So I’ve heard and seen the newest launch, and I thought for a private firm it seemed cool they were able to do it on their own, but I’m scratching my head that people are gushing about this as some hail mary.
I get the engineering required is staggering when it comes to these rocket tests, but NASA and other big space agencies have already done rocket tests and exploring bits of the moon which still astounds me to this day.
Is it because it’s not a multi billion government institution? When I tell colleagues about NASA doing stuff like this yeaaaars ago they’re like “Yea yea but this is different it’s crazy bro”
Can anyone help me understand? Any SpaceX or Tesla fans here?
Disclaimer: Fuck Elon Musk and all the shady shit he’s been pulling off.
That said, this is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in terms of the potential it holds to shape the future.
Up until 5 short years ago we had:
- No main booster recovery
- No rocket nearly as powerful as this one
- No successful flight of a full-flow stage engine
- Nobody even considering the catch with chopsticks thing
- No private company testing super heavy lift vehicles (BO is about to enter the chat as well)
- No push for reusability at all
This was all built on top of the incredible engineering of NASA, but this one launch today has all of the above ticked.
This is like making the first aeroplane that’s able to land and be flown again. SpaceX uses this example as well, like, imagine how expensive any plane ticket would have to be if you had to build a brand new A380 every single time people wanted to fly and then crashing it into the sea.
Going to space is EXPENSIVE. If this program succeeds it will both massively reduce the cost to space and spin off hundreds of companies looking to do the same in various ways.
Look at any new rocket currently in development, they all include some level of reusability in the design and that’s all thanks to the incredible engineers of SpaceX paving the way, first with Falcon 9 and now with Starship.
We’re talking industrial revolution levels of progress and new frontiers in our lifetimes, which is very, very exciting.
I hate Musk and his personal everything, but Like SpaceX. However, when people gush about reusability, they seem to forget the 135 Space Shuttle missions (2 fatal failures , yes.). All done with 5 vehicles. Yes expensive etc, but truly amazing.
Also, I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary. Impressive? Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right. There’d be no NASA by now.
Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
NASA spent about 50 Billion today-dollars developing (not launching) the shuttle program and that went to private contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, United Space, etc.) Starship has a long way to go to hit those numbers.
I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary
Really? Nothing? Many people said what Falcon 9 now does on a regular basis could not be done. No one was even trying. The closest plans were still going to land horizontally and went nowhere. Now, you have to explain why you’re not landing your booster, and what your plans are to fix that going forward: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/international/2024/09/11/china-wants-to-replace-jeff-bezos-as-musks-greatest-space-threat/
They quite literally revolutionized the space industry in terms of the cost to launch to orbit.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right. There’d be no NASA by now.
Yet another way they’ve revolutionized the industry. Almost everyone is doing expendable tests now so that they can move forward quickly. Columbia started construction in 1975, launched for the first time in 1981. When they launched it, it was a fully decked out space shuttle and they put the whole thing on the line - including two astronauts. Imagine NASA trying to do that now. They’d be grounded so hard they’d be jealous of Mankind having a table to land on.
I tried to explain to someone months ago that SpaceX testing things to failure was part of their success, and gave an example like purposely leaving heat shield tiles off starship to see what happened, or launching a version of starship that didn’t have all the improvements that the next starship had, and they then came back saying that is exactly why they (and other people) hate SpaceX. They don’t know everything up front and they should!
The Space Shuttle missions did not recycle the rockets, not to mention that the SpaceX missions were rated super-heavy: Only Apollo has done this before in America.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right.
You think they didn’t?
The Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) from shuttle launched were recycled. They parachuted into the ocean after being jettisoned and were recovered and refused. They just didn’t land themselves. The external fuel tank was not reused.
You think they didn’t?
No, they didn’t. Enterprise conducted 5 approach and landing tests where she was carried aloft by a 747 and then detached to glide to a landing, three with that aerodynamic tailcone thing, two with mockup main engines to simulate a return from space. Though there were issues with PIO revealed during the last flight, all five of Enterprise’s approach and landing test flights resulted in successful landings.
I would not describe any space shuttle as “crashed.” Challenger exploded during launch and Colombia broke up during re-entry; destroyed in service yes, crashed no. Enterprise, Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour all survived service and are on display at museums. No other airworthy space shuttles were built. Explorer/Independence and Inspiration are 1:1 scale models, and Pathfinder was basically a boilerplate meant for testing and incapable of flight.
