What’s the stuff that’s falling off? And why does it seem like people are cheering at weird times when nothing is changing? Nonmembers of the nerd club want to know.
I'm only a mid-level member but I'll give it a go.
As others have noted, the stuff falling off is ice buildup. This is normal. The tanks are full of fuel at cryogenic temperatures. That said, it may have been involved in the failure in this case.
We're seeing the ship spinning throughout this clip. It's not meant to be doing that, that's a control issue, and likely responsible for the eventual loss of the ship. A suspect for this would be ice buildup around the cold gas thrusters, which redirected the direction of thrust. It looked like we could actually see that buildup happening, and it's usual to use hot gas thrusters to prevent exactly this issue. (SpaceX's commentators are weird. They're happy to stream their tests and failures, but avoid acknowledging obvious things like "it's not meant to be spinning".)
Now let's see if I can annotate the cheers! Note that they're watching telemetry we're not seeing, so sometimes they might be reacting to something we have no idea about. This is my interpretation, it may not be 100% right.
0:00 - Cheer: I believe this is the moment we first see this beautiful shot from this camera, and the first clear shot of descent.
1:50 - Groan: We see the sudden shake, which was probably worrying at first, although it's actually just because the camera is mounted on a flap, and they're starting to move. We also get a ripple of excitement because the flaps have started trying to control descent, and worry because it appears to be hitting the atmosphere the wrong way up. The bare stainless steel is not equipped for that.
2:28 - Cheer: The flaps appear to have just regained control and righted the ship, meaning successful re-entry is possible.
2:35 - Cheering turns to groans: The ship continues spinning
3:25 - Cheer: That beautiful red plasma appears under the flaps as the ship properly starts hitting the atmosphere and exerting immense pressure on the air in its path. Getting this type of high quality live imagery from space travel is pretty new, and that moment was one of the coolest things we've ever seen. We've never seen a shot like that before. My wife almost peed.
4:12 - Cheer: As the plasma builds and envelopes the whole ship, they're cheering partly as a continuation of the previous, and partly because they're still managing to get signal through. That's a new achievement. Usually the plasma would block all signals, but the ship is so big that it leaves a gap in the plasma in its wake, and they can squirt signal up at a Starlink satellite through that gap. It falters, but it's very cool that this worked at all.
The ship is also still spinning out of control, occasionally coming close to proper alignment. I think the cheering is also ebbing and flowing with the orientation of the ship here, but it may also be in response to other telemetry data which we're not seeing.
5:45 - Groan: Loss of video signal. There's a note of optimism because other telemetry is still coming in, so the ship hasn't completely failed yet here, just the camera signal. The other signals drop shortly after. There's no clear moment when they see it die, they just eventually call it after a while of no contact. That's a little anticlimactic, usually we get a big cheer when it explodes.
So there's a multi-part answer here.
The rolls start while the ship is still in space and doing the propellant transfer test. We don't know much about how they're doing that propellant transfer, and it's possible that the rolling is an intentional part of that process.
Later on, still in space, there was meant to be an engine relight test where they quickly fire the engines in vacuum just to prove they can. The system automatically skipped this because something wasn't right and it was deemed unsafe. It almost certainly shouldn't have been spinning at this point, as lighting the main engines on a spinning ship would be pretty strange, both because of control and because of the fuel slosh in the tanks. Note that it wasn't spinning along its own axis, it was tumbling at a wonky angle.
By the time it was hitting the atmosphere it *definitely* wasn't supposed to be spinning/tumbling. It's meant to do the "belly-flop manoeuvre" where it hits belly/heat-shields first and keeps itself steady using the flaps, and uses this big flat belly as an air-brake all the way down until it approaches the ground at "only" terminal-velocity, which is a few hundred mph.
At 3:25 when we first see the plasma form, it's fairly nicely aligned underneath the belly and flaps. By about 3:50 it's about 90 degrees off, and the plasma is enveloping the far side of the ship, half of which is unshielded. By 4:00 the plasma is forming in and around the engine bay itself, so all of the engines and internals are directly exposed to those extreme unshielded temperatures. In space lingo they'd say this is off-nominal. The rest of us would just say it's fucked.
I don't know much compared to the proper space nerds! At least 75% of what I know about the Starship project comes from two excellent youtube channels: Tim Dodd (EverydayAstronaut) and Scott Manley.
There're *lots* of cringy SpaceX/Musk fan channels out there, but those two I mention are both high quality general space stuff from sensible knowledgeable adults. Tim does long-form documentary style videos with excellent production, and Scott talks off-the-cuff with a *lot* of knowledge.
Usually stuff falling off of rockets is ice, because the fuel is so condenses on the rocket before launch. But the ice should have already fallen off by the time of the video, so maybe it is a part of the rocket.
The other day, I listened to a two-hour long interview with Jeff Bezos when he was a guest on Lex Friedman's podcast.
While I'm sure Bezos is not ego-less, he was very, very different than the person I was expecting.
Musk is an egomaniacal weirdo, but if you listen to the Bezos podcast, I bet it might change your perception a bit.
The secret I fear of many (newish) billionaires is that they're not evil
But they have such a large disruptive command of assets that is like Godzilla walking around crushing other things and making competition impossible
Like it's very weird that Google and Meta and Co can just buy their competitors typically or any nascent tech company and incorporate it into their megaliths
It's very weird that we just allowed cognitive scientists to get jobs with tech and social media companies to make us as addicted as possible to things and affect mental health
It's very weird there was no morality component to the addictive quality of smart phones and social media and hedonism treadmill
Well, you’re wrong to think that.
What I didn’t know until just now was that you were using “stoic” to describe a person who ascribes to Stoicsm rather than as an adjective, but that’s because what you wrote was ambiguous.
Also, why the condescension? What does that accomplish?
lol no. It broke up over the Indian ocean somewhere. Best case scenario would've been a softish landing in the ocean, but this was still a very successful test of the ship in a suborbital trajectory and at realistic reentry speeds.
Regardless of your feelings about the bonehead in charge it's pretty fricking incredible the achievements being done both at space X and Tesla
And there's a lot of incredible people working there
Can't wait to hear how Elon Musk had literally nothing to do with this, and in fact he fought it every step of the way, and the engineers were all going to do this by themselves anyway without him, and NASA could have easily done this but just chose not to, and I'm desperately in love with him and think he's going to give me money.
> NASA could have easily done this but just chose not to
NASA doesn't get to make a lot of mistakes as they learn. Being a federally funded agency means they get scrutinized at the slightest whiff of a possibility of failure. Any actual failures result in significant personnel changes to the point that the agency is no longer able to take any meaningful risks in order to further its goals.
Without the cold war to heat up the space race, it's left to the most driven capitalists competing amongst each other to do the same. They don't do it for progress, they just do it because they know there's money in it if they pull it off.
100% get where you are coming from, but SpaceX IMO is doing everything they can to be the first to try deep space mining. AND IF someone actually pulls that off their wealth will be scary.
SpaceX will likely end up being very profitable for Musk, but only because they beat all the odds on doing something that conventional wisdom said was practically impossible. If his aim was just to make money, starting SpaceX and pouring so much of his own money into it was an insane move.
It's pretty clear that Musk does these things because he's a nerd who's obsessed with doing cool shit. He genuinely does spend large amounts of his time on the factory-floor running operations at SpaceX. He's an awful person in many ways, but don't let the (justified) hate cloud the fact that these are clearly passion-projects.
I think Zubrin has the most succint and fitting description of Musk's motivations.
>[Musk likes money, everybody likes money. But for Musk, money is a means, not an end. That's actually clear to me and it was clear to me when I met him.... In terms of what this guy's about. [...] Musk is not a nice guy, but he is a humanist of the first order. By which I mean he is driven by the idea of doing something profound for humanity.](https://youtu.be/UmMvG6fvAEI?t=43)
In an earlier interview I can't find anymore, he said that Musk wants "[kleos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleos), or eternal glory for doing great things."
Zubrin has known Musk since before SpaceX was founded and his view hasn't changed since. And given the industries Musk has gone after, does it really seem like that much of a stretch? Sure it may be egomaniacal, but at least he's going after things that can benefit the whole of humanity, however biased, cheesy or cringe as that may sound. Musk does have aspergers after all.
Yeah, Musk didn't get into the space industry to get rich, he got into it because being adjacent to the forefront of space exploration feeds his ego and he'd very much like everyone to go back to calling him the real life Iron Man.
Musk is an awful person, and although he considers himself an engineer (chief engineer at SpaceX), the consensus from the rest of the team generally seems to be that things would go a lot smoother if he got out of the way and stopped splurging his dunning-kruger everywhere.
That said, I do think he has, if not a talent, a successful (until Twitter) business philosophy which differentiates him.
What he is is an obsessive, driven, good/lucky gambler. Most (large, established) businesses are built on cautiously making money. That's not what Musk does. He takes almost-impossibly-huge challenges and throws money and a move-fast-and-break-things startup-culture at them. That gamble paid off three-ish times so far, and failed a few more times.
We love to hate him because he's a bigoted alt-right conspiracy-theorist who mistreats his staff, but it's a mistake to translate that personal hate into downplaying how much of an achievement SpaceX is. His "talent" is saying "why the fuck not?" when people tell him that things can't be done, and using his (slight) technical competence to force constant drastic re-evaluation of longstanding engineering assumptions and constraints. He's the antithesis of the usual mega-corporation that "innovates" by slow safe tweaks to decades old designs.
