We just wrote a piece this morning in Orbital Index about the iteration speeds of SLS, New Glenn, and Starship. SpaceX is putting everyone else to shame.
Reminds me of this quote from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in 2014: "Let's be very honest again. We don't have a commercially available heavy lift vehicle. Falcon 9 Heavy may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real."
I love the ¶ paragraph indicators - Google says it's called Pilcrow? [1] - at the beginning of each section. It's a great typographic choice.
Reminds me of those legal documents where they obsess about formatting and labelling the sections. And by they I mean usually the junior/intern staff at the law firms who are stuck in the 80s with paper and faxes.
I used to do legal word processing back in the late 1990s. It was a real career for a lot of people who were not junior lawyers but actually legal word processors. Most of them had other things going on also alike acting or something.
But yeah turning on the display of things like paragraphs was critical if you were trying to clean up a Word document.
I just did a search and apparently legal word processor is still a real job.
It did land, then exploded right now. There was a fire at the base of the SN10 and apparently got to the tank after a few minutes. 99% success. Next time for 100% hopefully.
There have been successful falcon 9 landings that looked like they hit the ground harder than that. I suppose either Starship will need to be more gentle when it sets down, or the legs will need to be more capable.
I’ll need to go back and watch but I think the fire started on the way down and not at landing. Also, then engine shutdown looked “messy” on the landing burn. I wonder if the root issue was relight. I hope there isn’t a major flaw in raptor with respect to getting them to relight. Re-ignition had problems in every flight it is been tried (iirc).
I bet they got good telemetry data from something in the upper part of the starship, after it got kicked up into the air, right until it crashed down again.
Either not all the landing legs deployed, or it landed too hard and broke them. It looks like it landed on the engine bells.
There's a lot less clearance under the Starship on landing than the Falcons. Several landing leg designs came out of Space-X; there's one animation with four folding legs, one with six, and one with legs that extend linearly. Not clear what flew.
Yes that's how I found it, just by dragging the slider until I saw the explosion, then using left/right arrow for more fine gained time index placement.
I was there. I have been following spacex for a decade. I watched all the most important launches on livestream. I watched the first dragon cargo mission launch live. But this was the first time actually being present at the launch. Despite all my experience, it was totally unexpected. I had no idea how surreal it feels to watch something that big float slowly towards the sky. The sound physically shakes you. It was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.
Everything looked perfect, except perhaps it set down a little hard. I think I saw it bounce a bit, and it might be leaning a little bit.
One way or another, a spectacularly successful test. Well done SpaceX! I'm keenly looking forward to seeing the first video of a Starship sitting on the surface of the moon and Mars.
I skipped to that part and almost closed the stream thinking I had clicked the wrong link, I was kinda annoyed someone passing of CG for the real stream, then I realised it was real
It looks like it used up the crumple zones on the legs, and then some. It was tilted over to the side a bit before it exploded. Leg close-up from a previous craft:
I doubt there's any plan to fly SN10 again. The point of this vehicle was to learn about controlling the flight with the flaps. The landing was a bonus, and reuse isn't part of the plan for the early prototypes (they already have several more in the pipeline, including SN11 which is pretty much ready to go)
It was the Delta Clipper (DC-X) [0] and that was actually like the SpaceX, grasshopper. It stayed upright, translated hovered and came back to land.
Starship has flaps, a low terminal velocity belly flop maneuver, and then a rotation up to landing only a few hundred meters up. They definitely build on each other, but this is more impressive.
Thunderf00t recently made fun of SpaceX for failing to do what DC-X did in 1995, but he ignored the fuel savings of the belly flop followed by a brief burn. Doing it fuel efficiently is critical to practical reuse.
The slightly mirrored fresnel lens of the internet.
My take is if someone is doing this, they are complaining about the overall lack of progress from an ancient achievement till now. They aren't wrong usually, but our flawed system doesn't make progress in that way.
