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Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but it was burning congressional pork as fuel and cost only the occasional human sacrifice.

Don’t forget the investigation documentation as an unexpected byproduct.

The only reason starship hasn't involved human sacrifice thus far is that they haven't put humans in it. It remains to be seen whether the engineers will manage to make something usable from musk's 'Cybertruck - space edition' fever dream.

True, but they're doing it on a far lower budget than the Space Shuttle.

A single RS-9 engine -- one of five used in the SLS -- costs more than an entire Falcon 9 launch with payload, taxes, and profit!

Starship is similarly frugal. Its construction is simpler, it is made of cheaper materials, it uses a cheaper fuel, etc, etc...

“Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”

I love this quote. mankind having been to space already, the rockets are the sideshow to the way they designed and grew an org that delivered them along with a great business, starting from an amount of capital loads of nobodies have had but failed to do anything interesting with.

I'm not sure why you would call Starship a "fever dream". The numbers work. It's in testing. I could see calling the Saudi "Line City" a fever dream, or California's HSR. But not Starship.

What numbers work specifically?

Because we haven’t seen a single re-use of a starship yet nor any significant payload brought to orbit, or the orbital refueling turn around and launch cadence necessary to even achieve 1/10th of what Musk suggests is “possible on paper”.

Super-heavy is being wasted on a potential dead end 2nd stage in my opinion.

Only because they haven't honestly tried (for reuse). We've seen Superheavy caught successfully with engines that could probably be reused, and we've seen Starships lightly splashdown with engines that could potentially be reused if they weren't filled with saltwater. I'd agree that they're way behind schedule and that recent launches have been disappointing but they've demonstrated their components. I believe reliability will come in time, the question is how much time.

By "numbers" I mean the rocket equation. There should be plenty of fuel to put Starship in orbit with a nontrivial payload and have it land again. Yes, the entire system doesn't work yet, but we're already into the refinement stage.

...Or full driverless mode in Tesla cars. That also works in theory - waymo is doing fine - but the Tesla execution has been hampered for years by musk's misguided idea that only camera should be necessary. Likewise, I only expect starship to successfully execute to the extent that musk can be kept out of the decision-making process.

I suspect that's the opposite of true. Musk was deeply involved in the most successful rocket program in history, and his involvement in Starship allows SpaceX, as an organization, to make decisions quickly.

And isn't that decision to leave humans behind on the ground an inspired piece of mission planning. It's wonderful that computers and telemetry has progressed so far.

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