All these years I thought it was an official channel. When I first saw their logo it also reminded me of National Science Foundation that just cemented my (now corrected) belief.
Thanks! I had started watching what I thought was the SpaceX live stream on YouTube but turned out just before launch to switch itself into some computer generated video of a fake Elon trying to scam people about crypto. Ended up switching to the Everyday Astronaut stream to watch.
But keyboard wise, it's just holding down shift vs not holding down shift when typing. The difference in real life between m and M is less than you think :)
Providing any second timezone but not UTC/GMT is really weird. I don't want to have to figure out what other countries are doing with their daylight savings, just give me UTC and I'll know my current offset.
But the real issue is why don't have browsers an integrated way of doing these computations by reading some HTML tags and also providing input widgets to make sure that it is universally readable by machines. Like <datetime ts="1700310507" ref-tz="Europe/Amsterdam" /> (if the event's timezone is Europe/Amsterdam, only for informational purposes)
JavaScript language and browsers have tons of facilities for dealing with date times in sensible ways, including displaying a `Date` object in the local time zone and local preferred formatting.
SpaceX designed their page to display specific time zones for whatever reason.
Maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg (NASASpaceflight) would be better, as it's accessible without any login-wall and doesn't require creating an account to view.
That’s third-party/unofficial (and unaffiliated with NASA, despite the name) coverage. AFAIK they do not have access to all the cameras/drones/animations that the “real” SpaceX coverage does.
For those who almost never use VLC (like me), don't download and then open the file. Instead open VLC, Update it from its ancient version, and then File, Open Network Stream, paste in
My iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 17 shows a Play button crossed with a line in gray over a black background instead of loading, on Safari. Is there something else I need to do for it to work there?
Too late now, but this also worked for streaming to Chromecast via VLC (which worked seamlessly from my Linux PC by just hitting Playback -> Renderer -> <my chromecast> and then opening it.
Edit: This is basically how automated FTS works, folks. Follow parameters of the flight, and if an "exception" occurs, solve the situation by exploding the rocket over a safe spot, before it veers too much off course.
Stayed up all night looking forward to this. Fingers crossed for success on hotstaging - I think that's what everyone is most worried about. I read that due to the continuous thrust with hotstaging they can carry more payload with that design, rather than losing upward momentum during stage separation.
Gosh this is exciting.
Oblig, I can't wait until these are happening every day!!
SpaceX on Twitter: "T-40 seconds and holding. This is a planned hold. Teams are using this time for final checks. All systems continue to look good for today’s flight test"
Both the booster and ship have been destroyed. SpaceX can keep claiming these RUDs are 'fine' and 'we're getting data', but the rest of the industry does not consider it normal or a "success."
Hotstaging didn't "work" until they can demonstrate the Starship vehicle survives orbital insertion, re-entry, and landing without damage or malfunction caused by the hotstaging.
The industry laughed it up as Falcon 9 failed landing repeatedly. (https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ) Then they shifted to “ok but do it 10x”. They aren’t laughing now.
They’ve lost as many Starships as NASA lost Space Shuttles so far, with no deaths. It’s a test program for now.
Ask the “rest of the industry” about how Boeing’s Starliner is going. That’s what failure looks like.
This. Especially with NASA. The more infrequently you launch the more the expectation is that there are no failures so the more time you take to avoid failures and so it recurses into launching SLS once every year and half or taking 10 years to launch J. Webb.
I understand a lot of it is politics and government spending but it would be nice if NASA could get a case of go fever every once in awhile. So long as humans aren't involved.
I understand if there were more failures there'd be less money for big projects -but I think we should take the chance to see if that money would end up being spent on more smaller quicker projects.
We've crashed production probes into Mars, we've burned astronauts alive, we've had the supposedly "safe" options like Boeing's Starliner have fundamental problems even making it to orbit. Space has always been this way.
Starship's more akin to taking the Bell X-1 up for a spin than flying a 787 around, for the time being. Problems are expected at this point in the program, or we'd be sending people on them already.
On one side we are talking about how the "space industry" is most moving slowly and how spacex is doing great things.
