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Comment by timschmidt | Hacker News Reader

> It’s been in some level of development for well over a decade. Back in 2018 they changed the idea from using carbon composites to stainless steel and renamed the project Starship but in no way can you call it a fast process.

How long did the last fully reusable superheavy lift rocket take to develop? There's never been one you say? Right. So you have no metric for measurement. The closest equivalent: SLS is flying hardware who's design originated in the 60s, and Blue Origin began development 24 years ago.

Starship is developing at light speed by comparison to anything approaching it's size.

Still think it's happening slowly? Feel free to build one yourself in less time. I'll wait.

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They’ve taken longer to develop Starship than NASA did with the Space Shuttle.

Space shuttle development can be traced to the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar ) which began in 1957, the MiG-105 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105 ) from 1965, and the Silbervogel project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel ) from 1941. The space shuttle didn't fly until 1981. Try again.

I’m not sure you’ve really thought that argument through to it’s conclusion.

> the MiG-105 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105 ) from 1965, and the Silbervogel project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel ) from 1941.

Starship can trace its development back to the 1920’s seeing as the team leveraged that research, if you’re going to use such a meaningless definition including USSR projects as a legacy here Starship loses simply because of the much later launch date.

> if you’re going to use such a meaningless definition including USSR projects as a legacy here

So you're not even aware of how the shuttle was developed and are just making ill-informed assumptions. Got it.

I’m well aware of the link, but again Starship shares similar links with much older projects.

We can trace them both down to liquid rocket propulsion, but one flew in 1980’s the other is still in R&D.

> I’m well aware of the link

Then why don't you tell us about it?

> Then why don't you tell us about it?

Because you’re obviously trying to deflect from a lost argument. Starship has clearly been mismanaged and nothing you’ve suggested has actually countered that core issue.

Well, I've provided plenty of links and facts. You've provided your unique opinions, little else, and seem wholly unaware of the development history of these vehicles you claim to know better than rocket engineers about.

Even if I use your example and timeline:

Shuttle: 1968 (project announced) - 1981 (first launch): 13 years

Starship: 2012 (project announced) - 2022 (first launch): 10 years

Starship's several years ahead of Shuttle development.

Hilarious conversation. Thanks for providing laughs for the evening.

golf clap

Yep, you’ve got nothing. Starship even borrows heavily from the shuttle program using a lifting body design etc.

One last link for ya: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

I’d rather have a coherent debate, but I’ll take a laugh instead.

At least have the dignity of walking away.

I guess we're both laughing then! lol

The difference here is that STS-1 achieved orbit and flew 37 times around the earth, while Starship flight 1 didn't even explode correctly after failing to keep its designated path. Starship has yet to achieve orbit, in fact, in 2025 - passing the 13 year mark of STS-1.

And note that the actual shuttle that was launched in 1981, the Columbia, went on to conduct 27 more successful missions (until its tragic end many years later). So it was already successfully reusable from its first test flight (with the known caveats around cost of refurbishment).

> with the known caveats around cost of refurbishment

Only the orbiter was refurbishable (not fully and rapidly reusable like Starship - booster reuse was demonstrated today), which took 6 months, and cost $2 Billion per launch.

The whole Starship development program is slated to cost about as much as 5 Shuttle launches.

Nearly 50 year old technology is generally inferior to modern equivalents, that hardly an argument that Starship’s R&D process is going well.

Again, feel free to point to any rocket of the size and reusability of Starship which is further along in development or has developed faster. None exist.

> Nearly 50 year old technology is generally inferior to modern equivalents <

Feel free to counter the points being addressed rather than attack a straw man. Obviously if Starship was strictly worse there’d be no point in trying to develop it.

Suggesting a modern preproduction car is better than a Fiat Argenta from the early 80’s isn’t a recommendation, same deal with Starship.

that first launch included a crew, it's 2025 and starship is nowhere near that

Yeah, well, apparently neither was Shuttle. RIP Challenger and Columbia and crews.

No fatalities with Dragon yet, thankfully. It seems to me that Dragon and Shuttle are much more directly comparable. Falcon 9 throws away it's second stage, which is still less than Shuttle did. And Dragon requires a similar level of refurbishment to Shuttle. Shuttle could carry 27,000kg to LEO whereas Falcon 9 can carry 22,800kg to LEO.

Starship is slated for 200,000kg to LEO. It's in an entirely different class.

The aspect of Starship I find craziest - it's lack of launch abort system at this stage of development - was a problem Shuttle suffered it's whole life. And Shuttle didn't have the engine redundancy of Starship or Falcon 9.

Comparing a project by a private company to the most powerful government in world history is a little disingenuous

If we were comparing two projects in 2025 I would absolutely agree.

Except SpaceX is spending ~2 billion dollars per year which on the surface is well below the space shuttle (though not that far), but modern aerospace projects have massive advantages over these early programs so simple inflation calculators don’t really capture the cost changes well.

They are getting way more value than the space shuttle which wasn't very useful by comparison. Apples to oranges

How are defining value here?

The shuttle flew well over 100 successful mission including infrastructure that’s still in use ISS, Hubble.

Starship has 0 successful missions.

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