So I’ve heard and seen the newest launch, and I thought for a private firm it seemed cool they were able to do it on their own, but I’m scratching my head that people are gushing about this as some hail mary.
I get the engineering required is staggering when it comes to these rocket tests, but NASA and other big space agencies have already done rocket tests and exploring bits of the moon which still astounds me to this day.
Is it because it’s not a multi billion government institution? When I tell colleagues about NASA doing stuff like this yeaaaars ago they’re like “Yea yea but this is different it’s crazy bro”
Can anyone help me understand? Any SpaceX or Tesla fans here?
What you’re asking is akin to: why are people impressed by the airplane? We’ve already reached the Americas and India by boat.
SpaceX, and others actually are not advancing science per se, but are greatly improving/optimising the engineering so that it can be used in cheaper ways by science.
There’s also the issue that after the moon landing we didn’t really improve that much and much of the knowledge faded
I read that nasa can’t even make saturn v rockets anymore. that the design documents and manufacturing techniques weren’t properly archived and everyone that worked on them has died by now. idk if any of that is true.
It is true that we cannot make Saturn V rockets anymore.
The drawings are preserved, and even if they weren’t, we have a few examples of unflown ones on display to study. There has been some institutional knowledge lost, several components were made by welding techniques we don’t use anymore. Also, many of the components and materials used in the Saturn V are not manufactured anymore and are not available.
Building another Saturn V isn’t entirely impossible, but the amount of retooling and re-engineering we’d have to do to the designs to get a flyable rocket we might as well just start over and call it a clean sheet design. Like Falcon Heavy, which put a sports car into solar orbit, or SLS which flew an Orion capsule around the moon in 2022.
SpaceX is not run by Elon and he’s kept from being involved closely by a buffer of people that keep him from getting too close to making any “elon” level changes.
SpaceX is successful despite Musk, not because of. And the woman who runs it knows that and keeps Musk away from any important decisions or impacts.
So the stuff they’re doing is legit, cool aerospace stuff.
It’s just not something Musk should take credit for. He does/will. But he shouldn’t. He’s a hack.
That’s not true in the least. He is CEO, CTO and Chief rocket designer. He’s deeply involved in every step
I’m guessing they let him name the Of Course I Still Love You?
But he shouldn’t. He’s a hack.
He’s also a stupid doodoo brain, with poop and pee in his pants! Cacca doodoo!
NASA, nor anyone else, has done this before. I’m not sure what you’re referring to when you say NASA did this already.
I hate Elon just as much as the next guy, but pretending that this wasn’t a marvel of engineering is really disingenuous. People with intelligence beyond my comprehension made that a reality, and just because the company had his face on it, it doesn’t make it any less impressive
I’ve seen so many people grudgingly pretending what they saw wasn’t one of the coolest fucking things they’ve seen all year all because they hate Musk. Like, you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right? By all accounts he’s more of a hindrance and these amazing fears of engineering have been accomplished despite him, not because of him.
I personally don’t really care how big of a douche Musk is, as long as he’s willing to fund these kinds of things.
What did people see that was so cool?
I personally don’t really care how big of a douche Musk is, as long as he’s willing to fund these kinds of things.
He’s not funding this, dude. We are. Space X gets massive government contracts and subsidies. The rest comes from income streams like Starlink.
Catching starship booster was pretty fucking cool.
So I was teaching some kids snowboarding, one kid started talking to me about musk on the chairlift. He tells me that musk is the greatest engineer to ever live. I say that he’s really more of a business man buying up companies. Kid is not convinced. I tell him that the only engineering that musk may have done was software engineering on PayPal. Kid thinks that’s great support of his claim.
Adults and 11 year olds are pretty much the same, so I would say there’s lots of people that think musk is a super genius. Probably a dwindling amount, but there’s a lot of people on earth.
He’s literally the chief ticket designer as well as CTO. Deeply involved in the engineering.
Rocket not ticket. Lol
He bought co-founder status at Paypal too IIRC. He was ousted in part because he wanted to rename it “x.com”. Weird that.
these amazing fears of engineering
😱
you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right?
He actually is. Everyday astronaut has done several interviews with him and the dude knows about rockets and engineering.