On the other side we are saying that this is good enough for nasa (who is the establishment when it comes to space) and yolo bro.
On one side we are defending nasa because priorities, but on the other side we're cheering on spacex who is ultimately sucking at the big fat government tit.
i'm not sure anyone is aiming at burning people alive and just because it happened does not make it a justification moving forward.
I don't know why you're being a contrarian here. Booster completed it's primary mission. Main vehicle survived long enough to show viability. Multiple technologies were proven beyond a reasonable doubt to work.
Shuttle was 1.6 billion a launch. This is gonna be 100 million a lunch even if you let the booster blow up every time.
This test is in line with how every new rocket is developed. You really need to Google the 50s and 60s of space flight and see how many rockets were lost in those days.
Objectively, this test successfully demonstrated the water deluge system, an intact launch pad, all engines on the first and second stage igniting and staying lit, stage separation, hot staging, and a long burn nearly to orbital speeds. That's a pretty good list of ticked boxes.
They very openly stated they didn't necessarily expect it to get all the way to splashdown. You can argue that's PR, but their history has objectively been one of incremental progress (again, see Falcon 9's landing attempts) via repeat testing.
Personally, I'd consider a mission failed if a) it carries a real payload it's supposed to get somewhere and doesn't, b) it breaks due to a previously known issue, or c) it breaks sooner than the last test. I'd also consider it entirely fine to have "reach goals" in a test.
They went longer, faster, further, and more successfully than the first test. I'm happy calling that a win, and I suspect SpaceX will as well.
Objectively, for any test to be judged a failure or success you have to define the outcome you want upfront. If you do not any amount of mental gymnastics you you after the test does not matter.
It does not matter you call it a win if you are not respecting other opinions that this is a fail.
SpaceX very clearly stated just prior to launch that their goal was for the rocket to get through hot-staging because the hot-staging process they had large unknowns. Sure their flight plan went well beyond that, but I don't see how having an aspirational plan that goes beyond "we'll blow it up after hot-staging", also likely required for the FAA, defeats the "successful" qualification of the test.
> "Tomorrow is a test and we’re going to learn a lot either way," Lisa Watson-Morgan, who manages NASA's Human Landing System program, told Ars in an interview this week. "We’d love to see it go off perfectly, but frankly, if it doesn’t, it’s still going to be a great learning event, and it still will give us progression on the schedule for the different flight tests, and then we’ll know the areas we need to more deeply penetrate.”
And on top of all of that, there’s a laundry list of firsts that are being achieved here: first flightworthy full-flow staged combustion engine, largest vehicle launched, largest number of engines working in concert, first vehicle built with full reusability factored into its design from day one.
Every launch where more is nominal for longer is new territory and an achievement.
The rest of the industry doesn’t build dozens of ships in a massive assembly line. Blue Origin hasn’t even completed a single full test prototype ship yet.
And if you go look at NASA during the Space Race era of the 60s, they blew up plenty of ships.
Blowing up lots of rockets to figure out how not to blow up rockets is traditional rocket development. The "get everything perfect the first time so it never blows up even once" tactic is forced on NASA because Congress is dumb.
I'm not totally sure Space X cares what the rest of the industry thinks. This is next-level space engineering compared to what's come before. Who's opinions are we concerned about? ULA? Arianespace? Those companies can't even blow up a space craft successfully because they can't launch them (see, SLS, Ariane 6).
> but the rest of the industry does not consider it normal or a "success."
True. The rest of the industry also can’t seem to muster a reusable orbital class first stage. So far evidence is with spacex. Their RUDy development seems to have born fruit before.
The way you dismiss SpaceX's accomplishments is just hilarious. As if you are some "insider" in the space industry. ROLF. SpaceX is awesome and inspiring in what it is doing.
Are we reading the same comment? I don't see any dismissal of previous accomplishments. Why is calling this failure a failure bad? You need failures to learn and hopefully be successful eventually.
Do you mean this was a launch failure or a test failure? It was obviously a launch failure, but even the most optimistic wouldn't have expected anything else. As for whether the test was a failure: since it successfully did a bunch of things that didn't work the last time, why would you say it's a failure?
