SpaceX moves Starship to launch site, and liftoff could be just days away

Always curious what sort of monitoring is used here, pressure valves, temperature, could we assume there's ultra-high-FPS cameras at every useful vantage point? Would there be any vantage point you could put a camera(or other sensor) that wouldn't get destroyed in a catastrophic unplanned disassembly?

They've blown up SO many Starship prototypes now, I can't keep track. It has to be like more than 6, especially if you include MK1, etc.

(This isn’t supposed to be a dig at SpaceX… just a factual statement. I find this risk-tolerant approach to be inspiring, actually.)

They really don't want it to blow up on the launch pad. They've put a lot of work into the ground service equipment, and depending on how bad the damage is, blowing up on the pad could set them back months. It also isn't clear if they will have completely finished all the protections on the launch equipment (cladding, deluge, etc) before this test flight, so blowing up on the pad this time around might actually be worse than if it happened in some future test instead.

Once it is well-clear of the pad – blowing up is a lot less bad. But still, ideally they want it to make at as far through the flight plan as possible. If it blows up early in the flight, there's a lot of stuff that happens later they won't even get the chance to test this time around. Sure, they'll get the chance to test it next time around – but that'll be another delay in an already delayed project.

You are right, and expecting the first launch of a rocket platform to be anything but a bomb is a little unrealistic.

But wouldn’t it be amazing if it did make max Q, then coast, then ORBIT on the first try? It’s never happened before. But imagining the possibility gives my imagination a little bit of awe.

Starship would be the first system to run purely on our optimism! ;p

It's a rocket so there is always a non-zero risk of explosion. This one is also a new, not-yet-launched rocket, making it extra non-zero chance of explosion.

Starship is a massive two stage rocket/ship. Most powerful rocket in history. This is the first attempt at launching the full stack. To reach orbit, a rocket needs to be highly optimised, with little room for error. If errors occur, it could explode. Errors are most likely to happen the first time you try something.

I am aware it's not strictly aiming to reach orbit

Why would you expect your code to compile and run correctly on the first try? Same energy.

They can test / simulate as much as they want on the ground but the first full launch is bound to reveal issues.

Best case those issues just stop it from reaching the desired level of performance, more realistically they mean it goes boom at some point.

In rocketry, the failure of any one part often results in total system collapse. This rocket has far more such parts than most. And it is a very big system. Any collapse will be spectacular. But if all goes well, that too will be a sight to see. Rocketry is about explosions: either you direct the explosion downwards as thrust or it overtakes you and goes omnidirectional. Either way, an explosion will happen.

I'm not aware of a single type of orbital rocket reaching orbit successfully on first attempt. Not all of them blew up, but many did.

Twitter files show that there's a MASSIVE disinformation and censorship industry in the US government. It looks like they use shady NGO's to push government sponsored disinformation and to censor civilians:

https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-dark-hand-in-twitter-ce...

https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/malinformation-censors-excuse-...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-covid-censorship-ma...

That's only garbage if you believe democracy and liberty are garbage.

The number Mask is targeting is $10/kg to orbit. With all supplies, it means under $10k / person for a week in orbit.

Perhaps a lot of people wouldn't agree and I admit I'm stirring up debate a bit to see what other people think.

To me it seems if we see orbital success in the next 5 yrs, mass production of starship thereafter and SpaceX sticking to their Earth-to-Earth transport idea - this seems plausible. Airliners developed about as quick, but then again its a far harder environment - it's nice to dream.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

(edit rambling on about the wrong system)

If William Shatner can do it in his 80s, I'm pretty sure that a substantial fraction of the population can do it.

Don't get me wrong, Shatner has worked hard to keep himself in shape. And he didn't get to orbit. But if you keep in shape (and are rich or famous) it may be an option.

Per https://spaceexplored.com/2021/05/06/can-you-make-it-as-a-bl...:

> When it comes to the G-Forces being pushed on you, many roller coasters have peak G’s at or above these limits. Most people are probably familiar with the different rides at Walt Disney World so let’s use those for examples. At EPCOT, Mission Space is a centrifuge-based ride where you go through a simulated launch and landing on Mars. The sustained G’s on that ride is 2.5 G’s, close to how many G’s New Shepard will experience during launch.

> For the descent, Blue Origin says you must be able to withstand 5.5 G’s, if you ever rode Rock ‘n Roller Coaster at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, you would have experienced up to 5 G’s during the initial launch of the ride.

Epcot Mission Space (the "Orange" version) is pretty intense as it's really sustained G-forces, but manageable. During the ride, you have to reach in front of you to press some buttons, and that's when you feel the G-forces most. But for SpaceX/BlueOrigin, passengers do nothing.

Rock n Roller Coaster itself for the peak G is done by kids, not a big deal.

You can absolutely use engineering to limit the g forces. It's just a matter throttling back the engines near the end of a stage and/or staging sooner. For example, Gemini peeked at 6.4g, Apollo peeked at 4g and the Space Shuttle peeked at 3g.

3g is low enough that most humans shouldn't black out, even without training.

I'll also point out that professional astronauts are expected to remain functional for the entire assent (including emergencies, where g forces might peek much higher), which is not required for passengers.

Will Shatner was 90 when he was on a suborbital launch with Blue Origin. Given his wealth and access to quality healthcare etc. he was probably a decent amount healthier than the median 90 year old, but given that he was able to do it without issue I imagine the vast majority of humans under the age of ~60 or so can definitely manage.

Most are. If you have certain heart conditions, you might not know you have them, and then die. That's why it's likely that they'd require an ECG (and maybe have an age limit and require generally reasonable health/fitness), but if you're a reasonably healthy adult, it should be fine.

