PSA: Starship's 4th Integrated Test Flight tentatively June 6
- Thread starter Phenomenally Frantastic
- Start date
Some of you on here just are rooting for SpaceX failures because you disagree with Musk’s politics. I agree with you that Musk has gone down a path that way that is unproductive. But his politics do not affect SpaceX’s success and future path in Space exploration! SpaceX is a huge company with thousands of employees and an operational plan that is far superior to other competitors. It is way more than Elon Musk.
GHOX, Joe, Belem, etc. - you need to abandon your little petty personal grievances (and your scientific illiteracy) and simply grow up and get with the program.
How can you live with your incomprehensible shame and continue posting in this thread?
SpaceX >>>>> anyone else by wide margin
The contrast is rather astounding. Boeing takes how many years to finally launch Starliner with crew, while SpaceX achieve that feat years ago and now has Starship doing everything they want.
Each of SpaceX’s tests of Starship have progressed further than the ones before. During the inaugural test flight in April 2023, the rocket exploded about four minutes in—before its two stages, the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster, could separate.
Last November, in a second test, the spacecraft and booster successfully separated, then both exploded shortly after, Space.com’s Josh Dinner wrote at the time. Starship reached its planned orbit and entered space during its third launch in March, but the spacecraft broke apart during re-entry, about 49 minutes into the mission. The booster was also destroyed before landing.
The fourth test launched from Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday morning. “The primary objectives will be executing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster and achieving a controlled entry of Starship,” SpaceX wrote in a post on its website.
This was was definitely successful compared w/ the initial 3.
SpaceX's Starship Lands Successfully for the First Time in a Test Flight
Three previous uncrewed test flights ended with Starship being destroyed, but both the booster and the spacecraft splashed down on the fourth try
Based on a 0.250 batting average, would you fly on it?
Each of SpaceX’s tests of Starship have progressed further than the ones before. During the inaugural test flight in April 2023, the rocket exploded about four minutes in—before its two stages, the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster, could separate.Last November, in a second test, the spacecraft and booster successfully separated, then both exploded shortly after, Space.com’s Josh Dinner wrote at the time. Starship reached its planned orbit and entered space during its third launch in March, but the spacecraft broke apart during re-entry, about 49 minutes into the mission. The booster was also destroyed before landing.The fourth test launched from Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday morning. “The primary objectives will be executing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster and achieving a controlled entry of Starship,” SpaceX wrote in a post on its website.
This was was definitely successful compared w/ the initial 3.
SpaceX's Starship Lands Successfully for the First Time in a Test Flight
Three previous uncrewed test flights ended with Starship being destroyed, but both the booster and the spacecraft splashed down on the fourth trywww.smithsonianmag.com
Based on a 0.250 batting average, would you fly on it?
i don't think anyone would at this point it is still a test article, which is why there hasn't even been a payload yet. I would expect it is about 2-3 years away from being human rated.
Each of SpaceX’s tests of Starship have progressed further than the ones before. During the inaugural test flight in April 2023, the rocket exploded about four minutes in—before its two stages, the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster, could separate.Last November, in a second test, the spacecraft and booster successfully separated, then both exploded shortly after, Space.com’s Josh Dinner wrote at the time. Starship reached its planned orbit and entered space during its third launch in March, but the spacecraft broke apart during re-entry, about 49 minutes into the mission. The booster was also destroyed before landing.The fourth test launched from Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday morning. “The primary objectives will be executing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster and achieving a controlled entry of Starship,” SpaceX wrote in a post on its website.
This was was definitely successful compared w/ the initial 3.
SpaceX's Starship Lands Successfully for the First Time in a Test Flight
Three previous uncrewed test flights ended with Starship being destroyed, but both the booster and the spacecraft splashed down on the fourth try
Based on a 0.250 batting average, would you fly on it?
These are test flights. Good grief.
You took issue with my "will this one blow up?" comment.
Simply clarifying for you, in case you forgot.
Elon should have hired Joe's Place. We'd have an interstate highway system high and speed rail on Mars by now.
Nah
But I'd have re-prioritized the "Hyperloop" stuff to not be for transporting people, but rather make a 600 mph tube system that ran along existing interstate routes, to deliver packages/pallets maybe 3'x3' in size along those routes, so you could ship things 10x faster than trucks, and then use the trucks to short-haul them from depots separated by 50 or 100 miles.