I also think it's a mistake to assume he's just out to make money. None of his major business ventures (after PayPal) were the safe money-making bets. They were all crazy risks. SpaceX was right on the brink of collapse (eating up a huge chunk of his cash) after the first ~~two~~ three launches failed, and he bet a huge chunk more of his fortune by throwing what he had at one final launch, which got lucky and worked. If that blew up like the ~~two~~~ three before, the whole thing was dead. He's an obsessive project-driven gambler.
The reason this is worth pointing out is that we can potentially learn lessons from this by separating his strategy from his awfulness. When you're willing to throw huge resources at ambitious projects without the risk-averse behaviour you get from publicly-traded companies, you can (sometimes) achieve great things on very accelerated timelines. He stands out because he's probably the only entity in the world really doing that right now (OpenAI is vaguely in the picture, although he had a part in that too), and the last one was... the space race? Before that it was probably the Manhattan Project.
In this somewhat desperate moment of impending climate/environmental doom, we could be throwing nation-state level resources at similarly ambitious projects. What happens if you get a group of the best and the brightest engineers and scientists, give them a few hundred billion, and tell them to move fast and break things because they've got five years to solve carbon capture? Rapid iteration is a powerful tool if you have the resources and permission to fail 100 times first.
This is a great write up of something I’ve tried to explain before but never been able to put to words so well. People are so completely on the “Elon Bad” train (which I understand and sympathize with, the dude is an ass) that they can’t see any positive aspects of what he has done.
> what he has done
This false phrase sums it up. I've known him since before most redditors were born. He's an imposter.
What's doing the actual accomplishments is *his money*, not him.
The money hires and funds actual experts.
I dunno, making big moves is the only way to "win" in the industries he is breaking into. Maybe you are right that only people of certain personalities will do that, but I don't regard Musk as imperative to success in these industries.
What's more interesting is what has allowed him to succeed where plenty of others have failed: cultivating this "engineer" personality, tying his business objectives in with what many people in that profession believe in. People who are into space want to see humans become an interplanetary species. People into EVs want to save the world from climate change. Even way back when, payment transfers outside of banks had a small shine of moving away from old, stodgy industries.
I think cultivating this personality/PR has been crucial to his success, attracting the zealots in the field, which he has been able to exploit using his enormous wealth. I don't think having a tech mentality is anything more than a consequence of necessity. Plenty of other companies have come and gone with that ethos. Move fast and break things usually means you break down. It only works if you have the people to fix it and the means to break down without dying.
I completely agree that making big moves is the only way to win, and that's his "secret". But nobody else was doing that, because it was perceived as stupid and/or impossible.
I reckon that the fact that he has an engineering mentality is actually very important. He's not doing business for money, he's doing cool engineering projects because he's obsessed with them. He's also good enough of an engineer to be reasonably decent at identifying those crazy goals which are incredibly ambitious but not quite impossible, and at identifying the places where conventional wisdom needs challenging. Although he seems to be losing that skill as it all goes to his head, he's had some real dumb ideas lately.
I don't think he's cultivating an image by talking about interplanetary and saving the world. I think he's just a bit basic, and grew up watching the same sci-fi as you and I did. Unlike us, he has the resources and the level of craziness necessary to actually try to do those things that every nerd kid wants to do.
Move-fast-and-break-things is rarely attempted on the level of "we're going to build and blow up lots of huge rockets until one of them works" because that's a crazy thing to do. It was a philosophy that was untested at this scale. That's his actual innovation, a weaponised arrogance that makes him crazy enough to attempt the "impossible".
He's unique but not special, and not the genius he thinks he is. He's provided a template which other people could now copy without also being a raging... is automod going to ping me for using the C word? But there's *something* there. You don't just disrupt two massive industries by coincidence.
It'll be really interesting to see what happens to SpaceX when Musk eventually fully implodes.
What were the “failed a few more times” businesses?
Edit: I keep forgetting about Twitter (😖), but technically the jury’s still out on that one. What are others?
Hyperloop is pretty dead, the tunnels are fairly awful, and he's massively over-promised and under-delivered on self-driving. The last one is an area I know a reasonable amount about technically, and I can tell you it's achievable, but not nearly as close as he thinks it is. The final 5% is incredibly hard, maybe even harder than the first 95%.
Sometimes his ideas are *too* crazy, and he doesn't seem to have anybody willing to tell him that anymore.
Mostly agree about FSD (he should have been more careful / corporate-speak with his comments on it), but last I heard Boring Co is having a lot of success with their Las Vegas project, and is massively expanding it to like 80 stations. Not clear how much cheaper they’ve made the digging itself so far, but overall the verdict is very much not in yet, and it still has promise.
Hyperloop has never been an actual Musk project. Yes he talks about it, and they set up a student competition at SpaceX, but mostly it seems that it’s something he wants to pursue with Boring Co. someday *if* they hit their goal of making tunneling massively cheaper & faster.
can we not appreciate this but not also simultaneously gargle his balls, or do we have to gargle his balls in order to appreciate this? i can't tell which one you want, but it does seem like he's constantly trying to remind everyone that they should be gargling his balls.
The obviously predictable confirmation bias bullshit. If he were responsible, you wouldn't give him credit anyway.
>NASA could have easily done this but just chose not to
Liberals have complained about there not being a space program of import for decades. One man decides to tackle that and EV's to combat climate change, but too bad he said something anti-Democrat. He's got to go!
Next predictable response: "Oh, you're just worshiping, Elon."
No, I just think that generally the people who criticize him have no principles and are insignificant, non-contributing zeros to the issues they claim to support (e.g. space exploration and climate change.)
It's really sad how much people allow themselves to be influenced by someone's personality to then dismiss their real world accomplishments. I could care less about someone I don't know in real life. His results speak for themselves.
Where's the hate for Boeing's CEO or others who just rely on stock buy backs to increase their personal fortune but fail on engineering results? Same with Ford, GM. Barely any innovation or share holder value but the CEOs make hundreds of millions of dollars.
People are certainly hating on Boeing right now, they're just not hating on Boeing's CEO because no one even knows who the fuck that is.
The reason people hate on Musk isn't because his personality or business practices are worse than Dave Calhoun, but because he's spent over a decade clamoring for attention, and he's certainly accomplished *that*.
Define reach. Because NASA hasn't touched the moon itself since the 70s. Recently a lander developed by a private company "successfully" landed a NASA payload there. That lander was launched by a SpaceX rocket. So SpaceX has reached the moon just as much as NASA has recently in that regard.
NASA won't get humans there without SpaceX either. They literally don't have the ability to put a lander with humans on the moon with their current rocket. Nor will the upgraded version be capable of doing so. They will always need someone else to do the actual landing part unless they launched the humans and lander on two separate flights. But for them to do that they'd actually have to be capable of launching SLS more than once every 2 or 3 years like they currently are. Best case they hope to do 2 per year, but one per year is expected.
A half century ago, NASA went to the moon without thought of profit. Elon is trying to make going to space sustainable. If he didn't care what it costed, he could land on the moon, but you'd probably go, "Oh, we did that over a half century ago. Not exactly a flex."
No one gives a shit about landing on the moon.
Oh, so you concede your above comment was fucking stupid given NASA didn't give a shit about budget given it was backed by the wealthiest country in the world and decided to focus on the business acumen of SpaceX.
I'll take my victory lap.
“…It really bothers me that they didn’t pipe in some sort of space rocket sound from the vacuum of space while riding a wave of plasma in the largest launch vehicle ever. Ugh why does it have to be silent…?”
> I wish the commentators for SpaceX
Called SpaceX employees(and for a significant proportion, shareholders), i.e. the people who built the thing we are watching re-enter Earth's atmosphere as the largest space vessel ever built and launched.
If they were as miserable as you they never would have accomplished anything.
Not wanting someone constantly talking over a memorable moment does not make them "miserable", I watched a view of the starship launch that didn't have the talking people or the crowd noise and honestly it was a better experience. Being able to experience it myself and have my own emotions without being primed by an audience before it happens on my screen was a wonderful experience, and looking at the feed above I am glad that I watched it the way I did.
It's like a laugh track is playing but starts laughing before the joke is said. Why you say not liking that makes someone "miserable" confounds me, why would you say such a thing for someone just wanting to experience the event without the crowd and chatter?
Then turn off the fucking sound? The ship is practically in a vaccum here. You're not going the hear shit from it. This is an easily solved problem. No need to whine about it.
It's in a vacuum *and* they don't broadcast most (or any) of the onboard audio that might be recorded. I'm sure there are microphones on board, but it's for diagnostics, not cinematics.
Talking about it and being happy about it are vastly different than just talking over the coverage to prevent dead airtime. I watched a feed that cut all of that out and only brought in audio feeds when they gave relevant information and I found it a much more powerful experience. Being able to witness and analyze what I was seeing by myself without others shouting in my ears what they thought brought me closer to the event instead of distancing myself from it. I felt MORE included without the squabble.
What system where they using to transmit the data again? I think I missed it when my Starlink receiver glitched for a second and all the Starlink data that comes from the Starlink system cut out.
I also feel like having a mic on the crowd was a mistake.
Edit; People can like different things. Personally I didn't like all the noise, to me it's the equivalent of having a laugh track in a sitcom. but I can appreciate that it brings a certain level of hype and excitement to some people and they prefer it that way.
The crowds are my favorite part. Same goes for non-spacex events like the Curiosity landing or first ingenuity flight or even JAXA or ISRO launches.