The shuttle technically does a flop (it flies backward in orbit) and comes down via active control w/ aerodynamic surfaces. Not sure if that what poster means tho.
From the non-vertical look after it landed, and the known weak landing legs, I am guessing it damaged the structure at the bottom. It doesn't seem like they actually plan to fly them more than once (once they make their objectives). Is that correct?
At this point it is very unlikely they'll fly them more than once, at some point in the future that is the total reason why they are designing this rocket.
I think fire control is what needs to be worked on at this point. After it landed there was an uncontrolled fire, probably from leaking methane that burned for a bit and, my guess, weakend the steel leading to warping and finally a rupture.
With that said, design tests at this point were really focusing on landing so now they have the next series of design iterations figure out how to keep fuel out of the fire.
SN12 was scrapped and SN13 and SN14 were never built, to allow for SN15, the new design, to jump the queue. SN11 is next followed by SN15 and then possibly BN1, the first booster.
Two of the three engines flaming out in the last few seconds, was that intentional? Something similar happened last time too, but at least this time it landed.
Yes. They need 1 to land - more than one means too much thrust.
Last time they only lit one, it failed to light, and boom. This time they lit all three hoping at least one would work, then turned off the ones they didn’t need.
I assume they had the idea independently of the guy who asked musk why they didn’t light more than one and shut down — musk replied “because we’re dumb”, but I guess that tweeter could claim to be a rocket scientist now.
Quick edit to this - they need two for the rotation to happen. Last time they lit two and one failed, so they did not have enough thrust to rotate it. This time they lit three and turned off one for the rotation, then turned off a second once it was rotated.
Yep, you’re right, just saw the video from SpaceX. Good call. This actually makes me wonder if they significantly changed the landing profile since they’re scrubbing velocity so much faster with three thrusters, it may explain why the single thruster landing portion seemed slow compared to previous attempts.
To start both main and backup engine was standard procedure planned for Soviet lunar landing LK, at liftoff. If everything's fine, backup engine shuts down.
"The rocket company", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocket_Company , a great and quite realistic book, reminds about importance of knowing history; there, a company explicitly maintains a library of previous technical solutions to problems encountered.
This wasn't done for SN8 and SN9, where they only lit one engine. Musk said that this time around, they were going to light all three and then shut two off, thus providing some engine redundancy during the landing.
Two are necessary for the rotation and one for the landing. SN9 tried to light two and one failed, now they're lighting all three for the rotation. Here's a video on SN9 with one burning and one flameout: https://youtu.be/z8PzW8imgAE?t=401
I wonder about raptor re-ignition. They have it down with Merlin but it’s not torch ignited nor full flow. I wonder how well that torch handles being in a lit combustion chamber and what the insides of the preburners are like after shutdown...
Ps so so easy to armchair quarterback. I don’t want to sound like I, even one tiny bit, am not constantly dumbfounded by SpaceX’s accomplishments!
They were landing on one iirc but this one did look very fiery and there was a fire started that eventually caused it to explode a while after landing.
I'm not an engineer (well not that kind), but it seems to me relying wholly on thrusters seems kind of iffy on being fully stable... wouldn't maybe having the rockets slow down the craft to the point where drones could lasso it, or connect to it, or even built in wings could expand with copter blades to steady it and lower it down more gentle?
I mean early space-flight used parachutes, that's an option too though I'd imagine a space capsule weighs a shit ton less....
I just wouldn't trust my family on a rocket like this, feels very pre-mature. Like there's something missing to ensure it doesn't do a back flip at the end...per se.
Starship is being designed to land on Mars. Therefore it needs to land safely with only what comes with the vehicle. Note Mars atmosphere is 1% pressure of Earth.
Helicopter blades have been proposed and tested, but apparently Roton, an early space company, did not have nearly enough money. Also they pursued a SSTO platform that they didn't have the efficiency margins to pull off.
You need to consider how freaking gigantic this thing is. It literally like a huge building falling out of the sky. That scale alone makes most of these solutions silly.
