. He’s the Henry Ford of this era.
But, just like Ford, Musk isn’t the nicest guy on the planet, he’s got an ugly side, and he’s pretty clearly past his prime. If he’s smart, he’ll get out his own way and let Tesla and SpaceX move towards their logical conclusions. He can still play a positive role as a senior leader and solidify his place in history.
https://youtu.be/WLjr3dzOUpQ?s... [youtu.be]
Re:Congradulations (Score:4, Informative)
I don't agree with the other post though, about Musk having a better grasp on reality, morals and ethics than the rest of us by dint of his superior intelligence. Other highly intelligent people have been spectacularly wrong before, about matters that were outside their area of expertise. Including Einstein.
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Apparently, Musk isn't all that involved in running SpaceX anymore
According to whom?
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I don't agree with the other post though, about Musk having a better grasp on reality, morals and ethics than the rest of us by dint of his superior intelligence. Other highly intelligent people have been spectacularly wrong before, about matters that were outside their area of expertise. Including Einstein.
This. We too often think that being smart means being right. It doesn't. Not only are there different ways of being smart and different areas of expertise, but it's also normal for smart people to make mistakes. One part of being smart is making mistakes and learning from them.
This is also what makes SpaceX different from NASA. At NASA, they try to do things right the first time. They have the processes and the controls to work like that. At SpaceX they are more of the "fail early and often and use each fai
Re:Congradulations (Score:4, Insightful)
Nowadays, spacex is rolling forward and doesnt need Musk much anymore.
And you base this on what?
The science was all there - any of the big space companies could have done what Musk did, but they didn’t. They lacked the vision, leadership, willingness to take risks, and energy. Musk provided all of that. spaceX would never have come into being without him. Without the guy, we’d barely be past space-shuttle tech.
And what do you think has changed?
If he’s smart, he’ll get out his own way and let Tesla and SpaceX move towards their logical conclusions.
You act as though that, at this point, SpaceX is now just another established company that's ready to be run like any other business. But this is far from true.
Better yet -- do you have any idea why spacex isn't a publicly traded company? Any idea at all? I mean if SpaceX did an IPO, all of the current shareholders, especially its employees, would be quite wealthy basically overnight, and they know it. This already happened to even line workers at Tesla, several of whom became millionaires soon after the IPO. So why wouldn't they all just cash out? If you figure out the reason why, hold that thought.
That very same reason, by the way, most of the world is currently calling bullshit on, basically saying it won't be done any time soon, no money in it, etc. I'd wager you're probably even one of them. And you bet your ass that Wall Street would very quickly demand a course change if they had any stake in it at all. Most of those working at SpaceX are doing it for no reason other than they just want to see it happen. If anybody else, other than Elon and those he himself believes in, was at the helm, then it probably won't happen.
What is that reason, and who, other than Elon, has the wherewithal to see it to completion? I'd even argue that his wealth alone is a very good reason why so many others would stray from it. This isn't to say anything bad of Gwyn by the way, she does a fantastic job, and she'd certainly press forward with SpaceX's mission given the chance. Of that I have zero doubt. The only concern I have without Elons presence is just how fickle investors can and do get. And when they become activists, all bets are off, they start getting their own ideas about how a company should be run, and my concern is that it would end up being like every other big complacent defense contractor, because that's the surest bet.
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Ford was right, and so is Musk.
Actually, in hindsight, the concept of a car that every working man could afford ultimately created a lot of problems for society.
Now I'm not gonna sit here and hypocritically claim that I don't enjoy having my own privately-owned vehicle which I can hop in and go anywhere around town at a moment's notice, but I also can't pretend that freedom didn't come at a cost far beyond what I paid for the vehicle itself. The entire area I live in was literally designed to accommodate cars. If you ever stopped and looked at how much of the land is being utilized for roadways and paved parking lots, if this was an idea proposed today, people would call it insane.
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Interesting)
but I also can't pretend that freedom didn't come at a cost
My favourite line on this will always remain: "Freedom is not owning a car, freedom is not needing to own one." Someone told me this 15 years ago and I laughed in their face because I too lived in a car-dependent society. Fast forward to today after moving to Europe... I don't own a car anymore, and I travel a lot, both within the country and internationally.
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Actually, in hindsight, the concept of a car that every working man could afford ultimately created a lot of problems for society.
I think the direction we were already going in, i.e. horses, would have left us much worse off. The problem cars create only really apply to large cities. Once you leave the city, those problems are basically moot, and cars are basically a godsend.
