Unbelievable! Watched with my 4 year old, he was full of questions about why the ocean was turning to nighttime, what satellites are, about going to another planet, about the earth being so blue and if we “ever even knew that before”.
This is the same age when I started watching Star Trek (original series). To say it had a profound impact on my interest in science and ethics is an understatement. English wasn't even my first language, but I think I picked up a lot of the themes, and my interest in science, tech and ethical philosophy continues to this day. I actually wrote this bit about introducing children to Star Trek (answer is a bit dated now): https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/6719/what-is-the-r...
Dated indeed, as nobody is interested in Star Trek anymore since they've actively ruined the IP.
Heck, the person spearheading star Trek vision has gone on public records essentially saying he never liked star Trek and that's why he's gonna make it more like star wars....
You're talking about the movies, and yeah, that has failed. They're talking about yet another one, and I'm baffled, but we'll see where (if anywhere) it goes.
But the Paramount+ stuff is doing pretty well. Strange New Worlds is very popular. So was Lower Decks. The last season of Picard, at least, gave fans a lot of what they had been looking for. They've got a new series coming out, and what little we know is that it has a bang-up cast. (Not that that's sufficient; Discovery did very badly by some very talented actors. But it's a good start.)
So Trek: The IP is still going pretty strong. At least as well as Star Wars, which has also been hit-and-miss.
Take a blanket, drive in an area with minimal light pollution, lay on the ground and watch the sky with your kid(s).
I did that with my grandma as a kid and to this day I don't think I've done anything more relaxing and interesting, it's like watching a fire or waves, it never gets old
So awesome, I hope to have kids one day precisely for this reason! One of my fondest memories is my dad quenching my curiosity (with a drawing, to boot!) of how satellite dishes work when I was 6 or 7.
My kids learning to ride a bike - the moment you release your hand for the first time and they just go and go. When my son learned checkers, and then when he beat me the first time. When my daughter told her first original joke at a family dinner and everyone died laughing.
The moments truly never stop. Every single day they amaze and surprise you, fill you with so much love and joy and appreciation.
One time Bill Gates was asked what gave him joy and without missing a beat he said his children. Nothing is greater, nothing gives you more meaning, nothing is more ultimate than the sacrifice and patience and wonder and fulfillment of having children.
There's a moment of abject horror, fascination, wonder, surprise, and pride when you suddenly recognize yourself in your children; a moment, a word, even just a holding of the head and you're staring into a mirror ...
It is a complete shift in world view. In BC (before children) you lived one way, then in AD (after delivery) you live another. Complete and utter change in priorities, outlook, experience, meaning, fundamental shift that those without children cannot understand
And people with children cannot understand what it is to live a whole life in full freedom. I'm over 50 years old and I fully love my life as it is and have never regretted my choice of not having children (and never will).
Not that my choice is suitable for everybody, but the most common choice is not suitable for everybody either.
This is a matter of personal preference of course. But the way you phrased it, "a whole life in full freedom" tells me you think it's either all or nothing. If you can't enjoy the full freedom in the last years of your life, does it take away from the previous years?
For better or worse people with kids know both lives, people without kids only know one. It's like saying "you'll never know how it is to eat an entire cake". Maybe you ate much of it, that counts for something. Now you're on to the next cake. You might bite more than you can chew but this goes for everything.
The value of this freedom is the highest when you're young, experimenting, putting your life on some track. Being "free" at 65 doesn't have anywhere near the same value as it does at 20. Once you do it (almost) all, everything else becomes more of the same doesn't it? That cake I was mentioning? The first bite tasted a whole lot better than the last.
There's no right or wrong, everyone knows their preference and personal circumstances. But your explanation felt like a knee-jerk reaction.
Hard disagree, I lived my life without children, the hedonism and lack of responsibility. And you can live this until death. And I didn’t discount such a life in my writing. I stated that having children fundamentally changes you, in a way you will never understand
Given State of World, my take on it is there's far more hedonism and irresponsibility in having kids.
It's nice they make you happy, but will their lives be happy?
The evidence says it's very unlikely.
My choice is not to inflict that experience on another sentient being. I'm really not seeing anything at the moment that encourages me to question that.
For a different perspective: the world today is not perfect, but when I compare the current state of the world with how our ancestors lived from the Roman empire to the last century I think my kids have a high chances to do much better than that average.
My direct ancestors lived through some harrowing times without losing their will to live and if they were alive today they would likely feel this is a great time to be alive. My 2c.
And the very act of hope that having kids is (and it is a strong act of hope, no denial) changes your outlook on life and the state of the world, too.
Sometimes to more abject despair, but often to more hope.
People shouldn't be forced at gunpoint to have children, but they also shouldn't be dragged down into insecurity and despair that it's financially impossible.
> Given State of World, my take on it is there's far more hedonism and irresponsibility in having kids.
Compared to what? We're living in some of the best times humanity as a whole ever had. Deciding en-masse to not have kids is the irresponsible thing because it literally condemns humanity to extinction and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're cursing the world because you stubbed your toe. Social media inflicted this kind of feeling a lot over the last couple of decades.
> but will their lives be happy?
You'd have to ask them. Humans overwhelmingly choose to live so you could conclude that they prefer existing over the alternative. Happiness is very relative and you'd have a hard time defining it even for yourself, let alone for your hypothetical unborn child.
> The evidence says it's very unlikely.
There's absolutely no evidence to support anything you said. It's your personal preference and you're entitled to it. Why don't you own your choice instead of putting it on fictitious evidence that your unborn child will be unhappy?
> My choice is not to inflict that experience on another sentient being
Whatever you pick you're making that choice for you, not for them.
And at least in my experience, children do not get existential despair about the state of the world until adulthood, unless it is given to them from outside forces.
Children don't know the world exists beyond their town until they're instructed on it!
You can choose to end your bloodline, and your opinion is the human race should go extinct now like a race of eunuchs have taken over. But I could personally not disagree more
Sure we do, not everybody got married and got kids at 20.
And I mean proper life, backpacking for months around south east asia, himalaya, diving in remote tropical islands, doing extreme mountain sports to the fullest capacity. You know, stuff that adds easily many decades of life actually experienced.
It doesnt compare, it cant.
But there is a catch - to have a chance for actually being a good long term stable parent (and also having and raising kids in a similar way), 2 balanced individuals need to meet and be close to each other on many levels, and then keep working on it. Something I dont see often around me unfortunately in these me-me-me times, with corresponding consequences. Better having no kids than be a miserable parent, raising another miserable generation of permanent cripples.
Just wait till you hit 60s and the pool of nice things you can do keeps shrinking dramatically, I've heard such phrases before and then heard regrets some time later.
As a fellow manyKid™ enjoyer I know what you mean. Even your "free time" is guided and directed by kids, and when you DO get some time alone with the wife or a good friend, you talk about the kids.
It really is a change that's not quite possible to convey with words.
Do your kids have Social Security Numbers yet? Let's ask Elon to use his privileged mode on xAI to have it characterize their socio economic relations among all Americans that have existed since The Great Deal, shall we?
To respond in such a moronic, unthinking, truly absurd and ridiculous way to such a beautiful comment is bizarre and unnecessary beyond human understanding
Even Steve Jobs, who was by most accounts a pretty cold fish (his many other qualities notwithstanding), said something similar. By memory, he said something like: With your kids, it's as if they carry your heart around outside of your body. Which I found super touching and apt.
"Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." -- Elizabeth Stone
Oh I will. My boy just turned 4, so he’s a little young for video games right now. Maybe 5 or 6? But we played spaceships in the park all evening. Looking forward to gaming age for sure!
Well that's part of what makes this interesting. Some part of it did go boom. Looked like a COPV or something exploded sometime after payload deployment
It was said somewhere that one of the previous ditches in the ocean. the booster remained a little too intact and floated into Mexican waters creating a navigational hazard. So the idea was also to make sure it broke up on splashdown.
Not quite, but it's a major milestone. Still quite a bit of work to go on the rapid reusability part (burnt flaps, oxidized body, missing tiles, tile waterproofing). Starship might actually deliver payload to orbit on flight 11.
They mentioned in the stream they were intentionally stressing the ship on reentry.
But yes, “rapid reusability” is a ways off. I expect they’ll be spending weeks inspecting and repairing ship and booster before reflight for a few years, but they’ll drive it down over time.
TBD how “rapid” the reusability ends up being in the end.
The push for rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships.
It seems like if they can get boosters to rapid reuse (a much easier goal), and churn out ships at sufficient scale, they can afford to take time inspecting/refurbing each ship as part of a pipelined approach.
> The push for rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships.
