clothes
Prediction time!
Stage Zero: Works with only minor damage.
Booster Engine Failures: 5 :(
Hot Staging: Works, looks cool.
Upper Stage: Flies, with significant issues.
FTS: Big boom, on time!
End result: Booster re-enters in one piece, Ship in many.
What scanners do people recommend?
If it’s only the on-screen flap that had issues, hopefully that points to a minor fix instead of a major one. I wonder what sort of data they have on this. How many thermal tiles were lost on each flap? Where did the issues start? Are the other flaps alright? Hard things to track.
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?
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!
As far as I know these EVA suits aren’t going to be tested sans people, and that gives me the creeps!
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!