The problem with ideas like this is that you have to develop another huge difficult large scale engineering project. That you need to maintain, update operate and so on.
And even if you do that, is this gigantic device actually more stable then just relaying on your well tested well engineered rocket engine?
On smaller vehicles you can do air capture because you can use commercial helicopters.
Now, parachutes simply don't scale that large. It simply doesn't work.
> I just wouldn't trust my family on a rocket like this, feels very pre-mature. Like there's something missing to ensure it doesn't do a back flip at the end...per se.
Well it is pre-mature. Nobody denies this. This is the first vehicle ever to fly a Full-Flow Stage Combustion engine. Its one of the single biggest flying devices ever made by humans. It uses a re-entry procedure that has never been done before. With a combination of structure and heat shield that has never been done before. With a landing maneuver that has never been done before.
This will likely fly 100 times before humans get on it, and then only astronauts.
All that said however, there is no inherent reason why relaying on your engine and thrusters should be unstable. You can have redundancy in those systems.
(I don't understand the downvotes; you're asking the same reasonable questions that I'm sure Elon asked too.)
From what I've read, passive landing solutions like parachutes, wings, rotors, air bags, etc. are feasible only for smaller payloads. Think Apollo/Soyuz capsules, or the first couple Mars landers, or RocketLab's Electron rocket with a parachute.
I'm sure the JPL engineers would have preferred a tried-and-tested passive parachute (and maybe some airbags) over a sky-crane, but the latest rovers are just too heavy for safe parachute landing. I believe it's the same situation with Falcon 9 and Starship recovery.
And remember that SpaceX's Dragon capsule demonstrated an impressive propulsive landing, but NASA said no thanks and required parachutes.
I wasn’t watching a very high res stream but did anyone else notice what looked like a blackish/sooty exhaust on the way up from one engine? Maybe it was just the video feed...
My hunch is at least one engine wasn’t performing 100% but the flight control software was able to compensate pretty freaking well.
I agree. On the SpaceX stream from inside the engine shroud it was very clear that one engine had a blue flame-exhaust, while the other was noticeably yellow.
My laymen rocket skills makes me think the yellow one wasn't performing very well.
This is actually normal, and expected. The issue with these specific Starship tests is that the flight plan calls for 1) a height of ~10 km, 2) not going supersonic. The second one is quite critical, because supersonic flight introduces much greater stresses on the craft.
Given these two limitations, Starship currently carries very little fuel. Think of it like a mostly empty soda can with a few sips sloshing about the bottom. Adding 3 Raptor engines to such a tank makes them way too powerful to run at 100% thrust the whole time.
On the launchpad, all 3 Raptors start off at full thrust until well clear of the pad. At that point, one engine at a time starts throttling down gradually, so as not to go supersonic or exceed the 10 km flight plan. A throttled engine does not burn as cleanly or efficiently, which is what results in the orange exhaust plume. Same as your campfire, blue flame is hotter than orange/red flame, and the bluer exhaust engine is therefore burning hotter and providing more thrust.
As Starship gets closer to the 10 km peak, it shuts off one engine at a time, and finally throttles the final Raptor down as low as it can go. Note that Raptor engines have a minimum throttle that is ~20% of max thrust, below which the only option is to shut down.
I think the lean is expected, I’ve been predicting it. The vehicle lands on only one engine at the end which is off centre, so the landing legs are going to get asymmetric forces on landing. Also these are only interim leg designs.
I very highly doubt the lean is expected. The fact is that 2-3 of the landing legs deployed but did not lock into their extended position, which resulted in the lean this time. This also caused structural damage to the engines and tanks, causing the rupture and kaboom.
Tons of amateur space nerds are analyzing every frame of video that's been gathered about the incident. Here's a gif [1] posted on NASASpaceFlight but originally shot by LabPadre that shows that some of the legs on the left extended and then flopped back and forth a bit, whereas the ones on the right extended and stayed that way. Commenters on Twitter have also pointed out the same [2].