Elon always talks about a city on Mars but seeing for the first time the gargantuan size of Starfactory it dawned on me that SpaceX are true believers. It is still a big IF, because the dimension of the mission is absolutely bonkers, but IF the goal is to send every two years hundreds of Starships to Mars (everyone needing around 3-4 tanker missions) you need large scale production of ships.
Ten years ago every expert said a hundred launches a year was utterly impossible. Five years ago they said it was unlikely. SpaceX have launched more than a hundred times this year already.
Anyone who thinks they can’t do stuff is not seeing the whole picture.
The stated goal was always to have a lot of ships, and also to have them be reusable.
Starship is a fuel-hungry beast - it can get to LEO by itself, but it needs a lot of tanker launches to go beyond. And if your goal is a Mars colony, you don't want to be limited to one launch per launch window.
Their scenario is that the ships are mostly going to be "fuel mules" to ferry propellant to the ship that is destined to go somewhere (i.e. Mars) - so if you want an armada to travel to another planet, you need a much larger fleet of supply vehicles to prepare your armada. Hence the need to mass produce them.
> rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships
As you say, they reïnforce each other by speeding up the learning curve and deployment of learning to the real world, serving as both a bolstering of the product and experimental validation.
Not at odds at all. It doesn't matter how fast you can make them if each one costs $5-10 million. Much better to amortize that over 100+ flights and not waste the booster.
Once the tanker version is needed, a ship ship could go up 5+ times a day. The logistics of backfilling a pad with a new ship is much more involved
I didn't mean this ship and booster, I mean in a year or so when they're done with the test phase and frequently launching Starlink satellites on Starship.
Mildly interesting to be exposed to the world of 'YouTube engineers' who are derisory of the real-world engineering success of SpaceX. Informed criticism is fine but when you're just openly calling a world class engineering company 'stupid' then you deserve to be ignored (except, obviously, by everyone suffering from MDS).
Thunderfoot is a long-time Musk project hater for some reason. That's now his specialty which probably appeals to his audience. There are plenty of equally uninformed youtubers with glowing praise for SpaceX. Just like the real news, people divide themselves into bubbles of whatever reinforces their beliefs.
The nice thing about SpaceX’s rapid iteration philosophy (and having Starlink as its first “customer”) is that they can account for engine unreliability by building extra margin into early launches, fly with reduced payloads, collect data on failures, and improve the reliability over time.
They did that too, but they also had an early engine failure. No big deal, they're redundant, and the booster they caught during flight 8 suffered worse.
A composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) seems to have exploded on the upper stage during reentry. It did significant damage to the rear flap and it made some dents in the engines too.
Are the tiles on Starship going to need replacing after flight like the Shuttle? There isn’t a permanent material that can handle all the heat yet? Serious question, my space expertise is only from KSP.
The intention is to need minimal to no replacement between flights. Part of the purpose of these tests is to figure out how to do that.
The tiles themselves work fine, but how to best mount them? where do you need them? Can you make them thinner? do you need anything underneath? what kind of gap do you need between tiles? Those are the things they're hoping to understand in these tests.
The Shuttle tiles were technically reusable AFAIK. The issue was that they were very fragile and the Shuttle for the most part could not tolerate any heat getting through the tiles (being aluminum), so every flight needed to have a perfect heat shield. Starship is a bit better on that end, as stainless steel is a lot more capable of tolerating heat and I think the tiles are a bit less fragile. Still, would be ideal to figure out how to not drop any tiles.
Would note that Shuttle tiles were never mass manufactured. The Shuttle’s shape meant lots of unique tiles. And its lack of mass production meant each tile was basically an artisanal object.
SpaceX aims to reüse tiles over many flights. But even if some tiles need replacing after each launch, that doesn’t tank Starship per se.
Maybe even throwing a used ship away as scrap metal away would work as a business case. The expensive part are the rocket engines, if they can be reused much would be won.
> every flight needed to have a perfect heat shield.
Which is a little easier to do when your craft is shaped like a plane and not a simple cylinder. The loading and positioning were easier to model and then achieve in flight.
The shuttle also flew with repair kits and glue that could be used in a vacuum. The astronauts could perform an EVA and work to replace damaged tiles and there were published plans on how to do so. NASA unfortunately figured out very late that using the Canadarm to image the bottom of the shuttle immediately on achieving orbit was extremely necessary given the icing problems of the external tank.
I thought that while the spare tiles did exist, there was never an actual safe procedure for replacing tiles (that didn't require being docked to the ISS) they were only carried to be available when the choice was between losing the entire crew on reentry or risking a crew member?
I don't quite understand how the airplane shape made it easier to model the loading and positioning? (Not saying you're wrong, just doesn't fit my intuition and I'm curious).
My understanding is that Shuttle didn't have to answer the questions about tile gaps etc because it used glue rather than mechanical attachments, if that's what you mean by positioning.
> I don't quite understand how the airplane shape made it easier to model the loading and positioning? (Not saying you're wrong, just doesn't fit my intuition and I'm curious).
You can approximate space shuttle reentry to roughly a 2d surface entering atmosphere. Because of airplane shape, the tile side faces atmosphere and the plasma goes around plane edges. Where as starship being cylinder doesn't have any separation boundary and plasma roughly goes more than 180% of the cylinder.
IR reflectivity of stainless must help a good deal for the unshielded parts. I wonder if the internal surface is painted or finished in a way to help radiate the heat away internally.
Is there any active cooling of any of the skin that we know of?
Remains to be seen. That's what they want, but it's never been done before. (edit: clarity: they do NOT want to replace them after each flight.)
They're currently experimenting with things such as actively cooled tiles (which I presume were installed on this ship, since they were on the last two).
I personally think the likely best case is that they'll have to go over the ship and replace some here and there before launching again.
Even if they don't get to a no replacement....they still already have a massive improvement over Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle basically every tile was unique, and and the pattern was different between the different orbiters. A good bit of the months of refurbishment of the Orbiter between flights was heat shield repairs. SpaceX has already shown from when they completely retiled one of the ships. they have cut down the time to replace a single tile down to minutes instead of the hours it took with the shuttle. The Tiles are also alot more standardized so they can be more mass produced than shuttle tiles.
I think there are still a few unique tiles on Starship around joints and such IIRC, but either way, the number of tile types is much smaller for Starship.
To my thinking, the sane sequence will be launch; catch; survey and maintain (heat shield and other items); and then launch again 24 hours later if everything checks out.
And that will be an absolutely massive improvement over what we have today, let alone what we had with the Shuttle.
Landed on target in the Indian Ocean! Engines relit successfully and it touched down vertically (and then promptly exploded, which I guess was the plan :)
This sequence of events (even though expected!) reminds me a lot of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail speech:
> Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.
(although I suppose this ship fell over, then burned down, and then sank into the ocean)
EDIT: made it. I suppose it was meant to blow up on landing in the ocean? It would have been nice to examine the burned components — but perhaps they had not intended to retrieve it that far away anyway.
The walls are 3mm thick steel, they're very likely to buckle and tear when it tips over, the residual methane vapor gets out and there are plenty of sources of heat to ignite it.
They don't claim to have any plans of recovering the wreckage, but they have previously fished up wreckage for study, so it's still possible they decide to do that.
Maybe just some part of the construction (possibly even just the strinngers or simply some nook or cranny that is fully eclosed) got presurized or was pressurized for the whole time by just air that could not escape.
That would be fine for the fligt so far - until it started to heat up from re-entry heating. The stainless steel would be still fine if heated to hundreads of degrees, but the expanding gass could maybe make the enclosed volume to rupture ?
Or a mix of methane and oxygen accumulating somwhere and exploding - but that seems less likely to me in a near vacuum environment during re-entry.
IIRC they have pressure vessels in the lower fins with some of the gasses they need. Maybe one of those was damaged and burst. To me it looked like something blew out the bottom of one of the fins (maybe got too hot) and hit the skirt.
They announced before the flight that they intentionally removed tiles from some areas around the lower flaps specifically to get data on what happens when tiles fail, such as how much burn occurs, how quickly and what type. It appears it was successful in showing varying amounts of burn through and damage in the areas that were intentionally left under-protected.
The part that burned was damaged from early on, likely at, or right after, separation. So the integrity of that flap was already very compromised. I actually thought the flap would disintegrate on re-entry with that kind of damage. But no, they even put full stress on it, unfolding it while supersonic through the atmosphere, like a champ.
So the starlink simulators its deploying right now are empty platters that will burn up in the atmosphere from what I understand. Next missions they’ll be real statlink sats. Are these different than regular sats? It sounds like they’re able to handle more bandwidth but I don’t know.
