The front fell off.
You must be from Reddit. I appreciate good comments like this
What’s with all the snobbery?
Shhhh, they’re winning the Internet by being 3L1T3.
That’s not how you spell l33t. You fucking n00b.
Actually I remember when it was still “elite” and it meant you had access to the warez section of a BBS.
Oh, Warez.
That sure was a long time ago…
Thanks for the memory!
1337, cmon now!
Do you get to the cloud district very often? Oh what am I saying, of course you don’t.
the explosion, which took place at its Boca Chica Starbase facilities
The raptor testing stand at McGregor experienced an anomaly
Well, which is it? I’m going to trust NASASpaceflight over this article and go with it was a McGregor. No where near Starbase. And that means it will likely have no effect on IFT4 as this article says.
edit: Adding to this, the author of this article has no idea what they are talking about.
The Raptor engines that are currently undergoing testing are SpaceX’s Raptor 2 engines
So clearly nothing to do with IFT4, as Ship 29 and Booster 11 are already outfitted with their engines, non of which are Raptor 2s.
On its last flight test, IFT-3, Starship finally reached orbital velocity and it soared around Earth before crashing down into the Indian Ocean. On the next flight, SpaceX aims to perform a reentry burn, allowing Starship to perform a soft landing in the ocean.
IFT3 burned up on reentry, maybe parts of it made it to the ocean, but it was not crashing into the ocean that was the problem. IFT4 does not plan on doing a reentry burn. No one does a reentry burn from orbit. Starship uses a heat shield like every other orbital space craft. They are planning to attempt a landing burn, that is probably what they are talking about.
The re-entry burn is the burn to slow down your spacecraft below orbital speeds, initiating re-entry.
Every spacecraft that wants to land back on earth after orbiting it needs to do a re-entry burn.
The only exception, theoretically, are spacecraft that return from outside earth’s orbit. They could in theory re-enter by steering towards the atmosphere at the right angle. I don’t know if they actually do that in practice or slow down to orbital speeds first, though.What you’re talking about is usually referred to as a de-orbit burn. Sure somebody could call it a reentry burn, but not SpaceX. What SpaceX calls a reentry burn is the maneuver when a Falcon 9 booster lights its engines as it first hits the atmosphere to slow down and move the heating away from it’s body. Neither the super heavy booster nor the ship make a maneuver like this.
IFT3 did not make a de-orbit burn, and there is not one planned for IFT4 either.
Thanks for the correction and clarification. Looks like I’ll have to return my degree from KSP academy.
Does anyone else think the thumbnail looks like a llama with laser eyes?
I do now
A few years ago (already) I would have been sad and shocked. Now I don’t give a shit about SpaceTwitter. That douchebag managed to kill all the interest I had for space exploration, a topic I was passionate about for most of my life. He really is that kind of killjoy.
I know how you feel I used to love watching all the SpaceX launches, but I just can’t bring myself to care anymore about anything Musk is involved in.
Sad to be you. Starship is super exciting
Wow talk about blaming someone else for your waning interest. If you were really into space exploration, you wouldn’t let one person come in the way. A person who doesn’t even know you. Or you don’t know either technically. I’m no Elon shill and I dislike him like everyone else. But I’ll be damned if I lose interest in space just because of him. Even if the whole world was a douchebag, I’d still get out telescoping equipment and gaze at the skies. And oh by the way, if not for SpaceX do it for NASA who were there way before anyone else. Do it for your ancestors who looked at the sky in amazement every night.
Good lord, everyone please learn a tiny bit about spacex and the state of the space industry instead of letting your (justified) hatred of Elon do the typing.
I’d have a lot more sympathy for this comment if people would actually do this in reference to Space Billionaires. I’ve had far too many conversations online and elsewhere where the individual shits on NASA for space industry problems and worships Space Billionaires because [some convoluted “government bad rich entrepreneurs good” reason] and their problems aren’t really problems. I’m not saying you’re part of the billionaire sycophant club, but I’m not against musk’s well deserved criticism as he sacrifices people in his rush, and probably work quality suffers alongside them.
NASA successfully launched Artemis 1 first try.
DEFINITELY not first try. I was there in their first try… and second… Still didn’t see it launch.
At a greater cost than every starship built to date combined…
Congrats?
I expect they’ll be able to launch 2, perhaps even 3 more Artemis rockets before the program is cancelled and the rocket architecture abandoned due to unreasonable cost.
Where’s your evidence proving exactly how much Starship has cost in total? Or wait, maybe you are just making bullshit up because you have no idea how much it has actually cost them because they don’t disclose that information like NASA does.
SpaceX can likely build and launch a fully expendable version of Starship for about $100 million. Most of that money is in the booster, with its 33 engines. So once Super Heavy becomes reusable, you can probably cut manufacturing costs down to about $30 million per launch.
This means that, within a year or so, SpaceX will have a rocket that costs about $30 million and lifts 100 to 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
Bluntly, this is absurd.
For fun, we could compare that to some existing rockets. NASA’s Space Launch System, for example, can lift up to 95 tons to low-Earth orbit. That’s nearly as much as Starship. But it costs $2.2 billion per launch, plus additional ground systems fees. So it’s almost a factor of 100 times more expensive for less throw weight. Also, the SLS rocket can fly once per year at most.
likely
probably
Where is the “exactly” that I asked about?
