Space Travel & Exploration

[s_bushido]

Explain it to me like I'm five: How is SpaceX blowing up equipment considered in any way a success?

[PACOX]

Explain it to me like I'm five: How is SpaceX blowing up equipment considered in any way a success?

If you're talking about Starship, it goes back to the Space Shuttles.


Prior to the Shuttles, all rockets were one and done and craft. Tiny capsule, rocket goes up, rocket comes down, build another. If you wanted to launch cargo you launched a separate unmanned rocket. The Space Shuttles combined heavily launch capabilities, with utility, with manned flight. Space Shuttles were heavy launchers, they also had a cargo hold that could hold non-standard payloads and/or capture things already in orbit, they also came with the perks of humans on board. The issue with the Space Shuttles were that they were inefficient despite all their capabilities - took too long to launch in between missions, they were ahead of their time as far as capabilities went, it was often (99% of the time) to just used expendable craft to launch payloads. The Shuttles were great when it came to building the ISS but even then engineers could have probably came up with cheaper workarounds.


Starship is the next iteration of the Shuttle design and concept. A manned orbital workhorse capability of added the ingenuity of a spacious cargo hold and astronauts on board to spaceflight. Not being tied down by regulations NASA has to adhere to helps. What Starship is, aims to be, is a multipurpose reusable heavy launch spaceship. Its most promising/exciting feature is propellant transfer. Propellant transfer greatly expands what kind of payloads you can carry because you aren't expending a bunch of energy just on fuel at launch to get to where you want to go. Instead, planners (rocket scientists) only need to worry about getting their payloads to a low Earth orbit, where they can then load up enough fuel to get to where they want. Starship has a theoretical infinite range (within the solar system) because it has the ability to refuel in space, while not being limited by the small size of capsules. It blowing up is just a sign of progress. NASA sent a new rocket around the Moon on its maiden flight, SLS, but that rocket is based on proven concepts and hardware. SpaceX's Starship is trying to explore new concepts (or ones that havent been touched in 30 years) so its explosions are seen as learning opportunities.

[ringpriest]

Explain it to me like I'm five: How is SpaceX blowing up equipment considered in any way a success?

Making a rocket work means lots of different things need to work right. Making everything in a very big rocket work right is extra hard. Let's say SpaceX's new rocket needs a hundred (100) different things to work right every time before it can really do its job and take people and other stuff to space. Part of the way SpaceX gets their rockets to work right is by practice. They try again and again until they get everything to work right every time.

While the rocket is flying, it sends back information about exactly what is happening with all of its parts. That way SpaceX knows everything that happens on the rocket while it is flying to space and back. They know what things are working right, and what things go wrong. More importantly, they learn how things go wrong. That lets them fix those things so they will work better on the next rocket.

The first time SpaceX flew one of their new rockets, about 10 things worked right, and it blew up.

The second time SpaceX flew one of their new rockets, about 25 things worked right, and it blew up a little later.

This time, the third time that SpaceX flew one of their new rockets, about 60 things worked right, and it blew up much later. This is progress! The rocket went a lot further, and flew a lot longer before blowing up. And a lot more things worked right.

SpaceX never thought everything would work right the third time they flew the rocket. But they're happy that the rocket flew a lot farther, and that lots of things worked, even if it still blew up at the end.

SpaceX thinks it might take ten rockets or more blowing up in flight before they figure out how to get everything right. But after this flight, it might only take two or three more rockets blowing up before they get everything right.

If the rocket had blown up right away, and SpaceX didn't learn anything, then it would have been a failure. This flight was a success because the rocket worked much better than earlier rockets, and SpaceX learned a lot.

[Nerraw]

Booster for the next Starship flight underwent a static fire yesterday. The highly ambitious goal of a May launch is looking more and more likely.

[PACOX]

Booster for the next Starship flight underwent a static fire yesterday. The highly ambitious goal of a May launch is looking more and more likely.

I would imagine that they would pick up the pace if the DoD does actually commit to some to Starship. There's no need to rush anymore now that Artemis's entire timeline has been pushed back, though. Thats not a particular slight SpaceX, the timeline wasn't feasible when the first SLS/Artemis 1 went up. You could argue it wasn't feasible before that. But the fact that the last Starship test went above and beyond kind of put some more pep in SpaceX's step. If SpaceX does anything well its fabrication, so we can expect the hardware to be ready even if engineers need time to run through data.


Not the biggest fan of Musk but if I were him I would race Bezos to see what happens sooner, a New Glenn launch or another Starship orbital run. Me sitting as a rocket fan , I'm just excited. New Glenn should launch this year, its engines were proven on Vulcan. Starship is nearing at least HLS phase, signaling a return to a ship as versatile as the shuttles but without government red tap. The US has 3 spaceports in operation, maybe 4 if Texas catches on. NASA/The Easter Range is allowing multiple rocket launches within hours of each other. We're approaching a new era.

[Nerraw]

Elon Musk provided a Starship update: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1776669097490776563


If you're like me and don't want to hear Elon prattle on for 45 minutes, NSF has an excellent overview of the main points made here: https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/...76390735163511

Also A few relevant slides from the presentation: https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/...76719258173896

[PACOX]

I wonder if Elon Musk will learn that it is currently more important to safe this planet than to travel to Mars at some point.

It will take 50 years to render a big part of this planet inhabitable. Terraforming is a tech we will not learn within the next hundred years. If Musk was smart, he would invest his money into this world, and not Mars.

