So I’ve heard and seen the newest launch, and I thought for a private firm it seemed cool they were able to do it on their own, but I’m scratching my head that people are gushing about this as some hail mary.
I get the engineering required is staggering when it comes to these rocket tests, but NASA and other big space agencies have already done rocket tests and exploring bits of the moon which still astounds me to this day.
Is it because it’s not a multi billion government institution? When I tell colleagues about NASA doing stuff like this yeaaaars ago they’re like “Yea yea but this is different it’s crazy bro”
Can anyone help me understand? Any SpaceX or Tesla fans here?
Not a fan, but it generally boils down not to where they can fly but how they differ in other aspects, mainly cost.
SpaceX is currently the world pioneer in heavy reusable rockets, which is another way to say they are the only ones to launch big stuff up there so cheap, and it gets even better.
They are essentially doing the good side of capitalism - making stuff cheaper - applied to space, one of the most expensive industries in the world.
You’ve supported none of these hollow, false claims.
SpaceX is a hole where government subsidy goes to die without purpose. They said they’d fly multiple manned cargo missions to a city they’d built on a terraformed Mars by 2022. How we doing?
Instead, musk was just served a divorced, sexually assaulted a woman and tried to bribe her with a horse, publicly destroyed twitter for the Saudis and stuck his whole gender affirming surgery reshaped face into trump’s sloppy, bediapered asshole on stage - all while giving him $50 million dollars a month to interfere with an American election and demonize immigrants… as an immigrant.
I might be wrong on the side of cost efficiency, this is just common perception and you can inform me, but where did I tell anything about Musk himself?
I do think he is an asshole, but this is irrelevant to the topic
musk is spacex is musk.
And "I might be wrong"after the fact is a pleasant way to say, “I completely pulled my previous assumption out of my ass while stating it plainly as fact”
Yeah but they’re not and they don’t. Downvote all you want (and you will) but I’m right
Thet didn’t pioneer reusable rockets, that was done decades ago already, and they’re not cheap either. They’re expensive, and they’re floating on government grants so that Elon musk can decide to absolutely obliterate a launch pad and pollute the kilometers wide surroundings.
SpaceX sull hasn’t done anything hat wasn’t done better long before. They do party hard reen a rocket of theirs explodes, which I never saw NASA do. Didn’t watch NASA blow up launch pads because of their CEO either.
They managed to get their super duper new heavy rocket in an uncontrolled spin in low earth orbit! I’m sorry, Noy impressed by results that are less than half of what -again- NASA did in the 60’ and 80’ of the last century.
SpaceX might be much more if it drops it’s current CEO
You might check your research a bit, go beyond Facebook GeForce your “facts”
The(y) didn’t pioneer reusable rockets
They did pioneer reusable orbital liquid fueled rockets, closest before that was the space shuttle’s SRBs (solid fuel, dumped and fished out the ocean).
and they’re not cheap either. They’re expensive,
They are incredibly cheap to operate by rocket standards, the reason why they haven’t lowered the pricetag is:
a. Would absolutely be an anti-trust against them if they didn’t stay close to competitors (monopoly by simply being too good is a thing)
b. Capitalism baby, they have no real competitor so they can make a crazy profit (and because of point A they basically have to unless they want to be sued to oblivion).
and they’re floating on government grants
Contracts* They have government contracts. Government requests a service, SpaceX provides the service, SpaceX gets paid, simple as that. They have gotten subsidies to expand Starlink, but every ISP gets that and even then they have been declined it countless times because AT&T, etc. have lobbied against them.
SpaceX s(ti)ll hasn’t done anything hat wasn’t done better long before.
I’m sorry, what other rockets and space capsules can be reused? What other rocket can be returned directly on the launch pad?
They do party hard (wh)en a rocket of theirs explodes, which I never saw NASA do.
Because they see milestones being completed in the testing program, it’s about where it exploded (it was gonna explode either way, planned or unplanned).
They managed to get their super duper new heavy rocket in an uncontrolled spin in low earth orbit! I’m sorry, Noy impressed by results that are less than half of what -again- NASA did in the 60’ and 80’ of the last century.
