Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
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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."
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.
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.
https://youtu.be/XOQkk3ojNfM?t=38340
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.
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.
https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Starshi...
EDIT: I take that back... It did fly again...
One last time.
But hopefully a second flight using SN11.
Seriously! They nailed that part on the first and every attempt. That by itself is pretty amazing.
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.
I feel we missed a serious opportunity with DC-X.
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.
"That. Was. AWESOME!" - NASA Spaceflight guy
"You liked the landing? Cool. Here's an explosion anyway."
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.
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.
"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.
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!
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.
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.
https://medium.com/@andreifyodorov_65581/kin-dza-dza-was-dir...
Amazing movie by the way.
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.
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.
Here for example NASA idea for the Saturn V: https://thespacereview.com/archive/3741a.jpg
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.
See RocketLab doing this currently: https://cdn4.dogonews.com/images/e97aac75-0e4b-442e-b484-a71...
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.
Landing legs didn't deploy so it landed on its body, and fire suppression kicked in, but I guess there was a leak.
But it looks like the engine gave out early. The rocket was way too fast, so the legs probably wouldn't have made much difference.
Edit: This video shows six legs deploying, but two failing to latch.
My hunch is at least one engine wasn’t performing 100% but the flight control software was able to compensate pretty freaking well.
My laymen rocket skills makes me think the yellow one wasn't performing very well.
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.
What an achievement SpaceX!
Next test?
Oh, keeblewey!
[1] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;... [2] https://twitter.com/TerminalCount/status/1367261799293272068
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.
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)
A novel and naive idea in the twenty-first century, but a man can dream.
So, I wouldn’t expect that to stay the case if that rule would start to be used.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even if that's true (which I highly doubt), a "mostly" self-sustaining colony won't last long if a catastrophe cripples human life on Earth.
Even if it'll take 500 years to achieve, which seems longer than realistic, that's still the blink of an eye on a cosmic timescale.
A comet or asteroid could hit us at any moment and cause our extinction. That's one example of a planet-specific existential risk.
Diversifying life across multiple planets would make it much more likely that we'd survive as a species if something like this happened.
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.
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.
But if we manage to establish self sustaining city on Mars we will be sure that we can survive everything on Earth.
Also, having a working blue print of what to do in the event of a sudden disaster on that scale would certainly be helpful.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 just saying that Mars colonization is a waste of time.
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.
It's sad really. But it's the reality we're dealing with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X#Flight_...
> The original DC-X was built in 21 months for a cost of $60 million.[18] This is equivalent to $101 million in present-day terms.[19]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X#Flight_...
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4
That program likely cost less then $60 million.