You'd get seafood caught in the AM sent anywhere in the US for restaurant dinners where the restaurants could have it by early afternoons. Mail would mostly ship overnight. Amazon could leverage it for even faster shipments.
That's what I'd have done w/ that type of "tech" vs making a failed "human transit" boondoggle....
You seem to have the same problem OP does. You think that criticism of Musk is criticism of SpaceX/Tesla.
Right now Tesla shareholders are voting on Musk's insane compensation plan - he wants $56 BILLION and it threatening to leave if he doesn't get it. Tesla should take him up on that offer and get a CEO who isn't driven by whatever he reads on twitter or his adderall filled rages. SpaceX had a person who just distracted Musk from screwing things up while they tried to get real work done. The starship redesigned the top because elon thought a pointy one looked cooler.
This. Who would cheer against the success of scientific progress and exploration? Oh, but Elon’s politics! Some folks in here are so shallow and boring.
Mods.....this rrk77 model Bot appears to be replying to itself, and is broken
Please repair.
Or toss it.
Now don’t go off the deep end, Joe. You won’t be able to haul asteroids back from the Oort Cloud!
I thought you would eventually see the light.
Only watch this if you want your delusion that Elon isn’t a “real engineer” shattered.
Space Studies Board and Board on Physics and Astronomy November 17, 2021 with Adam Burrows from Princeton University.
Space Studies Board and Board on Physics and Astronomy November 17, 2021 with Adam Burrows from Princeton University.
You think Elno made those recs?
How cute!!!
FWIW, carbon fiber composite matrices are polymer resins. It ain't exactly rocket science that they will have a far lower melting point than any type of steel. Any 1st/2nd year MatSci student could tell you this.
Just like any MatSci/Astropyhysics student could tell you that dragging an asteroid back from the Oort Cloud to Earth is a non—starter!
IIRC, you were telling us that "astronauts could go out there and do the mining...."
Yes I do believe he was deeply involved in those decisions.
@aelluswamy summarized the past decade very well.
When I hopped in my friend’s model S in 2015, it hit me in a weird way: that car was running software all around, had a nice big touch screen (finally, an actual “screen”), was receiving frequent feature updates over the air, and came with a mobile app for essential remote controls. How could a big car company build something like this? Didn’t make sense back then (and still today for many).
My interview with the Autopilot team early 2016 was very different than most interviews I’d ever taken. We first had a technical discussion on something I had built before, with several engineers and the executive in charge of the group at the time. An actual white board chat where we were all bouncing ideas on the matter together. The only places I’d ever seen the face of anyone above, at best, a team lead during interviews was at some small startups.
Every 1:1 interview that followed was similarly practical. Real coding situations you’d encounter as an engineer, not useless LeetCode trick questions typically found in other big companies’ interviews. When we got done, the recruiter walked me through the office. Everyone was sitting literally next to each other: autopilot software, hardware, vehicle firmware, and many other teams interacting live without friction. Eventually, we walked past @elonmusk's desk and he was sitting right there, next to the engineering teams. Not in any separate ivory tower.
One week in the job, and I was already in a team meeting with him brainstorming Autopilot technical challenges, exactly how it went during my interview. And that went on almost every single week, for the 8+ years that followed.
It soon became pretty clear that Elon was directly behind that culture of pragmatic innovation, percolating through all aspects of the company.
Week after week, I’ve witnessed that relentless drive to build features that make people’s lives better and safer, removing roadblocks and unnecessary layers one after another, systematically drilling down to the fundamental “why” - all of this while sleeping at the factory during Model 3 production hell, designing new vehicles, working on BOM reductions, and launching new factories across the globe. During that entire time, through all these chapters, news headlines and other difficult company-wide moments, and while landing rockets on drone ships in the ocean, Elon was still sitting with us in a room every week, often more, with the only objective of building things that will change humanity for the better.
When he announced Tesla would soon start a humanoid robotics program to fuel a future of abundance at AI Day 2021, many once again laughed and doubted. Two years into the program, and Tesla is actively testing early versions of what could well be the first full-fledged humanoid robots equipped with articulated hands autonomously conducting real tasks in a real factory via an end-to-end neural net, running entirely on the bot’s compute hardware. And again, using 2D cameras only.
Whether at Tesla or not, I’d say the same: without Elon, none of any of these amazing things would have ever happened. I can only imagine what a lesser future we’d be living without his involvement and dedication.
If you own Tesla shares, please find 5 minutes to vote.”