Starship will be deploying the next gen v3 satellites, which weigh about 2 tons each. A single Starship launch with 60 of these deploys more capacity than 20 launches of a Falcon 9.
The figures they've been talking of the ideal cost per launch of starship are even more insane. I'm sure some of it is hype farming on Twitter but if they get the cost to less then $1000/kg it would be incredible.
Yes; I think it would be more accurate to say that the economics of Starship basically require high cadence launches with lots of v3 Starlink satellites (because only the big internet constellations can financially justify launching so much payload to orbit right now).
I can't help but think of one cray thing...This is absolutely amazing to watch. The fact that there are cameras at every stage showing exactly what is happening. Being able to see the curvature of earth all in hi-def. But the entire time I watch this I just keep thinking even with all this proof you still will not convince some people that the moon landings are real and that the earth is not flat. They will say these are just AI videos used to trick people from the truth.
It just amazes me that technologies have come so far that at one end we can really show that the earth is truthfully a sphere but also at the same time technology has come so far one can claim this is just another video created by AI and is not actually true.
Yea, I'm older and remember the shuttle days. It's the video all the way to the ground that amazes me every time (well at least when the orbiter is aligned properly and not turning into a meteor shower).
Only possible through SpaceX Starlink, but technical progress aside they also deserve kudos to be so open to share some of their video streams publicly and not cutting away from explosions or burning flaps.
Blue Origin didn't show with the first New Glenn launch their payload mechanism or reentry mishaps.
Anyone know the best way to get the SpaceX video from Twitter/X onto Apple TV?
My current method is to screen share from an iPad after starting the video on Safari. Trying to Airplay gave me audio but not video on the TV. But, the screen share has a pretty large letterbox around it, was hoping to get full screen video.
> Anyone know the best way to get the SpaceX video from Twitter/X onto Apple TV?
I don't have Apple TV but for videos on X, I download it temporarily to a intermediate server then stream using VLC [1] it's a hassle but I get great watching experience on all platforms. For now, you can stream this on VLC: https://bin.hrzn.pics/0AdLye8
Though I generally watch Everyday Astronaut's [2] coverage on YouTube.
Exhilarating to see the V2 finally get its "fourth time's the charm" full success!
My top reason for wanting to visit US has flipped semi-recently to wanting to witness one of these launches. I'd hate for the Boca Chica site to become more secretive as it marches on towards production quality.
The crazy thing is there’s a public road about 200 yards from the pad that also goes right by the front door of the factory. Like you can drive right up to starbase, park, and walk around and see everything. Also, you can go past the pad to the beach and walk up on the dunes and be within 500 yards of the pad and whatever is sitting on it too. I visited a few years ago and was amazed at the scale and how everything is literally right on the side of the road. One thing I didn’t expect, it’s pretty noisy because it’s an ongoing construction site. You don’t think of that when you see the videos.
Nice! I know they were intentionally stressing the flaps, but saw at least one was on fire again and deteriorating. How big an issue is this and how are they likely to solve it?
The damage to the trailing edge of the aft flaps was caused by whatever took out the skirt. You can see they are torn up and sheet metal flapping long before they start to descend and heat up. It is possible they would have held up to the heat if that hadn't occurred. I didn't see any burning through along the flap hinge like in previous flights (although they only showed direct side-on video of two of the flaps).
My parents have formative memories of watching the moon landings as kids, and I of watching the space shuttle. As someone who ended up where I am in large part due to my curiosity about the world growing up, reading of OP's kid watching a rocket launch, thinking critically about what they're seeing, and learning more about the world from it is a joyous thing.
I expect many kids to know that from cartoons, but perhaps my kids whatch weird cartoons. Anyway, the cartoons sometimes have the details wrong, so it's nice to talk about that.
What Scott is missing is that the only reason "it did not get to orbit" is of interest at all is that SpaceX keeps claiming they got to orbit with starship. I believe that the trajectories have all been suborbital by design, but it still pisses me off that they keep claiming they got to orbit.
The reason this matters is that if they get into an orbit in a short test, they need to exit that orbit with some sort of active system. So the statement "we got to orbit" implies a lot more technology development than the current flights actually show. I agree with Scott that Starship can easily enter LEO, but I am not so sure it can exit gracefully.
What exactly do you think is the “more technology development than the current flights actually show“ needed to get into and out of orbit?
My impression is they just need to leave the engines on a little longer to get to orbit, then turn them on again with the ship pointed in another direction to get back to the suborbital trajectory they’ve already demonstrated deorbiting from.
The hard part is reentering through the atmosphere without burning up, flipping, and landing, which they’ve already demonstrated multiple times. There’s no additional atmosphere between where they’ve flown and “orbit”.
A little more longevity and one more engine restart, unless the suborbital is very suborbital, then it also means a lot more delta v. It doesn't seem that far away at all.
What's surprising is that people are still resorting to this silly complaint about not reaching orbit when there's a perfectly sensible complain they could be making instead: that SpaceX hasn't yet demonstrated that they can reach orbit and return safely. The safe return is important because I would expect a failure to return safely to be a big deal: it's not like this thing is going to completely burn up if they don't have control during a deorbit. The inadequate retry thermal protection is a large issue even if the Ship has managed to get to the landing areas on target and soft land in the right spot: the burn through on the control surfaces seems to mean that was as much luck as good engineering that the thing didn't crash somewhere less intended.
I appreciate none of that is as pithy as saying it simply didn't reach orbit, but it's a real concern versus something that is really irrelevant.
Starship returned safely. Safe return of orbital generally means a splashdown within 1500 miles of Point Nemo. They just demonstrated that they can splash down within meters of their target buoy. Even if the flaps failed completely they still would have been far less than 1500 miles off target.
They've done so more than than this time, too. Granted, with a little less "Ship" than they left with on all occasions I know of.
No one (at least not me or anyone I take seriously) is arguing whether or not these suborbital profiles are designed to be safe even under adverse or full failure conditions; though the Caribbean air corridors might have been managed a bit more gracefully on some previous flights... still...
Nonetheless there is a valid criticism that in ten flights they still haven't mastered keeping the control surfaces of the space craft whole during the reentry phase of flight. 1500 miles isn't going to cut it as a safe return zone when they try bring this in for a catch. While I'm as impressed as anyone that they've hit the mark with compromised Ships as many times as they have, neither Port Isabel nor Titusville are 1500 miles from their nearest Ship catch towers and I wouldn't support any attempts for a catch until they can get the whole Ship back in good working order... reliably. While I'm a advocate for this program and SpaceX... I'm not such a fanboy that I can't see there are issues with this aspect of the program. This is ignoring the impact on rapid reusability and simply focusing on the basic safety of the program.
Port Isabel is 6 miles away from Boca Chica. They demonstrated on a previous mission that they can land within meters of their target despite burnt out flaps. If SpaceX tries to catch Starship their launch tower might not be safe, but Port Isabel would be safe.
But they haven't tried to catch Starship yet and likely won't for a while, so you're arguing a silly hypothetical.
"Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines and executing the first flip maneuver and landing burn since our suborbital campaign, followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch."
"Starship completed another successful ascent, placing it on the expected trajectory. The ship successfully reignited a single Raptor engine while in space, demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn before starting fully orbital missions. With live views and telemetry being relayed by Starlink, the ship successfully made it through reentry and executed a flip, landing burn, and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean."
"The Starship upper stage will again target multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned."
To be fair, there were two press releases where they didn't correctly use "sub-orbital" and used orbital instead. Releases 3 and 9. Neither said they achieved orbit, but more causally talked about the "orbital coast" and the worst: "Starship's six second stage Raptor engines all started successfully and powered the vehicle to its expected orbit" from flight 3. It's true these statements are incorrect, but they aren't asserting a direct claim to having reached orbit (though they imply it), when they make an assertion about the nature of the program they seem fairly consistent in talking about their "suborbital campaign" as well as talking about their orbital missions being in the future.
The way I'm reading it, it looks like they get sloppy with language sometimes, but it doesn't look like they are directly asserting anything other than being in a suborbital program.
I have most heard this in terms of "orbital velocity" and "orbital trajectory," as well as statements from the announcers on their livestreams, who are SpaceX spokespeople whether you want to excuse them or not, of "we reached orbit." I agree that if you look at their carefully-crafted press releases, there are fewer exaggerations than if you look at other communications. Even so:
> To be fair, there were two press releases where they didn't correctly use "sub-orbital" and used orbital instead. Releases 3 and 9.
Another example of an official communication is a March 14, 2024 Musk tweet after a rocket did not reach orbital velocity:
> Starship reached orbital velocity! Congratulations @SpaceX team!!