A failure would have been scattering the pad all over again, and not getting to stage sep. Or worse.
They did define what they wanted; several incremental goals, not just one. You can watch the pre-launch video to hear it for yourself.
Years before Covid, my neighbor had an "opinion" that vaccines were unnecessary/dangerous, so she wouldn't get vaccinated. Just like you, she said "you have your opinion, and I have mine." In today's woke culture, that makes me the bad guy for not respecting her opinion, mansplaining, etc.
But opinions don't trump facts. At least, they shouldn't
i don't see what vaccines have to to with any of this.
also, as cool as "facts" are it really bothers me when people take their opinion and present it as fact or as truth. you see: the truth is something abstract and usually, not always, but usually there is a matter of interpretation and a gradient of the truth. I'm not speaking of well researched things that have mountains of evidence behind them. I'm speaking about people having really strong opinions without understanding the evidence behind it and without understanding the nuances of what applies when. It's really fashionable to shit all over other people when they don't agree to a T with what you are saying but IMHO it's the wrong thing to do - being curious and actually unpacking what they are trying to say if they can have a civilized discussion and logic actually works with them is the way to go.
Before the launch, on the stream, SpaceX were saying that getting through staging was their primary goal this time. Everything else was bonus. So clearly it was a success on the primary mission.
Pretty similar to how a lot of NASA's missions have requirements like lasting 90 days on Mars. If that is reached, the mission was a success, even though they obviously don't just stop having objectives after that.
I'm sorry, what's that, something about failure? I can't hear you over the thunderous roar of cheers from the Spacex engineering team after stage separation.
Except objectively they stated ahead of time that a success would be stage separation, everything else is gravy. I had this same argument on HN after IFT-1. Folks were trying to argue that it was a failure because it blew up before orbit, when Elon was saying the whole time that just getting off the pad would be a success.
Super Heavy/1st stage exploded after separation and turn. The important part, Starship/2nd stage, was doing fine but appears to have been eaten by the Space Ghoul around T+10 min.
2nd stage was terminated by the automated flight termination system right before the coast phase. Saw some interesting flaring/clouds coming from second stage engines a bit before the final big cloud.
Does anyone know how the start was filmed? The first shot was a drone, but after that it nearly looked like either cgi or another rocket flying next to it.
That was my point, you talk about new eras, but nothing changes. Who is this new for? You, me, or the billionaires who make lives like mine horrible?
It’s all spectacle, and where will it all lead? We landed men on the moon, and haven’t been back. What is SpaceX going to use for going to Mars? Are you gonna be the one that’s going or are they gonna leave you behind to rot here on this burning planet?
Mars is a horrible place to live so I'll take Earth any day. But it would be nice if humanity doesn't get wiped out if we get unlucky with an asteroid.
In the meantime, we're already well into ecological collapse (I think we've lost something like 3/4s of the earth's species?) and existential-threat-level climate change which in fifty years or so will be so bad we'll be dealing with near constant humanitarian crises...with no sign of improvement on either front. Decarbonization isn't happening nearly fast enough and industrial pollution is chugging along.
Frankly, I don't see human society surviving long enough - or perhaps better put, maintaining a necessary level of societal development - for us to develop the tech to establish a self-sufficient colony capable of independent growth and to get us to a planet with the resources to make such a thing possible.
It's hard to make rocket parts when everyone is living in shacks made of sticks and mud and leaves.
Hang on. You said you were living in a minivan - a vehicle which took a few technological leaps to be able to develop and build, so you could live in it.
You also appear to have an internet connection and a means to use it. Again, technological leaps were required for you to be able to whine on HN.
Perhaps - if you're so utterly sincere and serious about saving the planet as you appear to be - you should be living in the nearest available cave? After all, that minivan is likely to use an internal combustion engine and runs on dead dinosaurs; let alone the plastics and metals and silicon used in said minivan's assembly.
See, this is what I don't get about eco-heros like you appear to be - even if you are homeless, you're still, right now, utilising every single technological leap that it took to get you to the stage of even just living in your minivan and complaining about rocket development on the internet. This, to me, reeks of hypocrisy.
