llamacoffee @ llamacoffee @lemmy.world

Posts

387

Comments

96

Joined

2 yr. ago

Interesting comment from Jared Isaacman: https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1815801469532266841

Its a good article, a few thoughts:

• I don't like monopolies, but why the sudden unease? The government buys all of its refueling tankers from Boeing, all of the main battle tanks from General Dynamics, all the aircraft carriers from Newport News shipbuilding, all of our air-to-air missiles from Raytheon. The government buys fighter jets from a duopoly that often provides reciprocal work-shares making them a monopoly. Historically, the government had no problem buying launch services from ULA and in fact had to be sued to prevent a continuation of that practice.
• If SpaceX acts like a monopolist, then they will increase prices to levels that naturally stimulate more competition or risk antitrust actions. However, If SpaceX does not act like a monopolist and the government is getting the best product for the lowest price through open competitions, then what is the problem? As tax payers, we should want the best product/service for the lowest price and delivered as quickly as possible. We probably should not punish the few companies that are actually exceeding expectations.

I would love to see the government breaking up the monopolies that actually harm the competitiveness of the nation by failing to innovative and consistently come in over-budget and behind schedule and therefor have an allergy to fixed price contracting.

So cool! I really want to see one close up someday.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=2036700

I bet the editor just felt it was better to cut around for the sizzle reel. For the tip-over, I wonder if the booster went kaboom when it hit the water and they want to emphasize the success rather than what could be perceived as a failure. So you're right, maybe brand image. Maybe one day they'll finally release the footage!

I think they were more open when they were developing Falcon 9. Based on all these amazing test flights, the engineers still have that magic SpaceX culture, but perhaps the media department has become more corporate.

I love that they showed more of the booster landing footage, but I still wish we could see it hit the water and tip over!

Pretty sad that the coolest part of the whole video is what user effi on the NSF forum spotted:

Even in the Raptor room behind the Mega bay they watch NSF :D .A Screenshot from 46:14:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=60962.0;attach=2294746;image

NSF Video Apologies for the X links!

Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines and executing the first flip maneuver and landing burn since our suborbital campaign, followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch.

I still can't believe that happened! Gives me so much confidence on their in-space propellant storage too, for some reason.

Let's go!!

I am beyond excited for this! Hope it goes off on the first attempt :)

I agree with everything you said and especially with the hope for competition (which in some ways there is, SpaceX is just miles ahead), but I just wanted to point out that basically every rocket ever developed was done with government funding :)

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/thursdays-starship-flight-provided-a-glimpse-into-a-future-of-abundant-access-to-space/

SpaceX can likely build and launch a fully expendable version of Starship for about $100 million. Most of that money is in the booster, with its 33 engines. So once Super Heavy becomes reusable, you can probably cut manufacturing costs down to about $30 million per launch.

This means that, within a year or so, SpaceX will have a rocket that costs about $30 million and lifts 100 to 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

Bluntly, this is absurd.

For fun, we could compare that to some existing rockets. NASA's Space Launch System, for example, can lift up to 95 tons to low-Earth orbit. That's nearly as much as Starship. But it costs $2.2 billion per launch, plus additional ground systems fees. So it's almost a factor of 100 times more expensive for less throw weight. Also, the SLS rocket can fly once per year at most.

The renders for Starship V2 have a dramatically redesigned hot stage mechanism. My guess is as good as any, but it's possible the current HSR is so bulky and has nothing in common with the future version that they feel it's actually more representative to throw it away.

So no in-space engine relight just as we heard recently, but the interesting addition of jettison of the hot stage ring. I really hope that's temporary!

I also LOVE to see that they want to attempt to relight the raptors and do the flip of Starship survives entry! I wonder how confident they are that it will.

Also in an update, SpaceX noted that both booster engine issues and RCS on IFT-3 were caused by filter blockages and clogged valves. Kind-of fascinating that's still happening, but I have high hopes they will solve that soon!

Beautiful launch, gorgeous jellyfish, perfect landing :)

I can't wait to see this lift off! I've been following closely, but I'm still not sure what was their main hold-up. I really thought they could make early May before, but now late May or early June seem like the closest NET dates.

Either way I hope we're just a week or two away!

Analyst on Starlink’s rapid rise: “Nothing short of mind-blowing”

I understand the sentiment, but I'm sorry to say I have seen absolutely no data that supports this. Perhaps you'd like to share a source?

Right? That's kind-of the weird thing, this milestone is very much attributable to Musk (and of course the countless engineers that make it happen) despite his... eccentricity, shall we say.

X Teaser Video