Orbital velocity at the altitudes they target is 28-30 km/h. They consistently stop their tests at about 26 km/h. This is not to say the rocket can't make it to orbital velocity, just that it didn't.
"They get sloppy with their language sometimes" is a good way to excuse repeated lies. If this were a company you were less of a fan of, "they get sloppy with their language sometimes" probably wouldn't fly for you, either. Getting called on their bluffs about this is probably the reason they have gotten more precise about their language.
By the way, it is my opinion that it is time to cancel the entire Artemis program and both of its failures of rocket technology. If SpaceX wants to continue to develop Starship, it should do so without federal funding. I would have no problems with the Starship program if not for the use of public money.
Is it really a lot more technology? If they were landing 100 km away I'd agree, but aren't they basically reaching the required orbital speed and reentering and landing under retrorocket control? I'm no expert on orbital dynamics, so I might be missing something important.
They're never reaching orbital velocity on purpose. The reason is that they're still proving that they can fire rockets and deorbit under control; until they do that, any problem automatically puts the ship in the ocean no matter what while if they go to orbit and can't control the deorbit they end up possibly causing a disaster.
Now, they are getting it to pretty damn close to orbital velocity... which is why saying they still haven't reached orbit is a bit silly. They're clearly technically able to reach orbit if they really want to... that they haven't proved they can safely leave orbit is the problem.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait and generally using HN for political/ideological battle? You may not owe $ThatPerson better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
Before going further down this route, I think we should first establish what makes you the decider of the exact circumstances in which it is okay to collaborate with nazis, fund them, and install them into high positions in the government bureaucracy.
I don't know who owned what, but many components of the Apollo era space program were manufactured by privately owned companies that received taxpayer funding: Grumman, Boeing, Rockwell, Douglass, and IBM to name a few.
I know the history well about the involvement of private contractors, the difference is that in the end, NASA, a government agency owned the tech and the public benefited massively from NASA and continues to benefit today. Basically every tax paying American was a shareholder in that greatness.
I bet you one thing for sure, if this didn't have Elon Musk smell on it, and it was a government funded project, it would have 2500 upvotes. I can tell you that for sure. Just most people are afraid to speak their mind because...well you know, the flagging and down votes. Which I couldn't care less about, I think this whole down voting ideas you don't like game is rather stupid. This community has not evolved in years.
300 something upvotes for something "this big" as opposed to the 2500+ yesterday about Google's anti-side loading efforts should tell you that.
Pretty sure the DOGE intent was good, but real efforts were mostly sidelined for the Trump pony show. Thus the 'fighting' words that followed when the BBB tax cut showed up.
DOGE never tried to do good work. It was a hit and run job to satisfy Musk's ego and get rid of stuff he personally doesn't like. It didn't save much money and didn't create any efficiency.
You’ve been seriously misled or you’ve forgotten what happened. How did the illegal shutdown of USAID and the waste of billions of dollars of medicine, food, and health care for the poorest folks in the world come from good intentions? How did the irresponsible injection of inexperienced outsiders into the SSA come from good intentions? How is cancelling billions of ongoing federal contracts without cause and withholding payments for work already done an effect of good intent?
Consider what would have happened if Elon wasn't there. Likely the same. The people wanting those things cut are still present.
I wish he hadn't gone along with them, but there likely had to be concessions before attempting to make progress. When it became clear cost savings and efficiency wasn't the actual goal in the White House, Elon left.
Come now - you really believe that Elon saw DOGE as a good faith effort to cut costs in the government?
For someone with such a vaunted intelligence, he was either dumb or complicit. "Working things out from first principles" would have had him leave after the very first step.
What do you mean "gone along with them"? Seems like a strange kind of reality-distortion to try and convince youself that Musk was misled into doing those terrible things as part of DOGE, when he actually just wanted to do it himself...
Any chance you could help keep this site political flamewar free?
Not everyone agrees with you politically and it's unpleasant to have to wade through these kind of rants to read about interesting things.
You have strong feelings, I get it, but please stop the pollution. I am trying my best to say this in a kind and sincere way. There are plenty of other places to make political rants.
Unbelievable! Watched with my 4 year old, he was full of questions about why the ocean was turning to nighttime, what satellites are, about going to another planet, about the earth being so blue and if we “ever even knew that before”.
Just wonderful stuff. So excited for the future.
This is the same age when I started watching Star Trek (original series). To say it had a profound impact on my interest in science and ethics is an understatement. English wasn't even my first language, but I think I picked up a lot of the themes, and my interest in science, tech and ethical philosophy continues to this day. I actually wrote this bit about introducing children to Star Trek (answer is a bit dated now): https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/6719/what-is-the-r...
Dated indeed, as nobody is interested in Star Trek anymore since they've actively ruined the IP.
Heck, the person spearheading star Trek vision has gone on public records essentially saying he never liked star Trek and that's why he's gonna make it more like star wars....
You're talking about the movies, and yeah, that has failed. They're talking about yet another one, and I'm baffled, but we'll see where (if anywhere) it goes.
But the Paramount+ stuff is doing pretty well. Strange New Worlds is very popular. So was Lower Decks. The last season of Picard, at least, gave fans a lot of what they had been looking for. They've got a new series coming out, and what little we know is that it has a bang-up cast. (Not that that's sufficient; Discovery did very badly by some very talented actors. But it's a good start.)
So Trek: The IP is still going pretty strong. At least as well as Star Wars, which has also been hit-and-miss.
In hindsight, I don't feel like the lessons in ethics have done wonders for the USA either...
The "Yangs vs. Comms" episode comes to mind.
Take a blanket, drive in an area with minimal light pollution, lay on the ground and watch the sky with your kid(s).
I did that with my grandma as a kid and to this day I don't think I've done anything more relaxing and interesting, it's like watching a fire or waves, it never gets old
So awesome, I hope to have kids one day precisely for this reason! One of my fondest memories is my dad quenching my curiosity (with a drawing, to boot!) of how satellite dishes work when I was 6 or 7.
My kids learning to ride a bike - the moment you release your hand for the first time and they just go and go. When my son learned checkers, and then when he beat me the first time. When my daughter told her first original joke at a family dinner and everyone died laughing.
The moments truly never stop. Every single day they amaze and surprise you, fill you with so much love and joy and appreciation.
One time Bill Gates was asked what gave him joy and without missing a beat he said his children. Nothing is greater, nothing gives you more meaning, nothing is more ultimate than the sacrifice and patience and wonder and fulfillment of having children.
There's a moment of abject horror, fascination, wonder, surprise, and pride when you suddenly recognize yourself in your children; a moment, a word, even just a holding of the head and you're staring into a mirror ...
It is a complete shift in world view. In BC (before children) you lived one way, then in AD (after delivery) you live another. Complete and utter change in priorities, outlook, experience, meaning, fundamental shift that those without children cannot understand
And people with children cannot understand what it is to live a whole life in full freedom. I'm over 50 years old and I fully love my life as it is and have never regretted my choice of not having children (and never will).
Not that my choice is suitable for everybody, but the most common choice is not suitable for everybody either.
This is a matter of personal preference of course. But the way you phrased it, "a whole life in full freedom" tells me you think it's either all or nothing. If you can't enjoy the full freedom in the last years of your life, does it take away from the previous years?
For better or worse people with kids know both lives, people without kids only know one. It's like saying "you'll never know how it is to eat an entire cake". Maybe you ate much of it, that counts for something. Now you're on to the next cake. You might bite more than you can chew but this goes for everything.
The value of this freedom is the highest when you're young, experimenting, putting your life on some track. Being "free" at 65 doesn't have anywhere near the same value as it does at 20. Once you do it (almost) all, everything else becomes more of the same doesn't it? That cake I was mentioning? The first bite tasted a whole lot better than the last.
There's no right or wrong, everyone knows their preference and personal circumstances. But your explanation felt like a knee-jerk reaction.
Hard disagree, I lived my life without children, the hedonism and lack of responsibility. And you can live this until death. And I didn’t discount such a life in my writing. I stated that having children fundamentally changes you, in a way you will never understand
Given State of World, my take on it is there's far more hedonism and irresponsibility in having kids.
It's nice they make you happy, but will their lives be happy?
The evidence says it's very unlikely.
My choice is not to inflict that experience on another sentient being. I'm really not seeing anything at the moment that encourages me to question that.
For a different perspective: the world today is not perfect, but when I compare the current state of the world with how our ancestors lived from the Roman empire to the last century I think my kids have a high chances to do much better than that average.
My direct ancestors lived through some harrowing times without losing their will to live and if they were alive today they would likely feel this is a great time to be alive. My 2c.