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
EDIT: This is taken from an article about fear while making art. I think that's what's happening here - The SLS team are probably not allowed to blow up their space ship (because it is too expensive). SpaceX are allowed to blow theirs up, and in doing so they can learn a lot more a lot more quickly, and try more daring things to begin with.
When I was an undergrad we had a trebuchet building competition between a team of mechanical engineers, and a team of physicists.
Believe if or not, the mechanical engineers were the ones who spent the entire building time making CAD models and calculating torques while the physicists just said "it is approximately a wheel" and start building immediately.
The physicists finished, and it worked beautifully on the first try with no tuning. That part was just luck for sure, but it was still beautiful to watch.
“It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes”
Why would they care about quality? If they learned from their mistakes, they would make two or three pots, each one heavier than the rest (smart students would just make one item, making sure it weighed at least 50 kgs).
This probably would work if the teacher promised them 1 point for each mediocre item produced, 2 for each slightly less mediocre one, etc. with scores such that producing mediocre items at full speed at best gives them a low grade.
That gives the students both an incentive to start producing items soon (so that that can produce, as a safeguard, lots of mediocre items and get a decent grade) and to improve their technique (so that they can reach a higher grade, or finish earlier their work earlier)
Perhaps they're taking a pottery class because they are actually interested in producing good pottery and are intrinsically motivated to improve the quality of their work rather than just gradehacking.
A novel and naive idea in the twenty-first century, but a man can dream.
> on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups
Possible improvement: the students are simultaneously graded on quality and quantity, where one can tilt heavily in one direction or the other to get a good grade. Students choose their strategy: all in on quantity or quality, or quality leaning towards quantity, et cetera. At the end of the term, the surprise being that the students who leaned towards quantity (maybe number of firings versus mass) produced the most stunning work.
> SpaceX's rapid iterations and fail fast methodology might save the human species
Would you mind elaborating here?
How will reaching a dead planet while we actively kill the literally perfect place for us to survive and foster save the human species, exactly? And how does a fail fast methodology fit in there?
Elon Musk believes that it’s important for humanity to not be entirely dependent on Earth for its survival. Whether that’s because we destroy the planet, or an asteroid hits, or there’s a terrible virus and we can’t get people to wear masks, doesn’t really matter. The point is that having a second permanent home would make this far less likely to end the human race. It’s a very unlikely thing to happen, but it’s entirely catastrophic if it does, so an expected value calculation could be argued to show that it’s worth it.
As for not destroying the planet, that’s what his other big company is working on.
I’m not fully on board with his reasoning here, and don’t agree with many of his beliefs, but he is quite explicit and consistent about these reasonings and I don’t think it’s the worst outcome.
1. One day we will need to leave Earth. Maybe sooner than later. Would you rather have a spacecraft or not when that becomes a need?
2. Many rare materials are common in space. Even if we do not leave Earth, being able to bring those to us would do a great deal.
3. What if we discover life through exploring the cosmos?
4. Nobody settled new lands the first time they sailed the ocean (at least not very successfully). Give it a couple hundred years, maybe less, who knows?
5. Do you really not want to explore the universe? In the literal sense of the word?
> 1. One day we will need to leave Earth. Maybe sooner than later. Would you rather have a spacecraft or not when that becomes a need?
I don’t equate visiting another planet or planets with saving the human species. We have vast existential problems, mostly imposed by ourselves, right now on Earth. Let’s say we had a copy of Earth that we could travel to right now in a safe solar system with a healthy star. Is the human species saved? Are our problems solved? If we simply spread our cancerous way of life throughout the cosmos, I’m not sure I find that exciting. It would be much more exciting if we learn to be a sustainable acting and net positive species (in all the ways) while spreading in the cosmos. Getting to another planet is a very small part of all that. It’s exciting of course, but not the solve everything solution the parent and downvoters apparently think it is.
