totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Scotius]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

(I do hope SpaceX manages to land this test flight. I'm not anti-SpaceX. It's just so annoying that many SpaceX fans seem to think anything not SpaceX is bad.)

Because it's not much outside of Dragon flying. Starliner is bogged down in technical problems and delays. Orion is in Limbo, waiting for SLS - and even then her flights will be rare. Blue Origin? Jeff Who the heck knows? Maybe they have a flight article ready to unveil, maybe they don't.

It's easier to be a SpaceX fan.

[Lukaszenko]

It's also easier to be a SpaceX fan because they made a crazy-ass promise (cheap/ easy access to space), and each success they have is a step closer to delivering on this. You can actually visually see a step-by-step growth and progression towards this goal, you can can extrapolate that it will probably happen, and it's exciting.

Starliner is great and all. But, if they succeed, whenevertf that will be, then we'll....have another capsule. You know, like we did in the 60s.

Not nearly as exciting.

[YNM]

4 hours ago, Nothalogh said:

The trajectory of Boeing, at this point, is not promising.

They've been bogged down partly because they keep to have to re-schedule their flights. Since the start of this year (Jan 18) they've been cleared to fly again; however with two docking ports serving three "missions" at the same time it proves difficult to schedule things.

We really need a 3rd IDA/IDSS docking port...

[Hannu2]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

So I guess here is where I point out that the Starliner has been to orbit and returned from orbit safely. Meanwhile people in this thread are super excited about a ship that has blown up every time it has tried to land.

Why not? That exploding ship try to achieve new landing maneuver which can make far larger and cheaper ships possible. But first capsules was flown to orbit and back in 1960. There is nothing really new in Boeing's capsule. Dragon makes everything Starliner do but is much cheaper to operate.

 

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

I predict that the Starliner carries crew sooner than the Starship. Wanna take that bet?

Certainly it do. But it is also certain that Starliner achieves never any milestones in manned or unmanned operation.  It is second best tool for routine work, selected in addition to best tool because redundancy and political issues.

Starship at least intends to achieve new things in both categories. In addition to fanboys also NASA officers seem to trust company.

 

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

(I do hope SpaceX manages to land this test flight. I'm not anti-SpaceX. It's just so annoying that many SpaceX fans seem to think anything not SpaceX is bad.)

I agree that fans are sometimes quite annoying. Especially those who takes aspirational schecules too seriously. But SpaceX's ability to take risks and develop new things seem to be exceptional. It is clear that Boeing can not compete with fancy ideas as publicly traded company which owners demand profit but it is sad that Blue Origin seems to fall behind. It's owner has enough money to do whatever crazy things and he could compete with Musk. SpaceX's de facto monopoly will be bad thing for space business in longer period.

[Meecrob]

27 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

But it is also certain that Starliner achieves never any milestones in manned or unmanned operation.  It is second best tool for routine work, selected in addition to best tool because redundancy and political issues.

Well lets at least be fair here and let Boeing complete their test program before you go declaring SpaceX the winner. Its not a race, first into space is not the superior vehicle.

[Cuky]

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

I predict that the Starliner carries crew sooner than the Starship. Wanna take that bet?

It would be embarrassing for Boeing if that wouldn't be the case.

It is 11 years since Starliner was announced and it is 10 few months short of 10 years since NASA awarded a contract to Boeing. Since then Starliner only flew once and that flight was riddled with technical failures and they were lucky to even recover the capsule. For such an experienced company with such big budget and huge contract from NASA in comparison to their competitors it is embarrassing to be so far behind. And they are so damn slow at working out their issues as it has been almost one and a half year since first test flight that failed.

[tater]

[SOXBLOX]

7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

(I do hope SpaceX manages to land this test flight. I'm not anti-SpaceX. It's just so annoying that many SpaceX fans seem to think anything not SpaceX is bad.)

I agree. Sure, Boeing had a few technical issues, but it was a first flight. Who doesn't have technical issues? I think Starliner is a great vehicle, and I hope to see it fly soon.