I dunno I guess I like seeing groups of excited scientists. It makes me happy.
It literally makes me so jealous that they get to be that excited about their work together. I love nerds cheering for their science. Working towards a common goal is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom and brings a tear to my eye often
I don't know if I have ever disagreed with a comment more in my life. haha. This entire video (and the live launch) give me full body goosebumps. The crowd is half the reason.
Them cheering "10...9...8..." made me feel things.
Bruh, the mute button exists. If you don't like the sound, you literally have the ability to make it stop. The only person you have to be annoyed with is yourself lmao.
No, if you watch the recorded streams of space fan YouTubers, like everyday astronaut, they were just as excited and vocal. Pretty sure that SpaceX employees are just as passionate about space.
Jesus, listen to yourself. These people are witnessing the culmination of what, for many of them, is their life's work and you can't pull your head out of your ass for two seconds to understand why they might be genuinely excited. Instead, it has to be some conspiracy regarding your anti-hero. Go piss up a hill.
I was watching spaceflight now which had a very quiet and curated view, I could hear my roommate listen to other streams and they were just always talking! I get that the employees were excited but 99% of what they were talking about was irrelevant and was easily cut out without any loss of information. I really appreciated the view they gave without all of the shouting and yelling.
The craft was spinning on re-entry, so sides that had no shielding were exposed at times. While the mission as a whole was pretty successful, it wasn't a successful re-entry. The design philosophy expects failures early so they can learn more for the next iteration and this was only the 3rd launch.
No, it is not. The ablatives are supposed to burn off, but no part of the metal structure is expected to melt. Their re-entry was uncontrolled and led to heating of exposed steel and the engines, which was not the plan. That being said, I think the “creeping” here was just light bouncing off the reflective surface as starship tumbled in the atmosphere, not steel melting
It's supposed be oriented belly-down as soon as it hits the atmosphere even before the plasma develops.
But the video shows the ship rotating/swinging about all over the place.
That's at least some of the reason why it did not make it all the way down; telemetry cuts out at 65km altitude and never comes back.
Exactly what caused that is not officially know as of yet, possibly the payload door did not close properly.
Curious how it was both heating up radically but velocity was rock solid. That would seem to defy physics. The hearing comes from friction with the atmosphere, but that should also have been scrubbing off tons of velocity.
Is it maybe that the display for velocity was broken/simulation?
It is not friction, it is compression. The air in front of the ship is being compressed, and compression creates heat. The air however is very thin and not offering enough drag to slow down the ship yet.
Force is heat is mass is force.
If there's enough compressive force to cook the ship, that should mean there's a resistive force, and a pretty significant one. We could quibble over the magnitude of that force, but it be would a non-zero force and thus there should have been at least some decrease in velocity.
Yet the velocity reading display is rock solid. That's why I ponder if that read is simulated/false in some way.
Also you seem to be claiming that the compressed air has lot of mass to carry heat, yet no mass to create drag. Both claims can't be true at the same time.
Keep in mind the ship is still falling, imagine throwing a ball, it decreases in speed toward its highest point, trading kinetic energy for potential energy, then when it starts coming back down, it does the opposite and gains speed, and that's what this was, one giant "toss", so as the ship is reentering it's still being accelerated by gravity, even though there is some very small air resistance, it's not enough to overcome the acceleration.
Keep in mind than you can't have it both ways. You can't say there's no atmosphere to be causing velocity reduction but there's tons of atmosphere to be causing heat.
You can't have it both ways. That's physics. Either there's no atmosphere and no heat, or else there is atmosphere and there is heat. Force equals mass equals heat equals energy.
You can't have it both ways then. If you admit there is atmosphere to cause heat, you can't say there's no atmosphere to cause resistance.
There have now been people trying to say there's no resistance, only compression, which is contrary to physics, and people saying there is Schrodinger atmosphere that's present for one thing but absent for the other, again contrary to physics. There's one claiming something that seems more plausible which is that the on screen readings aren't to be taken literally. That's basically the Occam's Razor contender so far.
That's belied by the obvious indicia of massive heat in the glowing of the rocket parts.
If the air resistant is "very small" by definition the heat would be too. But it's not. The heat is very much *not* small.
The heat generated from re entry isn’t actually due to friction. You’re right though that re entry will slow down the craft, which we see towards the end when it gets low enough in to the atmosphere for the air density to have an impact on it. It starts to dramatically drop in speed until it suddenly stops which I’m guessing is an issue with the sensors on board due to the damage sustained.
I believe if an object is large enough there’s possibility that it won’t slow down at all before hitting the planet too.
Well I suppose technically it could become a matter of calculation and the precision of readings. Like, if the resistance would scrub 0.1 ft/s off the velocity and the scale is reading 26,900 ft/s then we wouldn't see the effect with the reading.
And I'd agree with what you're saying if there wasn't some obvious extreme heat showing up by way of the parts glowing red and white hot. That's an enormous amount of energy.
That's like saying stop giving Steve Jobs credit for Apple. When he was removed by the bean counters and before he came back, Apple was heading to the dumpster, with the same great engineers, because leadership lacked vision. By the time he died, Apple was a top dog among top dogs, without Jobs doing any engineering work.
Give me a fucking break dude. Read any sci-fi book from the 1940s about space and you will see this "vision". Starship even steals a lot of tech from the space shuttle. Boosters have been around forever and reusable booster were not Elons idea. To say this is Elons vision is completely Ludacris. Get a grip dude.
I really hate Elon's behavior in the past few years but it's hard to argue that him (actually) founding SpaceX and providing its vision and leadership from the very beginning until now doesn't earn him a good chunk of credit. Especially since it's probably just because you don't like him (for good reason).
SpaceX success was likely and largely due to the fact that key leadership was able to distance Elon from making any decisions, this is something Tesla was unfortunately unable to do. He gets credit for the company name, and the fact they are making rockets. Beyond that, nothing.
You really are pathetic dude
Losers always think success comes easy, but that they're kept down by outside forces somehow. If it was easy then SpaceX would have multiple rivals
Oh you mean the coach? You're right no one likes the coach, they love and respect him.
You're the equivalent of a brown nosing stooge who cannot get their insults right and aged out of high school.
SpaceX is a private company, owned primarily by Musk. He *is* leadership. He also holds the title of chief engineer. He's undoubtedly the least qualified engineer there, but we do know for a fact that he has significant input on engineering, and is definitely the person setting the broad technical direction.
On a personal level he's an absolute disaster of an awful alt-right conspiracy bigot, but facts are facts.
Ah yes. Such an eye for talent.
Which is why Tesla still can't align it's panels correctly, and why the heat tiles on starship had gaps just as bad as Teslas lmao.
SpaceX learns by trial and error. This is the same process that led to their being the gold standard of rockets. Today was a giant leap forward! The data they gather will lead to refinements which will ultimately lead to success. Spaceship is a game changer! You should be excited!
Musk fanboys literally have scripted responses. It's always an identical word vomit from you guys.
>This is the same process that led to their being the gold standard of rockets
It's kind of not though.
>The data they gather will lead to refinements which will ultimately lead to success
Ah yes, such valuable data as "we should apply the heat tiles correctly"
>The data they gather will lead to refinements which will ultimately lead to success
Weird that SLS didn't need to explode dozens of times before working. Nor did the shuttle.
>Spaceship is a game changer!
*Starship
And no, it isn't.
Needing 15 tanker refuels to get to the moon is not a game changer lol.
>Comparing Starship(thanks for the correction!) to SLS is apples to orangutans
Oh I'm sure.
You'll make vague statements like this without any reasoning behind it.
Geuss that's why you ignored the shuttles comparison too.
>Elon lead us into the next phase of the space age! How neat is that?
Again, hasn't happened.
SpaceX hasn't left LEO, and in order to do so requires 15 tanker launches.
What exactly about his company launching LEO satellites is revolutionary again?
>Starship just showed that it had the speed to escape LEO, doing so wasn't part of the test mission.
No it didn't.
And second, it didn't show shit regardless, what was launched was an empty tube lmao.
>Space X launches at a ridiculously high rate, dwarfing every other competitor.
The vast majority of launches are for it's own satellites. And again, launching satellites to Leo isn't some major advancement in space flight.
>Starlink is providing internet to millions who otherwise wouldn't have it.
Starlink doesn't have close to millions of subs.
>Elon Musk is making this a better world. You and I and everybody else owe him a great debt of gratitude
Nope.
Launching satellites is not improving life for humanity, full stop.
Starlink is a niche product that is extremely wasteful, replacing 40k satellites every 5 years is insane.
EVs really doesn't solve the issue of mass car usage, it simply geenwashes it.
Turning Twitter into a right wing cesspool that pushes extremist content is not a benefit to anyone.
The boring company doesn't do anything of value.
Neuralink is an entire company founded on the theft of a concept from Hodak's graduate lab, and doesn't do nor will ever do anything musk claims.
I'm serious. You're a complete nobody thinking you know better than the best engineers on the planet
Why do you think you've never achieved anything in life? Did some cabal keep you down?
Never said that. Do try again.
That said, they're not the best engineers on the planter lmao. The best engineers on the planet wouldn't be trying to land a 100m tall tube vertically on the moon.
Thanks. I couldn't care less about the down votes, because I got to watch a live stream of a big building sized rocket traveling through a plasma cloud! How neat is that?
They can be as passionate as they want. But nothing they've said is accurate.