He’s the chief rocket designer as well as chief technology officer. He’s deeply involved and is well regarded as an incredible engineer
True, he appears to be closely involved and does seem to know what he talks about. Especially compared to jeff bezos lol.
Wait, when did NASA land a fully reusable rocket like fucking Buck Rogers?
Then do it again, but capture it with the freakin’ launch tower?
When did NASA even have a reusable rocket? Oh, the shuttle, the bastardized money pit for NSA/NRO/Air Force, that appears to have been designed to orbit a surveillance satellite chassis, which most people know as Hubble (it’s one of many, this one being used to surveil the universe, instead of the earth).
And the shuttle was a quasi-reusable orbiter, not a rocket.
I believe NASA could also refurbish and re-use the SRBs, but the big orange tank was expended with every flight. The Space Shuttle Main Engines are actually still in service, we have a small inventory of them and they either have been or will be flown since 2011.
But I would definitely say that the moment the Falcon Heavy’s two booster stages returned to Cape Canaveral and made synchronized powered landings was the moment 21st century space flight arrived. SpaceX is head and shoulders above what anyone else is doing with reusable rockets and spacecraft. Meanwhile Boeing is in the broom closet huffing Lysol and muttering about quarterly earnings.
Did you just talk shit on the shuttle and Hubble? Whaaat?
The shuttle was a massive and unsafe waste of space ship.
Not sure what Hubble did to catch this stray however.
Can I just add that “fucking Buck rogers” is an excellent phrase and all three words can mean sex and when combined they don’t.
Honestly “Buck fucking Rogers” is a pretty big missed opportunity
Because they are impressive in the way NASA was. Which is the problem - we should be doing this as a nation and not subsidizing whatever a billionaire fancies at the moment.
eh, it will probably be good thing to just commercialize space buses and leave NASA to the science.
Exactly. It’s concerning that a private individual is allowed to do this, much less without government competition. It’s like we’ve forgotten that the boosters that got us to the moon were the same missiles that terrorized Britain.
Yes. It’s down right scary to think about what the consequences of private ownership will mean.
In best case it will turn into a profitable business which means burning a shit ton of fuel in the atmosphere and leaving tons of garbage in orbit.
Yes it’s impressive that it’s possible, but is it less impressive if it means screwing up the option for others to launch anything in 50 years just because the richest man on earth right now wanted to earn more money.
It’s a small step for a large corporation, but it’s a large step backwards for humanity.
I’d rather see new technologies like the slingshot launches becoming successful than seeing SpaceX launching the same old dirty rockets over and over for profit.
Disclaimer: Fuck Elon Musk and all the shady shit he’s been pulling off.
That said, this is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in terms of the potential it holds to shape the future.
Up until 5 short years ago we had:
- No main booster recovery
- No rocket nearly as powerful as this one
- No successful flight of a full-flow stage engine
- Nobody even considering the catch with chopsticks thing
- No private company testing super heavy lift vehicles (BO is about to enter the chat as well)
- No push for reusability at all
This was all built on top of the incredible engineering of NASA, but this one launch today has all of the above ticked.
This is like making the first aeroplane that’s able to land and be flown again. SpaceX uses this example as well, like, imagine how expensive any plane ticket would have to be if you had to build a brand new A380 every single time people wanted to fly and then crashing it into the sea.
Going to space is EXPENSIVE. If this program succeeds it will both massively reduce the cost to space and spin off hundreds of companies looking to do the same in various ways.
Look at any new rocket currently in development, they all include some level of reusability in the design and that’s all thanks to the incredible engineers of SpaceX paving the way, first with Falcon 9 and now with Starship.
We’re talking industrial revolution levels of progress and new frontiers in our lifetimes, which is very, very exciting.
no rocket as powerful as this one.
So I’m confused on this because people still seem to be using Starships’s old estimates of 100 tons to LEO orbit, which the SLS can put 145 tons to LEO.
Then 6 months ago Musk got on stage and updated the specs to Say that Starships’s current design can only do 40-50 tons.
This feels awfully familiar for anyone that’s seen early Tesla specs/presentations/promises and I can’t help but wonder as to the validity of everyone saying SpaceX is mostly insulated from Musk’s “influence.”