And the very act of hope that having kids is (and it is a strong act of hope, no denial) changes your outlook on life and the state of the world, too.
Sometimes to more abject despair, but often to more hope.
People shouldn't be forced at gunpoint to have children, but they also shouldn't be dragged down into insecurity and despair that it's financially impossible.
> Given State of World, my take on it is there's far more hedonism and irresponsibility in having kids.
Compared to what? We're living in some of the best times humanity as a whole ever had. Deciding en-masse to not have kids is the irresponsible thing because it literally condemns humanity to extinction and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're cursing the world because you stubbed your toe. Social media inflicted this kind of feeling a lot over the last couple of decades.
> but will their lives be happy?
You'd have to ask them. Humans overwhelmingly choose to live so you could conclude that they prefer existing over the alternative. Happiness is very relative and you'd have a hard time defining it even for yourself, let alone for your hypothetical unborn child.
> The evidence says it's very unlikely.
There's absolutely no evidence to support anything you said. It's your personal preference and you're entitled to it. Why don't you own your choice instead of putting it on fictitious evidence that your unborn child will be unhappy?
> My choice is not to inflict that experience on another sentient being
Whatever you pick you're making that choice for you, not for them.
And at least in my experience, children do not get existential despair about the state of the world until adulthood, unless it is given to them from outside forces.
Children don't know the world exists beyond their town until they're instructed on it!
You can choose to end your bloodline, and your opinion is the human race should go extinct now like a race of eunuchs have taken over. But I could personally not disagree more
Sure we do, not everybody got married and got kids at 20.
And I mean proper life, backpacking for months around south east asia, himalaya, diving in remote tropical islands, doing extreme mountain sports to the fullest capacity. You know, stuff that adds easily many decades of life actually experienced.
It doesnt compare, it cant.
But there is a catch - to have a chance for actually being a good long term stable parent (and also having and raising kids in a similar way), 2 balanced individuals need to meet and be close to each other on many levels, and then keep working on it. Something I dont see often around me unfortunately in these me-me-me times, with corresponding consequences. Better having no kids than be a miserable parent, raising another miserable generation of permanent cripples.
Just wait till you hit 60s and the pool of nice things you can do keeps shrinking dramatically, I've heard such phrases before and then heard regrets some time later.
I can understand. I have 4 small kids. The amount of freetime us near zero. I can sometimes envy your life
As a fellow manyKid™ enjoyer I know what you mean. Even your "free time" is guided and directed by kids, and when you DO get some time alone with the wife or a good friend, you talk about the kids.
It really is a change that's not quite possible to convey with words.
Do your kids have Social Security Numbers yet? Let's ask Elon to use his privileged mode on xAI to have it characterize their socio economic relations among all Americans that have existed since The Great Deal, shall we?
To respond in such a moronic, unthinking, truly absurd and ridiculous way to such a beautiful comment is bizarre and unnecessary beyond human understanding
Thanks for this. We are expecting one in two months (our first), and reading this made me happy.
Even Steve Jobs, who was by most accounts a pretty cold fish (his many other qualities notwithstanding), said something similar. By memory, he said something like: With your kids, it's as if they carry your heart around outside of your body. Which I found super touching and apt.
"Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." -- Elizabeth Stone
67
Go directly to steam and download Kerbal Space Program.
Thank me later.
Warning. KSP breaks pretty much all sci fi programs when you wonder why the landing shuttle is flying towards the planet it’s going to.
Oh I will. My boy just turned 4, so he’s a little young for video games right now. Maybe 5 or 6? But we played spaceships in the park all evening. Looking forward to gaming age for sure!
If you live in a good spot, a beginners telescope might be money well spent.
I always ask mine what she’d like to do after school today.
“Let’s go to the moon” comes back at least once a week.
Sincerely hope to be able to take her, one day.
I'm amazed the thing landed right next to the Buoy, and was seen from the BuoyCam.
This has happened many times so far. Control to reach a specific landing point is quite good (when things don't go boom first)
This is definotely on purpose & quite important for the upcomming starship catching for rapid reusability. :)
Well that's part of what makes this interesting. Some part of it did go boom. Looked like a COPV or something exploded sometime after payload deployment
[flagged]
Not sure why you would joke about something like that
Far better to pretend it didn't happen, and downvote all mentions of it?
Every day these companies operate with "don't be ashamed of your past AfD" as the CEO ... Is a mockery.
So keep lapping up the propaganda! Tastes sooooo good.
So what's worse, all the unbridled enthusiasm for a Nazis corporation, or me bringing up the dark side in a joke?
Was cool to see the pez dispenser door start to open and all that vapor get sucked outside.
The booster ditch was super cool, hover then just cut the engines and let it drop.
Simulating a chopsticks landing, probably.
It was said somewhere that one of the previous ditches in the ocean. the booster remained a little too intact and floated into Mexican waters creating a navigational hazard. So the idea was also to make sure it broke up on splashdown.
Just saw the splash down. I think this was 100% successful test.
Not quite, but it's a major milestone. Still quite a bit of work to go on the rapid reusability part (burnt flaps, oxidized body, missing tiles, tile waterproofing). Starship might actually deliver payload to orbit on flight 11.
It accomplished all the goals for this flight. That’s 100% successful
They mentioned in the stream they were intentionally stressing the ship on reentry.
But yes, “rapid reusability” is a ways off. I expect they’ll be spending weeks inspecting and repairing ship and booster before reflight for a few years, but they’ll drive it down over time.
TBD how “rapid” the reusability ends up being in the end.
The push for rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships.
It seems like if they can get boosters to rapid reuse (a much easier goal), and churn out ships at sufficient scale, they can afford to take time inspecting/refurbing each ship as part of a pipelined approach.
> The push for rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships.
Elon always talks about a city on Mars but seeing for the first time the gargantuan size of Starfactory it dawned on me that SpaceX are true believers. It is still a big IF, because the dimension of the mission is absolutely bonkers, but IF the goal is to send every two years hundreds of Starships to Mars (everyone needing around 3-4 tanker missions) you need large scale production of ships.
Ten years ago every expert said a hundred launches a year was utterly impossible. Five years ago they said it was unlikely. SpaceX have launched more than a hundred times this year already.
Anyone who thinks they can’t do stuff is not seeing the whole picture.
The stated goal was always to have a lot of ships, and also to have them be reusable.
Starship is a fuel-hungry beast - it can get to LEO by itself, but it needs a lot of tanker launches to go beyond. And if your goal is a Mars colony, you don't want to be limited to one launch per launch window.
Still, LEO is halfway to anywhere in the Solar System, so that's exciting.
Also you can assemble things in LEO from multiple launches. Once you're up there, you have a lot more freedom in terms of size and shape.
If "rapid reusability" was a proxy goal for maintaining a given launch pace we wouldn't need any of this.
We could just construct 200 Space Shuttles and spend months refurbishing them after every flight, and still send one up every week.
The goal is to drive down launch costs, time is money, and a system that requires time consuming refurbishments is more expensive.
Mars transit takes far longer than one week. And their plan is in orbit refueling so getting a single starship to Mars takes more than one ship.
Their scenario is that the ships are mostly going to be "fuel mules" to ferry propellant to the ship that is destined to go somewhere (i.e. Mars) - so if you want an armada to travel to another planet, you need a much larger fleet of supply vehicles to prepare your armada. Hence the need to mass produce them.
> rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships
As you say, they reïnforce each other by speeding up the learning curve and deployment of learning to the real world, serving as both a bolstering of the product and experimental validation.
Not at odds at all. It doesn't matter how fast you can make them if each one costs $5-10 million. Much better to amortize that over 100+ flights and not waste the booster.
Once the tanker version is needed, a ship ship could go up 5+ times a day. The logistics of backfilling a pad with a new ship is much more involved
The ship and booster both sank in the ocean as planned, so there is no inspecting and repairing phase.
I think that work can be done quite well based on all the footage and other collected metrics.
I didn't mean this ship and booster, I mean in a year or so when they're done with the test phase and frequently launching Starlink satellites on Starship.
What's the need for tile waterproofing ?
They are extremely hydrophilic.
Thunderf00t shows various tile problems with Starship: https://youtu.be/MZUQe38SJIs?si=QAVIk7fMX1HIQETb (he's not a fan of Musk)
Mildly interesting to be exposed to the world of 'YouTube engineers' who are derisory of the real-world engineering success of SpaceX. Informed criticism is fine but when you're just openly calling a world class engineering company 'stupid' then you deserve to be ignored (except, obviously, by everyone suffering from MDS).
