tseitsei89

There are other rocket companies too that deliver stuff to LEO. So no monopoly.

IMO you are in orbit if your periapsis is above ground level. It just isn't a stable orbit since air resistance will slow you down but it is an orbit. There is no clear altitude where atmosphere stops slowing you down, it just gets weaker and weaker the higher you go so defining it with some arbitrary periapsis height is...well arbitrary. Saying you have to complete a full orbit in order to be in orbit is also sketchy. You can put a ship in a 500km x 500km orbit and do a deorbit burn before you complete a full orbit. You clearly were in orbit but you just exited orbit before completing a full circle.

That is definitely a good thing. They can make a rocket engine that is not too delicate to be transported that way. They transport raptors like that and they still work...

Vibrations are probably different with and without starship on top of the booster so it is better to test with starship. They have a very good idea how to land boosters since they already have a great software for F9 (superheavy is really similar in landing) so software is probably least of their worries. Plus they seem to be producing starship prototypes faster than they can actually fly them so exploding one wouldnt really hurt all that much

Ok. I think I'm done here.

WOW! That was a fast leap. What I mean is that technological advancements have always needed and will probably always need some sacrifices. One extreme is still living in a hunter-gatherer tribe society and leaving nature completely untouched and the other extreme is just "screw earth" as you put it. Obviously neither of the extremes is good, but we can't simply stop all scientifical and technological advancements just so we can leave nature untouched.

That is your opinion. My opinion is that a batch of marshland is a small price to pay if that means we can enter an entirely new era of space exploration.

As stated earlier, they kind of need a coastal location for the launches in order to not cause risk to people by flying over land (where people live) and there is only so much coastline available in US.

Yeah, and taking any other place on earth has some other downsides to someone (wildlife, or human settlements or something else) as well, like already mentioned earlier in this thread. Who are you to decide which downsides are acceptable and which are not?

Yeah, great argument there dude! You got me convinced. But seriously: Yes, this happens all the time very regularly all across the world.

To my understanding pretty much yes. Just an explosive charge that rips open the tank if necessary

Yeah, it is of course not guaranteed to work, but the argument he has ("it won't work because hull is cylindrical and previous re-entry vehicles have not been cylindrical") is quite ridiculous. He is basically saying that "it won't work because it hasn't been done before". By that logic nothing new will ever work.

Does this Kerbiloid guy really think that he understands re-entry and what is possible during re-entry better than Elon Musk, all the engineers at spaceX and at NASA? If it was so obvious that re-entry with cylindrical hull was impossible, why [Snip] would spaceX use all this time, effort and money to design and test such a vehicle? They aren't exactly idiots at spaceX Also many many people called landing falcon core stage on a drone ship a science fiction and impossible until it was done. SpaceX has already proven that it can do amazing stuff that many consider impossible

It does often happen though, You will polish, streamline, automate and upscale the production so it gets cheaper as they perfect the process Storage tank is a storage tank in this case. It is just needed to store liquid oxygen/methane, nothing more fancy than that. They built a bigger tank because they just had existing production line for starship sized tanks and used that to build the tank. They could just as well use several of those smaller tanks like they have done until now.

Yeah, that doesn't tell anything either. How was "maximum public risk allowed" exceeded? What exactly was the thing they should have done differently with SN8 and did differently with SN9 now to get the approval? edit: I mean of course if they didn't have FAA approval they shouldn't have launched but that text still doesn't explain why they didn't get the approval for SN8 and what they did differently to get it for SN9 now.

What requirement/regulation did they not comply with exactly? That piece of text doesn't really tell us much about anything...

Yeah there is this https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_1_7364.html#restrictions for infinite height. But it is older than this https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_1_8562.html that is only up to 7200 feet. I dont really know how to interpret that. Is the older one still in effect as well or only the newer, low altitude one,

edit: Nevermind I was wrong

Yeah well, obviously 99.6% would be completely unacceptable for a car trip safety as well. But as I said: spaceflight is not and will not be like driving a car. 0.5% or even 1% chance of death during landing seems quite irrelevant in the grand scheme of things here to me. You are probably much more likely to die of some other cause when trying to live on Mars than that 1%. Possible point to point transportation of starship is still FAR FAR away in the future (even compared to starships possible crewed spaceflights and going to mars) and I doubt it will never even happen. It would need amazing safety margins and it would still probably be really expensive compared to airplanes. Fast of course but you can already fly across atlantic in less than a day.

Well, spaceflight is not driving a car and will obviously never (or at least for a VERY long time) be as safe as driving a car. 99% might be unacceptable for manned flights but comparing it to car trips is pretty dumb. Exploration has always been quite dangerous and required big risks to be taken.

Yeah obviously Elon-time is vastly different from reality.

Yes that is exactly why I said it will be a slow process but not impossible. Falcon 9 is already quite reliable today.

Yes of course Raptors still need to be made extremely reliable and it will be a slow process. But if you look at Merlin in its current state, it really is super reliable nowadays. They can just flip higher up for manned flights anyway, engine failure or not. Yes it will need more propellant to slow down in the end but it will be safer. I mean they could plan the landing for 1 engine to begin with. Then if the planned engine doesn't ignite, just immediately try to ignite another one.

They might eventually be able to do single engine landings and do the flip manouver without the help of raptors (with aerodynamic surfaces + gas thrusters). Then 1 or even 2 engine failures wouldn't necessarily mean certain death if they can just use the remaining working engine to land.

Who did a powered landing first is completely irrelevant. SpaceX actually made rockets reusable and that is what really matters. Same goes for testing the bigger engine. All kinds of fun stuff has been tested but what matters is to make them work in actual missions with real rockets.