I think they mean the “superheavy” (somehow a more stupid name than starship) booster rocket is the most powerful. I’m pretty sure by thrust metrics it is. It’s just that the superheavy-starship system can’t put much up in LEO because the starship is huge and heavy on its own.
If you put an expendable second stage on top of the superheavy booster instead of a starship it could put a lot more up to LEO.
To be very honest even if Starship is able to only lift 50 tons, which I’m sure they’ll be able to hit 100/150 tons eventually. The huge difference in cost would easily cover the extra times Starship would have to fly, compared to SLS. Considering each flight of a SLS will be around 4 billion dollars.
I hate Musk and his personal everything, but Like SpaceX. However, when people gush about reusability, they seem to forget the 135 Space Shuttle missions (2 fatal failures , yes.). All done with 5 vehicles. Yes expensive etc, but truly amazing.
Also, I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary. Impressive? Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right. There’d be no NASA by now.
The space shuttle was technically reusable, but not in a way that was beneficial to anyone. The time and cost of refurbishing the shuttle after every launch was so much they may as well have built a brand new disposable rocket for each mission.
SpaceX may have built the first reusable rocket that actually saves money
Like SpaceX. However, when people gush about reusability, they seem to forget the 135 Space Shuttle missions (2 fatal failures , yes.). All done with 5 vehicles. Yes expensive etc, but truly amazing.
The Space Shuttle was a marvel of engineering. But while it was reusable, it wasn’t actually good at it. Reusability was supposed to bring down cost and turnaround time and it did neither. And not just that, it was actually much more expensive than competing expendable rockets. Plus, it had lots of other issues like being dangerous as fuck. You couldn’t abort at all for major parts of the ascent and there was the whole issue with the fragile heat protection tiles, both of which caused fatalities.
I think part of the reason why people aren’t impressed by the Shuttle anymore is because it flew 135 missions. It’s 40 year old technology. And it’s not like SpaceX are just doing the same thing again 40 years later, they’re reusing their rockets in a completely different way, which no one else had done before. And in doing so they seem to be avoiding most of the disadvantages that came with the Shuttle’s design.
Also, I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary. Impressive? Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
Sure, I wouldn’t say that no one else could do this with a similar amount of money (and the will to actually do it). Whether you want to call it revolutionary or not is subjective, but they’re definitely innovating a lot more than any other large player in spaceflight. The Falcon 9 is a huge step forward for rocket reusability and SpaceX have also been the first to fly a full-flow staged combustion engine as well as the most powerful rocket ever. They’re making spaceflight exciting again after like 40 years of stagnation and I think that’s what resonates with people.
I think your last sentence answers the OP in a nutshell. There’s nothing more to it than that, and there needn’t be.
Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
NASA spent about 50 Billion today-dollars developing (not launching) the shuttle program and that went to private contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, United Space, etc.) Starship has a long way to go to hit those numbers.
I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary
Really? Nothing? Many people said what Falcon 9 now does on a regular basis could not be done. No one was even trying. The closest plans were still going to land horizontally and went nowhere. Now, you have to explain why you’re not landing your booster, and what your plans are to fix that going forward: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/international/2024/09/11/china-wants-to-replace-jeff-bezos-as-musks-greatest-space-threat/
They quite literally revolutionized the space industry in terms of the cost to launch to orbit.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right. There’d be no NASA by now.
Yet another way they’ve revolutionized the industry. Almost everyone is doing expendable tests now so that they can move forward quickly. Columbia started construction in 1975, launched for the first time in 1981. When they launched it, it was a fully decked out space shuttle and they put the whole thing on the line - including two astronauts. Imagine NASA trying to do that now. They’d be grounded so hard they’d be jealous of Mankind having a table to land on.
The space shuttle wasn’t as reusable as it was claimed to be.
Each airframe required massive refurbishment after every flight.
And the “crashes” you’re talking about were part of the project process, articles that were never going to be any more than test objects to begin with.
NASA crashed a lot of stuff, unintentionally. Three off of the top of my head, killed 15 astronauts, all which were preventable (not to mention the launch pad failures getting to Apollo).
NASA/NACA/Air Force crashed a lot of stuff along the way.