Thunderfoot is a long-time Musk project hater for some reason. That's now his specialty which probably appeals to his audience. There are plenty of equally uninformed youtubers with glowing praise for SpaceX. Just like the real news, people divide themselves into bubbles of whatever reinforces their beliefs.
> There are plenty of equally uninformed youtubers with glowing praise for SpaceX
Definitely true
> Just like the real news, people divide themselves into bubbles of whatever reinforces their beliefs
Hopefully HN can be better than that and be a place for informed criticism or informed praise from whatever provenance
That guy is so annoying.
Yes, although one booster engine failed at the start. Not a big deal. :)
The nice thing about SpaceX’s rapid iteration philosophy (and having Starlink as its first “customer”) is that they can account for engine unreliability by building extra margin into early launches, fly with reduced payloads, collect data on failures, and improve the reliability over time.
They said ahead of time they were shutting one booster engine down to test redundancy.
They did that too, but they also had an early engine failure. No big deal, they're redundant, and the booster they caught during flight 8 suffered worse.
that was on the landing burn. they had a engine out on the ascent.
Yes. Looks like it ignited and ran correctly for the first few minutes though.
The hype had this thing already on the Moon by now.
“At SpaceX We specialize in making the impossible merely late”
-Elon
*Mars
"An uncrewed test flight was planned for 2025 to demonstrate a successful landing on the Moon which has since been delayed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS
Still they are making good progress if a bit slower than that.
A composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) seems to have exploded on the upper stage during reentry. It did significant damage to the rear flap and it made some dents in the engines too.
It's interesting to see which parts are critical at each stage of flight. Clearly those parts weren't needed by that point!
The rear flap was damaged before that explosion, not sure by what.
Yes, it was not the explosion what done it.
It looked like it happened during separation somehow.
Another copv failure? That’s what ripped open the starship during the ground test. Wtf I suspect that sub won’t be making copvs for spacex any longer.
Are the tiles on Starship going to need replacing after flight like the Shuttle? There isn’t a permanent material that can handle all the heat yet? Serious question, my space expertise is only from KSP.
The intention is to need minimal to no replacement between flights. Part of the purpose of these tests is to figure out how to do that.
The tiles themselves work fine, but how to best mount them? where do you need them? Can you make them thinner? do you need anything underneath? what kind of gap do you need between tiles? Those are the things they're hoping to understand in these tests.
The Shuttle tiles were technically reusable AFAIK. The issue was that they were very fragile and the Shuttle for the most part could not tolerate any heat getting through the tiles (being aluminum), so every flight needed to have a perfect heat shield. Starship is a bit better on that end, as stainless steel is a lot more capable of tolerating heat and I think the tiles are a bit less fragile. Still, would be ideal to figure out how to not drop any tiles.
> Shuttle tiles were technically reusable
Would note that Shuttle tiles were never mass manufactured. The Shuttle’s shape meant lots of unique tiles. And its lack of mass production meant each tile was basically an artisanal object.
SpaceX aims to reüse tiles over many flights. But even if some tiles need replacing after each launch, that doesn’t tank Starship per se.
Maybe even throwing a used ship away as scrap metal away would work as a business case. The expensive part are the rocket engines, if they can be reused much would be won.
> every flight needed to have a perfect heat shield.
Which is a little easier to do when your craft is shaped like a plane and not a simple cylinder. The loading and positioning were easier to model and then achieve in flight.
The shuttle also flew with repair kits and glue that could be used in a vacuum. The astronauts could perform an EVA and work to replace damaged tiles and there were published plans on how to do so. NASA unfortunately figured out very late that using the Canadarm to image the bottom of the shuttle immediately on achieving orbit was extremely necessary given the icing problems of the external tank.
I thought that while the spare tiles did exist, there was never an actual safe procedure for replacing tiles (that didn't require being docked to the ISS) they were only carried to be available when the choice was between losing the entire crew on reentry or risking a crew member?
I don't quite understand how the airplane shape made it easier to model the loading and positioning? (Not saying you're wrong, just doesn't fit my intuition and I'm curious).
My understanding is that Shuttle didn't have to answer the questions about tile gaps etc because it used glue rather than mechanical attachments, if that's what you mean by positioning.
> I don't quite understand how the airplane shape made it easier to model the loading and positioning? (Not saying you're wrong, just doesn't fit my intuition and I'm curious).
You can approximate space shuttle reentry to roughly a 2d surface entering atmosphere. Because of airplane shape, the tile side faces atmosphere and the plasma goes around plane edges. Where as starship being cylinder doesn't have any separation boundary and plasma roughly goes more than 180% of the cylinder.
IR reflectivity of stainless must help a good deal for the unshielded parts. I wonder if the internal surface is painted or finished in a way to help radiate the heat away internally.
Is there any active cooling of any of the skin that we know of?
Ah, that makes sense!
Having seen the shuttle in person in LA museum, I was struck by how much it looked like a plane sitting on a flat heat shield surface
Remains to be seen. That's what they want, but it's never been done before. (edit: clarity: they do NOT want to replace them after each flight.)
They're currently experimenting with things such as actively cooled tiles (which I presume were installed on this ship, since they were on the last two).
I personally think the likely best case is that they'll have to go over the ship and replace some here and there before launching again.
Even if they don't get to a no replacement....they still already have a massive improvement over Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle basically every tile was unique, and and the pattern was different between the different orbiters. A good bit of the months of refurbishment of the Orbiter between flights was heat shield repairs. SpaceX has already shown from when they completely retiled one of the ships. they have cut down the time to replace a single tile down to minutes instead of the hours it took with the shuttle. The Tiles are also alot more standardized so they can be more mass produced than shuttle tiles.
Absolutely!
I think there are still a few unique tiles on Starship around joints and such IIRC, but either way, the number of tile types is much smaller for Starship.
To my thinking, the sane sequence will be launch; catch; survey and maintain (heat shield and other items); and then launch again 24 hours later if everything checks out.
And that will be an absolutely massive improvement over what we have today, let alone what we had with the Shuttle.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed...
Recent and related:
Starship's Tenth Flight Test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45007907 - Aug 2025 (233 comments)
Landed on target in the Indian Ocean! Engines relit successfully and it touched down vertically (and then promptly exploded, which I guess was the plan :)
I thought it exploded after it landed?
Well, yes, it landed in the ocean by design and toppled over because that's what happens when you land a 50m tall spaceship vertically in water.
This sequence of events (even though expected!) reminds me a lot of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail speech:
> Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.
(although I suppose this ship fell over, then burned down, and then sank into the ocean)
It’s basically a direct description of the reusable booster tests.
That's the expected result for this test flight.
There wa supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom. And there was.
That was expected. It’s not meant to land on water.
It is, for the purpose of this test. Don't want it coming back down on land somewhere unexpected :)
> I thought it exploded after it landed?
It landed on the sea, there was no barge afaik.
Also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpmTivdrQiQ
Successful splashdown! Looks like they nailed all the objectives, and not a moment too soon.
Some kind of failure in the lower engine area.
Figure it's going to burn up on entry?
EDIT: made it. I suppose it was meant to blow up on landing in the ocean? It would have been nice to examine the burned components — but perhaps they had not intended to retrieve it that far away anyway.
The walls are 3mm thick steel, they're very likely to buckle and tear when it tips over, the residual methane vapor gets out and there are plenty of sources of heat to ignite it.
They don't claim to have any plans of recovering the wreckage, but they have previously fished up wreckage for study, so it's still possible they decide to do that.
generally 4mm for the barrel sections, plus all the stringers that add rigidity to that 4mm.
It's not meant to perform well after landing in water, is how I would phrase it.
Maybe just some part of the construction (possibly even just the strinngers or simply some nook or cranny that is fully eclosed) got presurized or was pressurized for the whole time by just air that could not escape.
That would be fine for the fligt so far - until it started to heat up from re-entry heating. The stainless steel would be still fine if heated to hundreads of degrees, but the expanding gass could maybe make the enclosed volume to rupture ?
Or a mix of methane and oxygen accumulating somwhere and exploding - but that seems less likely to me in a near vacuum environment during re-entry.
IIRC they have pressure vessels in the lower fins with some of the gasses they need. Maybe one of those was damaged and burst. To me it looked like something blew out the bottom of one of the fins (maybe got too hot) and hit the skirt.
It made it, but there was some toastyness on the bottom of the lower flaps. This said, it is less bad than we've seen on the other 2 landings.
They announced before the flight that they intentionally removed tiles from some areas around the lower flaps specifically to get data on what happens when tiles fail, such as how much burn occurs, how quickly and what type. It appears it was successful in showing varying amounts of burn through and damage in the areas that were intentionally left under-protected.