NASA sent a 50m tall, 9m wide second stage that was designed to be fully reusable with full-flow staged engines and then transferred super-chilled fuel between tanks? Cool! Which system was that? Would love to read about it!
They are essentially doing the good side of capitalism - making stuff cheaper
I mean yeah, it’s cheaper due to technological advancement, but I fail to see how that’s an effect of capitalism. I’d argue similar developments would have been made even without capitalism. I just don’t think we would have the desire to leave this place without capitalism, but that’s besides the point.
It’s not clear to me how SpaceX has managed to do things for cheaper. Are they cutting labor? QC?
Two things, mainly. They do a lot of the production steps in-house, as opposed to having a web of subcontractors (who have their own subcontractors)for each component. But the big thing is just efficiency of scale. Building and launching 100 rockets per year doesn’t cost 100 times more than one launch per year.
They are able to reuse the rockets
They really haven’t yet. The concept is that reusable rockets will be cheaper than soviet era single use rockets… eventually.
On a surface level it makes sense, taking a rocket refurbishing it, and refueling sounds cheaper. But its not. Not yet anyways. Too complex and expensive presently.
Wait, when did NASA land a fully reusable rocket like fucking Buck Rogers?
Then do it again, but capture it with the freakin’ launch tower?
When did NASA even have a reusable rocket? Oh, the shuttle, the bastardized money pit for NSA/NRO/Air Force, that appears to have been designed to orbit a surveillance satellite chassis, which most people know as Hubble (it’s one of many, this one being used to surveil the universe, instead of the earth).
And the shuttle was a quasi-reusable orbiter, not a rocket.
Did you just talk shit on the shuttle and Hubble? Whaaat?
The shuttle was a massive and unsafe waste of space ship.
Not sure what Hubble did to catch this stray however.
I believe NASA could also refurbish and re-use the SRBs, but the big orange tank was expended with every flight. The Space Shuttle Main Engines are actually still in service, we have a small inventory of them and they either have been or will be flown since 2011.
But I would definitely say that the moment the Falcon Heavy’s two booster stages returned to Cape Canaveral and made synchronized powered landings was the moment 21st century space flight arrived. SpaceX is head and shoulders above what anyone else is doing with reusable rockets and spacecraft. Meanwhile Boeing is in the broom closet huffing Lysol and muttering about quarterly earnings.
They could reuse the SRB but the cost to refurbish them was like 90% of a new one. So it wasn’t terribly useful.
Can I just add that “fucking Buck rogers” is an excellent phrase and all three words can mean sex and when combined they don’t.
Honestly “Buck fucking Rogers” is a pretty big missed opportunity
I don’t know they just launched and caught a rocket yesterday, that’s pretty fucking cool.
I’ve seen so many people grudgingly pretending what they saw wasn’t one of the coolest fucking things they’ve seen all year all because they hate Musk. Like, you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right? By all accounts he’s more of a hindrance and these amazing fears of engineering have been accomplished despite him, not because of him.
I personally don’t really care how big of a douche Musk is, as long as he’s willing to fund these kinds of things.
What did people see that was so cool?
I personally don’t really care how big of a douche Musk is, as long as he’s willing to fund these kinds of things.
He’s not funding this, dude. We are. Space X gets massive government contracts and subsidies. The rest comes from income streams like Starlink.
Catching starship booster was pretty fucking cool.
So I was teaching some kids snowboarding, one kid started talking to me about musk on the chairlift. He tells me that musk is the greatest engineer to ever live. I say that he’s really more of a business man buying up companies. Kid is not convinced. I tell him that the only engineering that musk may have done was software engineering on PayPal. Kid thinks that’s great support of his claim.
Adults and 11 year olds are pretty much the same, so I would say there’s lots of people that think musk is a super genius. Probably a dwindling amount, but there’s a lot of people on earth.
He bought co-founder status at Paypal too IIRC. He was ousted in part because he wanted to rename it “x.com”. Weird that.
He’s literally the chief ticket designer as well as CTO. Deeply involved in the engineering.