> 3. What if we discover life through exploring the cosmos?
That isn’t under discussion. How does that solve humanity’s problems? I am sure we will find life or evidence of it elsewhere.
> 5. Do you really not want to explore the universe? In the literal sense of the word?
That wasn’t a question I responded to or has anything to do with what I said.
> I don’t equivocate visiting another planet or planets with saving the human species.
All it takes is one big, unlucky rock hurlting through space hitting this singular planet of ours, and we're gone like the dinosaurs. Eggs in one basket, and all that.
That is a threat, but the time when humans can survive away from a destroyed Earth is so long away that I don’t understand how a fail fast attitude helps.
It wouldn't be that far off if we had the money and motivation.
We could probably have a mostly self sustaining colony in caves on Mars within ten years , if we really wanted to. It would just take an absurd amount of money and singular focus and dedication by governments and companies.
> If we simply spread our cancerous way of life throughout the cosmos, I’m not sure I find that exciting.
Unlike you, I do not have much confidence that we will change our ways. Humanity consumes and exploits all that it has met, and will likely continue to do so successfully, or die out. Unless we find more to exploit, the latter seems more likely. Ergo the need for spaceships eventually.
Re: the last two points, they appeal to emotion more so than reason.
Just FYI you probably meant equate instead of equivocate. Two other reasons to add on to the GP's post:
(i) improving our species fault-tolerance to astroids, and other existential risk is a good thing
(ii) efforts like SpaceX make science "cool again" in a way that it has not been since the Apollo program, and generally since the end of WWII
Putting humanity on a second planet is about creating a redundancy in case something happens to the earth.
That redundancy is designed to protect against rare events on that might well be 100,000 years away.
Going to mars to "save the human race" isn't a path anyone is proposing as an alternative to addressing climate change. That's a challenge we face across the next 10-200 years.
Going to mars to "save the human race" is about ensuring that, if a planet-scale disaster strikes the earth in 10,000 years the human experiment continues on.
They're two different challenges that we face, and I see no reason why we can't address both.
You're 100% right, except for one detail: human politics. Unfortunately, the organizations here on Earth actually capable of solving the climate change problem (namely, governments) move too slowly and/or are horribly divided against themselves (see: USA). As an engineer, I look at the problem and I come to your same conclusion; It would be far, far more efficient just to save Earth than to try to colonize and terraform Mars. Unfortunately, Earth politics being what they are (hell, USA has > 500,000 deaths due to COVID and STILL around 45% of the population thinks it's fake or no worse than the flu), our only realistic option for ensuring the continuity of the species is to colonize another planet so that if the governments on Earth collectively decide to ensure its doom, there is another place where humans can continue the species.
It's sad really. But it's the reality we're dealing with.
But those same humans will be supposedly colonizing Mars and elsewhere, bringing the same or even worse politics, which makes me say: if we can't solve our problems here, the perfect place to do so, then what's the point? It's a harsh question but a real one meant to highlight the imbalance of what people get hyped about versus what's really important.
Surviving extinction-level events like asteroid strikes likely requires an off-planet human civilization.
But I do share your concerns about humans neglecting their ideal habitat, and think we need to be careful about mistaking efforts like colonizing Mars as some kind of panacea abdicating any responsibility to clean up our act at home.
> Earth even if hit by an asteroid that killed dinosaurs, Chicxulub impactor, would be more habitable than Mars.
Not initially. Maybe after a few days or weeks. The thermal pulse from the impact itself would have instantly charred terrestrial life for some portion of the Americas. And the reentry of ejecta radiated enough heat to ignite forests around the globe.
Anyone on Mars would be sitting lucky, well situated to begin the recolonization of Earth.
There's still plenty of earth we could be learning to survive on without going all the way to Mars. Why not build a self-sustaining colony in Antarctica or under the ocean or something first? Or hell, just a biodome do-over. All of those places are still a hell of a lot more habitable than Mars and have much easier rescue options.