Forces depend a lot of the specific vehicle. The space shuttle peaks at 3 G, I've seen numbers from 3.6 to 4.5 (again peak) for Crew Dragon on the way up, 3-5 on the way back. Soyuz seems to be 4 on a good day and 10 on a bad one, plus the momentary forces during landing.

Since we put anyone willing to pay a few bucks on carnival rides that sustain (!) up to 3 G for minutes, and the profile can likely be adjusted at the expense of reduced payload capacity, I don't expect this to be a big problem.

They sent two very ordinary people with only months of training on the Inspiration 4 mission.

Spectators were kept about 3 miles from Saturn V launches, so you could build a REALLY WIDE stadium for Starship launches. The Circus Maximus wouldn't have ANYTHING on it.

We might be less than 50 years out from Starship or similar launches being as boring as a plane taking off or a train passing by.

It will fly from Florida so that will be much easier then going to Starbase.

I saw an Atlas V launch at KSC in January 2017, from the LC-39 observation gantry, and it was incredible. Highly recommend seeing a launch – any launch! – if you have the means and opportunity.

Starship is designed to lower the cost to space below 100$/kg.

Forget tourism, at that price beaming solar power back to earth approaches viability.

No one at SpaceX has projected $10 per ton. Cost of fuel is about $10,000 per ton to LEO, assuming Starship can lob 100 tons at a time.

In a speech to USAF in 2019, Musk said SpaceX's out of pocket cost per launch could be "maybe like $2 million," which would be about $20,000 per ton.

Adjust numbers for inflation accordingly.

I think the upper stage they might use lacks the control fins necessary for their landing maneuver.

To be fair any time Elon gives an estimate, people retcon it as a concrete promise and then bitch when things shift less than his competitors' estimates.

Yeah, how the heat shield holds up seems one of the most interesting topics. But they only have very limited options of investigating damages on their first attempt, since they won't recover the upper stage. So they have to rely on sensor data and possibly photo/video. More recent prototypes don't even have a heat shield anymore. The heat shield will probably come into focus when they try to recover the upper stage. But initially their focus will be on recovering the lower stage, since it has way more engines, which makes it more expensive.

Though you forgot the option where the launch is scrubbed due to technical problems and nothing happens. For example, SLS launched only on its third attempt, which was associated with a delay of 2.5 months.

The development of Falcon 9, Dragon Cargo, Dragon Crew, and now Starship have all been partially funded as Government Programs.

The difference is that a faction within NASA has been fighting to run these and other projects as open-bid commercial service contracts, where NASA can provide detailed requirements but not dictate specifically where and how the vehicles are built, and this has encouraged diversity and competition in these markets.

Traditional NASA development projects (like the SLS rocket) are micromanaged by congress in the budget, where congress dictates specifics of rocket design to ensure specific contractors in specific states receive a slice of the pie in defense-industry style cost-plus contracts.

I have heard at least one reason NASA doesn't work as well as it should is because its methods are dictated by politicians who know nothing. I think the shuttle program is the common example of this - it was selected by the VP at the time and there were a lot of detractors in the industry saying it was a bad decision. In retrospect the detractors were proven correct.

That is one of the reasons that important government projects often involve multiple contractors in multiple states; it ensures that the project won't be cut during the next budget talks. It's not efficient but it is expedient.

Yes this is a big part of it. NASA's budget is often micromanaged by congress.

Rather than giving them a budget of $X to accomplish goal Y, specific rocket designs and decisions are written into the budget to try to ensure facilities and contractors in various states are given a slice of the pie.

SpaceX's success has come with direct partnership with NASA, within specific projects where those inside NASA fought to run the development as an open bid for commercial services, rather than as NASA-engineered projects with work doled out to cost-plus defense industry contractors. SpaceX is not the only beneficiary of these projects, the goal is to try to cultivate multiple successful service providers that can sustain their own businesses.

There has been plenty of opposition to these commercial bid projects within congress, but the success and efficiency of these projects so far have made them hard to argue against.

AI would likely be a first-class participant or citizen in any early human colony in space. Our perception of risk-to-civilization changes significantly for off-world events. Just like the plan to build nuclear reactors on the Moon, the threat from AI isn't deemed serious if the plan is to have AI bots on another celestial body.

If that were to play out, that would mean the demand for building the AI ecosystem would only increase, and even if it were for off-world deployment, it would still disrupt industries and economies on Earth.

I interpreted that to mean the opposite: an inability to leave your planet means you have little resilience to planetary-scale destructive events, and no resilience to planetary destruction. Alternatively, we're less likely to identify or recognize an intelligent civilization on a single planet, as opposed to one across multiple planets or systems.

Because additional grams in orbit are equivalent to additional joules of energy released as weaponry, e.g. dropping rocks. I fear that our ability to use space to destroy ourselves will come before we can use it to launch a diaspora.

Much safer to assume it's ahead.

AIs or SIs may well have optimization functions that don't permit them past the "Destroy all humans" phase into the "Harvest resources of nearby starsystems to make more paperclips" phase - They may well reach a local maxima, be unable to proceed, and burn out long before then. I would assume that most AI with a sufficiently bad optimization function as to destroy their creators would fall into that hole.

Maybe the IAs that destroyed civilizations were just misaligned and didn't desire to survive after the achievement of their goal? Maybe all around the universe, millions of IAs have just killed everyone and stop their execution with the return message: World peace achieved.

Super Intelligence would expand at near the speed of light, reaching us extremely fast. It would be unlikely for the window of time that we have telescopes and the window that the aliens are expanding towards us to overlap.

https://grabbyaliens.com/

while we are in the AI stack, ie they are dependent on humans for power, hardware, maintenance etc. we will be fine. when the robots can do those though...