The part that burned was damaged from early on, likely at, or right after, separation. So the integrity of that flap was already very compromised. I actually thought the flap would disintegrate on re-entry with that kind of damage. But no, they even put full stress on it, unfolding it while supersonic through the atmosphere, like a champ.
> Some kind of failure in the lower engine area.
The girl in NASASpaceflight video linked at top said maybe one of the three oxygen vents blew up due to some kind of buildup. Location makes sense.
Sounds like they removed a few too many heat tiles before launch.
Everything nominal so far and payload deployment was successful for the first time. Re-entry starts at around T+0:45.
Which is in about 4 minutes.
And it splashed down successfully too.
Looks like they hit all the objectives!
Splashdown right next to the buoy!
Awesome to see it all go right.
They did it. Damn.
So the starlink simulators its deploying right now are empty platters that will burn up in the atmosphere from what I understand. Next missions they’ll be real statlink sats. Are these different than regular sats? It sounds like they’re able to handle more bandwidth but I don’t know.
Starship will be deploying the next gen v3 satellites, which weigh about 2 tons each. A single Starship launch with 60 of these deploys more capacity than 20 launches of a Falcon 9.
The figures they've been talking of the ideal cost per launch of starship are even more insane. I'm sure some of it is hype farming on Twitter but if they get the cost to less then $1000/kg it would be incredible.
Wow, that really puts it into perspective
IIRC the v3 sats can do like 1 Tbps of bandwidth thanks to a larger antenna system?
Next flight should be a mass simulator of at least 100 tons to orbit. This flight was around ~10 tons to almost orbit.
The economics of Starlink basically require high cadence Starship launches with 50+ Starlink v3 satellites on each flight.
Isn't starlink a revenue generating endeavor already?
Yes; I think it would be more accurate to say that the economics of Starship basically require high cadence launches with lots of v3 Starlink satellites (because only the big internet constellations can financially justify launching so much payload to orbit right now).
Yes, they're bigger than the current Falcon 9 rockets can launch and can handle more bandwidth.
I can't help but think of one cray thing...This is absolutely amazing to watch. The fact that there are cameras at every stage showing exactly what is happening. Being able to see the curvature of earth all in hi-def. But the entire time I watch this I just keep thinking even with all this proof you still will not convince some people that the moon landings are real and that the earth is not flat. They will say these are just AI videos used to trick people from the truth.
It just amazes me that technologies have come so far that at one end we can really show that the earth is truthfully a sphere but also at the same time technology has come so far one can claim this is just another video created by AI and is not actually true.
Yea, I'm older and remember the shuttle days. It's the video all the way to the ground that amazes me every time (well at least when the orbiter is aligned properly and not turning into a meteor shower).
Only possible through SpaceX Starlink, but technical progress aside they also deserve kudos to be so open to share some of their video streams publicly and not cutting away from explosions or burning flaps.
Blue Origin didn't show with the first New Glenn launch their payload mechanism or reentry mishaps.
Anyone know the best way to get the SpaceX video from Twitter/X onto Apple TV?
My current method is to screen share from an iPad after starting the video on Safari. Trying to Airplay gave me audio but not video on the TV. But, the screen share has a pretty large letterbox around it, was hoping to get full screen video.
> Anyone know the best way to get the SpaceX video from Twitter/X onto Apple TV?
I don't have Apple TV but for videos on X, I download it temporarily to a intermediate server then stream using VLC [1] it's a hassle but I get great watching experience on all platforms. For now, you can stream this on VLC: https://bin.hrzn.pics/0AdLye8
Though I generally watch Everyday Astronaut's [2] coverage on YouTube.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vlc-media-player/id650377962
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtUMt0gsqrs
Thanks. I'd like to find something that works for the live stream too.
Yeah Airplay is probably the best option, I had no problems playing it from my Macbook.
Did you pull it up in Safari and then Airplay it?
That's what I did on the iPad and couldn't get the video. I can try the Mac next time. It's not my fault driver and assumed iPad would be the same.
Exhilarating to see the V2 finally get its "fourth time's the charm" full success!
My top reason for wanting to visit US has flipped semi-recently to wanting to witness one of these launches. I'd hate for the Boca Chica site to become more secretive as it marches on towards production quality.
The crazy thing is there’s a public road about 200 yards from the pad that also goes right by the front door of the factory. Like you can drive right up to starbase, park, and walk around and see everything. Also, you can go past the pad to the beach and walk up on the dunes and be within 500 yards of the pad and whatever is sitting on it too. I visited a few years ago and was amazed at the scale and how everything is literally right on the side of the road. One thing I didn’t expect, it’s pretty noisy because it’s an ongoing construction site. You don’t think of that when you see the videos.
The crazy thing is that hopefully in 2-3 years a Starship launch could be as "boring" as a dime-a-dozen Falcon 9 launch today.
Nice! I know they were intentionally stressing the flaps, but saw at least one was on fire again and deteriorating. How big an issue is this and how are they likely to solve it?
The damage to the trailing edge of the aft flaps was caused by whatever took out the skirt. You can see they are torn up and sheet metal flapping long before they start to descend and heat up. It is possible they would have held up to the heat if that hadn't occurred. I didn't see any burning through along the flap hinge like in previous flights (although they only showed direct side-on video of two of the flaps).
Always an inspiring sight!
Well done Elon! Very excited for the future!
Incredible.
Dude, they nailed it. Amazing.
> The flight test began with Super Heavy successfully lifting off by igniting all 33 Raptor engines and ascending over the Gulf of America.
It took me a moment to remember what the Gulf of America is. What stupidity.
You're not stupid!
It's a body of water south of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
It used to be called the Gulf of Mexico.
Still is everywhere else.
Yup
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starship 10
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Its pretty common for 4 year olds to not yet know about planetary orbits, and to also find rocket launches fascinating
Don't be bamboozled! This is an amazing time to be alive!
I'm not seeing cues of satire, it all seems sincere.
...Huh? Why would that be sad?
My parents have formative memories of watching the moon landings as kids, and I of watching the space shuttle. As someone who ended up where I am in large part due to my curiosity about the world growing up, reading of OP's kid watching a rocket launch, thinking critically about what they're seeing, and learning more about the world from it is a joyous thing.
What is sad about this?
Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1053/
I expect many kids to know that from cartoons, but perhaps my kids whatch weird cartoons. Anyway, the cartoons sometimes have the details wrong, so it's nice to talk about that.
what is the sad part here?
Why would it be satire? We all just saw one of the greatest achievements in the history of engineering and we can’t feel good about it?
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I think Scott Manley's position on the "still hasn't gotten to orbit" take is probably still the best and most accurate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8htMpR7mnaM&t=420s
What Scott is missing is that the only reason "it did not get to orbit" is of interest at all is that SpaceX keeps claiming they got to orbit with starship. I believe that the trajectories have all been suborbital by design, but it still pisses me off that they keep claiming they got to orbit.
The reason this matters is that if they get into an orbit in a short test, they need to exit that orbit with some sort of active system. So the statement "we got to orbit" implies a lot more technology development than the current flights actually show. I agree with Scott that Starship can easily enter LEO, but I am not so sure it can exit gracefully.
What exactly do you think is the “more technology development than the current flights actually show“ needed to get into and out of orbit?
My impression is they just need to leave the engines on a little longer to get to orbit, then turn them on again with the ship pointed in another direction to get back to the suborbital trajectory they’ve already demonstrated deorbiting from.
The hard part is reentering through the atmosphere without burning up, flipping, and landing, which they’ve already demonstrated multiple times. There’s no additional atmosphere between where they’ve flown and “orbit”.
A little more longevity and one more engine restart, unless the suborbital is very suborbital, then it also means a lot more delta v. It doesn't seem that far away at all.
What's surprising is that people are still resorting to this silly complaint about not reaching orbit when there's a perfectly sensible complain they could be making instead: that SpaceX hasn't yet demonstrated that they can reach orbit and return safely. The safe return is important because I would expect a failure to return safely to be a big deal: it's not like this thing is going to completely burn up if they don't have control during a deorbit. The inadequate retry thermal protection is a large issue even if the Ship has managed to get to the landing areas on target and soft land in the right spot: the burn through on the control surfaces seems to mean that was as much luck as good engineering that the thing didn't crash somewhere less intended.
I appreciate none of that is as pithy as saying it simply didn't reach orbit, but it's a real concern versus something that is really irrelevant.
Starship returned safely. Safe return of orbital generally means a splashdown within 1500 miles of Point Nemo. They just demonstrated that they can splash down within meters of their target buoy. Even if the flaps failed completely they still would have been far less than 1500 miles off target.