Rocket not ticket. Lol
Unfortunately, a lot of smart people are under his spell too. I had to listen to the CEO of a medium sized company wax poetic about how he’s a super genius and the greatest boon to human ingenuity in a century, desperately trying to hold my tongue as I rolled my eyes into the back of my skull.
I think he’s an okay businessman. That’s about as much praise as I’m willing to afford him. He’s definitely charismatic enough to convince a room full of investors that the ideas he’s pitching are worthwhile. Part of that is that his passion for these projects are genuine, and when you put somebody in a room with a passionate guy, the enthusiasm tends to rub off on them just a little.
Most of his investments that garnered him his wealth are just him being at the right place at the right time. Getting in on PayPal when Ecommerce was in it’s infancy and partnering with Ebay to take advantage of shopaholics who just couldn’t help themselves. Buying his way into Tesla right when EVs were primed to take off and pushing hard for an economy class variant that could be mass produced rapidly (in an already-made factory that Toyota closed down, no less!). Founding SpaceX and pouring a shit ton of his own money into rocket and aeronautics R&D right around the time the U.S. Government was looking for cheap contractors to take over the space program. I think the only project he miscalculated on was buying Twitter for way too much money when social media was really starting to stagnate.
His politics are fucking weird, though. Him being a Trump nutter is really not helping his “I’m a genius” image. I find his personality to be pretty repugnant. I already didn’t like him because back in the early days of Tesla he pushed all the management to essentially become slavedrivers for the line workers. I live in California near the plant and I had friends who worked there in production that got nearly worked to death, extreme overtime and weekend shifts, few breaks, the only saving grace was the above average pay that kind of kept them trapped in that hell of a job for way too long. Then the whole Thai soccer team incident happened and I was so over him. Haven’t heard anything about him since that has made me feel like he deserves to be the richest cunt in the fucking universe.
Like, you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right?
Just don’t look up who made the design changes to stainless steel, aerodynamic flaps or tower capture.
you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right?
He actually is. Everyday astronaut has done several interviews with him and the dude knows about rockets and engineering.
True, he appears to be closely involved and does seem to know what he talks about. Especially compared to jeff bezos lol.
He’s the chief rocket designer as well as chief technology officer. He’s deeply involved and is well regarded as an incredible engineer
these amazing fears of engineering
😱
Like, you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right
Not everybody does. I’ve seen some threads, mostly on insta, where people were fallomg over themselves to get on their fucking knees to slob on Elon’s nob. I get that the average insta user isn’t the brightest, but people like that do exist.
And it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, because there is a chance that the hard work of the engineers, laborers, and Shotwell will be used for Elon’s fame throughout history.
So yeah, fuck Elon. The tech is cool as fuck though.
People like space and his company is doing a lot of space
Not a Tesla fan and I absolutely despise the cult around Elon. SpaceX is a bit different though. Luckily with Elon’s many, many side project misadventures he’s pretty hands-off with SpaceX. Ultimately it comes down to being largely engineer driven and given sufficient (but yes, still government) funding to try new things without the scrutiny of direct government agencies. The hours are usually terrible from what I hear, but this varies team to team.
My biggest complaint is that they do lowball engineers using the stock as reasoning for why it’s worth accepting. FWIW historically that has been the case, and many engineers there do effectively have golden handcuffs. But expecting infinite golden handcuff level growth forever is unrealistic.
I’m not very impressed by nasa. What have they done in the last 50 years? If anything, they seem to be sleeping.
I honestly don’t think they have the desire to make earth a space traveling civilization. They are just looking for bacteria and will continue to do so for hundreds of years. It’s all so pointless.
Didn’t they just send a rocket to Europa?
Looking forward to blurry pictures you can’t even see what it is, and then having nasa proudly state that we are looking at ice on Europa.
Kinda like how blurry those mars pictures were huh
Those pictures that look exactly like earth pictures?
I agree they were not blurry though. :)
Oh god…
NASA makes extensive use of contractors. The moon hardware was largely designed, built and tested by private companies.
Lots of people here with very well fleshed out takes. Mine is simpler though, and by no means mutually exclusive:
Good marketing.