On a tangent: Few people realize that Nazi Germany was using horse drawn vehicles for military logistics until the very end and they think of that war as being highly mechanized. With very few exceptions, pretty much only the US was. Sure, Hitler had tanks, but ou
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Actually, in hindsight, the concept of a car that every working man could afford ultimately created a lot of problems for society.
That is true. However, in 1908 (the year the Model T started production) the population of the USA was less than 90 million. Families were also larger - the average household size was around 4.5 people per household (today it's about 2.5).
According to census data, there were around 20 mio. households in the USA at that time. Today it's more than 110 mio.
In 1908 it was fair to assume one car per household, because when he said "working man", Ford certainly meant "man" in the sense of male person, not in the
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Insightful)
And neither of these mean jack squat with respect to politics, let alone "reality, morals, and ethics." People can be geniuses in one area and have massive deficiencies in other. In fact, I'd argue that it's a lot more common for "geniuses" to be utter idiots in a wide variety of subjects than it is for them to have well-rounded knowledge.
The closest historical analogue to Musk, Howard Huges, literally had no grasp on reality during large stretches of while he still functioned as a successful businessman.
Of course, I'm dealing with a troglodyte who uses the word "cuck" in public conversation, so I'm not particularly expecting a rational response to this one.
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People can be geniuses in one area and have massive deficiencies in other. In fact, I'd argue that it's a lot more common for "geniuses" to be utter idiots in a wide variety of subjects than it is for them to have well-rounded knowledge
The proper term is autism. You see, my shitposting is god mode, but outside of that...meh.
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I love how conservatives love to throw around the word "cuck"
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I still believe that Musk will put men on Mars by 2020. If anyone can do it, Elon can!!!
Re:Congradulations (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet they didn't.
Like many company leaders, Musk provides vision.
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet they didn't.
Perhaps they're content to stay in their lane. A company like Apple getting into rockets would probably go as well as Tesla buying a social media company. *cough*
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Oh...boy...how little you know...
He didn't have limitless cash or connections, actually. In fact SpaceX nearly bankrupted him twice because he put basically everything he had into it, twice, even at a time when it showed no promise whatsoever, the first time was after three failed launches and no successes. Remember, SpaceX started in 2002, long before he even became a billionaire. Elon wasn't even Forbes listed until 2012, a full ten years later. What's more, NASA basically ignored SpaceX until the first s
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Elon Musk, as the colorful and larger-than-life front man, ends up grabbing the credit for all the things that his companies do, both accomplishments and failures.
In fact, it's the company he's put together. But you have to give his vision some credit, for steering the company the right way.
Musk himself, like most consequential men, has good points and bad points. Right now I'd say that his propensity to make decisions on impulse and to fire anybody who disagrees with him to any respect whatsoever means h
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And someone else would fund initiatives to help even more "everyday" everyday people than you'd fund. You support the average working man? Well, I support the average working woman! You support migrant laborers? Well, I support people who are caught in active war zones! You support genocide victims? Well, I would support a museum dedicated to peoples who have already been wiped out, whose very existence is just a matter of academic speculation! Ha ha!
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Musk just gave people in a hurricane disaster zone free internet until the end of the year when other carrier facilities were down.
While I'm sure there are at least a few people where their biggest concern after a storm is not being able to watch Netflix, it still comes across as a "when the only tool you have is a hammer" move by Musk.
Having been through a few storms myself, it's usually gasoline and generator shortages that are the most immediate pressing issues. Without power, your fridge rapidly becomes a biohazard if you don't start tossing all your perishables. After that's sorted out, then it's a need for money for people who
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it still comes across as a "when the only tool you have is a hammer" move by Musk.
Erm...
Having been through a few storms myself, it's usually gasoline and generator shortages that are the most immediate pressing issues.
Starlink was delivering terminals and other supplies via helicopter. And I think you're really (deliberately?) understating how vital telecommunication is in a disaster area, warzone, etc. It's one thing if your food is about to spoil, but you'll be able to manage for at least a few days, but it's a whole other thing when there's e.g. a medical emergency and you have no means to request medical supplies, evac, etc.
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Yeah, I totally forgot that during the early 2000s we un-invented things like handheld VHF radios. My bad.
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Even before then, few people had them, let alone now. Even if you dolled them out to the masses, you're talking a very wide area with likely only a single dedicated emergency channel. I'd pick the starlink terminal way before I'd go for something like that.