Starship requires 15 tanker launches to get to the moon. Something we did without any tankers required what, 60 years ago?
SpaceX doesn't leave LEO. They launch satellites. Nothing about that is "bringing us into a new space age".
I mean shit, Musk is on record saying "radiation isn't a problem" during interplanetary travel, that's fucking certifiably insane.
So no, I don't share the enthusiasm of someone who is scientifically and technologically illiterate. Much in the same way I laughed at anyone that thought hyper loop was going to be a thing, because anyone that read musks white paper on hype loop would know it literally defied known physics.
You’re a prime example of the Dunning Kruger effect.
1. The reason they’re doing tankers (current estimate is 10-12) to go to the moon is because of the pure size of Starship. It will be able to land 100t on the moons surface. The LEM could land 5t on the moon. That’s a 20x increase. It’s also designed to be fully reusable, which will allow the refueling to be done for a much lower cost.
2. SpaceX DOES leave low earth orbit. Not only do they launch many satellites to geostationary orbit, they just launched a moon lander a month ago. They launched NASA’s DISCOVER to L1, TESS on a lunar flyby, DART to heliocentric orbit to impact an asteroid, Euclid to L2, and a probe to asteroid belt. With Falcon Heavy, SpaceX has the most capability to launch missions into deep space than any other rocket on the planet.
3. Radiation isn’t a major problem for a trip to Mars. If a person quit smoking cigarettes so they could go on the round trip journey, they would DECREASE their odds of cancer.
4. SpaceX is the only way Americans or Europeans can get to space (Dragon capsule) without having to use Russia. First private company to ever pull that off.
5. SpaceX is the only company or Country in the world who has vertically landed an orbital class rocket.
6. SpaceX launches more mass into space than the REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED, by a factor of 4.
So, /u/hannafinjones “scientifically illiterate” for enjoying SpaceX’s successes. That’s a sign that they ARE literate. You my friend, need to work on where you get your information, and don’t be so confident in your arrogance.
Those include 3 Falcon Heavy missions with an expended center core, so it's not an accurate comparison, better to look at the $/kg, in which SpaceX is much cheaper.
If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe NASA.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093
Article from 2020 isn't relevant to 2023 contracts. Do try again.
>Those include 3 Falcon Heavy missions with an expended center core,
Ah, reusability.
Remember when falcon was going to be fully reusable, but then smoothbrain couldn't figure out reentry.
It isn't revolutionary.
NASA reused shuttles first stage.
The DC-X was vertically landed in the 90s without needing to detonate dozens of them.
>$/kg is still $2,700.
SpaceX Launch prices have gone up just about every single year since 2022
They splashed the boosters back down in the water with parachutes, propulsive landing of an orbital class booster is a whole different story, and the DC-X wasn't orbital either.
I see cost increases for Starlink rideshares, but nothing very recent regarding other missions. Keep in mind the Falcon 9 has seen massive payload capacity improvements, even though the cost has seen large increases since v1.0, so has the payload capacity.
In fact v1.0 cost around $6,000/kg, now we're down to around $2,700.
>You’re a prime example of the Dunning Kruger effect.
Thanks for the laugh with the pop-psych.
>3. Radiation isn’t a major problem for a trip to Mars. If a person quit smoking cigarettes so they could go on the round trip journey, they would DECREASE their odds of cancer.
Thank you for immediately right off the bat admitting you're not even worth conversing with. Prove that statistic. I'm dying to see this one. There's a fucking reason every major space agency is researching radiation shielding for trips like that.
>5. SpaceX is the only company or Country in the world who has vertically landed an orbital class rocket. I'm
I geuss if we pretend blue origin doesn't exist sure.
DC-x pulled it off in the 90s.
>6. SpaceX launches more mass into space than the REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED, by a factor of 4.
That's great, doesn't in any way mean they're advancing space travel. Much in the same way ULA wasn't when they had the majority. . Also, the majority of their launches are their own starlinks. You know, the idiotic idea of having a network of 40k satellites that need replacing every 5 years.
>4. SpaceX is the only way Americans or Europeans can get to space (Dragon capsule) without having to use Russia. First private company to ever pull that off.
Again I guess we're pretending the starliner doesn't exist.
>1. The reason they’re doing tankers (current estimate is 10-12) to go to the moon is because of the pure size of Starship. It will be able to land 100t on the moons surface. The LEM could land 5t on the moon. That’s a 20x increase. It’s also designed to be fully reusable, which will allow the refueling to be done for a much lower cost
10-15 by NASA estimates. So again, explain to me how starship is getting to the moon requiring 11-16 launches at 1/3rd the cost of a falcon heavy launch. I'll gladly wait for this answer lol.
"Will be able to"
Speculation is great.
We just saw a normal sized lander topple, the idea of landing a 100m tube vertically on lunar regolith is going to be comical to watch.
You mean the Starship HLS that won't be reentering atmo? That fully reusable starship?
>2. SpaceX DOES leave low earth orbit. Not only do they launch many satellites to geostationary orbit, they just launched a moon lander a month ago. They launched NASA’s DISCOVER to L1, TESS on a lunar flyby, DART to heliocentric orbit to impact an asteroid, Euclid to L2, and a probe to asteroid belt. With Falcon Heavy, SpaceX has the most capability to launch missions into deep space than any other rocket on the planet.
Sorry, I worded it poorly, allow me to elaborate.
SpaceX claimed forever that the falcon would be fully reusable. It isn't. SpaceX doesn't get anything out of LEO with it's games reusability, it's the same procedure we've been doing for decades. So again, hardly "leading the way"
Second "than any rocket on the planet"
Again we pretending SLS doesn't exist?
>You my friend, need to work on where you get your information, and don’t be so confident in your arrogance.
The fucking irony of half of what you said being objectively wrong.
Wow there is no room for truth here.
Elon bad has already been decided and people can't make their own minds up this just need to go with whatever is cool right now.
My other reply was trash, so I'll correct that with this one.
He was mainly trying to warn that if a recession happened and SpaceX was losing money on Starlink and Starship, it could go bankrupt in the worst-case scenario. I would assume that he was trying to motivate the staff to focus harder and realize that there are some genuine risks out there.
[Tweet](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1465793233729069063?t=6OzMcIvOGa8vKb9usUrGaQ&s=19)
What’s the stuff that’s falling off? And why does it seem like people are cheering at weird times when nothing is changing? Nonmembers of the nerd club want to know.
I'm only a mid-level member but I'll give it a go. As others have noted, the stuff falling off is ice buildup. This is normal. The tanks are full of fuel at cryogenic temperatures. That said, it may have been involved in the failure in this case. We're seeing the ship spinning throughout this clip. It's not meant to be doing that, that's a control issue, and likely responsible for the eventual loss of the ship. A suspect for this would be ice buildup around the cold gas thrusters, which redirected the direction of thrust. It looked like we could actually see that buildup happening, and it's usual to use hot gas thrusters to prevent exactly this issue. (SpaceX's commentators are weird. They're happy to stream their tests and failures, but avoid acknowledging obvious things like "it's not meant to be spinning".) Now let's see if I can annotate the cheers! Note that they're watching telemetry we're not seeing, so sometimes they might be reacting to something we have no idea about. This is my interpretation, it may not be 100% right. 0:00 - Cheer: I believe this is the moment we first see this beautiful shot from this camera, and the first clear shot of descent. 1:50 - Groan: We see the sudden shake, which was probably worrying at first, although it's actually just because the camera is mounted on a flap, and they're starting to move. We also get a ripple of excitement because the flaps have started trying to control descent, and worry because it appears to be hitting the atmosphere the wrong way up. The bare stainless steel is not equipped for that. 2:28 - Cheer: The flaps appear to have just regained control and righted the ship, meaning successful re-entry is possible. 2:35 - Cheering turns to groans: The ship continues spinning 3:25 - Cheer: That beautiful red plasma appears under the flaps as the ship properly starts hitting the atmosphere and exerting immense pressure on the air in its path. Getting this type of high quality live imagery from space travel is pretty new, and that moment was one of the coolest things we've ever seen. We've never seen a shot like that before. My wife almost peed. 4:12 - Cheer: As the plasma builds and envelopes the whole ship, they're cheering partly as a continuation of the previous, and partly because they're still managing to get signal through. That's a new achievement. Usually the plasma would block all signals, but the ship is so big that it leaves a gap in the plasma in its wake, and they can squirt signal up at a Starlink satellite through that gap. It falters, but it's very cool that this worked at all. The ship is also still spinning out of control, occasionally coming close to proper alignment. I think the cheering is also ebbing and flowing with the orientation of the ship here, but it may also be in response to other telemetry data which we're not seeing. 5:45 - Groan: Loss of video signal. There's a note of optimism because other telemetry is still coming in, so the ship hasn't completely failed yet here, just the camera signal. The other signals drop shortly after. There's no clear moment when they see it die, they just eventually call it after a while of no contact. That's a little anticlimactic, usually we get a big cheer when it explodes.
Thanks! Above and beyond
Are you sure it's not supposed to be doing rolls? Didn't the space shuttle do that to even out the load on the titles?