Like SpaceX. However, when people gush about reusability, they seem to forget the 135 Space Shuttle missions (2 fatal failures , yes.). All done with 5 vehicles. Yes expensive etc, but truly amazing.
The Space Shuttle was a marvel of engineering. But while it was reusable, it wasn’t actually good at it. Reusability was supposed to bring down cost and turnaround time and it did neither. And not just that, it was actually much more expensive than competing expendable rockets. Plus, it had lots of other issues like being dangerous as fuck. You couldn’t abort at all for major parts of the ascent and there was the whole issue with the fragile heat protection tiles, both of which caused fatalities.
I think part of the reason why people aren’t impressed by the Shuttle anymore is because it flew 135 missions. It’s 40 year old technology. And it’s not like SpaceX are just doing the same thing again 40 years later, they’re reusing their rockets in a completely different way, which no one else had done before. And in doing so they seem to be avoiding most of the disadvantages that came with the Shuttle’s design.
Also, I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary. Impressive? Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
Sure, I wouldn’t say that no one else could do this with a similar amount of money (and the will to actually do it). Whether you want to call it revolutionary or not is subjective, but they’re definitely innovating a lot more than any other large player in spaceflight. The Falcon 9 is a huge step forward for rocket reusability and SpaceX have also been the first to fly a full-flow staged combustion engine as well as the most powerful rocket ever. They’re making spaceflight exciting again after like 40 years of stagnation and I think that’s what resonates with people.
The space shuttle wasn’t as reusable as it was claimed to be.
Each airframe required massive refurbishment after every flight.
And the “crashes” you’re talking about were part of the project process, articles that were never going to be any more than test objects to begin with.
NASA crashed a lot of stuff, unintentionally. Three off of the top of my head, killed 15 astronauts, all which were preventable (not to mention the launch pad failures getting to Apollo).
NASA/NACA/Air Force crashed a lot of stuff along the way.
Ffs they knew Columbia had a tile problem, and said “it’ll be OK”. They knew it had been too cold for the booster seals on Discovery, and launched anyway.
The space shuttle was technically reusable, but not in a way that was beneficial to anyone. The time and cost of refurbishing the shuttle after every launch was so much they may as well have built a brand new disposable rocket for each mission.
SpaceX may have built the first reusable rocket that actually saves money
I thought it was the boosters that were in retrospect pointlessly refurbished and would have been cheaper to make new.
Are you sure it was also the shuttle itself being cheaper to make new? The shuttle also took something like 6 months to refurb. Reusable, but not rapid.
The big ass rocket engines in the back fueled by the massive fuel tank may disagree with you
A bit of a timeline correction. The falcon 9 started landing succesfully in 2016. So 8 years ago but your argument still stands.
no rocket as powerful as this one.
So I’m confused on this because people still seem to be using Starships’s old estimates of 100 tons to LEO orbit, which the SLS can put 145 tons to LEO.
Then 6 months ago Musk got on stage and updated the specs to Say that Starships’s current design can only do 40-50 tons.
This feels awfully familiar for anyone that’s seen early Tesla specs/presentations/promises and I can’t help but wonder as to the validity of everyone saying SpaceX is mostly insulated from Musk’s “influence.”
To be very honest even if Starship is able to only lift 50 tons, which I’m sure they’ll be able to hit 100/150 tons eventually. The huge difference in cost would easily cover the extra times Starship would have to fly, compared to SLS. Considering each flight of a SLS will be around 4 billion dollars.
I think they mean the “superheavy” (somehow a more stupid name than starship) booster rocket is the most powerful. I’m pretty sure by thrust metrics it is. It’s just that the superheavy-starship system can’t put much up in LEO because the starship is huge and heavy on its own.
If you put an expendable second stage on top of the superheavy booster instead of a starship it could put a lot more up to LEO.
The Saturn 5 was able to lift 141t to LEO.
The Space shuttle was reusable.
The Saturn V could lift 141t to LEO…once. Also it’ll be at least another 5 years before we reach a stable max power version of Starship.
For example the Falcon 9 v1.0 first flew in 2010 and the current Block 5 version first flew in 2018 with more than double the LEO capacity when fully expendable.
If they configure Starship as fully expendable it can lift 250t to LEO (per SpaceX, so grain of salt there to be fair).
As for the shuttle, I love it to bits and I’m sad it had to be grounded. It was refurbishable but not really reusable and the massive liquid fuel tank was discarded in each flight.