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Informative)
No, Musk didn't give the people in a hurricane disaster zone free internet. They get one free month on Starlink, but they have to buy a $400 dish and at the end of their free month, they get automatically converted into a $120/month plan.
Robo-taxi doesn't have a plug. It charges - slowly - by driving over special roads w/embedded coils. There's 1/4 mile of such road in the US, so the thing is useless.
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If you're in the disaster area and have a compatible T-Mobile phone, it will automatically connect to Starlink for voice and data service. No charge, no bill, no dish.
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Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Musk just gave people in a hurricane disaster zone free internet until the end of the year when other carrier facilities were down.
Wait... when did that happen?
I ask because Starlink offered existing customers 30 days free. And non-customers 30 days free if they buy the hardware. And become subscribers.
As in, the generous offer was in fact a sales pitch.
What have you done exactly? You won't win that argument.
Zero. My net worth isn't hundreds of billions of dollars, so I have less disposable income to spend on the needy. That said, I didn't pull a sales move on people in need.
Musk is by far the most innovative and philanthropic individual alive today. By far.
Huh? I won't quibble that he's successful. I won't quibble that he's pushed some companies towards success. But in what way is he innovative as an individual? Or philanthropic in any way?
It is awesome to see all you soy-fuck Democrats cry over it.
So you derive pleasure in observing upset people? Sounds like a supporter of that American political party that's pretty famous for "every accusation is an admission". You know the ones. The ones who has a non-zero number of members convicted of election fraud? The ones trying to re-elect a man who is objectively a compulsive liar?
For the record... I'm not a soy-fuck, not a Democrat, and not crying. Sorry to disappoint. Turns out people can disagree with your bullshit without fitting in any of your convenient boxes.
The facts speak for themselves.
True. The facts are: he's a bad person. He's a narcissistic, cruel, hypocritical fraudster.
His companies are out-innovating everyone in multiple disciplines.
Get this: it's possible for a very bad person to own and control a successful business. Evidence suggests it's actually probable.
It isn't a coincidence.
No, it's not. I grant that wholeheartedly. SpaceX is trouncing Blue Origin. Tesla is only starting to lose its headway against everyone else and their charging network is superior to the point everyone else wants on board. Starlink has no meaningful competition in the market for bandwidth clutter. The Boring Company made a nice flame-thrower. Twitter is sheltering more and more racists every day.
None of that remotely changes that the guy's fundamentally an asshole.
He is the key-man in those companies and actively participates in the design and provides insane levels of leadership.
Uh... evidence suggests otherwise. There are only so many hours in the day and there are only two possibilities: a CEO is very, very important or a CEO is not very important at all. Work with me here a moment. Imagine CEOs are important. They sit around say... 8 hours a day, making crucial decisions nobody else could, after studying the reports they get from teams of underlings. Or... they're not. They basically rubber-stamp decisions that have been made obvious long before they reach the top, leaving them plenty of time to play figurehead at multiple companies.
See... if the top guy was so critical, the top guy couldn't top guy for a half-dozen massive companies. But we all know C-suite execs are more about shaking babies and kissing hands than doing actual work.
Musk provides opportunities for underlings to succeed. And that is not to be understated. That is huge. But his companies do best when he gets the fuck out of the way.
The whole "his people are great, not him" line is absolute horse-shit. Apple saw what Tesla was doing with Robo-taxi and abandoned their $10b investment into their own self-driving car. Lol.
I mean... that's one take. As is "Apple realized the tech isn't anywhere near mature and didn't bother trying to lie to the pub
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Musk just gave people in a hurricane disaster zone free internet until the end of the year when other carrier facilities were down.
Only because they were called out for gouging people. https://www.pcmag.com/news/fac... [pcmag.com]
Initially, SpaceX was going to charge its usual $120-per-month internet fee after the one-month free trial, which is significantly higher than the average home broadband bill. As a result, SpaceX faced backlash in the press, on social media, and even from government officials for allegedly running a scam to drive revenue. Today, the company updated its support page to say, "Starlink is available and temporarily offering f
Re:Congradulations (Score:4, Insightful)
Neuralink is less about therapeutic care, than about "I want to use my brain to play solitaire". Which is hardly a foundational piece of Mazlow's hierarchy of needs. No one is dying for lack of what Neuralink is doin.