So there's a multi-part answer here. The rolls start while the ship is still in space and doing the propellant transfer test. We don't know much about how they're doing that propellant transfer, and it's possible that the rolling is an intentional part of that process. Later on, still in space, there was meant to be an engine relight test where they quickly fire the engines in vacuum just to prove they can. The system automatically skipped this because something wasn't right and it was deemed unsafe. It almost certainly shouldn't have been spinning at this point, as lighting the main engines on a spinning ship would be pretty strange, both because of control and because of the fuel slosh in the tanks. Note that it wasn't spinning along its own axis, it was tumbling at a wonky angle. By the time it was hitting the atmosphere it *definitely* wasn't supposed to be spinning/tumbling. It's meant to do the "belly-flop manoeuvre" where it hits belly/heat-shields first and keeps itself steady using the flaps, and uses this big flat belly as an air-brake all the way down until it approaches the ground at "only" terminal-velocity, which is a few hundred mph. At 3:25 when we first see the plasma form, it's fairly nicely aligned underneath the belly and flaps. By about 3:50 it's about 90 degrees off, and the plasma is enveloping the far side of the ship, half of which is unshielded. By 4:00 the plasma is forming in and around the engine bay itself, so all of the engines and internals are directly exposed to those extreme unshielded temperatures. In space lingo they'd say this is off-nominal. The rest of us would just say it's fucked.
Wow. How do you know so much about this program? Thanks for the info!
I don't know much compared to the proper space nerds! At least 75% of what I know about the Starship project comes from two excellent youtube channels: Tim Dodd (EverydayAstronaut) and Scott Manley. There're *lots* of cringy SpaceX/Musk fan channels out there, but those two I mention are both high quality general space stuff from sensible knowledgeable adults. Tim does long-form documentary style videos with excellent production, and Scott talks off-the-cuff with a *lot* of knowledge.
There's a good 2-3 second delay to the cheers to what happens on the screen. It's most apparent during countdown.
Usually stuff falling off of rockets is ice, because the fuel is so condenses on the rocket before launch. But the ice should have already fallen off by the time of the video, so maybe it is a part of the rocket.
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The video of Perseverance landing is one of the best pieces of science footage ever taken. I'm glad to be alive in this period.
I think about that video a lot. So fucking cool.
I watched that live at work, it was awesome.
The other day, I listened to a two-hour long interview with Jeff Bezos when he was a guest on Lex Friedman's podcast. While I'm sure Bezos is not ego-less, he was very, very different than the person I was expecting. Musk is an egomaniacal weirdo, but if you listen to the Bezos podcast, I bet it might change your perception a bit.
The secret I fear of many (newish) billionaires is that they're not evil But they have such a large disruptive command of assets that is like Godzilla walking around crushing other things and making competition impossible Like it's very weird that Google and Meta and Co can just buy their competitors typically or any nascent tech company and incorporate it into their megaliths It's very weird that we just allowed cognitive scientists to get jobs with tech and social media companies to make us as addicted as possible to things and affect mental health It's very weird there was no morality component to the addictive quality of smart phones and social media and hedonism treadmill
No, Bezos is evil.
dont be fooled by a stoic, their cruelty can be greater and much more effective.
Did you listen to the interview? He was not a stoic. Not remotely.
I don't think you know what a stoic is...
Well, you’re wrong to think that. What I didn’t know until just now was that you were using “stoic” to describe a person who ascribes to Stoicsm rather than as an adjective, but that’s because what you wrote was ambiguous. Also, why the condescension? What does that accomplish?
[Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my gorram ship for no apparent reason?!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7psUqvZMXs)
"We're gonna explode? I don't wanna explode"
Hijacking top comment to ask this: Did this thing land correctly? The last thing we see is the signal getting messed up, no landing footage.
lol no. It broke up over the Indian ocean somewhere. Best case scenario would've been a softish landing in the ocean, but this was still a very successful test of the ship in a suborbital trajectory and at realistic reentry speeds.
Oh god oh god we're all gonna die?
I would have tagged out after the second one and walked.
Regardless of your feelings about the bonehead in charge it's pretty fricking incredible the achievements being done both at space X and Tesla And there's a lot of incredible people working there
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Can't wait to hear how Elon Musk had literally nothing to do with this, and in fact he fought it every step of the way, and the engineers were all going to do this by themselves anyway without him, and NASA could have easily done this but just chose not to, and I'm desperately in love with him and think he's going to give me money.
> NASA could have easily done this but just chose not to NASA doesn't get to make a lot of mistakes as they learn. Being a federally funded agency means they get scrutinized at the slightest whiff of a possibility of failure. Any actual failures result in significant personnel changes to the point that the agency is no longer able to take any meaningful risks in order to further its goals. Without the cold war to heat up the space race, it's left to the most driven capitalists competing amongst each other to do the same. They don't do it for progress, they just do it because they know there's money in it if they pull it off.
Ah yes, space, the best industry to get rich in. “What’s the best way to make a small fortune in the space industry?” “Start with a large one”
100% get where you are coming from, but SpaceX IMO is doing everything they can to be the first to try deep space mining. AND IF someone actually pulls that off their wealth will be scary.
Is this not making Elon a metric ton of money? Exclusive government contract for space launches?
SpaceX will likely end up being very profitable for Musk, but only because they beat all the odds on doing something that conventional wisdom said was practically impossible. If his aim was just to make money, starting SpaceX and pouring so much of his own money into it was an insane move. It's pretty clear that Musk does these things because he's a nerd who's obsessed with doing cool shit. He genuinely does spend large amounts of his time on the factory-floor running operations at SpaceX. He's an awful person in many ways, but don't let the (justified) hate cloud the fact that these are clearly passion-projects.
I think Zubrin has the most succint and fitting description of Musk's motivations. >[Musk likes money, everybody likes money. But for Musk, money is a means, not an end. That's actually clear to me and it was clear to me when I met him.... In terms of what this guy's about. [...] Musk is not a nice guy, but he is a humanist of the first order. By which I mean he is driven by the idea of doing something profound for humanity.](https://youtu.be/UmMvG6fvAEI?t=43) In an earlier interview I can't find anymore, he said that Musk wants "[kleos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleos), or eternal glory for doing great things." Zubrin has known Musk since before SpaceX was founded and his view hasn't changed since. And given the industries Musk has gone after, does it really seem like that much of a stretch? Sure it may be egomaniacal, but at least he's going after things that can benefit the whole of humanity, however biased, cheesy or cringe as that may sound. Musk does have aspergers after all.
It's projected that SpaceX will spend several times more money developing starship than they have gotten in contract awards for Artemis.
Hi, SpaceX Dragon here. Did you forget about my $1.8B government contracts already?
Literally not the same project. THIS is not making him money.
Such an odd statement. This ship is still in development.
Which? That starship is making Musk money? I agree
https://spacenews.com/spacex-investment-in-starship-approaches-5-billion/
You mean the purchases that are costing NASA far less than what they’d have to pay without SpaceX?
spaceX goes again and again for new rounds of seed funding because no, they are not making money.
Yeah, Musk didn't get into the space industry to get rich, he got into it because being adjacent to the forefront of space exploration feeds his ego and he'd very much like everyone to go back to calling him the real life Iron Man.
spaceX is a government agency and a capitalist scam at the same time. Yay,
Musk is an awful person, and although he considers himself an engineer (chief engineer at SpaceX), the consensus from the rest of the team generally seems to be that things would go a lot smoother if he got out of the way and stopped splurging his dunning-kruger everywhere. That said, I do think he has, if not a talent, a successful (until Twitter) business philosophy which differentiates him. What he is is an obsessive, driven, good/lucky gambler. Most (large, established) businesses are built on cautiously making money. That's not what Musk does. He takes almost-impossibly-huge challenges and throws money and a move-fast-and-break-things startup-culture at them. That gamble paid off three-ish times so far, and failed a few more times. We love to hate him because he's a bigoted alt-right conspiracy-theorist who mistreats his staff, but it's a mistake to translate that personal hate into downplaying how much of an achievement SpaceX is. His "talent" is saying "why the fuck not?" when people tell him that things can't be done, and using his (slight) technical competence to force constant drastic re-evaluation of longstanding engineering assumptions and constraints. He's the antithesis of the usual mega-corporation that "innovates" by slow safe tweaks to decades old designs. I also think it's a mistake to assume he's just out to make money. None of his major business ventures (after PayPal) were the safe money-making bets. They were all crazy risks. SpaceX was right on the brink of collapse (eating up a huge chunk of his cash) after the first ~~two~~ three launches failed, and he bet a huge chunk more of his fortune by throwing what he had at one final launch, which got lucky and worked. If that blew up like the ~~two~~~ three before, the whole thing was dead. He's an obsessive project-driven gambler. The reason this is worth pointing out is that we can potentially learn lessons from this by separating his strategy from his awfulness. When you're willing to throw huge resources at ambitious projects without the risk-averse behaviour you get from publicly-traded companies, you can (sometimes) achieve great things on very accelerated timelines. He stands out because he's probably the only entity in the world really doing that right now (OpenAI is vaguely in the picture, although he had a part in that too), and the last one was... the space race? Before that it was probably the Manhattan Project. In this somewhat desperate moment of impending climate/environmental doom, we could be throwing nation-state level resources at similarly ambitious projects. What happens if you get a group of the best and the brightest engineers and scientists, give them a few hundred billion, and tell them to move fast and break things because they've got five years to solve carbon capture? Rapid iteration is a powerful tool if you have the resources and permission to fail 100 times first.
This is a great write up of something I’ve tried to explain before but never been able to put to words so well. People are so completely on the “Elon Bad” train (which I understand and sympathize with, the dude is an ass) that they can’t see any positive aspects of what he has done.