The prospect for building a self sustaining colony on Mars in the foreseeable future is essentially zero. And even the largest disasters on earth are unlikely to kill quite everyone.
So the most likely outcome of a metaphorical or literal asteroid hit on Earth is that it would still leave thousands, millions, or billions of survivors on Earth, while leaving it unable and/or unwilling to sustain maintenance missions to Mars, so the Mars colonists would starve or otherwise die slowly, despite being technically unaffected by the original disaster.
You would have said the same thing about airplanes at the turn of the 20th century and dismissed them as fads for rich people. Or about computers. Or the internet. And yet here you are.
> you talk about new eras, but nothing changes.
And yes, it does affect my life. I have dreamed my whole life of this stuff happening. After growing up in a "third world" country, I navigated the byzantine US immigration system, went through a decade+ of training, to finally be here and working at a new-space company right at the beginning of this new space age. The industry that I am working at right now would be in a completely different place (and a lot smaller) without SpaceX. It also wouldn't exist without the advances made for Apollo and the Space Shuttle program.
> What is SpaceX going to use for going to Mars?
Starship probably.
> Are you gonna be the one that’s going
Maybe. There is a non-zero chance now that the system that will achieve it is that much closer to being operational. You are missing the step change in cost that this will enable.
> or are they gonna leave you behind to rot here on this burning planet
It does not have to be one or the other. The "burning planet" will be solved just like we solved every other challenge facing our species.
You are obviously going through some stuff and seem to be in place where you cannot appreciate the good things that are happening in this world. But that does not change the fact that they are.
What you’re telling me here is that you’re just being selfish. This is good for you so it should be good for all of humanity. I’m sorry, but it’s not.
I appreciate a lot of good things when they happen. I’m saying this this is not a good thing. Do you think it’s a good thing because it made your life better. But you’re only seeing it from your perspective. You don’t have a holistic view of the world.
> This is good for you so it should be good for all of humanity. I’m sorry, but it’s not.
You asked me how it impacts me and I answered.
> But you’re only seeing it from your perspective. You don’t have a holistic view of the world.
You are failing to see the holistic view yourself because you seem to be having a bad time. Lowering the cost of mass-to-orbit by a couple of orders of magnitude significantly changes what can be done in space. This includes truly massive satellites (e.g. https://www.k2space.com/) that can provide services for Earth that were not possible before. In-space manufacturing of materials that cannot be made easily on Earth. Moving polluting industries off the surface, mining of resources from space (for use in space or on the surface if it is valuable enough) and much more. It is a feed-back loop that will compound into massive changes.
All of that and more will impact the whole of humanity in a very positive way.
Why do we need satellites and space to care about each other? I don’t need a massive satellite in space, I need somewhere to live. A massive satellite in space is not going to provide me a house. And it’s not gonna provide any time before my death. Which is being hind because I’m homeless. Which is being hasten because, I have no healthcare.
Don’t you understand? You’re all surprised about my negative comments but I’m sure you would be feeling the same if you were in my position right now.
> You’re all surprised about my negative comments but I’m sure you would be feeling the same if you were in my position right now.
There are things that do not benefit you right at this moment. That does not mean that they are not a boon to society at large and a net-positive for this world.
A significant fraction of the billions of people on this planet have had their life changed positively due to advancements in space technology - in all probability including you. And it will continue to do so. I am sorry that you are not in a place where you can appreciate that and be happy about it. I hope it changes for you.
And how is some company launching a rocket involved in you not being able to get housing? I understand your frustration but you can’t just blame anything for it.
Yea it's not about new eras. Hold on a sec "Hey Siri, navigate to the nearest Costco". Yea nothing has changed for the average person as a result of first space launch
The kind of scientific advancements needed to sustain on the moon or mars will tremendously improve our abilities to be sustainable here on Earth. You are willfully ignorant or naive.
Ha! I’m naïve? What are you saying that we’re going to turn the Earth into a Mars or moonlight planet? And we’re all gonna have to live in bubbles? Do you think that’s the answer? Talk about pessimistic and negative…
But right now there seems to be virtually zero activity in the life support side of things (Biosphere 2 was more than 30 years ago, and was not exactly a rousing success), and the rocket motor side is not particularly helpful to sustaining life on earth.