The Boring Company and Hyperloop are both scams used by Musk as a counter to public transit. Both of these are fancy variations on "Make the highway wider" approaches to traffic, which is well known to be a never ending treadmill that does nothing but increase the demand for cars (so it is self-serving to musk as an owner of a car company) via the phenomenon of induced demand
Musk does things that benefit Musk. He, like most billionaires, is smart enough to pay professionals to help him make his actions appear as though they are philanthropic as opposed to motivated self interest. That does not change the base motivation, and a skeptical eye should be used when evaluating ANYTHING that ANY BILLIONARE does for the public and ask "Who benefits most from this?"
To be clear, it is super impressive what his companies have accomplished, but it is hardly the actions of one man. No leader, no matter how impressive, accomplishes anything without the efforts of others. And being the leader of an impressive team is in no way orthogonal to being an absolutely horrible human being. In fact, the two are quite often highly correlated since it is much harder to become a billionaire if you are a gunienly good person, as opposed to someone who only looks like a good person due to the herculean efforts of your massive PR team.
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Re: Congradulations (Score:2)
Best of luck. I hope for your sake this naiveté is a rhetorical device and not how you live your actual life.
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I'm "naive," but you think your feelings about people count more for or against them than what they actually do. Grow up and get over yourself.
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Neuralink is less about therapeutic care, than about "I want to use my brain to play solitaire". Which is hardly a foundational piece of Mazlow's hierarchy of needs. No one is dying for lack of what Neuralink is doin.
A poorly considered argument. Consider two things:
- The first recipient of neuralink just got a job as a camera operator, which means physically moving around a camera assembly in the real world, not in solitaire.
- What are the first, second, and third leading causes of death for tetraplegics? Spoiler: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Have you any idea how the first might help with the second? Particularly considering cosmetic surgery is, sometimes strangely IMO, seen as a critical treatment for the third l
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The Boring Company and Hyperloop are both scams used by Musk as a counter to public transit.
Good. Public transit needs to die and be demolished. I dislike Musk, but being anti-cattle-cars is something that should be lauded.
Don't think the transit is bad? Well, the Greater Houston Area has _faster_ commutes than _any_ large European city. And vastly better living conditions. While paying less taxes on infrastructure.
And self-driving cars will allow people who can't or won't drive themselves to be finally free of the wasteful and inconvenient transit.
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Second of all, he's more involved in the R&D than you think.
No. He's less involved in R&D than *you* think. Musk is a strategy and overarching ideas man. He has fuck all technical knowledge required to do any of the amazing things SpaceX has done, and these days, as CEO of multiple companies, and Trumps campaign lapdog and X-er extraordinaire he wouldn't have the time to contribute to actual R&D even if he did have any kind of knowledge that would help.
CEOs do play an important role in a company, but please don't elevate people to some kind of Godhood for wh
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No. He's less involved in R&D than *you* think. Musk is a strategy and overarching ideas man. He has fuck all technical knowledge required to do any of the amazing things SpaceX has done
No, he's involved. Sure, a small (but no less important) portion I'll grant you, but the exact same can be said for basically anybody at SpaceX. There's more than meets the eye, so to speak. Also, do you have any idea at all what he did prior to becoming a CEO of anything?
but please don't elevate people to some kind of Godhood for which they are undeserving. All you're doing is shitting on the actual scientists and engineers who are accomplishing great feats.
I did no such thing, rather I get annoyed when people push out a lot of speculation that they do not know to be true, rather they just very badly want it to be true so they just assume it must be. You are definitely one such person.
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How can he when all he does is shit post to his personal social media site?
As a seasoned shitposter myself, I can personally attest that shitposting doesn't take very much time at all. You should know, after all, as you're one of my regular customers. And then of course, given twitter having strict post length limits, that probably takes even less time.
Yeah I can really picture Elmo sitting down and adding his verifier signature to some cad drawings.
Given he's the CEO of a publicly traded company and another private company, he also has to personally sign off on a lot of things, like financial statements, 10Qs, 10Ks, disclosures, and a whole other mess of regulatory requirement
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Well what does he do?
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Is there any point explaining it to you? You'll just cry about something else anyway.
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Where did anybody mention that Musk had built the rocket all by himself?
Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did anybody mention that Musk had built the rocket all by himself?
I'm not a Musk fan, as I find him to be a dangerous jerk. However, this booster capture today is totally impressive and independent of my personal opinions of Musk. Musk does deserve some measure of praise for this achievement, even if we, as geeks, would like to praise the engineers even more.
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At last! If only more people were able to separate their opinion on his politics from their opinion on his business/engineering side.