Imagine you want to build a cabin in a very remote place in Alaska.
Getting there is quite difficult, you did it a few times in the 60’s but the path is so bad that you had to throw the truck away each time (around $45,000 per trip, for the truck + gas)
You are still planning to build your cabin but having to buy a new truck for each trip is not great, plus the fact that only one company can make this SLS truck so you can’t get more than once a year.
Building a cabin in these circumstances is close to impossible.
Now SpaceX makes a new Starship truck that can go all the way AND be reused. The trip from the hardware store to the build site now only costs you around $100 for the gas plus truck expenses AND you can now do the trip to the hardware store multiple times a day !
Now building the cabin becomes way more accessible.
Replace the Alaskan cabin with a scientific base on the moon or Mars and multiply the amounts by 100,000 and you have an approximation of the situation
Now SpaceX makes a new Starship truck that can go all the way AND be reused.
Not much of a spacex fan, but the fact that they were able to prove reusability on the falcon 9 and starship when the main players - ULA, Boeing, fuck, everyone said it was decades away IF EVER gets my attention. it illustrates how there are blind spots in all industries where people have to be shown what is possible because they’ll never believe it and that dogma can stifle innovation for ages when left unchallenged.
NASA could have done this if they had the budget. Instead we’d rather give huge tax cuts to billionaires so they can build a private sector NASA to charge NASA exorbitant sums to use their private vehicles. It’s the most asinine and innefficient way of going about it.
No, NASA has the budget. They already spent $50 billion on the development of SLS and Orion, Starship development cost is estimated to be around $10 billion.
So in theory with the money they spent on SLS they could have built 5 starship program.
The problem is that NASA has to follow political interests, sometimes the political interests align with technical interest and we get great things like the Apollo program.
They also have a very tight tolerance of failure. Every failure made in the engineering process brings more and more scrutiny by those holding the purse strings in Washington.
Space X has less bureaucracy and can pursue other commercial ventures. The amount nasa pays is high, but it’s still cheaper than continuing their old program
Plus NASA can’t afford the risk. If SpaceX failed, no big deal. We would have lost some money and everyone would ridicule Musk. If NASA tried it and failed, they would not only have lost five times the money, but would be parylized by investigations, audits, cutbacks. NASA does a LOT more than just rockets and it would all be at risk
Plus notice NASA has been investing in multiple commercial programs where possible. 3 big rocket programs. Two crew capsules and multiple cargo capsules. Multiple space stations, etc. NASA could not have created this redundancy on their own
My guy they just caught an object falling from space using a pair of giant chopsticks
https://youtu.be/b28zbsnk-48?t=412
That thing is about 70 meters long and weights 300 tons and some.
Technically not from space since the lower stage never made it past the Karman line, which is 100km above sea level.
I hate Elon just as much as the next guy, but pretending that this wasn’t a marvel of engineering is really disingenuous. People with intelligence beyond my comprehension made that a reality, and just because the company had his face on it, it doesn’t make it any less impressive
SpaceX is not run by Elon and he’s kept from being involved closely by a buffer of people that keep him from getting too close to making any “elon” level changes.
SpaceX is successful despite Musk, not because of. And the woman who runs it knows that and keeps Musk away from any important decisions or impacts.
So the stuff they’re doing is legit, cool aerospace stuff.
It’s just not something Musk should take credit for. He does/will. But he shouldn’t. He’s a hack.
That’s not true in the least. He is CEO, CTO and Chief rocket designer. He’s deeply involved in every step
He can give himself whatever titles he likes, that doesn’t mean he makes any positive technical contribution.
Watch a few of the multi hour interviews he given while raining through explaining everything. He knows what he’s doing if you’ve not been paying attention. Lots of reasons to not like him but your completely wrong on this one
He’s far too busy with X, Trump, and his relationship drama to have any time to do anything close to being involved. Of the company’s he’s bought or been involved in creating SpaceX is toward the bottom of his priorities from what I hear.
Which is hilarious, as the eponymous Culture is the epitome of luxury gay space anarchism. Pan-sexual, non-monogamous space hippies that can (and do) change their biological sex just by thinking about it. People so past the idea of “gender” that they consider giving any serious weight to the concept barbaric.
I know it’s a rhetorical question: but is Elon stupid or something?
But he shouldn’t. He’s a hack.
He’s also a stupid doodoo brain, with poop and pee in his pants! Cacca doodoo!
