Starship Flight 5
- Thread starter Tiny Hands Trump
- Start date
Yeah I happened to catch it livestreamed with my kids. Amazing...truly remarkable.
Nah, that flies on Falcon 9 or Atlas/Vulcan.
This was just 5th flight test of Starship. First catch attempt of the booster.
Watching scifi become sci reality right in front of us.....
Still amazing that not one single person at NASA ever thought that chucking booster after booster into the Atlantic Ocean wasn’t a good thing.
I imagine they absolutely did have it on a white board decades ago. But when the discussion about how much up front R&D it would take, and the possibility of public failures, they decided that a "more stable and tried and true" method would be better. Reliable is usually a top priority, budget isn't. Hence why we really do need a change in approach by the govt. They are rewarded by the wrong things.
I'd bet the mission statement didn't demand enough recurring missions when they started that the ROI made sense. Nowadays, we launch a lot more due to what we have in space for technology, so a reeval is likely over due.
So basically a good helping of government red tape, regulations and bloated government bureaucracy to kill.
Very likely to some degree. This across the board is one of the things we need to fix with the US govt. Toss in pressure to present an image....
You are too stupid to separate winning a government contract for a fraction of the price of your competitors and actually delivering those services and “subsidies.”
SpaceX has saved US Taxpayers ~$50B in launch costs.
If that is “subsidies” we need to give SpaceX 100 times more “subsidies.”
Tom Mueller, employee #1, is generally credited as the most intelligent rocket engineer that ever worked at SpaceX. He left SpaceX in 2021 to start his own rocket firm, Impulse Space.
From his wikipedia page:
en.m.wikipedia.org
Thomas John Mueller is an American aerospace engineer and rocket engine designer. He was employee No.1 of SpaceX and is the founder and now CEO of Impulse Space.[1]
From his wikipedia page:
Tom Mueller - Wikipedia
Thomas John Mueller is an American aerospace engineer and rocket engine designer. He was employee No.1 of SpaceX and is the founder and now CEO of Impulse Space.[1]
Christian Davenport
Christian Davenport is the Washington Post's defense and space reporter and the author of "Space Barons". The following quotes are excerpts from his book.
He dispatched one of his lieutenants, Liam Sarsfield, then a high-ranking NASA official in the office of the chief engineer, to California to see whether the company was for real or just another failure in waiting.
Most of all, he was impressed with Musk, who was surprisingly fluent in rocket engineering and understood the science of propulsion and engine design. Musk was intense, preternaturally focused, and extremely determined. “This was not the kind of guy who was going to accept failure,” Sarsfield remembered thinking.
Throughout the day, as Musk showed off mockups of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 5, the engine designs, and plans to build a spacecraft capable of flying humans, Musk peppered Sarsfield with questions. He wanted to know what was going on within NASA. And how a company like his would be perceived. He asked tons of highly technical questions, including a detailed discussion about “base heating,” the heat radiating out from the exhaust going back up into the rocket’s engine compartment—a particular problem with rockets that have clusters of engines next to one another, as Musk was planning to build.
Now that he had a friend inside of NASA, Musk kept up with the questions in the weeks after Sarsfield’s visit, firing off “a nonstop torrent of e-mails” and texts, Sarsfield said. Musk jokingly warned that texting was a “core competency.” “He sends texts in a constant flow,” Sarsfield recalled. “I found him to be consumed by whatever was in front of him and anxious to solve problems. This, combined with a tendency to work eighteen hours a day, is a sign of someone driven to succeed.” Musk was particularly interested in the docking adapter of the International Space Station, the port where the spacecraft his team was designing would dock. He wanted to know the dimensions, the locking pin design, even the bolt pattern of the hatch. The more documents Sarsfield sent, the more questions Musk had.
“I really enjoyed the way he would pore over problems anxious to absorb every detail. To my mind, someone that clearly committed deserves all the support and help you can give him.”
Mosdell ( 10th employee ) found Musk a touch awkward and abrupt, but smart. Mosdell had showed up prepared to talk about his experience building launchpads, which, after all, was what SpaceX wanted him to do. But instead, Musk wanted to talk hard-core rocketry. Specifically the Delta IV rocket and its RS-68 engines, which Mosdell had some experience with when at Boeing. Over the course of the interview, they discussed “labyrinth purges” and “pump shaft seal design” and “the science behind using helium as opposed to nitrogen.”
After the meeting on Valentine’s Day adjourned, Musk offered to give the group a tour of his facility. To this group of engineers and entrepreneurs, it was like an invitation to a six-year-old to visit a chocolate factory. As Musk guided them through the factory floor, the group “let loose with detailed, technical questions, and he answered all of them,” Gedmark said. “Not once did he say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable answering that because it’s proprietary.’… It was certainly impressive.”
Christian Davenport is the Washington Post's defense and space reporter and the author of "Space Barons". The following quotes are excerpts from his book.
He dispatched one of his lieutenants, Liam Sarsfield, then a high-ranking NASA official in the office of the chief engineer, to California to see whether the company was for real or just another failure in waiting.
Most of all, he was impressed with Musk, who was surprisingly fluent in rocket engineering and understood the science of propulsion and engine design. Musk was intense, preternaturally focused, and extremely determined. “This was not the kind of guy who was going to accept failure,” Sarsfield remembered thinking.
Throughout the day, as Musk showed off mockups of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 5, the engine designs, and plans to build a spacecraft capable of flying humans, Musk peppered Sarsfield with questions. He wanted to know what was going on within NASA. And how a company like his would be perceived. He asked tons of highly technical questions, including a detailed discussion about “base heating,” the heat radiating out from the exhaust going back up into the rocket’s engine compartment—a particular problem with rockets that have clusters of engines next to one another, as Musk was planning to build.
Now that he had a friend inside of NASA, Musk kept up with the questions in the weeks after Sarsfield’s visit, firing off “a nonstop torrent of e-mails” and texts, Sarsfield said. Musk jokingly warned that texting was a “core competency.” “He sends texts in a constant flow,” Sarsfield recalled. “I found him to be consumed by whatever was in front of him and anxious to solve problems. This, combined with a tendency to work eighteen hours a day, is a sign of someone driven to succeed.” Musk was particularly interested in the docking adapter of the International Space Station, the port where the spacecraft his team was designing would dock. He wanted to know the dimensions, the locking pin design, even the bolt pattern of the hatch. The more documents Sarsfield sent, the more questions Musk had.
“I really enjoyed the way he would pore over problems anxious to absorb every detail. To my mind, someone that clearly committed deserves all the support and help you can give him.”
Mosdell ( 10th employee ) found Musk a touch awkward and abrupt, but smart. Mosdell had showed up prepared to talk about his experience building launchpads, which, after all, was what SpaceX wanted him to do. But instead, Musk wanted to talk hard-core rocketry. Specifically the Delta IV rocket and its RS-68 engines, which Mosdell had some experience with when at Boeing. Over the course of the interview, they discussed “labyrinth purges” and “pump shaft seal design” and “the science behind using helium as opposed to nitrogen.”
After the meeting on Valentine’s Day adjourned, Musk offered to give the group a tour of his facility. To this group of engineers and entrepreneurs, it was like an invitation to a six-year-old to visit a chocolate factory. As Musk guided them through the factory floor, the group “let loose with detailed, technical questions, and he answered all of them,” Gedmark said. “Not once did he say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable answering that because it’s proprietary.’… It was certainly impressive.”