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People he hired, or fired and hired replacements for. How many of the line workers have been at SpaceX since the beginning of the Starship project? How many have unique positions, as opposed to "Associate Software Engineer 3" or whatever?
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Re:Congradulations (Score:5, Informative)
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No
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Quotes? You don't quote BEHAVIOR, moron.
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Which behavior in particular?
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There's no need, you already get a free ride Tim Cook's.
I was going to be all cynical... (Score:2)
.. and say meh whats new. But thats pretty fucking impressive.
How does it know its position so accurately, GPS or some SpaceX bespoke system?
Re:I was going to be all cynical... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I was going to be all cynical... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the most impressive was that the very first attempt was a complete success.
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Was kind of hoping it would fail just to see a spectacular booster explosion. At least they gave a buoy view of the ship exploding after splashdown as consolation
They have a good data from IFT4. (Score:5, Informative)
According to Bill Gerstenmaier of SpaceX, that booster's landing was within 5 centimeter of the target. So they had a great confidence that it will work. FAA license to SpaceX is for both IFT-5 and IFT-6. So I expect IFT-6 on either December or January.
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FAA license to SpaceX is for both IFT-5 and IFT-6. So I expect IFT-6 on either December or January.
It's a good thing they did because the FAA has been by far the biggest impediment to Starship, and for reasons not even related to safety, environment, etc, but basically just taking unnecessarily and excessively long periods of time to review, even kicking it back multiple times over administrative and procedural matters completely unrelated to the mission. Just pure red tape that didn't even tangle up MCAS.
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I think the problem is that SpaceX is iterating so quickly that almost every test has had some parameters tweaked - whether it is the trajectory, the vehicles involved, etc.
It is a legitimate call out from both SpaceX (and from the FAA) that SpaceX launches are now constituting the majority of the space-related reviews and licenses that the FAA has to deal with. Either they need more resources, or they need to think about modifying the licensing regime (both for experimental test flights, and for commercia
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Starship/Super Heavy development have shown that SpaceX moves much faster than FAA can keep up. They have more built test vehicles on deck ready to fly.
They'll get good data from IFT5 too (Score:2)
According to Bill Gerstenmaier of SpaceX, that booster's landing was within 5 centimeter of the target.
Also landing Starship was on target. Spacex had buoys set up with cameras in the ocean northwest of Australia to watch it hit the targeted landing zone. Seeing the reflection of the rockets off the water at night (in the camera) was pretty cool, then as it touched down watching Starship sink into the ocean like some dying fire breathing monster was the end of an awesome weekend (that started with throwing my wife a surprise party - lols).
With Bezo's work on New Glen and the Mars transfer window coming up
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To correct myself, IFT-4 booster was within 0.5 centimeter of the target zone.
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Well if you want to be cynical you can say less of a land, more of a catch. Either way doesn't reduce the significance.
Re: I was going to be all cynical... (Score:5, Funny)
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I've heard Falcon 9 uses GPS and intertial measurement, maybe some differential GPS from the landing pad. The Starship booster probably does the same, although with the pad being fixed it might not even need the GPS. The boosters are only flying for a few minutes and good optical IMUs can be extremely accurate over short integration times.
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I've heard Falcon 9 uses GPS and intertial measurement, maybe some differential GPS from the landing pad.
That rectangular device in your pocket uses multiple sensors for positioning, GPS is just one of them. No reason to believe a rocket can't.
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Um, yes? Did anyone suggested it doesn't?
Impressive. (Score:3)
Quite impressive. In fact SpaceX is the only company that really impresses me nowadays, it's a bit like back in the space race, except the others are way far behind currently.
I don't remember the reason of having to catch vs landing on legs like they have been doing? Is it for faster reassembly? Or to not damage the landing area?
Re:Impressive. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Impressive. (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Impressive. (Score:2)
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I'd say it's the people who imagine that space is like Star Trek are the ones who failed.
I'd say it's more like The Expanse. Though one thing that bothered me about that show is the main thing limiting their movement were g-forces, including in that racing ship where presumably it's not going to engage in battle. So why not suspend the ship's occupants in water during maneuvers? Then the human body's tolerance for g-forces goes from 6 to about 24.
Excitement guaranteed (Score:3)
Excitement delivered.
What are the flames coming out of side of booster? (Score:2, Interesting)
And as far as musk goes. He can be associated with companies that do interesting things and also be a supreme fuckwad. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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Both Everyday Astronaut and NASASpaceFlight brought that issue during their stream.