IDK, but sometimes it feels like the hate some companies get comes from a "military-industrial complex bad!" point of view.

[tater]

They also have a launch June 1 from SLC-40 (SiriusXM sat).

Other Starlink launches don't seem to be on the spaceflightnow schedule, so who knows, maybe one of those late May?

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

IDK, but sometimes it feels like the hate some companies get comes from a "military-industrial complex bad!" point of view

In my case it’s more of a “cost-plus leeches bad” POV. Granted, Starliner won a commercial contract, but it seems that Boeing isn’t putting much resources into getting it flying sooner than later. 

[tater]

Apparently all the various ducks are in a row for the hop tomorrow.

[magnemoe]

10 minutes ago, tater said:

Apparently all the various ducks are in a row for the hop tomorrow.

Obvious post. 

[satnet]

14 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

So I guess here is where I point out that the Starliner has been to orbit and returned from orbit safely. Meanwhile people in this thread are super excited about a ship that has blown up every time it has tried to land.

I predict that the Starliner carries crew sooner than the Starship. Wanna take that bet?

(I do hope SpaceX manages to land this test flight. I'm not anti-SpaceX. It's just so annoying that many SpaceX fans seem to think anything not SpaceX is bad.)

I think even Elon would agree Starliner will carry crew sooner.  The reason Boeing is getting so much flak is because they said "according to our organization's engineering practices Starliner is ready to carry humans". It then had serious (though not life threatening) problems. They then stated that they had never done a full integration test, something that I can scarcely imagine and yet they acted like it was no big deal. Starship is still in the pathfinding/experimentation phase when mishaps are acceptable because it is meant to find the problems early before they are serious and SpaceX has never characterized it as done or even fit for cargo much less humans. Boeing's engineering judgement is in doubt because they overstated their readiness in the final phase, while SpaceX appears to have a solid grasp on what "ready for production" means even if they have a few more explosions on their way to getting there. I would like to see Boeing succeed (they employ a lot of people where I live) but they haven't exactly inspired confidence lately. Starliner will fly and be certified but they paid a heavy cost in schedule and goodwill for cutting a 24 hour integration test.

[tater]

16 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Really? You think the US government is going to have spent all this money and effort to develop two alternate crew transport providers and then decide they are only going to use one of them?

Yeah, that's absurd, Starliner will fly, there's no if.

 

 

The one thing that gets me with the whole Starliner thing is that Boeing convinced NASA to pay them an additional $287.2M for additional crew missions (within their contract anyway) because it looked like SpaceX was falling behind.

[sevenperforce]

15 hours ago, Flying dutchman said:

I completely agree.

But i think it's pretty much impossible to compare Starship to a capsule. One is a tried and proven concept and the other is quite experimental. 

I personally think ss won't Carry crew for a long time (except for lunar ss) but i could be wrong.

That's the point, I think. Even if Starship literally NEVER launches from Earth with crew, it will still be completely transformative.

[mikegarrison]

13 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

That's the point, I think. Even if Starship literally NEVER launches from Earth with crew, it will still be completely transformative.

... maybe.

Three letters for you to keep in mind here: T. R. L. Not everything that gets to the prototype flight test stage succeeds, although that is a lot more likely than things that are still in the component testing labs.

Most companies don't have the cash flow to keep blowing up their rocket engines, but SpaceX is a private company that doesn't have to worry about shareholders and is at least partially owned by one of the richest people in the world, so they can probably afford to do it.

Edited May 3, 2021 by mikegarrison

[tater]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

That's the point, I think. Even if Starship literally NEVER launches from Earth with crew, it will still be completely transformative.

Yeah, if reuse—rapid reuse in the sense that the ship is turned around without "refurbishment" that costs much—becomes a thing, it changes almost everything. Even if crew transit to and from LEO is capsules, spaceplanes, whatever, we have a powerful, inexpensive lift capability that allows all kinds of things that were impossible before.

