Damn. One good malfunction could have taken out Elmo, Trump, and Zodiac all at once.
Welcome to the era of D.I.P.S.H.I.T.
Department improving perennial spending and handling internal turmoil.
I like how the article reminds us of creating goverment efficiency by creating an additional department. I’m an old IT guy. I worked for the US goverment in the 80´s, and my org was the pilot place for a paperless office. We got a “fast” scanner, a 4 ppm Laser printer (in the 80´s those things went for 1000´s,) the size of a washing machine, and two additional new filing cabinets!!
An additional department… With two people in charge.
Such efficiency!
Starship’s upper stage will make a partial orbit of Earth, re-enter the atmosphere and splash down in the Indian Ocean…
Also known as not an orbit, or a suborbital flight / trajectory.
Saying a suborbital flight is a partial orbit is like saying a cessna can partially achieve hypersonic velocities.
NASA is also counting on a specialized version of Starship to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade under its Artemis program.
There is no public information indicating design on this variant has even begun.
… And Starship+Heavy Booster was supposed to have completed a succesful orbital flight in Q2 2022, per NASA’s contract with SpaceX.
Which it still has not done, in Q4 2024.
If SpaceX somehow completes an orbital flight of this thing in say Q2 2025, and keeps to the originally agreed contract timeline, well thats only 3 years behind schedule.
But this is Musk. Not the best track record on delivering on promises, more of a ‘pray i do not alter the deal further’ kinda vibe, but spoken with all the menacing intimidation of Darth Helmet.
So far he’s gotten a banana to suborbit in this thing.
…
I’ll eat a sock if a SpaceX launcher and lander gets human beings to the moon and back safely by the end of 2030.
Did I forget to mention Musk’s plan for a moon mission requires the Starship Lunar Lander variant to remain in Earth orbit, rendevouz and dock with and refuel from something like 12 or 16 other Starships?
… And there is also no publicly available information indicating actual design of this refuelling system either, just vague cgi concept arts of a plan?
I’ll eat two fucking socks.
I’m a space systems propulsion design engineer by profession. I worked on a project which I will not name that requires on-orbit refuelling. (It’s not this one and I don’t and will never work for Elon Musk).
The technology for in-orbit refuelling doesn’t exist, and there’s a whole lot of new technology required. Remotely docking is akin to self-driving in complexity; don’t forget to factor in the signal delay if you’re in a lunar or translunar orbit. If you make this a crewed activity only, then the problem becomes one of pneumatics. A pressure system that can reliably contain and transfer pressure up to the levels of spacecraft fuel (around 300 psi for liquid, 3000 for gas) repeatedly, in both directions is very, very heavy. The valves are heavy, the tanks are heavy, the control systems are heavy. Too heavy to be considered viable for spaceflight. Even less so for a mission whose payload is “as much transfer fuel as we can possibly get up there”. A huge amount of innovation has to take place before this can become real. As of 2022, when I last worked on this, none of the technology was even being researched, that is to say it was not even at TRL 3. Typically these things take on the order of a decade or so to get to TRL 9, if they are successful and quick.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying I’ll be fascinated to see which solutions they come up with, and that I’m sceptical that they do have current solutions which are feasible and useful, rather than something like a one-shot refueling subsystem that weighs 250kg and delivers 15 litres of hydrazine.Ehhh, two years late for a rocket isn’t terrible. Space is hard.
But yeah 2030 is an aggressive timeline. I’m shocked NASA didn’t go for an Apollo-style service module and lander that gets assembled in-orbit, launched by Falcon Heavies. That seems like the least crazy architecture and requires very little new technology.
They’ve also blown their entire development budget and have received another billion dollars in development funds.
The sheer number of people looking at starship’s delays and cost overruns and not seeing the exact same issues SLS had with Boeing are kind of staggering.
If you think that Starship has the exact same issues that SLS has you’re truly stretching reality. A billion dollars and two years is a TINY cost overrun compared to what they are doing. I know it sounds like a lot but for comparison, SLS costs like $2.5 billion per launch, not including development costs.
For comparison SLS spent about 2 billion in taxpayer money per year in development costs, and in the 4 years since the development contract was awarded to spaceX, they’ve spent around 5 billion in taxpayer money in development costs. (~1.25 billion per year)
For launch comparisons, the SLS can take a payload directly to the moon for 2.2 billion, while the proposed starship launch requires 10-12 refueling launches at ~1-2 million per launch (proposed, but falcon 9 heavy costs like 90 million per launch, so that puts it closer to 900 million-1.1 billion per combined launch)
I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch in reality to question these costs.
Look u dont need to like the guy to admit that spacex is possibly the most important advancement in human technology advancement in our generation. We must become a multiplanetary spiecies and i dont give a fuck who it takes to make that happen.
What do you care when it’s only the elite that will make it there? The rest of us will burn here on earth
I care cos the survival of our speicies is more important than any individual or their ideology. Plus i recon i got a real chance at being said elite.
I’d argue that if we can’t protect the little guy from the billionaires, then the race has no business continuing on into space.
So ur posing an ultimatum where one case is the extermination of our entire speicies the genociding of our enture spiecies.
Is that what u really stand for? The willing genocide of 8billion people?
Hypothetically if the ultra rich built this up and got to a point where humanity is ending, and they could save 10,000 of their friends and hanged-oners, but everyone else on Earth dies, and you have a button that could trap them here, would you poke it?
Are there any extra effects if I push the button quicker or more than once? I gotta know if I should worry about spraining my finger or not.
Well first i believe thw earth won’t get to the point its completely lost except if we have a astroid strike or sonthibg of the sort. And second i probably wouldnt simply cos i believe humanity is worth saving over being a spitefull cunt.
U didnt answer my question would u willingly genocide 8billion people simply to get revenge on 1?
I wouldn’t kill 8 billion to get revenge on one person, nah. I’d happily let 10,000 billionaires die though if they were abandoning Earth and letting 8 billion people die. They’ve had innumerable chances to help lift up humanity and instead all they do is enrich themselves at the expense of the 99.999%, why the fuck would I care about humanity surviving if that’s what ‘humanity’ is being defined as?
Honestly given current technology, it makes the most sense to care for the Earth than attempt to colonize other planets, which are fundamentally unlivable in a myriad of ways. Survival of our species doesn’t mean a whole lot if it is 8 guys in a Mars base dependent on regular supply missions from Earth.
Not to mention, if we do focus on our planet and how to best manage the environment, it teaches lessons on how to potentially manage other planets’ one day.
Is it, though? If only the selfish, egotistical, wealthy assholes make it off, I’d argue that I could care less about our “species” surviving. Fuck these people.
Agreed. SpaceX has and continues to do awesome shit. Elon simply bought the company. I don’t equate the two.
He founded and personally funded a majority of its R&D.
Sure. But it is his money and he is in change so he does deserve some credit. To what degree tho is debatable.
Government contract money. Our money.