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It's one of the methane vents, and the fire is well up in the methane cloud. There's a camera angle from the tower in the stream and you can see it. They're probably dumping excess fuel.
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Why do you call Elon a fuckwad? Because he doesn't agree with regime changing every nation that refuses to become JUSA's little bitch?
Or maybe it's because Elon doesn't think JUSA should be bombing the crap out of brown people villages in the Middle East just to get more oil or satisfy the zionists in AIPAC that buy the JUSA Congress every year.
Of course you probably think that all that regime changing and coup instigating and brown people village bombing is all so that we can spread DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM t
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Watching the SpaceX video (Score:4, Interesting)
The mission was great. The video of it is great. The achievements almost too many to count. (One that doesn't get enough mention is the ability to maintain contact through Starlink)
Yet what impresses me most are the video cuts of the SpaceX team itself. Cheering. How many companies can you name that can produce that? Although they are still there the white crew-cut horn-rimmed pocket protector members no longer dominate. I see women, black, Asian, Hispanic members of the team. And they are REALLY into it.
Elon Musk gets credit for that.
I wish I could stop there. Not too long ago I could.
I watch the SpaceX video announcers do their excellent job live-streaming and explaining everything. For the women I have to wonder what they think of Elon Musk's current politics, in full throttle support for the guy who brags about bringing about their loss of reproductive health care rights. They are in Texas, no less, where SB8 makes it law that everyone in the world has more say over what happens in their bodies than they do themselves. Beyond that, Musk has gone all in on supporting a convicted felon for president. The guy who attempted a violent coup to stay in power and Musk apparently believes that unless we install him again that will be the end of democracy. Proven grifter. Proven sex offender. Proven fraud. On record of lying more than 30,000 times over four years. [washingtonpost.com] (that is over 20 per day 24/7).
I am pretty sure you will never hear from any SpaceX or Tesla employee about their political views. That tells you a lot right there. But something tells me a majority of his employees are not going to be voting the way he would prefer.
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Yet what impresses me most are the video cuts of the SpaceX team itself. Cheering. How many companies can you name that can produce that?
You've clearly never started up a large engineering project before. To answer that question: Many companies do that. Many companies feature teams that are extremely dedicated and happy to do what they do, especially when their achievement and culminate in a single moment. The difference is you care about this one enough to look at them, and they think you care enough to live stream it.
We didn't have a film crew at the last major start-up we had, but we weren't in any less of a good mood, or any less diverse
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Your point is well taken and as you surmised, I haven't done large-scale projects. Smaller ones.
My point was not that this doesn't happen elsewhere but it doesn't very often and certainly not to that degree. You think Boeing today could possibly host a scene like that? Their prevailing emotion is that they hate SpaceX so much it was reported in mainstream press. Then what about any other areo-space company? Or how about any companies in other industry sectors?
Yeah, I'd say Nvidia has hosted a few
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At SpaceX, they don't seek to fill a check box during the hiring. You either deliver on performance or you're gone. It's meritocracy all the way. I don't think they care in anyway whatever label their employee slap on themselves. They just have to deliver and on Elon's schedule.
Calm down there bucky... (Score:4, Insightful)
This thread has NOTHING to do with politics, yet you simply cannot resist ranting and raving with MSNBC talking points about Trump (who has NOTHING to do with this launch).
If you are going to waste everybody's time with the derangement, at least try using actual facts, not delusional DNC factiods of the sort Joy Behar and Rachel Maddow pump daily into the national arteries. You guys are so scripted, and the crap so easily debunked, that it's hardly worth the effort, but somebody has to defend REALITY even if that requires appearing to defend Trump.
"Musk has gone all in on supporting a convicted felon for president." - First, in the US system of justice, a person is not considered a "convicted felon" until after sentencing. Trump will not be sentenced (in the hush payments case) until after the election. Your record is also scrubbed if you do not live long enough to get your appeals. Therefore, Trump is not yet "a convicted felon" and had he been successfully assassinated, he would have died an innocent man. So, now YOU, not Trump, are the guy ticking the "lie" meter. Oh, and FYI Elon is NOT supporting Trump because he's been accused of crimes, but rather because he sees Trump as a champion of individual rights (like free speech) at a time when famous democrats want the 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendments and the Supreme Court and electoral college eliminated. The "hush payments" case your are counting on will collapse on appeal. Blackmailing is illegal in the USA and the government should have been on Trump's side in the case (HE was the victim of a blackmail attempt). The feds properly did NOTHING with the accusations of some sort of campaign finance misdeeds, and a state prosecutor twisted state laws to try to bring in a federal law that does not apply via a creative backdoor that only worked because the jury was told they did not need to agree on an underlying crime...thus even now, nobody knows what actual LAW Trump has supposedly been convicted of. The case will not withstand the appeals process. Musk is NOT the one who went nuts here - the Democrat party is going insane.