He is pitching to investors. Landing on Mars is a technological achievement. There's no short term way we could live on Mars. We can theoretically get people to Mars in a year or two, but what's the point if it is just a one way trip and there's scientific merit besides says "yay we did it".


One reason we're going back to Moon is to learn how to do scientific missions in deep space away from the convenience and safety of low earth orbit. Humanity will be living in space stations before we're living on Mars the way things are panning out.

[Tuor]

[Fantomen]

Stopping global warming is a way bigger achievement. If all he wants is to get into history books this is what he should do, and not construct deadborn plans to make Mars habitable.

Did you miss the whole electric car thing, the battery storage, or you specific ignore it.

All Elon Musk currently does beside Starlink is creating a lot of space garbage (old satellites, an orbit full of debris), which could render spaceflight impossible at some point,

I give you point for twisting the truth as hard as you do. Elons Starlink do not create (long-term) debris, but to blame Elon for what other peoples satellites do, come on, you do not have to like him... but this feel pathetic.

[PACOX]

I give you point for twisting the truth as hard as you do. Elons Starlink do not create (long-term) debris, but to blame Elon for what other peoples satellites do, come on, you do not have to like him... but this feel pathetic.

Excuse people from siding with the FAA and numerous astrophysicist than a commercial entity. The latter has never been wrong or misrepresented facts until its too late, right? Starlink spam isn't a problem in the short term (but even that, its being generous for the sake of allowing people to have internet). Do we wait until Starlink's become a nuisance to regulate them? Until them is an accident that leave space debris in LEO? Wait until other ventures are putting up an equal amount of satellites and make exceptions for SpaceX? Wait until only SpaceX is only the only aerospace company that can cheaply punch through its ring of space trash? Wait until we found out Musk was simply telling half truths like with most of his ventures where he refuses to yield to the advice of his own more knowledgeable employees?


No one who is serious about the future of aerospace believes Starlink should be able to exists on its current operating trajectory without regulation. SpaceX (Musk) definitely isn't going to regulate itself.

[Nerraw]

Sure he creates tons of debris. His Starlink satellites only run for 5-6.5 years, and his goal is to put up 42,000 satellites up there. It only needs one solar flare to render half of them useless and turn our orbit into a wasteland which prohibits any further use of space.

Starlink sats are in such a low orbit that they'll come down on their own in single digit years if they no longer actively maintain their orbit. Why? Because the atmosphere does not magically end at the Karman line.

[PACOX]

Starlink sats are in such a low orbit that they'll come down on their own in single digit years if they no longer actively maintain their orbit. Why? Because the atmosphere does not magically end at the Karman line.

The concern is that SpaceX is still putting up ~50 satellites 3–4 times a week. The sats being in LEO means there are in closer proximity to one another, a denser cloud to account for.

Its not like SpaceX is going to being putting up less Starlink sats or all of the sats will suddenly be gone in 5 years. A little bit of regulation wouldn't burt.

[Nerraw]

Starliner launching astronauts tonight for the first time if all goes well. But how did we get here?

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/0...nished-at-all/

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

Starliner launching astronauts tonight for the first time if all goes well. But how did we get here?

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/0...nished-at-all/

Let's hope things work okay and not :

"If its a Boeing I am not going".

[PACOX]

Not to stand up for Boeing but no real money was lost on Starliner. NASA's objective was to contract two companies to have an option should another fail. Two different approaches that could be redundant to the other should some kind of unforeseeable thing happen. NASA also over saw SpaceX's development while leaving Boeing to its own devices. Sometimes the most valuable information are what you learn doesn't work. Hindsight is that the program wouldn't have been necessary if the space shuttle wasn't the sole overqualified US ride to the ISS - there should have always been a capsule like taxi to ferry astronauts to the ISS when shuttles weren't needed.


Does that mean NASA should squeeze Starliner into crewing the ISS? No, Boeing lost that fight, SpaceX earned its role. Should Starliner should be supported as a fallback? Yes.

[Nerraw]

Scrub has just been called for this attempt.

- - - Updated - - -

Surprisingly, it was a problem with an oxygen relief valve on the Centaur upper stage. Extremely rare case of Centaur not fully cooperating.

[Nerraw]

The Orion heat shield woes continue ahead of Artemis 2: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/0...-shield-issue/

[PACOX]

Trying to RND vehicles while shooting for the objective at the same time is the most frustrating thing. The program was doomed to be set back when just about every piece of hardware is expected to perform out the box. Well as the program was laid out.


I don't think NASA actually believed their dates wouldn't be pushed. If the bottleneck wasn't SLS then it would be Orion, if not Orion, then HLS/Starship, if not Starship then the suits, if not the suits then Gateway after Artemis 3.

I believe NASA secured a bunch of funding when it had the chance to do so in terms of the bureaucratic system they have to operate under. They will have the money and hardware for a more realistic push to deep space flight (don't think they actually care about the moon either) once the components are actually in place. No one actually believes it's taken this long for NASA to simply secure spacesuits, right?

[Fantomen]

Starlink sats are in such a low orbit that they'll come down on their own in single digit years if they no longer actively maintain their orbit. Why? Because the atmosphere does not magically end at the Karman line.

He know it, but he have some hate boner for Elon, and will say anything, to make him look bad.

[Shadowferal]

Astronomers say we may live at the center of a cosmic void 2 billion light-years wide that defies the laws of cosmology

Nice to feel special.