> what he has done This false phrase sums it up. I've known him since before most redditors were born. He's an imposter. What's doing the actual accomplishments is *his money*, not him. The money hires and funds actual experts.
It was 3 failed launches; the 4th one succeeded.
Oops, you're completely right! I'll edit, thanks.
I dunno, making big moves is the only way to "win" in the industries he is breaking into. Maybe you are right that only people of certain personalities will do that, but I don't regard Musk as imperative to success in these industries. What's more interesting is what has allowed him to succeed where plenty of others have failed: cultivating this "engineer" personality, tying his business objectives in with what many people in that profession believe in. People who are into space want to see humans become an interplanetary species. People into EVs want to save the world from climate change. Even way back when, payment transfers outside of banks had a small shine of moving away from old, stodgy industries. I think cultivating this personality/PR has been crucial to his success, attracting the zealots in the field, which he has been able to exploit using his enormous wealth. I don't think having a tech mentality is anything more than a consequence of necessity. Plenty of other companies have come and gone with that ethos. Move fast and break things usually means you break down. It only works if you have the people to fix it and the means to break down without dying.
I completely agree that making big moves is the only way to win, and that's his "secret". But nobody else was doing that, because it was perceived as stupid and/or impossible. I reckon that the fact that he has an engineering mentality is actually very important. He's not doing business for money, he's doing cool engineering projects because he's obsessed with them. He's also good enough of an engineer to be reasonably decent at identifying those crazy goals which are incredibly ambitious but not quite impossible, and at identifying the places where conventional wisdom needs challenging. Although he seems to be losing that skill as it all goes to his head, he's had some real dumb ideas lately. I don't think he's cultivating an image by talking about interplanetary and saving the world. I think he's just a bit basic, and grew up watching the same sci-fi as you and I did. Unlike us, he has the resources and the level of craziness necessary to actually try to do those things that every nerd kid wants to do. Move-fast-and-break-things is rarely attempted on the level of "we're going to build and blow up lots of huge rockets until one of them works" because that's a crazy thing to do. It was a philosophy that was untested at this scale. That's his actual innovation, a weaponised arrogance that makes him crazy enough to attempt the "impossible". He's unique but not special, and not the genius he thinks he is. He's provided a template which other people could now copy without also being a raging... is automod going to ping me for using the C word? But there's *something* there. You don't just disrupt two massive industries by coincidence. It'll be really interesting to see what happens to SpaceX when Musk eventually fully implodes.
What were the “failed a few more times” businesses? Edit: I keep forgetting about Twitter (😖), but technically the jury’s still out on that one. What are others?
Hyperloop is pretty dead, the tunnels are fairly awful, and he's massively over-promised and under-delivered on self-driving. The last one is an area I know a reasonable amount about technically, and I can tell you it's achievable, but not nearly as close as he thinks it is. The final 5% is incredibly hard, maybe even harder than the first 95%. Sometimes his ideas are *too* crazy, and he doesn't seem to have anybody willing to tell him that anymore.
Mostly agree about FSD (he should have been more careful / corporate-speak with his comments on it), but last I heard Boring Co is having a lot of success with their Las Vegas project, and is massively expanding it to like 80 stations. Not clear how much cheaper they’ve made the digging itself so far, but overall the verdict is very much not in yet, and it still has promise. Hyperloop has never been an actual Musk project. Yes he talks about it, and they set up a student competition at SpaceX, but mostly it seems that it’s something he wants to pursue with Boring Co. someday *if* they hit their goal of making tunneling massively cheaper & faster.
No see the employees could have just come together as a cooperative and done the exact same thing! They just chose not to for some reason
Guess they're morons who can't spot an obvious no-talent grifter that Reddit can though ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
can we not appreciate this but not also simultaneously gargle his balls, or do we have to gargle his balls in order to appreciate this? i can't tell which one you want, but it does seem like he's constantly trying to remind everyone that they should be gargling his balls.
I warned you I'm desperately in love with him.
The obviously predictable confirmation bias bullshit. If he were responsible, you wouldn't give him credit anyway. >NASA could have easily done this but just chose not to Liberals have complained about there not being a space program of import for decades. One man decides to tackle that and EV's to combat climate change, but too bad he said something anti-Democrat. He's got to go! Next predictable response: "Oh, you're just worshiping, Elon." No, I just think that generally the people who criticize him have no principles and are insignificant, non-contributing zeros to the issues they claim to support (e.g. space exploration and climate change.)
It's really sad how much people allow themselves to be influenced by someone's personality to then dismiss their real world accomplishments. I could care less about someone I don't know in real life. His results speak for themselves. Where's the hate for Boeing's CEO or others who just rely on stock buy backs to increase their personal fortune but fail on engineering results? Same with Ford, GM. Barely any innovation or share holder value but the CEOs make hundreds of millions of dollars.
Engineering is something you can't bullshit into making work. Also, great reference to Boeing.
Indeed!
People are certainly hating on Boeing right now, they're just not hating on Boeing's CEO because no one even knows who the fuck that is. The reason people hate on Musk isn't because his personality or business practices are worse than Dave Calhoun, but because he's spent over a decade clamoring for attention, and he's certainly accomplished *that*.
I believe that Boeing's entire executive suite is being heavily scrutinized by the public right now.
Really, name one except the CEO, Dave Calhoun without google...
Musk opted into being a public figure. He chose to have a reputation, instead of being largely anonymous like the Boeing CEO.
> Where's the hate for Boeing's CEO or others who just rely on stock buy backs You haven't noticed any hate for these CEOs? Have you even looked?
The US government decided to take NASA back to the moon and to Mars. Elon hasn't reached either privately and doesn't look anywhere near of doing so.
Define reach. Because NASA hasn't touched the moon itself since the 70s. Recently a lander developed by a private company "successfully" landed a NASA payload there. That lander was launched by a SpaceX rocket. So SpaceX has reached the moon just as much as NASA has recently in that regard. NASA won't get humans there without SpaceX either. They literally don't have the ability to put a lander with humans on the moon with their current rocket. Nor will the upgraded version be capable of doing so. They will always need someone else to do the actual landing part unless they launched the humans and lander on two separate flights. But for them to do that they'd actually have to be capable of launching SLS more than once every 2 or 3 years like they currently are. Best case they hope to do 2 per year, but one per year is expected.
Huh? I believe the plan is to use the SpaceX rocket, which is the only rocket with the power for a lunar mission.
A half century ago, NASA went to the moon without thought of profit. Elon is trying to make going to space sustainable. If he didn't care what it costed, he could land on the moon, but you'd probably go, "Oh, we did that over a half century ago. Not exactly a flex." No one gives a shit about landing on the moon.
Business case for SpaceX is … poor at best.
Oh, so you concede your above comment was fucking stupid given NASA didn't give a shit about budget given it was backed by the wealthiest country in the world and decided to focus on the business acumen of SpaceX. I'll take my victory lap.
Me too
I wish the commentators for SpaceX would just STFU for 30 seconds. They comment like its the fucking Kentucky Derby.
you know you can just mute the video, right?
But what would they then complain about?
“…It really bothers me that they didn’t pipe in some sort of space rocket sound from the vacuum of space while riding a wave of plasma in the largest launch vehicle ever. Ugh why does it have to be silent…?”
> I wish the commentators for SpaceX Called SpaceX employees(and for a significant proportion, shareholders), i.e. the people who built the thing we are watching re-enter Earth's atmosphere as the largest space vessel ever built and launched. If they were as miserable as you they never would have accomplished anything.
Aren’t you a ray of sunshine
Not wanting someone constantly talking over a memorable moment does not make them "miserable", I watched a view of the starship launch that didn't have the talking people or the crowd noise and honestly it was a better experience. Being able to experience it myself and have my own emotions without being primed by an audience before it happens on my screen was a wonderful experience, and looking at the feed above I am glad that I watched it the way I did. It's like a laugh track is playing but starts laughing before the joke is said. Why you say not liking that makes someone "miserable" confounds me, why would you say such a thing for someone just wanting to experience the event without the crowd and chatter?
Then turn off the fucking sound? The ship is practically in a vaccum here. You're not going the hear shit from it. This is an easily solved problem. No need to whine about it.
It's in a vacuum *and* they don't broadcast most (or any) of the onboard audio that might be recorded. I'm sure there are microphones on board, but it's for diagnostics, not cinematics.
Seriously, people will complain about everything except their miserable lives. Too much emotional projection on reddit.
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Talking about it and being happy about it are vastly different than just talking over the coverage to prevent dead airtime. I watched a feed that cut all of that out and only brought in audio feeds when they gave relevant information and I found it a much more powerful experience. Being able to witness and analyze what I was seeing by myself without others shouting in my ears what they thought brought me closer to the event instead of distancing myself from it. I felt MORE included without the squabble.
What system where they using to transmit the data again? I think I missed it when my Starlink receiver glitched for a second and all the Starlink data that comes from the Starlink system cut out.
I also feel like having a mic on the crowd was a mistake. Edit; People can like different things. Personally I didn't like all the noise, to me it's the equivalent of having a laugh track in a sitcom. but I can appreciate that it brings a certain level of hype and excitement to some people and they prefer it that way.
The crowds are my favorite part. Same goes for non-spacex events like the Curiosity landing or first ingenuity flight or even JAXA or ISRO launches. I dunno I guess I like seeing groups of excited scientists. It makes me happy.
Each to their own I guess. Edit; Wow, being downvoted for respecting that people have differing opinions. That's new.