 

 

[tater]

 

So we have SN15 tomorrow—AM?

Starlink 25 at 15:01 Eastern:

 

Then another Starlink Sunday.

Edited May 4, 2021 by tater

[cubinator]

36 minutes ago, tater said:

So we have SN15 tomorrow—AM?

Thought the TFRs were gonna be for afternoon. Either way, Starship test and Starlink launch on the same day would be quite something. (Of course, they HAVE to launch the Falcon on May the Fourth.)

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, if reuse—rapid reuse in the sense that the ship is turned around without "refurbishment" that costs much—becomes a thing, it changes almost everything. Even if crew transit to and from LEO is capsules, spaceplanes, whatever, we have a powerful, inexpensive lift capability that allows all kinds of things that were impossible before.

I am not sold that "rapid reuse" is a big deal for crew transfers. It's not like there is any big demand to launch people every day.

IMO, the technology that (if they can get it to work) would really be a big deal would be the orbital refueling. I know the ISS already has some capability in that direction, but if they can relatively cheaply upload a bunch of fuel, that is a huge multiplier for payload capability beyond LEO.

[tater]

14 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I am not sold that "rapid reuse" is a big deal for crew transfers. It's not like there is any big demand to launch people every day.

That's why I explicitly said even if crew to and from LEO is what we have now (capsules and maybe things like Dream Chaser, all launched on traditional or partially reusable LVs). I'm agreeing with you, I'm only talking about cargo...

14 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

IMO, the technology that (if they can get it to work) would really be a big deal would be the orbital refueling. I know the ISS already has some capability in that direction, but if they can relatively cheaply upload a bunch of fuel, that is a huge multiplier for payload capability beyond LEO.

That's always going to be the bulk of cargo to LEO—even in the universe with a "crew Starship," since any crew SS mission requires a bunch of full cargo to LEO launches to go anywhere, and that cargo is propellants.

That's really where this whole thing sings . There's all the "Starship" stuff (lunar, mars, what have you), then there are tug architectures, NEO survey and mining—a lot becomes possible with loads of dv and a big (cheap) vehicle.

 

BTW, the booster for the possible Sunday launch could be a 10th flight.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

... maybe.

Three letters for you to keep in mind here: T. R. L. Not everything that gets to the prototype flight test stage succeeds, although that is a lot more likely than things that are still in the component testing labs.

Most companies don't have the cash flow to keep blowing up their rocket engines, but SpaceX is a private company that doesn't have to worry about shareholders and is at least partially owned by one of the richest people in the world, so they can probably afford to do it.

Well we don't know how many engines has blown up at the engine testing facility

Blowing up starships, well they need to practice building them anyway, it looks to me that the flip works well enough but they get fuel flow issues during it. 
Probably solvable by changing how the baffles are oriented so you don't trap gas pockets during flip, Worse case use an cylinder header tank and some sort of piston with over pressure above during flip. 
The fuel flow issues was not something many wold caught in an simulation or study, the flip itself could be simulated since its just aerodynamic.
Now they could build an test rig, take the header tanks on an pole, put some turbo pumps on the other end and flip it who is something they probably do if they thought this was an tough problem.  Instead they do more testing. 
Guess most of the cost is labor and you have to pay them anyway and you learn more testing. 

[SOXBLOX]

What's their production rate for Starlink sats? It must be pretty high...

[tater]

5 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

What's their production rate for Starlink sats? It must be pretty high...

120 a month, anyway (assuming a goal of 2 launches per month)

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

Thought the TFRs were gonna be for afternoon. Either way, Starship test and Starlink launch on the same day would be quite something. (Of course, they HAVE to launch the Falcon on May the Fourth.)

Looks like after 12, so yeah.

[Nothalogh]

On 5/3/2021 at 5:23 AM, Hannu2 said:

Starliner achieves never any milestones in manned or unmanned operation

Not true, it flew sideways into orbit