Ffs they knew Columbia had a tile problem, and said “it’ll be OK”. They knew it had been too cold for the booster seals on Discovery, and launched anyway.
The Space Shuttle missions did not recycle the rockets, not to mention that the SpaceX missions were rated super-heavy: Only Apollo has done this before in America.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right.
You think they didn’t?
The Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) from shuttle launched were recycled. They parachuted into the ocean after being jettisoned and were recovered and refused. They just didn’t land themselves. The external fuel tank was not reused.
There was an extensive amount of refurbishment required to re-use the SRBs. Not to mention they had to be physically recovered, and salt water certainly made the process more complicated.
The shuttle itself needed each of its heat shield tiles replaced, which due to the shape of the shuttle were all unique.
The fuel tank was not reused.
The shuttle was meant to be a leap forward in rocket reusability, but it didn’t really pan out that way. There’s good reason the program was scrapped and not replaced with another space plane.
The Starship booster has the potential to launch multiple times per day. The only refurbishment period is how long it takes to refuel it.
Agreed. As I mentioned elsewhere, Falcon 9 is still revolutionary, but I was just clarifying that the SRBs were recycled, as that is sometimes forgotten.
TIL, thanks. That’s just a small part of the rocket though
Between the orbiter (reused), the boosters (reused), and the external fuel tank (not reused), which parts are not “just a small part” (in terms of technology/complexity/cost, not physical size)?
I take the part about “a small part” back as that’s a misleading term for what I meant: The Super Heavy booster is much bigger in both technology/complexity and physical size and has many more parts than the old space shuttle rockets as it needs to carry the weight of two space shuttle orbiters. Plus, spaceplane is weird.
Remember, unless we’re talking about Enterprise, “space shuttle rockets” includes the orbiter itself. The orbiter’s main engines were where all that fuel from the external tank was going, after all! From that perspective, I would argue that the main “space shuttle rocket” was definitely much more complex than the Super Heavy booster, because the crew stuff, cargo stuff, spaceplane stuff, etc. was integrated into it.
I feel like your criticism of the shuttle system being less reusable than advertised might have been more applicable if we were talking about the Soviet Buran (which indeed used expendable Energia rockets to reach orbit), not NASA’s shuttles.
Pedantic, but the shuttles were orbiters not rockets
The big ass rocket engines in the back fueled by the massive fuel tank may disagree with you
A bit of a timeline correction. The falcon 9 started landing succesfully in 2016. So 8 years ago but your argument still stands.
That can’t be right! 2016 was just… Fuck I’m getting old so fast
The Saturn 5 was able to lift 141t to LEO.
The Space shuttle was reusable.
The Saturn V could lift 141t to LEO…once. Also it’ll be at least another 5 years before we reach a stable max power version of Starship.
For example the Falcon 9 v1.0 first flew in 2010 and the current Block 5 version first flew in 2018 with more than double the LEO capacity when fully expendable.
If they configure Starship as fully expendable it can lift 250t to LEO (per SpaceX, so grain of salt there to be fair).
As for the shuttle, I love it to bits and I’m sad it had to be grounded. It was refurbishable but not really reusable and the massive liquid fuel tank was discarded in each flight.
For me being impressed with SpaceX is kinda like loving a piece of art even though the creator turned out to be an asshole. Or liking Star Trek, even though Berman was shady af to put it mildly.
What SpaceX does is very impressive from a technical point of view. Even if the rocket never amounts to anything except this one successful test, it’s still amazing they pulled it off. It tickles my engineer brain. And I think it’s worth to honor all the people that made it happen, despite them having to work for Musk. Combine this with what could be in the future and you can hopefully see why people hail this test flight.
Now I still have serious doubts about Starship in the moon program. The on orbit refueling seems very sketchy and unproven at this point. Sure they will get two rockets into orbit, mate them up and transfer some fuel, that’s a given at this point. But how much fuel are we talking? And how fast does the turnaround need to be to prevent losing a lot of it? How many ships and how many launches? Will this completely offset the cheaper launch costs due to reusability? It’s a huge unknown and will push back the moon program to well into the 2030s.
My guy they just caught an object falling from space using a pair of giant chopsticks
They caught a building, with a building holding chopsticks.
https://youtu.be/b28zbsnk-48?t=412
That thing is about 70 meters long and weights 300 tons and some.