But there's still more than a month to go until 2024. I'm sure everything will come together in time. </s>
The moon landings are historically seen through an almost exclusively middle class, white eye. The "magnitude" was definitely reduced if you were poor and/or black.
The "magnitude" of the US Space Shuttle program was definitely reduced for me even as a white kid; I got to watch the shuttle launch on a TV rolled into the classroom, and then go right back to reading my mangled, outdated science textbook, watching my teacher write on a chalkboard with chalk he had to purchase himself because our school district apparently couldn't afford to buy enough, because it was more important that we have more, and better, nuclear bombs and missiles to transport them than Russia.
We went to the moon. The rest of the world did things like set up universal healthcare for its citizens, build housing, non-punitive criminal justice systems, public transit, etc.
So you believe if there was no moon program then we would magically have universal healthcare, housing, non-punitive criminal justice systems. Very ignorant take
If people had more humanity, they would be focusing on getting universal healthcare housing, and a non-punitive justice system before we focus things like putting a few humans on a rock in space.
Why is it that the most difficult things to do are the most caring things?
“Why everyone needs a vacuum”written by a vacuum cleaner salesman.
That letter was written over 50 years ago, and we still have homelessness. We still have poverty, people are still starving, we still have idiotic, ideological wars, and separation of wealth. So when’s the return on the investment going to actually happen?
I grew up poor and in an underfunded school system as well. The ever-present reminder of this was buckets collecting drips from leaks in roofs. At one point in high school we exhausted our paper budget. Some teachers were able to locate a bunch of dot-matrix tractor-fed printer paper in a supply room and so we students helped to separate the perforations so we could have individual sheets of paper.
That school was publicly, though poorly, funded. I also had Pell grants for college, subsidized medical insurance, a free bus pass, an apartment made affordable through adequate supply of housing, a criminal justice system that has so far protected me from violence.
I have no chips on my shoulder from any deprivation, and appreciate everything that helped me to get where I am today, which I don't think would have been possible anywhere else in the world.
It could be the era when you strike it big with your new T-shirt business, propelled to fame by an instantly classic design featuring the words "One giant leap for mankind" over a soaring Starship, followed by the inevitable "One small step for me" below.
558 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 328 ms ] thread* 4 hours from now
* 5 AM Pacific Time
* 7 AM Central Time (local)
* 8 AM Eastern Time
* 2 PM Central European Time
Live Media
* Official yet channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceX
* Labpadre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIJTeeZj7k4
* NASASpaceflight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg
* EverydayAstronaut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6na40SqzYnU
* TheLaunchPad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0preOnsuo4
* TechniquesSpatiales(FR): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI4cKoSD-Jg
Ressources
* Mission sheet: https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
* Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18pCXD709TI
* https://x.com/SpaceX
* https://x.com/elonmusk
* https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/17uyblj/rspacex_int...
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
Edit: this stream works without having to login to Twitter
*NASASpaceflight
NASASpaceflight.com (and their Youtube channel) has no affiliation with NASA.
For years I was completely baffled why the National Science Foundation had to certify the wire shelving in my apartment...
https://www.srs-i.com/blog/all-about-nsf-certifications-shel...
It's extremely sketchy, and I wish NASA would do something to protect their trademark.
Everyday Astronaut on youtube.
Oh my god!
Oh my god!
Oh my god!
Oh my god!
Oh my god!
Their commenting _is_ like.
Otherwise, I agree.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=be%20like
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
But the real issue is why don't have browsers an integrated way of doing these computations by reading some HTML tags and also providing input widgets to make sure that it is universally readable by machines. Like <datetime ts="1700310507" ref-tz="Europe/Amsterdam" /> (if the event's timezone is Europe/Amsterdam, only for informational purposes)
SpaceX designed their page to display specific time zones for whatever reason.
https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB
But it is marked as dupe (HN seems to have already queried it and classified as broken link)
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi...
(taken from this website: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2023/11/new-starship-launch...)
____
In animation form:
https://twitter.com/spencertetik/status/1725769578544803975
NVM they said they were just going to let it splash.