They know how to advertise themselves as a brand. They’re easy to follow on any social media platform. For one or another, people are going to be looking at them- either in admiration, comparing it to others, just to be critical, or simply out of curiosity.
Imagine you want to build a cabin in a very remote place in Alaska.
Getting there is quite difficult, you did it a few times in the 60’s but the path is so bad that you had to throw the truck away each time (around $45,000 per trip, for the truck + gas)
You are still planning to build your cabin but having to buy a new truck for each trip is not great, plus the fact that only one company can make this SLS truck so you can’t get more than once a year.
Building a cabin in these circumstances is close to impossible.
Now SpaceX makes a new Starship truck that can go all the way AND be reused. The trip from the hardware store to the build site now only costs you around $100 for the gas plus truck expenses AND you can now do the trip to the hardware store multiple times a day !
Now building the cabin becomes way more accessible.
Replace the Alaskan cabin with a scientific base on the moon or Mars and multiply the amounts by 100,000 and you have an approximation of the situation
Now SpaceX makes a new Starship truck that can go all the way AND be reused.
Not much of a spacex fan, but the fact that they were able to prove reusability on the falcon 9 and starship when the main players - ULA, Boeing, fuck, everyone said it was decades away IF EVER gets my attention. it illustrates how there are blind spots in all industries where people have to be shown what is possible because they’ll never believe it and that dogma can stifle innovation for ages when left unchallenged.
NASA could have done this if they had the budget. Instead we’d rather give huge tax cuts to billionaires so they can build a private sector NASA to charge NASA exorbitant sums to use their private vehicles. It’s the most asinine and innefficient way of going about it.
Space X has less bureaucracy and can pursue other commercial ventures. The amount nasa pays is high, but it’s still cheaper than continuing their old program
Plus NASA can’t afford the risk. If SpaceX failed, no big deal. We would have lost some money and everyone would ridicule Musk. If NASA tried it and failed, they would not only have lost five times the money, but would be parylized by investigations, audits, cutbacks. NASA does a LOT more than just rockets and it would all be at risk
Plus notice NASA has been investing in multiple commercial programs where possible. 3 big rocket programs. Two crew capsules and multiple cargo capsules. Multiple space stations, etc. NASA could not have created this redundancy on their own
No, NASA has the budget. They already spent $50 billion on the development of SLS and Orion, Starship development cost is estimated to be around $10 billion.
So in theory with the money they spent on SLS they could have built 5 starship program.
The problem is that NASA has to follow political interests, sometimes the political interests align with technical interest and we get great things like the Apollo program.
They also have a very tight tolerance of failure. Every failure made in the engineering process brings more and more scrutiny by those holding the purse strings in Washington.
Specially this. How space x handles failures is a very hard nono in my book. “But we test in the field” is what space x says, and as a software developer its like saying “we test in production”.
Yes youll get something use able faster, but its way way more costly in the long run and is nasty in between.
My arse they cant test this stuff on earth. We have simulations, models, calculations, test, everything. Yes, things can and will sometimes still fail when going in production ( in flight ) but you want to lower the risk of it failing cause its costly as fuck.They dont seem to care though.
Also, im not saying what they are building towards is bad, it really really isnt, but their methods is… Bad
Iterative development like that isn’t uncommon in engineering as a whole. Simulation can get you a long way but there’s a hard limit to that. You don’t think spacex designed a starship to use without running extensive simulations to try and figure it out before hand right?
Sometimes you need to test in the field just to find out what bits you missed. Structural engineers will simulate and calculate extensively but they’ll still build scale models and test pieces because it’s the most reliable and effective way to ensure you’re covering as many bases as possible.
Its not an either/or situation here. They’re doing the testing and simulation and applying it IRL to find out where things break.
As a software developer i know what iterative development means, its in our blood and brains ( or at least it should be ). Simulations can indeed only get you so far, and i agree sometimes you have to make things and take a plunge. However, and i would like to be really wrong here so correct me if im wrong, but other companies like nasa, do not just shoot shit up in space and hope for the best. They arent allowed to do so for a reason. They test and calculate everything very rigoursly to make sure itll hold up as expected. From thruster power, resistance to continues extreme heat from reentry, …
All of that they do here, on earth, before shooting anything up into space. Otherwise things like the rover on mars would have needed like 20 tries instead of 2.These are things that looks like spacex is just throwing out the window.