Technically not from space since the lower stage never made it past the Karman line, which is 100km above sea level.
It reached the altitude of 96km, not space but not far either.
There are a few things that are different from what NASA has done in the past:
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SpaceX Rocket is the most powerful rocket ever, surpassing everything that NASA or anyone else has ever done.
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they are landing the rockets, with the aim of being able to recover them. If you skip the technicality that SpaceX first stage is suborbital but is part of an orbital launcher, that makes SpaceX the only entity who has achieved that, with some comparison to the Space Shuttle and Buran, though both were losing significant sections of the initial launcher, with very difficult repairs once on the ground.
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the cost of the launcher. In terms of capabilities, NASA’s SLS is probably close to Starship. However, it costs around $2B/launch, and nothing is recoverable. Starship is meant for low cost. It is estimated that the current hardware + propellant for a single launch is under $100M. With reusability, a cost per launch under $10M is achievable in the mid term (10 years I would say) once the R&D has been paid ($1.4B/year at the moment, I would guess the whole development for Starship will be $10-20B, so same if not less than SLS).
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the aim for high speed reusability - SpaceX aim is to launch as much as possible, as fast as possible, with the same hardware. While it is a bit early to understand how successful they will be (Elon was saying a launch every 1hr, which seem to be very optimistic, I would bet 6-12hrs to be more achievable). That was NASA’s original goal for the Space Shuttle, and they failed that.
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finally, orbital refueling means you have a single vehicle that can basically go anywhere in the inner solar system without much issues, and minimal cost.
Also, what gets people excited are the prospects of what this enables. A 10-100x decrease in the access to orbit changes completely the space economics and opens a lot of possibilities. This means going to the Moon is a lot simpler because now you don’t need to reduce the mass of everything. This makes engineering way easier as you do not need to optimise everything to death, which tends to increase costs exponentially. And as for Mars, Starship is what makes having a meaningful colony there possible. Doing an Apollo like mission on Mars would have been possible for decades, but at a significant price for not much to show for. With cheap launch, you can just keep sending hardware there.
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If you ignore Musk for a moment, it is impressive. Maybe not every launch (I wasn’t even aware of another one), but a company that’s actually pushing for more space exploration. That’s cool beans.
even if you don’t ignore musk…
They’ve achieved all that despite musk. musk is an idiot and a fool, and he’s far from an engineer. Imagine what they could do if his coke-and-ketamine fueled dipshitery decided to take up a different hobby.
SpaceX has a very robust management system that manages musk and keeps him out of the day to day. That’s the most impressive thing about them IMO. Tesla used to be better about this as well, but with the whole eDumpster (aka cybertruck) fiasco that system seems to have largely fallen apart.
yup.
edumpster is the polite way of describing it.Lol
For real - by all accounts, Musk has, for years, just introduced speed bumps to the process because he wants one particular part of the system to work one particular way, simply because he had an idea about it.
Imagine what they could do if his coke-and-ketamine fueled dipshitery decided to take up a different hobby.
Didn’t he just do that with Xitter?
Seems like he is quite isolated in SpaceX and COO is running everything.
SpaceX success is based on senior management being able to keep musk away from everything to do with the company. He is solely responsible for funding. Everything else, musk has zero credit.
he bought twitter to show what a company ran directly by him would be like. If that was SpaceX there would be far more rockets ploughing into the earth or exploding at launch.
Is it cool beans to litter the atmosphere with satellites and spend a metric fuckton on money, energy and garbage into “space exploration” while we treat the planet we live on is on fire and we treat it like shit? Isn’t it weird that they plan to deliver weapons around the planet in a short time? That doesn’t sound like a “space exploration” endeavour, it sounds like a military operation that is dressed up in make up so his fanboys go: whoooo, rockets, science.
The satellites burn up in the atmosphere
The money is budgeted
Yes the weapons part is sad
These trials are obviously the foundations of space exploration, you’re spending mental effort trying to justify it’s not
This was right below your post in my feed:
Have you seen their boosters land? It very much IS impressive. They basically made reusable rockets viable, which is a huge step for more affordable space flight.
Also their raptor engine is a marvel of engineering.