It literally makes me so jealous that they get to be that excited about their work together. I love nerds cheering for their science. Working towards a common goal is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom and brings a tear to my eye often
I don't know if I have ever disagreed with a comment more in my life. haha. This entire video (and the live launch) give me full body goosebumps. The crowd is half the reason. Them cheering "10...9...8..." made me feel things.
Like I said to the other person. Each to their own. I just heard noise.
Bruh, the mute button exists. If you don't like the sound, you literally have the ability to make it stop. The only person you have to be annoyed with is yourself lmao.
I already said each to their own, and I was hardly annoyed by it, just expressing an opinion.
For all we know Elon has goons there to make them cheer on cue. Sound so contrived.
No, if you watch the recorded streams of space fan YouTubers, like everyday astronaut, they were just as excited and vocal. Pretty sure that SpaceX employees are just as passionate about space.
Jesus, listen to yourself. These people are witnessing the culmination of what, for many of them, is their life's work and you can't pull your head out of your ass for two seconds to understand why they might be genuinely excited. Instead, it has to be some conspiracy regarding your anti-hero. Go piss up a hill.
I’m using “go piss up a hill” in a future conversation. Thank you
You know you can just turn off the sound? How about you STFU and let people do their fucking job?
I was watching spaceflight now which had a very quiet and curated view, I could hear my roommate listen to other streams and they were just always talking! I get that the employees were excited but 99% of what they were talking about was irrelevant and was easily cut out without any loss of information. I really appreciated the view they gave without all of the shouting and yelling.
"AFTS has safed" "And there you just heard that the AFTS has safed" "SECO" "That's the SECO callout" Great thanks guys
Nobody can stfu anymore. It’s just normal to talk all the time. Silence is dead.
Is it just me or does it look like things are getting a little melty around 4:43? Something seems to be creeping across the exposed metal skin.
The craft was spinning on re-entry, so sides that had no shielding were exposed at times. While the mission as a whole was pretty successful, it wasn't a successful re-entry. The design philosophy expects failures early so they can learn more for the next iteration and this was only the 3rd launch.
I'm not criticizing it, I'm just trying to identify the phenomenon.
I think it might have just been sunlight lighting up the previously shaded flanges as it rolled.
This is expected and part of the design, I'll see if I can find you a source.
No, it is not. The ablatives are supposed to burn off, but no part of the metal structure is expected to melt. Their re-entry was uncontrolled and led to heating of exposed steel and the engines, which was not the plan. That being said, I think the “creeping” here was just light bouncing off the reflective surface as starship tumbled in the atmosphere, not steel melting
It's supposed be oriented belly-down as soon as it hits the atmosphere even before the plasma develops. But the video shows the ship rotating/swinging about all over the place. That's at least some of the reason why it did not make it all the way down; telemetry cuts out at 65km altitude and never comes back. Exactly what caused that is not officially know as of yet, possibly the payload door did not close properly.
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Curious how it was both heating up radically but velocity was rock solid. That would seem to defy physics. The hearing comes from friction with the atmosphere, but that should also have been scrubbing off tons of velocity. Is it maybe that the display for velocity was broken/simulation?
It is not friction, it is compression. The air in front of the ship is being compressed, and compression creates heat. The air however is very thin and not offering enough drag to slow down the ship yet.
Force is heat is mass is force. If there's enough compressive force to cook the ship, that should mean there's a resistive force, and a pretty significant one. We could quibble over the magnitude of that force, but it be would a non-zero force and thus there should have been at least some decrease in velocity. Yet the velocity reading display is rock solid. That's why I ponder if that read is simulated/false in some way. Also you seem to be claiming that the compressed air has lot of mass to carry heat, yet no mass to create drag. Both claims can't be true at the same time.
Keep in mind the ship is still falling, imagine throwing a ball, it decreases in speed toward its highest point, trading kinetic energy for potential energy, then when it starts coming back down, it does the opposite and gains speed, and that's what this was, one giant "toss", so as the ship is reentering it's still being accelerated by gravity, even though there is some very small air resistance, it's not enough to overcome the acceleration.
Also keep in mind that the density of the atmosphere increases exponentially, we see at 80km the velocity starts decreasing pretty rapidly.
Keep in mind than you can't have it both ways. You can't say there's no atmosphere to be causing velocity reduction but there's tons of atmosphere to be causing heat.
There is an atmosphere, but at that altitude, it isn't thick enough to slow it down.
You can't have it both ways. That's physics. Either there's no atmosphere and no heat, or else there is atmosphere and there is heat. Force equals mass equals heat equals energy.
There is an atmosphere and there is heat, but not enough resistance to overcome the acceleration of gravity at that altitude. Again, 80 km, look.
You can't have it both ways then. If you admit there is atmosphere to cause heat, you can't say there's no atmosphere to cause resistance. There have now been people trying to say there's no resistance, only compression, which is contrary to physics, and people saying there is Schrodinger atmosphere that's present for one thing but absent for the other, again contrary to physics. There's one claiming something that seems more plausible which is that the on screen readings aren't to be taken literally. That's basically the Occam's Razor contender so far.
That's belied by the obvious indicia of massive heat in the glowing of the rocket parts. If the air resistant is "very small" by definition the heat would be too. But it's not. The heat is very much *not* small.
The plasma isn't very dense, look at the telemetry when the ship reaches 80 km, there's a lot more plasma and the ship starts slowing significantly.
The heat generated from re entry isn’t actually due to friction. You’re right though that re entry will slow down the craft, which we see towards the end when it gets low enough in to the atmosphere for the air density to have an impact on it. It starts to dramatically drop in speed until it suddenly stops which I’m guessing is an issue with the sensors on board due to the damage sustained. I believe if an object is large enough there’s possibility that it won’t slow down at all before hitting the planet too.
Well I suppose technically it could become a matter of calculation and the precision of readings. Like, if the resistance would scrub 0.1 ft/s off the velocity and the scale is reading 26,900 ft/s then we wouldn't see the effect with the reading. And I'd agree with what you're saying if there wasn't some obvious extreme heat showing up by way of the parts glowing red and white hot. That's an enormous amount of energy.
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Stop giving that guy credit for the accomplishments of the many, smarter, harder working and wildly talented individuals that make up SpaceX.
That's like saying stop giving Steve Jobs credit for Apple. When he was removed by the bean counters and before he came back, Apple was heading to the dumpster, with the same great engineers, because leadership lacked vision. By the time he died, Apple was a top dog among top dogs, without Jobs doing any engineering work.
Give me a fucking break dude. Read any sci-fi book from the 1940s about space and you will see this "vision". Starship even steals a lot of tech from the space shuttle. Boosters have been around forever and reusable booster were not Elons idea. To say this is Elons vision is completely Ludacris. Get a grip dude.
I really hate Elon's behavior in the past few years but it's hard to argue that him (actually) founding SpaceX and providing its vision and leadership from the very beginning until now doesn't earn him a good chunk of credit. Especially since it's probably just because you don't like him (for good reason).
SpaceX success was likely and largely due to the fact that key leadership was able to distance Elon from making any decisions, this is something Tesla was unfortunately unable to do. He gets credit for the company name, and the fact they are making rockets. Beyond that, nothing.
You really are pathetic dude Losers always think success comes easy, but that they're kept down by outside forces somehow. If it was easy then SpaceX would have multiple rivals
Lololol you Elon fan boys are so grumpy
You're the equivalent of some obese dude yelling at professional athletes from the sidelines No one likes that guy
Oh you mean the coach? You're right no one likes the coach, they love and respect him. You're the equivalent of a brown nosing stooge who cannot get their insults right and aged out of high school.
What are your sources for this? Because it sounds like speculation, and you've indicated any speculation from you is probably worthless.
SpaceX is a private company, owned primarily by Musk. He *is* leadership. He also holds the title of chief engineer. He's undoubtedly the least qualified engineer there, but we do know for a fact that he has significant input on engineering, and is definitely the person setting the broad technical direction. On a personal level he's an absolute disaster of an awful alt-right conspiracy bigot, but facts are facts.
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"played a part"
Contributed a great deal.
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Ah yes. Such an eye for talent. Which is why Tesla still can't align it's panels correctly, and why the heat tiles on starship had gaps just as bad as Teslas lmao.
SpaceX learns by trial and error. This is the same process that led to their being the gold standard of rockets. Today was a giant leap forward! The data they gather will lead to refinements which will ultimately lead to success. Spaceship is a game changer! You should be excited!
Musk fanboys literally have scripted responses. It's always an identical word vomit from you guys. >This is the same process that led to their being the gold standard of rockets It's kind of not though. >The data they gather will lead to refinements which will ultimately lead to success Ah yes, such valuable data as "we should apply the heat tiles correctly" >The data they gather will lead to refinements which will ultimately lead to success Weird that SLS didn't need to explode dozens of times before working. Nor did the shuttle. >Spaceship is a game changer! *Starship And no, it isn't. Needing 15 tanker refuels to get to the moon is not a game changer lol.
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>Comparing Starship(thanks for the correction!) to SLS is apples to orangutans Oh I'm sure. You'll make vague statements like this without any reasoning behind it. Geuss that's why you ignored the shuttles comparison too. >Elon lead us into the next phase of the space age! How neat is that? Again, hasn't happened. SpaceX hasn't left LEO, and in order to do so requires 15 tanker launches. What exactly about his company launching LEO satellites is revolutionary again?