If you want to prepare for that eventuality, instead of wasting your time and money colonizing Mars, you should be spending your time and money on doing asteroid surveys, and working on deflection strategies. It's far cheaper, and will save billions of lives.
Your ROI from doing so is going to be a hell of a lot better.
In comparison to that, colonization is a science fiction fantasy, in search of a problem to solve.
I wonder if the people working on asteroid deflection strategies would find it useful to have a giant cheap general purpose factory-produced fully reusable rocket that can refuel itself in orbit and quickly reach various points in the solar system and deliver a significant amount of payload to them?
How do you know it's far cheaper? If it won't work, then what?
Why not doing both?
There are many practical reasons for exploring the universe, but IMO we human being explore because we can't help it. As technology advance the smart and fearless people will dream of using the new technologies to achieve goals previous generations can only dream of.
Colonization will happen naturally: explorers come first, set up bases, recruits will arrive later to build infrastructure. Lot of people will die. If a place isn't survivable after several tries we will move to another place and repeat. It will occur over thousand years. But I have no doubt it will.
Because we currently don't do either, and if we're going to pick one mitigating strategy, I'd prefer picking one that actually has a point to it.
Money and human effort is fungible, you can spend it on many things. I'd rather it not being spent on pointless pursuits. If someone is going to spend it on pointless pursuits, I suppose they could do that, but they should at least not delude themselves.
Deflecting an asteroid with current technology would involve launching a rocket at it and either imparting enough kinetic energy to nudge it into an orbit that doesn't intersect Earth or blowing it up with a nuclear warhead. Either of those would require a large rocket capable of throwing a substantial payload well outside of Earth's orbit.
Tracking asteroids can be done with terrestrial radar (that was one of the things Arecibo was used for before it collapsed), or it could be done with space-based radar systems. Radar requires a lot of power, so any space-based radar will need a substantial solar array.
Both of these problems are easier when you have a heavy-lift rocket such as Starship or Falcon 9 (regular and heavy versions) available. If we're regularly ferrying stuff back and forth between Earth and Mars, we're going to need a lot of those rockets. Having a space transportation economy would mean rockets are available for other uses, such as the aforementioned asteroid interceptor or space radar delivery platform. These problems are all connected.
The problem is that there is no economic case for ferrying stuff to and from Mars. There is nearly nothing on Mars that anyone on Earth will pay a premium that will pay the costs of colonization off. It's the ultimate exercise of ditch-digging, and ditch-filling, with the justification that doing so accelerates the technological development of ditch-digging instruments. Which is both technically correct, and also completely insane.
I don't think it's obvious at this point whether or not a Martian colony would be profitable. A lot depends on technology and costs. Transportation costs are the biggest hurdle at the moment.
Any potential Mars colony is likely to be populated by an early group of scientists and tourists, but there are a lot of other reasons people might want to visit Mars or stay there. Mining of high-value minerals. Filming TV shows and movies. Sports. Claiming the best real estate before someone else does. Establishing a refueling station between Earth and the asteroid belt. Manufacturing heavy space equipment that we don't want to lift out of Earth's gravity well. Some people with mobility issues might rather live in low gravity on Mars than be bound to a wheelchair on Earth. And so on.
I'm a huge, long time fan of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, and I've found inspiration in some of the things that Elon Musk has shared over the years.
> greatest man alive today
I don't think that's a characterization that can be sustained or not with any level of objectivity.
What I am sure of is that for various reasons, good and bad, Elon Musk is a very polarizing figure, and his missions are best served by studiously avoiding anything akin to lionization or hero worship.
I don't think I've ever seen that phrase before, and I don't know what it means. (:
> coolest human being to ever live
I tend to reflexively reject superlatives for various reasons. I'm comfortable saying that some of the stuff Musk is working on has enormous potential for positive outcomes, and I'd have a hard time coming up with a single person in recent history that had unambiguously produced more possible positive impact.