(Submitted URL was https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB but our software got caught in a redirect to a login.)
https://prod-ec-us-west-2.video.pscp.tv/Transcoding/v1/hls/O...
----
Much better quality, slightly better latency. Seems like it comes from the Periscope transcoding infrastructure. Found it on reddit here: https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/17uyblj/rspacex_int...
For those who almost never use VLC (like me), don't download and then open the file. Instead open VLC, Update it from its ancient version, and then File, Open Network Stream, paste in
https://prod-ec-us-west-2.video.pscp.tv/Transcoding/v1/hls/O...
then click Play. Enjoy.
It's literally from Twitter livestream; they are just re-skinned Periscope.
You can even replace highlatency to lowlatency for better latency.
Edit: This is basically how automated FTS works, folks. Follow parameters of the flight, and if an "exception" occurs, solve the situation by exploding the rocket over a safe spot, before it veers too much off course.
Gosh this is exciting.
Oblig, I can't wait until these are happening every day!!
Edit had the second sentence wrong
Hotstaging didn't "work" until they can demonstrate the Starship vehicle survives orbital insertion, re-entry, and landing without damage or malfunction caused by the hotstaging.
They’ve lost as many Starships as NASA lost Space Shuttles so far, with no deaths. It’s a test program for now.
Ask the “rest of the industry” about how Boeing’s Starliner is going. That’s what failure looks like.
I understand a lot of it is politics and government spending but it would be nice if NASA could get a case of go fever every once in awhile. So long as humans aren't involved.
I understand if there were more failures there'd be less money for big projects -but I think we should take the chance to see if that money would end up being spent on more smaller quicker projects.
We've crashed production probes into Mars, we've burned astronauts alive, we've had the supposedly "safe" options like Boeing's Starliner have fundamental problems even making it to orbit. Space has always been this way.
Starship's more akin to taking the Bell X-1 up for a spin than flying a 787 around, for the time being. Problems are expected at this point in the program, or we'd be sending people on them already.
On one side we are talking about how the "space industry" is most moving slowly and how spacex is doing great things.
On the other side we are saying that this is good enough for nasa (who is the establishment when it comes to space) and yolo bro.
On one side we are defending nasa because priorities, but on the other side we're cheering on spacex who is ultimately sucking at the big fat government tit.
i'm not sure anyone is aiming at burning people alive and just because it happened does not make it a justification moving forward.
Shuttle was 1.6 billion a launch. This is gonna be 100 million a lunch even if you let the booster blow up every time.
This test is in line with how every new rocket is developed. You really need to Google the 50s and 60s of space flight and see how many rockets were lost in those days.
Yet they still got to the moon.
If you want to take the stance that any test is a success that's fine but remember this depends on what your definition of success is.
The other thing to keep in mind is that past success is not always a good predictor of future success.
Objectively, this test successfully demonstrated the water deluge system, an intact launch pad, all engines on the first and second stage igniting and staying lit, stage separation, hot staging, and a long burn nearly to orbital speeds. That's a pretty good list of ticked boxes.
They very openly stated they didn't necessarily expect it to get all the way to splashdown. You can argue that's PR, but their history has objectively been one of incremental progress (again, see Falcon 9's landing attempts) via repeat testing.
Personally, I'd consider a mission failed if a) it carries a real payload it's supposed to get somewhere and doesn't, b) it breaks due to a previously known issue, or c) it breaks sooner than the last test. I'd also consider it entirely fine to have "reach goals" in a test.
They went longer, faster, further, and more successfully than the first test. I'm happy calling that a win, and I suspect SpaceX will as well.
It does not matter you call it a win if you are not respecting other opinions that this is a fail.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/what-nasa-wants-to-see...
> "Tomorrow is a test and we’re going to learn a lot either way," Lisa Watson-Morgan, who manages NASA's Human Landing System program, told Ars in an interview this week. "We’d love to see it go off perfectly, but frankly, if it doesn’t, it’s still going to be a great learning event, and it still will give us progression on the schedule for the different flight tests, and then we’ll know the areas we need to more deeply penetrate.”
Every launch where more is nominal for longer is new territory and an achievement.