To take it back to software development, they are doing an iterative development ( which is very good for what they are doing! ) but their testing before production/release of software is so basic theyll just see how it responds out there. Thats a huge nono to me if youre going to end up crashing all those rockets in the sea killing a shit ton of nature in the process. Sometimes the means dont justify the costs to me, and this is one of them. Yes, the booster catching was nice to see ( eventhough it nearly ended badly ) and its idea is very good and needed, but the way to get there is…messy.
That’s a good point.
SpaceX is not run by Elon and he’s kept from being involved closely by a buffer of people that keep him from getting too close to making any “elon” level changes.
SpaceX is successful despite Musk, not because of. And the woman who runs it knows that and keeps Musk away from any important decisions or impacts.
So the stuff they’re doing is legit, cool aerospace stuff.
It’s just not something Musk should take credit for. He does/will. But he shouldn’t. He’s a hack.
I’m guessing they let him name the Of Course I Still Love You?
Those names are taken from Iain M. Banks’ Culture sci-fi series.
Which is hilarious, as the eponymous Culture is the epitome of luxury gay space anarchism. Pan-sexual, non-monogamous space hippies that can (and do) change their biological sex just by thinking about it. People so past the idea of “gender” that they consider giving any serious weight to the concept barbaric.
I know it’s a rhetorical question: but is Elon stupid or something?
That’s not true in the least. He is CEO, CTO and Chief rocket designer. He’s deeply involved in every step
“deeply involved in every step” absolutely not, because if he was it would be painfully obvious.
He can give himself whatever titles he likes, that doesn’t mean he makes any positive technical contribution.
Watch a few of the multi hour interviews he given while raining through explaining everything. He knows what he’s doing if you’ve not been paying attention. Lots of reasons to not like him but your completely wrong on this one
I have watched them. He’s just repeating things. He has no grasp of engineering or astrophysics at a fundamental level. He is a sales guy.
The same is true for his software engineering skills. They are novice level, at best. Watching his engineering brainstorm sessions at Twitter was a painful experience. He only knows how to talk the talk. He constantly misuses key tech jargon and design patterns. His engineering group will literally visibly cringe whenever he makes a suggestion.
You worked with him at Twitter?
My dude.
I’m a Principal software engineer with 27 years in the industry. I run a team of highly tenured, extremely badass engineers for an extremely large enterprise corporation with 30k+ employees.
I know what I’m on about when it comes to software development.
I’ve watched the musk interviews and behind the scenes brainstorming sessions for the Twitter 2.0 idea. He’s a hack.
What are your qualifications for praising him?
He’s far too busy with X, Trump, and his relationship drama to have any time to do anything close to being involved. Of the company’s he’s bought or been involved in creating SpaceX is toward the bottom of his priorities from what I hear.
Nice
But he shouldn’t. He’s a hack.
He’s also a stupid doodoo brain, with poop and pee in his pants! Cacca doodoo!
Gee wizz mate, calm the frik down, we don’t need that language around here!
Have you seen their boosters land? It very much IS impressive. They basically made reusable rockets viable, which is a huge step for more affordable space flight.
Also their raptor engine is a marvel of engineering.
I hate Elon just as much as the next guy, but pretending that this wasn’t a marvel of engineering is really disingenuous. People with intelligence beyond my comprehension made that a reality, and just because the company had his face on it, it doesn’t make it any less impressive
Disclaimer: Fuck Elon Musk and all the shady shit he’s been pulling off.
That said, this is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in terms of the potential it holds to shape the future.
Up until 5 short years ago we had:
- No main booster recovery
- No rocket nearly as powerful as this one
- No successful flight of a full-flow stage engine
- Nobody even considering the catch with chopsticks thing
- No private company testing super heavy lift vehicles (BO is about to enter the chat as well)
- No push for reusability at all
This was all built on top of the incredible engineering of NASA, but this one launch today has all of the above ticked.
