• rImITywR@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    the explosion, which took place at its Boca Chica Starbase facilities

    The raptor testing stand at McGregor experienced an anomaly

    Well, which is it? I’m going to trust NASASpaceflight over this article and go with it was a McGregor. No where near Starbase. And that means it will likely have no effect on IFT4 as this article says.

    edit: Adding to this, the author of this article has no idea what they are talking about.

    The Raptor engines that are currently undergoing testing are SpaceX’s Raptor 2 engines

    So clearly nothing to do with IFT4, as Ship 29 and Booster 11 are already outfitted with their engines, non of which are Raptor 2s.

    On its last flight test, IFT-3, Starship finally reached orbital velocity and it soared around Earth before crashing down into the Indian Ocean. On the next flight, SpaceX aims to perform a reentry burn, allowing Starship to perform a soft landing in the ocean.

    IFT3 burned up on reentry, maybe parts of it made it to the ocean, but it was not crashing into the ocean that was the problem. IFT4 does not plan on doing a reentry burn. No one does a reentry burn from orbit. Starship uses a heat shield like every other orbital space craft. They are planning to attempt a landing burn, that is probably what they are talking about.

    • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      It waw McGregor. And while the explosion was spectacular, it happened on the test stand, so not much damage was done actually.

    • KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The re-entry burn is the burn to slow down your spacecraft below orbital speeds, initiating re-entry.
      Every spacecraft that wants to land back on earth after orbiting it needs to do a re-entry burn.
      The only exception, theoretically, are spacecraft that return from outside earth’s orbit. They could in theory re-enter by steering towards the atmosphere at the right angle. I don’t know if they actually do that in practice or slow down to orbital speeds first, though.

      • rImITywR@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        What you’re talking about is usually referred to as a de-orbit burn. Sure somebody could call it a reentry burn, but not SpaceX. What SpaceX calls a reentry burn is the maneuver when a Falcon 9 booster lights its engines as it first hits the atmosphere to slow down and move the heating away from it’s body. Neither the super heavy booster nor the ship make a maneuver like this.

        IFT3 did not make a de-orbit burn, and there is not one planned for IFT4 either.

  • LesserAbe@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Good lord, everyone please learn a tiny bit about spacex and the state of the space industry instead of letting your (justified) hatred of Elon do the typing.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I’d have a lot more sympathy for this comment if people would actually do this in reference to Space Billionaires. I’ve had far too many conversations online and elsewhere where the individual shits on NASA for space industry problems and worships Space Billionaires because [some convoluted “government bad rich entrepreneurs good” reason] and their problems aren’t really problems. I’m not saying you’re part of the billionaire sycophant club, but I’m not against musk’s well deserved criticism as he sacrifices people in his rush, and probably work quality suffers alongside them.

  • vatlark@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Does anyone else think the thumbnail looks like a llama with laser eyes?

  • joneskind@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    A few years ago (already) I would have been sad and shocked. Now I don’t give a shit about SpaceTwitter. That douchebag managed to kill all the interest I had for space exploration, a topic I was passionate about for most of my life. He really is that kind of killjoy.

    • undyingarchie@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Wow talk about blaming someone else for your waning interest. If you were really into space exploration, you wouldn’t let one person come in the way. A person who doesn’t even know you. Or you don’t know either technically. I’m no Elon shill and I dislike him like everyone else. But I’ll be damned if I lose interest in space just because of him. Even if the whole world was a douchebag, I’d still get out telescoping equipment and gaze at the skies. And oh by the way, if not for SpaceX do it for NASA who were there way before anyone else. Do it for your ancestors who looked at the sky in amazement every night.

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I know how you feel I used to love watching all the SpaceX launches, but I just can’t bring myself to care anymore about anything Musk is involved in.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      Different philosophy. Play it safe and analyze everything extensively to make sure you don’t have a PR nightmare. That leads to less aggressive designs and longer schedules, but looks better for the public and Congress.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        And they don’t even have a goal of more than one launch a year and billions of dollars per launch. Artemis is the same old flag waving BS: do it once to say you’re first, then lose interest.

        Starship’s goals of reusability, frequent launches, order of magnitude cost reductions can be the foundation of the next jump in space industry/exploration

    • nexguy@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      DEFINITELY not first try. I was there in their first try… and second… Still didn’t see it launch.

    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      At a greater cost than every starship built to date combined…

      Congrats?

      I expect they’ll be able to launch 2, perhaps even 3 more Artemis rockets before the program is cancelled and the rocket architecture abandoned due to unreasonable cost.

      • 3volver@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Where’s your evidence proving exactly how much Starship has cost in total? Or wait, maybe you are just making bullshit up because you have no idea how much it has actually cost them because they don’t disclose that information like NASA does.

        • llamacoffee@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          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.

        • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          The starship is built out in the open, the whole world can watch. Because of that, there are pretty good estimates for how much construction costs. If you take the more pessimistic estimates, my statement would still hold true.

          Also, as a reminder, even without knowing exact numbers you can still make some ballpark assertions with confidence. For example, Jupiter has the mass of more than a dozens earths. I could look up the actual number, but I can be pretty damn sure it’s more than twelve.

    • red_pigeon@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Only a stupid person would compare rocket fuels to brain implants. Are you Elon ?

  • ghostblackout@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Bruh its a TEST STAND TEST STAND this is not the Frist time a engine exploded on a test stand raptor engines in their development phase are supposed to explode. Elon musk has said if something doesn’t explode then you did something wrong

    • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      If you’re testing for fail state, sure.

      If you’re testing for sustained burn, you fucked up. Time to science and figure up how to unfuck it.

  • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Do we have a shot of SpaceX employees cheering and clapping?

    I kinda got used to seeing happy faces after a catastrophic failure.

  • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently announced that Starship’s fourth integrated flight test, IFT-4, could be just days away.

    He should really stop predicting things.