There are a lot of individuals in recent history who have produced enormous positive outcomes, though typically without as much 'flare' as Musk.
While tongue in cheek, I do entertain this idea sometimes.
What I meant was, if one could quantify the minimizing of the output of CO2 by greatly accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles, and largely credit that to Musk, would that make him the “coolest?”
Why would I? The pain and sacrifice he went through to get where he is right now is just crazy....sacrificing the multimillionaire lifestyle is not easy.
I loved Lex's interview with Jason, he was talking about it as well.
You know if you think his life was so easy, I have an idea for you to have an even easier life: build a car company that's 10x better and more valuable then Tesla, and a space company that's 10x better than SpaceX. You'll have the easiest life in the world :)
It's just a little a lot tone deaf to talk about Musk's 'sacrifices' when so much of the US and the world is going through acute material crises. Sure you can still suffer when you're wealthy. But also dude could just up and go to the bahamas for the rest of his life no problem. Most of us don't have that choice.
He's trying to make humanity a multiplanetary species while at the same time trying to get humanity off of fossil fuels by completely upending and dominating:
1) The space industry
2) The automotive industry
3) The solar industry
4) Some parts of the world's power grid infrastructure.
He asks a LOT of his employees, and despite his companies being 15 years old at this point, asks for the type of commitment from employees that you would find at an early stage startup.
His competitors are largely government contractors, and government-backed natural monopolies. Because of this, the contrast between working for a company like spacex (innovate or die) is in stark contrast to something like ULA (rest on the momentum you have built over the last 50 years. Go home every day at 5:00. Lobby your boss for 4 day work weeks).
There are a LOT of people who look at the people working at SpaceX, see the insane schedule the work at, and resent them for it.
They are literally trying to save the human species. It turns out that requires some pretty serious dedication, but it also turns out that there are going to be some people who hate you for it when you try.
Also: there have been MASSIVE short positions taken against tesla in the last 5 years. So there has been a lot of negative stories and anecdotes shared about the working conditions of Tesla factors. However it should be noted that those working conditions are approximately the same (or better) than at most other large automobile manufacturers.
On what basis do you doubt that? Nearly everything he does or says, every interview, every company, seems singularly focused on the goal of bettering the chance of humanity existing forever.
He promotes conspiracy theories, is transphobic, put all of his workers at risk by ignoring (and actively advocating against) COVID safety protocols at his factories, is notorious for promoting a hostile work environment and overworking employees for poor pay...
Starship uses revolutionary new Full-Flow Staged Combustion engines that have never flown.
Starship is testing a never used before method of reentry and guidence.
Starship is testing a never used before method of landing.
Starship is testing never used before method of heat shielding tiles and how to attach them.
Starship is not just testing the ship itself, but also the mass manufacturing line for Starship. Its not a test mule, its a mass production pipeline that is being designed at the same time as the product it produces.
Will likely be the first Orbital rocket to use Methlox fuel.
The DC-X was a fundamental dead-end, many of its engineers went to BlueOrigin and worked on New Shepard, a sub-orbital only hopper.
SpaceX Grasshopper is more comparable to the DC-X then the DC-X to Starship.
The DC-X was a billion dollar research project. SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 first stage back in 2015 and now does it every other week as a commercial operator. The idea is not new either, you’ll see rockets landing upright in 1950 cartoons.
The truth is that the “landing a rocket” part is the least interesting here, Starship is a 150t capacity reusable space vehicle that will reduce launch costs by a factor of 100x, and is to be produced en masse like airplanes.
The height is almost irrelevant, as long as Starship is at terminal velocity prior to the re-ignition sequence. It's the landing sequence of belly-flop, flip and land that has never been tried before Starship.
https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-03-03-Issue-106/#heavy...
Reminds me of this quote from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in 2014: "Let's be very honest again. We don't have a commercially available heavy lift vehicle. Falcon 9 Heavy may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real."