"The guy who attempted a violent coup to stay in power..." - What the hell? WHAT "violent coup" are you talking about? On Jan 6th 2021 the single-most armed slice of the American civilian population (people on the Right) supposedly tried overthrowing the government without a single firearm???? Have you ever contemplated how insane and lame the talking points you've been fed are? In the summer of 2020 far more DC police and secret service were hurt and vastly more property damage done by anti-trump protesters who actually burned buildings and vehicles. Was THAT a "violent insurrection"? The Jan 6 protesters wanted the Constitution to be obeyed and the vote counts from about 6 states sent back for re-checking in the face of mountains of fraud. SOME protesters turned that into a riot (which very conveniently de-railed the recound demands being taken up in the Senate at that very moment). On an interesting note: we now know that there were undercover FBI agents dressed BOTH as ANTIFA and as MAGA both inside and outside the Capitol as the riot started... yet FBI director Christopher Wray still refuses to provide ANY information about [1] how many and [2] where they were, to the congress which has an absolute right to know. This will become a major political fight soon after YEARS of the FBI misleading congress on the matter.
"and Musk apparently believes that unless we install him again that will be the end of democracy." Musk's fears appear well-grounded. The democrats have been importing tens of millions of illegal aliens into the country as fast as they can and by all possible means, including airliners flying them here, and Democrat Majority Leader Senator Schumer has publicly announced his intentions to see to it that these people all become citizens [youtube.com] with the right to vote, and top Democrats have for years claimed that
Next up - more heatshield work (Score:2)
Great work flying both vehicles on target. Now they need to really get on that heat shielding. Yes it survived and made the target, and looked better than the last flight - but they wont' get licensed for landing Starship back at the launch site until they can demonstrate it not burning through control surfaces. FAA won't give them that until they can show there is not a danger of losing control surfaces while flying over populated areas (and no people, it's not FAA politics that'll drive this, it's safe
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They have already changed the design of the flaps on Starship V2. They are further leeward which should stop the joint getting blasted by plasma. There are many other changes to that ship as well. But indeed, the heat shield is likely to be the trickiest piece of the puzzle to sort out with respect to rapid reusability. Other than using a simpler geometry and a better substrate (stainless steel), they aren't really doing much different from the shuttle and the tiles are still prone to damage. They can almos
Are you people really that simple? (Score:5, Funny)
You don't need to like Elon Musk to respect what he does. Really. If you like him or not would only matter if want to marry him. If you don't want to marry him, just look at what he does, not what he says.
You people sometimes really seem to be like children. You can't marry him anyway, so why do you need to like him personally?
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You don't need to like Elon Musk to respect what he does.
I wish more people would realize this. The only reason I appear to be defending Elon here is because so many of these guys literally make a bunch of false claims about him and/or spacex because they badly need copium each time they see somebody they really don't like succeed. It's just conspiracy theory bullshit, there's no reason for these people to be so fucking insecure about themselves that they have to resort to straight up intellectual dishonesty to try to bring down somebody that they so badly want t
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But SouthAfrikanManBad! Isn't that convincing argument enough?
i've got to find a better forum site for geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
Such an amazing moment of history (Score:3)
Wow. I'm so glad I got the opportunity to watch that. I wish I could have seen it in person. I feel like this is one of those moments when the game changed. I supposed more accurately, it's one of those moments where everyone finally realized that the game changed, since SpaceX and various analysts have been talking about it for years now. For me, personally, watching this was more impactful than watching any sporting event or disaster. And even better, this is the sort of hopeful triumph where there is no loser. This is "just" a pure triumph for humanity and a vast increase in our potential to get off this planet and do things elsewhere in the solar system.
For those who want to watch the original SpaceX stream, the link to it can be found here:
https://www.spacex.com/launche... [spacex.com]
I personally don't like re-streamers, and find the SpaceX broadcast is the best quality and best information. Worth noting that on the rebroadcast here, after they sign off at the end, they have a few minutes of footage of the Heavy Booster landing catch from different angles, as well as footage from a drone that they flew in to circle it once it was landed. Very neat to see.