This is like making the first aeroplane that’s able to land and be flown again. SpaceX uses this example as well, like, imagine how expensive any plane ticket would have to be if you had to build a brand new A380 every single time people wanted to fly and then crashing it into the sea.
Going to space is EXPENSIVE. If this program succeeds it will both massively reduce the cost to space and spin off hundreds of companies looking to do the same in various ways.
Look at any new rocket currently in development, they all include some level of reusability in the design and that’s all thanks to the incredible engineers of SpaceX paving the way, first with Falcon 9 and now with Starship.
We’re talking industrial revolution levels of progress and new frontiers in our lifetimes, which is very, very exciting.
A bit of a timeline correction. The falcon 9 started landing succesfully in 2016. So 8 years ago but your argument still stands.
That can’t be right! 2016 was just… Fuck I’m getting old so fast
no rocket as powerful as this one.
So I’m confused on this because people still seem to be using Starships’s old estimates of 100 tons to LEO orbit, which the SLS can put 145 tons to LEO.
Then 6 months ago Musk got on stage and updated the specs to Say that Starships’s current design can only do 40-50 tons.
This feels awfully familiar for anyone that’s seen early Tesla specs/presentations/promises and I can’t help but wonder as to the validity of everyone saying SpaceX is mostly insulated from Musk’s “influence.”
To be very honest even if Starship is able to only lift 50 tons, which I’m sure they’ll be able to hit 100/150 tons eventually. The huge difference in cost would easily cover the extra times Starship would have to fly, compared to SLS. Considering each flight of a SLS will be around 4 billion dollars.
I think they mean the “superheavy” (somehow a more stupid name than starship) booster rocket is the most powerful. I’m pretty sure by thrust metrics it is. It’s just that the superheavy-starship system can’t put much up in LEO because the starship is huge and heavy on its own.
If you put an expendable second stage on top of the superheavy booster instead of a starship it could put a lot more up to LEO.
The Saturn 5 was able to lift 141t to LEO.
The Space shuttle was reusable.
The Saturn V could lift 141t to LEO…once. Also it’ll be at least another 5 years before we reach a stable max power version of Starship.
For example the Falcon 9 v1.0 first flew in 2010 and the current Block 5 version first flew in 2018 with more than double the LEO capacity when fully expendable.
If they configure Starship as fully expendable it can lift 250t to LEO (per SpaceX, so grain of salt there to be fair).
As for the shuttle, I love it to bits and I’m sad it had to be grounded. It was refurbishable but not really reusable and the massive liquid fuel tank was discarded in each flight.
I hate Musk and his personal everything, but Like SpaceX. However, when people gush about reusability, they seem to forget the 135 Space Shuttle missions (2 fatal failures , yes.). All done with 5 vehicles. Yes expensive etc, but truly amazing.
Also, I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary. Impressive? Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right. There’d be no NASA by now.
The shuttle was reusable in the same way a soyuz capsule is. And NASA very much crashed shuttle prototypes on the way.
The space shuttle was technically reusable, but not in a way that was beneficial to anyone. The time and cost of refurbishing the shuttle after every launch was so much they may as well have built a brand new disposable rocket for each mission.
SpaceX may have built the first reusable rocket that actually saves money
I thought it was the boosters that were in retrospect pointlessly refurbished and would have been cheaper to make new.
Are you sure it was also the shuttle itself being cheaper to make new? The shuttle also took something like 6 months to refurb. Reusable, but not rapid.
Not remake the entire shuttle, but to simply design a disposable rocket and build a hundred of those, instead of a space plane.
Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
NASA spent about 50 Billion today-dollars developing (not launching) the shuttle program and that went to private contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, United Space, etc.) Starship has a long way to go to hit those numbers.
I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary
Really? Nothing? Many people said what Falcon 9 now does on a regular basis could not be done. No one was even trying. The closest plans were still going to land horizontally and went nowhere. Now, you have to explain why you’re not landing your booster, and what your plans are to fix that going forward: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/international/2024/09/11/china-wants-to-replace-jeff-bezos-as-musks-greatest-space-threat/
They quite literally revolutionized the space industry in terms of the cost to launch to orbit.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right. There’d be no NASA by now.
