GatewayRedbirds.com

I’m no expert, but I’m guessing it wasn’t quite phallic enough.

They also lost at least six engines during the ascent, but that still leaves 27. The thing such a huge beast.

I think it's totally fine but also a lot of weird Elon fanboying and spin as if they had no intention of going further than off the launch pad. There's a lot of people at SpaceX who are probably much more serious about their jobs than Musk is. Lots of former NASA and JPL people. But also I don't want to hear suggestions to call Elon the next time there's a launch delay at NASA.

So, question for anyone who cares to entertain it. Does anyone think SpaceX ever sends people to Mars, beyond being part of a NASA mission?

It bewilders me that people think a private company is going to do this absent any clear profit driver. It's almost certainly a massive money pit to send humans, support them, and get them back. The kind that really only government can manage to get away with.

Even after getting there, and even after perhaps finding some resource to extract, I'd think it would take decades to develop a self-sustaining settlement and a means to profitably get the resource from Mars to Earth. So who's going to put money into developing that with no promise of return in their own lifetimes? I feel like you'd need 10 Bezos' who don't mind parting with billions and doing it for the good of mankind or their grandkids or whatever rationale they might have.

ghostrunner wrote: ↑

April 20 23, 9:53 am

I think it's totally fine but also a lot of weird Elon fanboying and spin as if they had no intention of going further than off the launch pad. There's a lot of people at SpaceX who are probably much more serious about their jobs than Musk is. Lots of former NASA and JPL people. But also I don't want to hear suggestions to call Elon the next time there's a launch delay at NASA.

I hear you. That [expletive] is incredibly grating and Musk’s insecurities drive him to actions that make his BS hard to tune out. Nonetheless, if this thing works, it’s undeniably super cool if perhaps not ultimately that useful.

Also, the NASA development approach has been deeply troubled for years with the shuttle vastly underperforming what it was supposed to achieve and this latest SLS program absurdly over budget to not even achieve the primary goals. It doesn’t have the power to get the spacecraft in a position to land on the moon, only a super high orbit, with the now rather goofy plan to sends astronauts in a somewhat larger than Apollo capsule only to meet up with a Starship based lander that dwarfs it in size.

It’s mostly Congress’s fault, but NASA should do a better job.

ghostrunner wrote: ↑

April 20 23, 10:01 am

So, question for anyone who cares to entertain it. Does anyone think SpaceX ever sends people to Mars, beyond being part of a NASA mission?

It bewilders me that people think a private company is going to do this absent any clear profit driver. It's almost certainly a massive money pit to send humans, support them, and get them back. The kind that really only government can manage to get away with.

Even after getting there, and even after perhaps finding some resource to extract, I'd think it would take decades to develop a self-sustaining settlement and a means to profitably get the resource from Mars to Earth. So who's going to put money into developing that with no promise of return in their own lifetimes? I feel like you'd need 10 Bezos' who don't mind parting with billions and doing it for the good of mankind or their grandkids or whatever rationale they might have.

I doubt it. The thing about Mars is that it is an uninhabitable desolate wasteland. Living on a deep ocean floor is a more practical idea than living on Mars.

I’m curious what will happen with the whole private space exploration boom now that interest rates are no longer stuck at 0%.

Re: The functionality.

Below is a 10 month old video from an astronomer at Columbia University and Cool Worlds Lab that discusses the economics of Starship and how the increased payload would decrease the costs for future telescopes.

He also touches on SpaceX's philosophy of trial by error and highlights their 4 starship explosions, I guess 5 after today.

And, lastly, he hits on how astronomers envision the usefulness that starship would provide. Frankly, I've followed this channel for years now and their videos are top notch and was surprised they had much of an interest in SpaceX. But holy cow he talks about all sorts of things that Starship would make possible just for his field...it's towards the end of the video if you care to watch.

That doesn't mean Starships taking anyone to Mars anytime soon or even in our lifetimes. But, getting people to Mars is an infinitely complex mission with countless steps to make it happen. At a very bare minimum, Starship will be one of those steps and hopefully provides information to help achieve the rest of them.

Listening to the cheers for Starship as it lifts off really gives me the feels.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote: ↑

April 20 23, 12:12 pm

Listening to the cheers for Starship as it lifts off really gives me the feels.

Me too. I’ve got engineer solidarity for everyone on that project including the part where you have to work for a psychopath in order to practice your craft. Yes, it blew up, but still incredible. Great work. I think it’s telling that when the thing detonates there’s applause and not horror. A lot of difficult stuff went right to get to that point.

Will be interesting to learn why they lost control. I think only the three center engines steer, and they lost one of those along with an unbalanced loss of the fixed engines, so I’m curious how much that contributed versus aerodynamics or whatever else.

I don't care if it blew up, it was still cool. I hate Musk but I really want this to succeed because I do think one giant uniting moment will be when we return to the Moon, and I can't imagine how awesome it would be to see man on Mars in my lifetime. I know those good vibes no partisan humans did something awesome feeling would only last about five minutes but it would be nice.

Starship isn't designed for travel outside of Earth Orbit. The Mars and Moon stuff is just marketing. I know this has been touted since BFR. I know NASA gave it the contract for the moon lander. But take a step back and look at what it does. The payload it carries is too large to leave orbit without being refueled 10+ times to have enough deltaV. If it was really designed for Mars or the Moon they would shrink the payload and possibly give it a third stage. You don't design a vehicle that needs that many refuelings to get to its destination or it makes it price inefficient versus a dedicated vehicle. And SpaceX is all about efficiency and lowering cost...

So what gives? Why say its for Mars and the moon? Because prospective Mars and moon missions are where you stimulate the public and get government contracts. There are no development contracts for what it really is, a rapid Earth to Earth, site to site transporter. Their goal is to make it price and time competitive with VIP business class for international flights. Need to fly from London to Sidney? Pop on board, 45 minutes instead of 18 hours. Have a server in Beijing go out that you need repaired ASAP and its costing you millions of dollars per hour, but your best tech is in New York and it'll take 15 hours to get there? 30 min flight. There's a small market for the high cost flights but they will try and get it down into the sub $10,000's. All of the initial renders for it show 100+ windows, seats, and basically no living space or cargo. Can it go to the moon and mars? Yeah, and it may very well do that. But so could anything if you expanded it's tank 1500% and refueled it 14 times in orbit.

Don't listen to what people say its designed to do, look at like an engineer. Look at what its design says its designed to do.

I'd be more forgiving for Starship since it is cool, but this is the exact problem we had with the shuttle where the economics of the shuttle stopped making sense as it got larger. A smaller orbiter would have been cost efficient versus Soryuz, but the shuttle we got with the large payload bay made Soryuz cheaper. Starship is once again following that model. The moonlander version is 10x too big for 2023. Maybe if the international flights thing really takes off they can lower the cost of launches enough to where suddenly its economically viable again, but that's if everything goes correctly, and costs are manageable but that's a big if and its not how Starship is being covered.