It was a resounding success.
And if you go look at NASA during the Space Race era of the 60s, they blew up plenty of ships.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/USAF_ICB...
Blowing up lots of rockets to figure out how not to blow up rockets is traditional rocket development. The "get everything perfect the first time so it never blows up even once" tactic is forced on NASA because Congress is dumb.
Or just take a look at "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8
I thought everyone here knew about this. Every software bug is a failure. Going through and squashing every one is the path to success.
What an odd thing to say. Are you suggesting that Starship is next-level when compared to Saturn V?
Hehe. I guess people nowadays lack any sort of historical perspective.
Starship is more then 2x as powerful as Saturn V. Starship is also designed for reusable.
So even if you consider it non-reusable its still much more powerful then Saturn V.
If 2x the size and major new features isn't 'next level' then what is?
It seems you are missing current perspective and glorifying the past.
True. The rest of the industry also can’t seem to muster a reusable orbital class first stage. So far evidence is with spacex. Their RUDy development seems to have born fruit before.
A failure would have been scattering the pad all over again, and not getting to stage sep. Or worse.
Optimistic/Pessimistic does not really matter.
By this criteria, I would say failure/partial failure or partial sucess. There is no way this was a success.
Also, everyone can call this what they want. The thing that grinds my gears is not respecting that other people do have a different opinion.
Years before Covid, my neighbor had an "opinion" that vaccines were unnecessary/dangerous, so she wouldn't get vaccinated. Just like you, she said "you have your opinion, and I have mine." In today's woke culture, that makes me the bad guy for not respecting her opinion, mansplaining, etc.
But opinions don't trump facts. At least, they shouldn't
also, as cool as "facts" are it really bothers me when people take their opinion and present it as fact or as truth. you see: the truth is something abstract and usually, not always, but usually there is a matter of interpretation and a gradient of the truth. I'm not speaking of well researched things that have mountains of evidence behind them. I'm speaking about people having really strong opinions without understanding the evidence behind it and without understanding the nuances of what applies when. It's really fashionable to shit all over other people when they don't agree to a T with what you are saying but IMHO it's the wrong thing to do - being curious and actually unpacking what they are trying to say if they can have a civilized discussion and logic actually works with them is the way to go.
Pretty similar to how a lot of NASA's missions have requirements like lasting 90 days on Mars. If that is reached, the mission was a success, even though they obviously don't just stop having objectives after that.
Not only it is not success, it is a massive failure when compared to the magic technology from the 60's.
Space industry is the only industry that is moving backwards, it seems.
https://youtu.be/w9OsSN2kJrk?si=FZ30c9jmkMOmYo3n&t=180
Certainly doesn't sound like the folks who built the thing thought it was a failure.
You can call a duck an eagle all day long but that does not make it an eagle.
Even the Administrator of NASA is happy with the progress. [1]
Objectively, it was a success.
[1] https://twitter.com/SenBillNelson/status/1725875275769028836
https://curious-droid.com/393/nasa-filmed-apollo-shuttle-lau...
I took some screenshots: https://ibb.co/1GvddL5 https://ibb.co/28BSxwG https://ibb.co/KmccttG
Could be a bird, but doesn't really look like it to me.
Sorry for whatever you are going through, though. Hope you get through it.
It’s all spectacle, and where will it all lead? We landed men on the moon, and haven’t been back. What is SpaceX going to use for going to Mars? Are you gonna be the one that’s going or are they gonna leave you behind to rot here on this burning planet?
Frankly, I don't see human society surviving long enough - or perhaps better put, maintaining a necessary level of societal development - for us to develop the tech to establish a self-sufficient colony capable of independent growth and to get us to a planet with the resources to make such a thing possible.
It's hard to make rocket parts when everyone is living in shacks made of sticks and mud and leaves.
You also appear to have an internet connection and a means to use it. Again, technological leaps were required for you to be able to whine on HN.
Perhaps - if you're so utterly sincere and serious about saving the planet as you appear to be - you should be living in the nearest available cave? After all, that minivan is likely to use an internal combustion engine and runs on dead dinosaurs; let alone the plastics and metals and silicon used in said minivan's assembly.