Yet another way they’ve revolutionized the industry. Almost everyone is doing expendable tests now so that they can move forward quickly. Columbia started construction in 1975, launched for the first time in 1981. When they launched it, it was a fully decked out space shuttle and they put the whole thing on the line - including two astronauts. Imagine NASA trying to do that now. They’d be grounded so hard they’d be jealous of Mankind having a table to land on.
I tried to explain to someone months ago that SpaceX testing things to failure was part of their success, and gave an example like purposely leaving heat shield tiles off starship to see what happened, or launching a version of starship that didn’t have all the improvements that the next starship had, and they then came back saying that is exactly why they (and other people) hate SpaceX. They don’t know everything up front and they should!
Like SpaceX. However, when people gush about reusability, they seem to forget the 135 Space Shuttle missions (2 fatal failures , yes.). All done with 5 vehicles. Yes expensive etc, but truly amazing.
The Space Shuttle was a marvel of engineering. But while it was reusable, it wasn’t actually good at it. Reusability was supposed to bring down cost and turnaround time and it did neither. And not just that, it was actually much more expensive than competing expendable rockets. Plus, it had lots of other issues like being dangerous as fuck. You couldn’t abort at all for major parts of the ascent and there was the whole issue with the fragile heat protection tiles, both of which caused fatalities.
I think part of the reason why people aren’t impressed by the Shuttle anymore is because it flew 135 missions. It’s 40 year old technology. And it’s not like SpaceX are just doing the same thing again 40 years later, they’re reusing their rockets in a completely different way, which no one else had done before. And in doing so they seem to be avoiding most of the disadvantages that came with the Shuttle’s design.
Also, I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary. Impressive? Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
Sure, I wouldn’t say that no one else could do this with a similar amount of money (and the will to actually do it). Whether you want to call it revolutionary or not is subjective, but they’re definitely innovating a lot more than any other large player in spaceflight. The Falcon 9 is a huge step forward for rocket reusability and SpaceX have also been the first to fly a full-flow staged combustion engine as well as the most powerful rocket ever. They’re making spaceflight exciting again after like 40 years of stagnation and I think that’s what resonates with people.
I think your last sentence answers the OP in a nutshell. There’s nothing more to it than that, and there needn’t be.
The Space Shuttle missions did not recycle the rockets, not to mention that the SpaceX missions were rated super-heavy: Only Apollo has done this before in America.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right.
You think they didn’t?
The Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) from shuttle launched were recycled. They parachuted into the ocean after being jettisoned and were recovered and refused. They just didn’t land themselves. The external fuel tank was not reused.
There was an extensive amount of refurbishment required to re-use the SRBs. Not to mention they had to be physically recovered, and salt water certainly made the process more complicated.
The shuttle itself needed each of its heat shield tiles replaced, which due to the shape of the shuttle were all unique.
The fuel tank was not reused.
The shuttle was meant to be a leap forward in rocket reusability, but it didn’t really pan out that way. There’s good reason the program was scrapped and not replaced with another space plane.
The Starship booster has the potential to launch multiple times per day. The only refurbishment period is how long it takes to refuel it.
Agreed. As I mentioned elsewhere, Falcon 9 is still revolutionary, but I was just clarifying that the SRBs were recycled, as that is sometimes forgotten.
TIL, thanks. That’s just a small part of the rocket though
Between the orbiter (reused), the boosters (reused), and the external fuel tank (not reused), which parts are not “just a small part” (in terms of technology/complexity/cost, not physical size)?
I take the part about “a small part” back as that’s a misleading term for what I meant: The Super Heavy booster is much bigger in both technology/complexity and physical size and has many more parts than the old space shuttle rockets as it needs to carry the weight of two space shuttle orbiters. Plus, spaceplane is weird.
Remember, unless we’re talking about Enterprise, “space shuttle rockets” includes the orbiter itself. The orbiter’s main engines were where all that fuel from the external tank was going, after all! From that perspective, I would argue that the main “space shuttle rocket” was definitely much more complex than the Super Heavy booster, because the crew stuff, cargo stuff, spaceplane stuff, etc. was integrated into it.