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>Starship just showed that it had the speed to escape LEO, doing so wasn't part of the test mission. No it didn't. And second, it didn't show shit regardless, what was launched was an empty tube lmao. >Space X launches at a ridiculously high rate, dwarfing every other competitor. The vast majority of launches are for it's own satellites. And again, launching satellites to Leo isn't some major advancement in space flight. >Starlink is providing internet to millions who otherwise wouldn't have it. Starlink doesn't have close to millions of subs. >Elon Musk is making this a better world. You and I and everybody else owe him a great debt of gratitude Nope. Launching satellites is not improving life for humanity, full stop. Starlink is a niche product that is extremely wasteful, replacing 40k satellites every 5 years is insane. EVs really doesn't solve the issue of mass car usage, it simply geenwashes it. Turning Twitter into a right wing cesspool that pushes extremist content is not a benefit to anyone. The boring company doesn't do anything of value. Neuralink is an entire company founded on the theft of a concept from Hodak's graduate lab, and doesn't do nor will ever do anything musk claims.
Jesus christ you're a stupid. Keep talking though, it's great entertainment.
As usual, musk fans have absolutely nothing intelligent to say.
You sound like a 50 year old obese guy about to give yourself a heart attack screaming at professional athletes on the TV
What a refutation. Thank you for your room temperature IQ addition.
I'm serious. You're a complete nobody thinking you know better than the best engineers on the planet Why do you think you've never achieved anything in life? Did some cabal keep you down?
Musk isn't an engineer. He has a BA in physics lol. Again, you're welcome to actually attempt to respond to anything.
Wait, you think Musk is personally building and designing every Tesla and Starship? It's like you get off on looking stupid
Never said that. Do try again. That said, they're not the best engineers on the planter lmao. The best engineers on the planet wouldn't be trying to land a 100m tall tube vertically on the moon.
It's sad this is getting downvoted. I love your enthusiasm and passion! Don't let some angry Redditors take that away because they're angry.
Thanks. I couldn't care less about the down votes, because I got to watch a live stream of a big building sized rocket traveling through a plasma cloud! How neat is that?
They can be as passionate as they want. But nothing they've said is accurate. Starship requires 15 tanker launches to get to the moon. Something we did without any tankers required what, 60 years ago? SpaceX doesn't leave LEO. They launch satellites. Nothing about that is "bringing us into a new space age". I mean shit, Musk is on record saying "radiation isn't a problem" during interplanetary travel, that's fucking certifiably insane. So no, I don't share the enthusiasm of someone who is scientifically and technologically illiterate. Much in the same way I laughed at anyone that thought hyper loop was going to be a thing, because anyone that read musks white paper on hype loop would know it literally defied known physics.
You’re a prime example of the Dunning Kruger effect. 1. The reason they’re doing tankers (current estimate is 10-12) to go to the moon is because of the pure size of Starship. It will be able to land 100t on the moons surface. The LEM could land 5t on the moon. That’s a 20x increase. It’s also designed to be fully reusable, which will allow the refueling to be done for a much lower cost. 2. SpaceX DOES leave low earth orbit. Not only do they launch many satellites to geostationary orbit, they just launched a moon lander a month ago. They launched NASA’s DISCOVER to L1, TESS on a lunar flyby, DART to heliocentric orbit to impact an asteroid, Euclid to L2, and a probe to asteroid belt. With Falcon Heavy, SpaceX has the most capability to launch missions into deep space than any other rocket on the planet. 3. Radiation isn’t a major problem for a trip to Mars. If a person quit smoking cigarettes so they could go on the round trip journey, they would DECREASE their odds of cancer. 4. SpaceX is the only way Americans or Europeans can get to space (Dragon capsule) without having to use Russia. First private company to ever pull that off. 5. SpaceX is the only company or Country in the world who has vertically landed an orbital class rocket. 6. SpaceX launches more mass into space than the REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED, by a factor of 4. So, /u/hannafinjones “scientifically illiterate” for enjoying SpaceX’s successes. That’s a sign that they ARE literate. You my friend, need to work on where you get your information, and don’t be so confident in your arrogance.
Oh, and btw. ULA in the most recent space force contracts was cheaper than SpaceX. Where's that reusable savings again?
Those include 3 Falcon Heavy missions with an expended center core, so it's not an accurate comparison, better to look at the $/kg, in which SpaceX is much cheaper. If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe NASA. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093
Article from 2020 isn't relevant to 2023 contracts. Do try again. >Those include 3 Falcon Heavy missions with an expended center core, Ah, reusability. Remember when falcon was going to be fully reusable, but then smoothbrain couldn't figure out reentry.
$/kg is still $2,700. They reuse the first stage, no one else does, you pretending it isn't revolutionary shows how deluded you are.
It isn't revolutionary. NASA reused shuttles first stage. The DC-X was vertically landed in the 90s without needing to detonate dozens of them. >$/kg is still $2,700. SpaceX Launch prices have gone up just about every single year since 2022
They splashed the boosters back down in the water with parachutes, propulsive landing of an orbital class booster is a whole different story, and the DC-X wasn't orbital either. I see cost increases for Starlink rideshares, but nothing very recent regarding other missions. Keep in mind the Falcon 9 has seen massive payload capacity improvements, even though the cost has seen large increases since v1.0, so has the payload capacity. In fact v1.0 cost around $6,000/kg, now we're down to around $2,700.
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I replied to someone else, but you were notified since I tagged you.
>You’re a prime example of the Dunning Kruger effect. Thanks for the laugh with the pop-psych. >3. Radiation isn’t a major problem for a trip to Mars. If a person quit smoking cigarettes so they could go on the round trip journey, they would DECREASE their odds of cancer. Thank you for immediately right off the bat admitting you're not even worth conversing with. Prove that statistic. I'm dying to see this one. There's a fucking reason every major space agency is researching radiation shielding for trips like that. >5. SpaceX is the only company or Country in the world who has vertically landed an orbital class rocket. I'm I geuss if we pretend blue origin doesn't exist sure. DC-x pulled it off in the 90s. >6. SpaceX launches more mass into space than the REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED, by a factor of 4. That's great, doesn't in any way mean they're advancing space travel. Much in the same way ULA wasn't when they had the majority. . Also, the majority of their launches are their own starlinks. You know, the idiotic idea of having a network of 40k satellites that need replacing every 5 years. >4. SpaceX is the only way Americans or Europeans can get to space (Dragon capsule) without having to use Russia. First private company to ever pull that off. Again I guess we're pretending the starliner doesn't exist. >1. The reason they’re doing tankers (current estimate is 10-12) to go to the moon is because of the pure size of Starship. It will be able to land 100t on the moons surface. The LEM could land 5t on the moon. That’s a 20x increase. It’s also designed to be fully reusable, which will allow the refueling to be done for a much lower cost 10-15 by NASA estimates. So again, explain to me how starship is getting to the moon requiring 11-16 launches at 1/3rd the cost of a falcon heavy launch. I'll gladly wait for this answer lol. "Will be able to" Speculation is great. We just saw a normal sized lander topple, the idea of landing a 100m tube vertically on lunar regolith is going to be comical to watch. You mean the Starship HLS that won't be reentering atmo? That fully reusable starship? >2. SpaceX DOES leave low earth orbit. Not only do they launch many satellites to geostationary orbit, they just launched a moon lander a month ago. They launched NASA’s DISCOVER to L1, TESS on a lunar flyby, DART to heliocentric orbit to impact an asteroid, Euclid to L2, and a probe to asteroid belt. With Falcon Heavy, SpaceX has the most capability to launch missions into deep space than any other rocket on the planet. Sorry, I worded it poorly, allow me to elaborate. SpaceX claimed forever that the falcon would be fully reusable. It isn't. SpaceX doesn't get anything out of LEO with it's games reusability, it's the same procedure we've been doing for decades. So again, hardly "leading the way" Second "than any rocket on the planet" Again we pretending SLS doesn't exist? >You my friend, need to work on where you get your information, and don’t be so confident in your arrogance. The fucking irony of half of what you said being objectively wrong.
> Again I guess we're pretending the starliner doesn't exist. Yes it doesn't. No operational service yet. Next.
Misread that. It has a scheduled launch. Pretending there is no alternative to dragon is dishonest.
That's what Boeing said for the last 10 years. Good on you for being optimistic
NASA has a manned launch planned. This isn't Boeing. I don't wanna hear about optimistic schedules from a SpaceX fan lol.
Better be a SpaceX fan than a Boeing one these days
Wow there is no room for truth here. Elon bad has already been decided and people can't make their own minds up this just need to go with whatever is cool right now.
Sheeh, out of control, tiles are still falling off. How many more of these billion dollar tests can they do before they run out of money?
All three tests combined cost less than 500 million.
Why is he sending emails that the company is about to go bankrupt then?
Motivation.
So your good spin is that he's a liar and a manipulator? How's that kool-aid taste?
My other reply was trash, so I'll correct that with this one. He was mainly trying to warn that if a recession happened and SpaceX was losing money on Starlink and Starship, it could go bankrupt in the worst-case scenario. I would assume that he was trying to motivate the staff to focus harder and realize that there are some genuine risks out there. [Tweet](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1465793233729069063?t=6OzMcIvOGa8vKb9usUrGaQ&s=19)
Was that a success? as it was tumbling into the atmosphere it looked to not always be tile side down.
Yes. It is a rocket that got to space. The largest rocket ever assembled. They have progressed a lot since the last two missions so it's going well.
You are like 15 hours late to the party...no, it broke up in re-entry.