So, any word on when Launch 6 will happen?
If you were lucky enough so see this live... (Score:4, Insightful)
then you were able to see one of those truly rare moments in history when a total paradigm shift occurred... and it MIGHT take you years to appreciate it.
This is NOT the completion of the project. Nothing done today will be useful in the marketplace tomorrow. There will be many more test flights, and some will surely go less-well. Today, however, Elon Musk and the team at SpaceX took a lot of back-of-the-napkin concepts that engineers have daydreamed about for as many as 70 YEARS and proved them POSSIBLE. All those long-gone engineers of the '50s through the '70s who had long bull sessions about booster recovery and re-use schemes at so many aerospace firms many of which are now only distant memories, like Convair, have vindication. It IS possible. There IS a business case for it.
From this day forward, we KNOW that a relatively inexpensive mass-produced stainless steel first stage can lift hundreds of tons of upper-stage to an altitude of over 65km, and a speed of over 5200km/hr in about 2 and a half minutes, then flip about and return to the launch pad to be caught and set right down on the pad again for re-flight. This was only a block1 booster with block2 engines, so THIS particular engineering unit will likely never re-fly, but the point is that the whole scheme WILL WORK. The cost of placing things into space will never be the same again, the cost and speed of moving cargo and even people from any point on Earth to any other point on Earth will never be the same again. It will be YEARS before these consequences ripple through entire industries and before governments wrap their collective brains about this change. The giant SLS rocket is officially a dinosaur. Even Musk's own Falcon9 took a stride toward obsolescence today. Musk plans to place lunar starships and martian starships and tankers atop his super-heavy, but nothing stops him putting a version of starship as a fully-reusable 2nd stage on top with a third stage powered by J2X and hydrolox or even a nuclear engine for a very high energy third stage and putting even Werner Von Braun's never-built massive "Nova" rocket to shame.... and doing it for mostly the cost of fuel and a small ground crew, thanks to re-usability.
The possibility of some future re-usable large first stage is no longer something aerospace engineers will spend endless hours debating over beers as they work for large firms whose management authoritatively asserts it can never be done.
Tomorrow morning, a launch of some number of tons on a Facon9 or a Vulcan to a specific orbit will be no different than today. It will be years before Starship hauls non-NASA and non-Starlink payloads and thus years before people see price-to-orbit plummet - as it now inevitably will. Teams at SpaceX will continue the mountain of difficult engineering that lies before them; They need to advance Starship in three flavors just for short-term requirements (Lunar for NASA, tanker, and Mars in order to send some tests in the next Mars launch window) while improving SuperHeavy to make it "production-ready". We will soon see a flight test 6, and then 7, and the block2 starships will debut, and there will be arguments about whether lunar startship is ready for a 2026 or 2028 landing, etc. It will take YEARS for the consequences of today's test flight to become obvious... but today made all that INEVITABLE. It's no longer a question of "can we..." but rather "how soon will we...". It was a privilege to see it in real-time.
My hat's off to every single person at SpaceX, including the janitors. Job well done. You've just altered the future of the human race in ways none of us can possibly yet grasp.
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Musk is not the CEO of SpaceX.
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Well, he is the CEO (and CTO, and President) officially, but in reality it's Gwynne Shotwell (the COO) who really runs SpaceX day to day.
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So you're going to replace the CEOs of these companies when they appear to be doing exceptionally well? Please explain your thought processes.
"Space man bad"
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SouthAfrikanManBad.
Re:I have great respect for Spacex (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're going to replace the CEOs of these companies when they appear to be doing exceptionally well? Please explain your thought processes.
It's not always true that a person who's brilliant at starting a company, or at ramping up a company from a garage shop to a billion-dollar venture, is also good at running one once it's grown.
If I were to give Musk advice, I'd say, quit Twitter (oops, I mean X) cold turkey, and go back to doing the things you're good at. But there's no possibioity I would ever be in a position to give him advice, nor any possibility he would listen if I did. (The second piece of advice I'd give him is to stop firing people who disagree with him, that is leading to him surrounding himself with yes-men.)
Tesla in particular I'd suggest would benefit from leadership that would guide it to a steady course actually selling cars, improving the cars it is already selling, and updating old models, rather than a wild man at the helm promising something different every five months and in between that ranting in public about the people who buy his cars.