I feel like your criticism of the shuttle system being less reusable than advertised might have been more applicable if we were talking about the Soviet Buran (which indeed used expendable Energia rockets to reach orbit), not NASA’s shuttles.
You think they didn’t?
No, they didn’t. Enterprise conducted 5 approach and landing tests where she was carried aloft by a 747 and then detached to glide to a landing, three with that aerodynamic tailcone thing, two with mockup main engines to simulate a return from space. Though there were issues with PIO revealed during the last flight, all five of Enterprise’s approach and landing test flights resulted in successful landings.
I would not describe any space shuttle as “crashed.” Challenger exploded during launch and Colombia broke up during re-entry; destroyed in service yes, crashed no. Enterprise, Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour all survived service and are on display at museums. No other airworthy space shuttles were built. Explorer/Independence and Inspiration are 1:1 scale models, and Pathfinder was basically a boilerplate meant for testing and incapable of flight.
- Okay, I stand corrected, NASA tests probably didn’t disintegrate. But something to consider is that SpaceX has always expected that the pretty early tests would fail as you can see in their statements.
- The Starship tests didn’t crash either. The first three disintegrated at different points in time and the fourth succeeded (albeit with one engine failure out of 33 and slight damage on reentry).
NASA blew up a LOT of shit before the space shuttle program. Who can forget Ranger 1 aka Stayputnik that blew up on the pad? But I’m especially thinking of a Little Joe launch, which I think was intended to test the Apollo launch escape tower, which developed an uncontrolled roll and threw itself apart. It was actually considered by NASA to be a double success because the escape system functioned correctly when the rocket was legitimately out of control.
Also, the Space Shuttle was THE WORST idea. It was as safe as barb wire contact lenses; it’s God’s greatest miracle that it only killed 15 people.
Frankly I’m surprised that I couldn’t find any disintegrated SLS flight tests with what happened to Colombia. There was something about Orbiter Integrated Tests but I couldn’t find some sort of itemized record on it.
I refrained from bringing up ancient stuff like Ranger because that’s a much higher R&D milestone to surpass.
The space shuttle never flew unmanned. Enterprise did all her glide tests manned, and STS-1 and STS-2 were flown by 2-man crews.
John Young, commander of STS-1, was informed by fellow astronaut Tony England that the House had included the space shuttle program in the budget on April 21, 1972. At the time, he was standing in the Descartes Highlands on the surface of the Moon in his capacity as Commander of Apollo 16.
The space shuttle wasn’t as reusable as it was claimed to be.
Each airframe required massive refurbishment after every flight.
And the “crashes” you’re talking about were part of the project process, articles that were never going to be any more than test objects to begin with.
NASA crashed a lot of stuff, unintentionally. Three off of the top of my head, killed 15 astronauts, all which were preventable (not to mention the launch pad failures getting to Apollo).
NASA/NACA/Air Force crashed a lot of stuff along the way.
Ffs they knew Columbia had a tile problem, and said “it’ll be OK”. They knew it had been too cold for the booster seals on Discovery, and launched anyway.
Pedantic, but the shuttles were orbiters not rockets
The big ass rocket engines in the back fueled by the massive fuel tank may disagree with you
No, the shuttle ALONE is not a launch vehicle. It’s an orbiter. They are apples to oranges.
It does not power itself off the pad, it uses boosters. So comparing the boosters to the SpaceX stuff is most relevant
Both are doing impressive things, but only one is deliberately using media to build hype.
They are also very different organizations with very different goals.
NASA is focussed on science, they are trying to learn as much as possible about our solar system and the universe.
SpaceX by contrast is focussed on engineering. They aren’t trying to find life on Mars, they are trying to build the ferry service to it.
When NASA built rockets back in the 60’s, space flight was a science problem. We needed to figure out if it was even possible to do so. Can we even get a capsule into space? Can humans survive in zero gravity? Nowadays space flight is an engineering problem. We know it’s possible, we know the math, but can we actually build those things?
Also, economics of the equation are important. NASA is funded by american tax payer money, so politics gets involved. SpaceX is a business, so normal ameircan capitalism applies here.
