7 months between 1 and 2, 4 months between 2 and 3. Given that they've continued to improve the process and haven't blown anything up where they aren't supposed to, probably a couple months. There was some talk by supposed insiders that they're aiming for April. That'd be impressive.
Imagine being an Artemis astronaut watching these launches, knowing you'll be sitting in one in a couple/few years. Anxiety inducing!
From what I understand SpaceX is only responsible for the moon lander portion. Astronauts are lancing from same rocket that launched a year back. No human is launching on that SpaceX contraption for a while
You're right on. Docks with Orion in lunar orbit both ways. They want hundreds of flights of starship before launching and landing with people.
So apparently they've been sneaking prototype Starshield satellites onboard for a couple years for a NRO contract.
Shotwell is saying early May for the next launch. I continue to be amazed at how rudimentary the knowledge seems to be with respect to getting this thing to accomplish basic tasks. I mean, its not like there isn't a very large body of information already available from the thousands of space launches over the past several decades. What am I missing here? I get that its very large and attempting to re-land for reusability, but they already have a lot of experience with the Falcon launches. I mean, they couldn't even get the pez door to open/close? Really? I'm a huge fan, but starting to scratch my head with some of this.
The point is specifically not to do it like it's been done a thousand times. They're seeing what they can get away with, because otherwise you just follow what's been done and you have an expensive launcher in the end. They have Falcon 9 to do the high quality, methodical work that needs to be close to 100% reliable, as you know. Shoot, no one else has even been able to get close to competing with Falcon 9 and that's going to be old news in 5 years or so. Pez dispenser looked janky but I'd bet by the time they actually load up starlinks that it'll work.
I totally get that, but some things have me baffled. Pez door total failure, loss of ship and booster control, engines going out/not lighting, stage zero damage (seems to be mostly fixed now), losing heat shield tiles, didn't light engine in space. Don't get me wrong, I'm still in complete awe, but its just starting to look like its so cheap to keep trying and trying that they should do more work between launches. Perhaps I'm twisted, but a lot of these things seem a bit rudimentary. I'd like to see a deep dive on the true complexities, with respect to all previous space launch technology.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to tongue-in-cheek bash SpaceX for their failures but technically it worked as well as any previous booster and 2nd stage has. All they needed to do was blow off the front half of the ship and leave it lit for another 5 seconds and they would have been able to put a 200 ton payload in to LEO on the 2nd and 3rd flights. They are playing with fast reusability techniques. RCS from fuel tank pressure dumps and not able to place them on more than half the ship’s surface as well as trying to “fly” it through reentry plasma field. RCS are always their own fuel systems. Likely some propellant froze the RCS valves. This was also the 1st test of flaps at hypersonic speeds. More than a year back Elon X’ed, or was it still Twitter back then, SpaceX thought the flap design might not be correct. There might be too much drag on top or bottom flaps for stable control on reentry. Next time they need to hit the atmosphere already stable to see how they control. The fact that we got the HD video of the beginning stages of reentry was a technological step forward. Ain’t never seen that before.
It never ceases to amaze me, the depth and breadth of knowledge on this silly board.....and the level of stupid... I'm also in awe of what SpaceX has accomplished, and the speed of iterations is impressive. That said, I don't know if they have the same design philosophy as they have at Tesla, where there doesn't seem to be integration between engineering departments. Just look at the variances in fasteners. Hex, Phillips, Bonding, Whitworth....pick a lane!
I get it! I'm just enjoying the ride right now because every launch is exciting. You have no idea what's going to happen, although they've consistently improved the result every time. In several years it'll be closer to Falcon 9, which I barely even tune in to watch anymore because it's so routine. I was blown away at the footage we got at reentry. To your point, I don't think there's much we can infer visually about the hypersonic aero setup from what we saw. You're not recovering with without RCS and entering with a tumble. They probably have some interesting data they can look at though.
Space X blew up three Falcon 1’s before they got it sorted, one Falcon 9 failure, one partial success. Starship is a whole level of magnitude over those efforts. The soviets gave up after toasting 3 N 1’s which is the only comparable platform. What the fuck do I know, I could be full of shit but simply have 33 engines successfully lighting and sequencing down for stage two separation, twice,hot staging at that is a huge step.
Sooo, When are they gonna light another one up? I need more than concrete pouring and factory building