See, this is what I don't get about eco-heros like you appear to be - even if you are homeless, you're still, right now, utilising every single technological leap that it took to get you to the stage of even just living in your minivan and complaining about rocket development on the internet. This, to me, reeks of hypocrisy.
So the most likely outcome of a metaphorical or literal asteroid hit on Earth is that it would still leave thousands, millions, or billions of survivors on Earth, while leaving it unable and/or unwilling to sustain maintenance missions to Mars, so the Mars colonists would starve or otherwise die slowly, despite being technically unaffected by the original disaster.
> you talk about new eras, but nothing changes.
And yes, it does affect my life. I have dreamed my whole life of this stuff happening. After growing up in a "third world" country, I navigated the byzantine US immigration system, went through a decade+ of training, to finally be here and working at a new-space company right at the beginning of this new space age. The industry that I am working at right now would be in a completely different place (and a lot smaller) without SpaceX. It also wouldn't exist without the advances made for Apollo and the Space Shuttle program.
> What is SpaceX going to use for going to Mars?
Starship probably.
> Are you gonna be the one that’s going
Maybe. There is a non-zero chance now that the system that will achieve it is that much closer to being operational. You are missing the step change in cost that this will enable.
> or are they gonna leave you behind to rot here on this burning planet
It does not have to be one or the other. The "burning planet" will be solved just like we solved every other challenge facing our species.
You are obviously going through some stuff and seem to be in place where you cannot appreciate the good things that are happening in this world. But that does not change the fact that they are.
I appreciate a lot of good things when they happen. I’m saying this this is not a good thing. Do you think it’s a good thing because it made your life better. But you’re only seeing it from your perspective. You don’t have a holistic view of the world.
You asked me how it impacts me and I answered.
> But you’re only seeing it from your perspective. You don’t have a holistic view of the world.
You are failing to see the holistic view yourself because you seem to be having a bad time. Lowering the cost of mass-to-orbit by a couple of orders of magnitude significantly changes what can be done in space. This includes truly massive satellites (e.g. https://www.k2space.com/) that can provide services for Earth that were not possible before. In-space manufacturing of materials that cannot be made easily on Earth. Moving polluting industries off the surface, mining of resources from space (for use in space or on the surface if it is valuable enough) and much more. It is a feed-back loop that will compound into massive changes.
All of that and more will impact the whole of humanity in a very positive way.
Don’t you understand? You’re all surprised about my negative comments but I’m sure you would be feeling the same if you were in my position right now.
There are things that do not benefit you right at this moment. That does not mean that they are not a boon to society at large and a net-positive for this world.
A significant fraction of the billions of people on this planet have had their life changed positively due to advancements in space technology - in all probability including you. And it will continue to do so. I am sorry that you are not in a place where you can appreciate that and be happy about it. I hope it changes for you.
But there's still more than a month to go until 2024. I'm sure everything will come together in time. </s>
The "magnitude" of the US Space Shuttle program was definitely reduced for me even as a white kid; I got to watch the shuttle launch on a TV rolled into the classroom, and then go right back to reading my mangled, outdated science textbook, watching my teacher write on a chalkboard with chalk he had to purchase himself because our school district apparently couldn't afford to buy enough, because it was more important that we have more, and better, nuclear bombs and missiles to transport them than Russia.
We went to the moon. The rest of the world did things like set up universal healthcare for its citizens, build housing, non-punitive criminal justice systems, public transit, etc.
Can you define that a bit more before I ask further questions?
Why is it that the most difficult things to do are the most caring things?
That letter was written over 50 years ago, and we still have homelessness. We still have poverty, people are still starving, we still have idiotic, ideological wars, and separation of wealth. So when’s the return on the investment going to actually happen?
It already did many times over what it cost. And continues to deliver.
That school was publicly, though poorly, funded. I also had Pell grants for college, subsidized medical insurance, a free bus pass, an apartment made affordable through adequate supply of housing, a criminal justice system that has so far protected me from violence.
I have no chips on my shoulder from any deprivation, and appreciate everything that helped me to get where I am today, which I don't think would have been possible anywhere else in the world.