They've done so more than than this time, too. Granted, with a little less "Ship" than they left with on all occasions I know of.
No one (at least not me or anyone I take seriously) is arguing whether or not these suborbital profiles are designed to be safe even under adverse or full failure conditions; though the Caribbean air corridors might have been managed a bit more gracefully on some previous flights... still...
Nonetheless there is a valid criticism that in ten flights they still haven't mastered keeping the control surfaces of the space craft whole during the reentry phase of flight. 1500 miles isn't going to cut it as a safe return zone when they try bring this in for a catch. While I'm as impressed as anyone that they've hit the mark with compromised Ships as many times as they have, neither Port Isabel nor Titusville are 1500 miles from their nearest Ship catch towers and I wouldn't support any attempts for a catch until they can get the whole Ship back in good working order... reliably. While I'm a advocate for this program and SpaceX... I'm not such a fanboy that I can't see there are issues with this aspect of the program. This is ignoring the impact on rapid reusability and simply focusing on the basic safety of the program.
Port Isabel is 6 miles away from Boca Chica. They demonstrated on a previous mission that they can land within meters of their target despite burnt out flaps. If SpaceX tries to catch Starship their launch tower might not be safe, but Port Isabel would be safe.
But they haven't tried to catch Starship yet and likely won't for a while, so you're arguing a silly hypothetical.
Point nemo is in the Pacific Ocean, it landed in the Indian Ocean.
What’s the point in the Indian Ocean they aimed for called?
near the northwestern coast of Australia
"far enough from land not to risk hitting anyone"
A zero-G engine restart is the big piece of technology.
They tested that extra restart as part of today's flight. I think the only thing now missing is carrying the extra fuel.
Where are they claiming that?
For example, this is from their Flight 4 press release (https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-4):
"Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines and executing the first flip maneuver and landing burn since our suborbital campaign, followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch."
Note that they clearly say since the start of their suborbital campaign. And this from their Flight 6 press release (https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-6):
"Starship completed another successful ascent, placing it on the expected trajectory. The ship successfully reignited a single Raptor engine while in space, demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn before starting fully orbital missions. With live views and telemetry being relayed by Starlink, the ship successfully made it through reentry and executed a flip, landing burn, and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean."
And from today's pre-launch press release (https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-10):
"The Starship upper stage will again target multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned."
To be fair, there were two press releases where they didn't correctly use "sub-orbital" and used orbital instead. Releases 3 and 9. Neither said they achieved orbit, but more causally talked about the "orbital coast" and the worst: "Starship's six second stage Raptor engines all started successfully and powered the vehicle to its expected orbit" from flight 3. It's true these statements are incorrect, but they aren't asserting a direct claim to having reached orbit (though they imply it), when they make an assertion about the nature of the program they seem fairly consistent in talking about their "suborbital campaign" as well as talking about their orbital missions being in the future.
The way I'm reading it, it looks like they get sloppy with language sometimes, but it doesn't look like they are directly asserting anything other than being in a suborbital program.
I have most heard this in terms of "orbital velocity" and "orbital trajectory," as well as statements from the announcers on their livestreams, who are SpaceX spokespeople whether you want to excuse them or not, of "we reached orbit." I agree that if you look at their carefully-crafted press releases, there are fewer exaggerations than if you look at other communications. Even so:
> To be fair, there were two press releases where they didn't correctly use "sub-orbital" and used orbital instead. Releases 3 and 9.
Another example of an official communication is a March 14, 2024 Musk tweet after a rocket did not reach orbital velocity:
> Starship reached orbital velocity! Congratulations @SpaceX team!!
Orbital velocity at the altitudes they target is 28-30 km/h. They consistently stop their tests at about 26 km/h. This is not to say the rocket can't make it to orbital velocity, just that it didn't.
"They get sloppy with their language sometimes" is a good way to excuse repeated lies. If this were a company you were less of a fan of, "they get sloppy with their language sometimes" probably wouldn't fly for you, either. Getting called on their bluffs about this is probably the reason they have gotten more precise about their language.
By the way, it is my opinion that it is time to cancel the entire Artemis program and both of its failures of rocket technology. If SpaceX wants to continue to develop Starship, it should do so without federal funding. I would have no problems with the Starship program if not for the use of public money.
Is it really a lot more technology? If they were landing 100 km away I'd agree, but aren't they basically reaching the required orbital speed and reentering and landing under retrorocket control? I'm no expert on orbital dynamics, so I might be missing something important.
They're never reaching orbital velocity on purpose. The reason is that they're still proving that they can fire rockets and deorbit under control; until they do that, any problem automatically puts the ship in the ocean no matter what while if they go to orbit and can't control the deorbit they end up possibly causing a disaster.
Now, they are getting it to pretty damn close to orbital velocity... which is why saying they still haven't reached orbit is a bit silly. They're clearly technically able to reach orbit if they really want to... that they haven't proved they can safely leave orbit is the problem.
Like turning back 300ft below the summit of everest because you aren't confident you have enough daylight to make it back if you do go for the top
A zero-G engine restart to break orbit is the technology. And yes, it is a lot more technology given how the engines work.
Oh! Thank you!
Today is a suborbital trajectory by design.
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And then what?
SLS is a many billion dollar dead end.
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You forgot the /s
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait and generally using HN for political/ideological battle? You may not owe $ThatPerson better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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> fascists on the moon and private space industry? Yay Give me the Apollo era anytime.
The Apollo program was built in no small part by Nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
Were the outputs of the project privately owned by them after receiving massive levels of tax payer funding?
Before going further down this route, I think we should first establish what makes you the decider of the exact circumstances in which it is okay to collaborate with nazis, fund them, and install them into high positions in the government bureaucracy.
I don't know who owned what, but many components of the Apollo era space program were manufactured by privately owned companies that received taxpayer funding: Grumman, Boeing, Rockwell, Douglass, and IBM to name a few.
I know the history well about the involvement of private contractors, the difference is that in the end, NASA, a government agency owned the tech and the public benefited massively from NASA and continues to benefit today. Basically every tax paying American was a shareholder in that greatness.
I bet you one thing for sure, if this didn't have Elon Musk smell on it, and it was a government funded project, it would have 2500 upvotes. I can tell you that for sure. Just most people are afraid to speak their mind because...well you know, the flagging and down votes. Which I couldn't care less about, I think this whole down voting ideas you don't like game is rather stupid. This community has not evolved in years.
300 something upvotes for something "this big" as opposed to the 2500+ yesterday about Google's anti-side loading efforts should tell you that.
Pretty sure the DOGE intent was good, but real efforts were mostly sidelined for the Trump pony show. Thus the 'fighting' words that followed when the BBB tax cut showed up.
DOGE never tried to do good work. It was a hit and run job to satisfy Musk's ego and get rid of stuff he personally doesn't like. It didn't save much money and didn't create any efficiency.
You’ve been seriously misled or you’ve forgotten what happened. How did the illegal shutdown of USAID and the waste of billions of dollars of medicine, food, and health care for the poorest folks in the world come from good intentions? How did the irresponsible injection of inexperienced outsiders into the SSA come from good intentions? How is cancelling billions of ongoing federal contracts without cause and withholding payments for work already done an effect of good intent?
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Consider what would have happened if Elon wasn't there. Likely the same. The people wanting those things cut are still present.
I wish he hadn't gone along with them, but there likely had to be concessions before attempting to make progress. When it became clear cost savings and efficiency wasn't the actual goal in the White House, Elon left.
Come now - you really believe that Elon saw DOGE as a good faith effort to cut costs in the government?
For someone with such a vaunted intelligence, he was either dumb or complicit. "Working things out from first principles" would have had him leave after the very first step.
Just because _someone_ is going to do something evil doesn't mean it has to be _you_. Every person has a choice, and he chose to do evil.
What do you mean "gone along with them"? Seems like a strange kind of reality-distortion to try and convince youself that Musk was misled into doing those terrible things as part of DOGE, when he actually just wanted to do it himself...
Yes, and then we'd blame those people instead. He chose to do do that himself.
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Please read / reread the site guidelines
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(There's one in the In Comments section that you're in clear breach of)
Any chance you could help keep this site political flamewar free?
Not everyone agrees with you politically and it's unpleasant to have to wade through these kind of rants to read about interesting things.
You have strong feelings, I get it, but please stop the pollution. I am trying my best to say this in a kind and sincere way. There are plenty of other places to make political rants.
That was not a political rant. It was a summary of what actually happened.
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DOGE is the best example of Dunning-Kruger effect. A bunch of smart kids think they are better than everyone.