The starship is built out in the open, the whole world can watch. Because of that, there are pretty good estimates for how much construction costs. If you take the more pessimistic estimates, my statement would still hold true.
Also, as a reminder, even without knowing exact numbers you can still make some ballpark assertions with confidence. For example, Jupiter has the mass of more than a dozens earths. I could look up the actual number, but I can be pretty damn sure it’s more than twelve.
Can someone please cue up the Boeing hit men?
Maybe someone called it cisgendered.
💥
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Only a stupid person would compare rocket fuels to brain implants. Are you Elon ?
Bruh its a TEST STAND TEST STAND this is not the Frist time a engine exploded on a test stand raptor engines in their development phase are supposed to explode. Elon musk has said if something doesn’t explode then you did something wrong
Well, if Musk said it, it must be true. /s
If you’re testing for fail state, sure.
If you’re testing for sustained burn, you fucked up. Time to science and figure up how to unfuck it.
Fuck this stupid company. No more federal funding for SpaceX.
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no u
Oof
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That’s a bonkers take. It’s the largest and most powerful rocket in history and it’s already made orbit. The raptor engines are the first full flow staged combustion engines to ever be put into a production rocket (This is a holy grail of rocketry). All estimates suggest that it’s also probably much cheaper to build than any of the other heavy lift rockets. And that was accomplished while also building full reusability into the design…
The work they’ve done is nothing short of astounding. Which makes your take come off as either insane, blind, or biased.
It has not made orbit.
It has done a suborbital flight.
The difference between getting to space and getting to orbit is well, an orbit.
Starship did not achieve the speed needed to maintain an orbit around the earth, if it can do so has not been proven.
Getting something that big off the ground is impressive, but we did it 50 years ago with slide rules and pencils. Getting something off the ground should not be a success for a company that already has an orbital rocket in frequent use. Having 3 vehicles fail to achieve orbit, fail to demonstrate critical features like fuel transfer and engine relight, and fail to re enter the atmosphere while under control, is not a success. I do not buy the SpaceX corporate spin that “everything after clearing the pad is icing on the cake” that’s not good enough for a critical piece of hardware that is supposed to take humans to the moon and land them there.
If ULA can develop a rocket that completes its mission on the first launch, and NASA can do the same, because they take the time to check everything, then why are we giving SpaceX the pass to move fast and break things when it’s clearly not working. They do not have a heavy lift orbital rocket. They have a rocket that can, from all evidence, achieve a suborbital flight while completely empty.
And remember, this is not private money they are burning every time one of these explodes or burns up in the atmosphere. They were given 3 billion American Tax dollars to develop this thing. And now the Government Accountability Office has not even been shown that the Raptor engine is even capable of achieving the mission goals for Artemis. And their test articles are behind schedule and routinely failing in catastrophic ways.
I want to see humans back on the moon in my lifetime. I think we need to go and set up a colony so that we can explore our solar system better and develop technologies for sustaining humanity both off of earth and in the harsh conditions we will face as our climate changes. Anything that threatens the mission of establishing a human presence off of earth needs to be looked at closely and realistically.
Back in the 60’s we knew that the only way to get humans to the moon was to keep the equipment reliable and redundant, anything else was asking for people to die. We seem to have lost that simple insight in recent years, and Starship is the epitome of that hubris. A ridiculously complicated vehicle with a complicated flight plan that has not been shown to work in any capacity. That needs to be pointed out and investigated if for no other reason then it is delaying a major mission.
You’ve written a whole lot for someone who doesn’t seem to know what they’re talking about.
It has not made orbit.
It has done a suborbital flight.
The difference between getting to space and getting to orbit is well, an orbit.
These statements are intentionally misleading. The starship was less than 100 dv short of orbit when they decided to cut the engines in order to test another flight regime. It takes at least 8500 dv to make orbit, which means they were already 98.8% of the way there and they still had plenty of propellent to spare. All systems were nominal, they could have continued, but they had already proved their capability to make orbit and were now aiming to accomplish more. The fact is, they did achieve the kind of speed you need to reach orbit, but rockets have been able to reach orbit for a long time, that’s not impressive, but rockets have only just begun to start returning to earth.
And remember, this is not private money they are burning every time one of these explodes or burns up in the atmosphere. They were given 3 billion American Tax dollars to develop this thing.
So far, the SLS has spent 23 billion tax payer dollars. They have built 1 rocket. But saying they “built” the rocket isn’t even fair, as they salvaged the engines from previous space shuttles, expending engines that had previously been reused. What will they do when they run out of pre-built engines? Prices will go up for sure…
Again, the SLS is attempting to use antique engines and essentially develop nothing new, and it has cost the public $23B. The starship is attempting to develop many ground breaking technologies, is so far achieving more of their goals with every launch. And they’ve spent 3 billion doing all of that.
At this point it may also be worth noting that the SLS has been in development for 14 years, the starship has been in real development for 5-7 years.
I remain in the position I started, to deny that SpaceX is doing something truly astonishing is plain bonkers.
If you don’t see progress, it’s because you’re not paying attention. Each test flight of starship has performed better than the last.
It already has made it to space…
Making it to space and making it to orbit are 2 different things.
Seriously… Are you drunk? There’s been incredible progress. It’s super exciting.
“move fast and break things”
Sounds like a slogan for one of Stalin’s “Five Year Plans.”
Maybe you should check your history there as well
So maybe working your engineers 24 hours a day isn’t a great idea?
maybe someone left their Tesla there
