Watching it closely still!
It’s been 20 minutes… looks like it’s not gonna blow 
. Just some normal-looking venting. Overall, looked like a really clean flight. Certainly seems like they’ve worked through a bunch of their teething pains with the Raptors, header tanks, etc.
Awesome! With HLS being contested, SpaceX really needed to stick that landing, and they did!
One potential glitch: I only saw two Raptors light for landing. Luckily they were both fine, but I thought the plan was to light all three at first.
The video was glitched at the initial Raptor light and for the flip–so they could well have ignited three and quickly turned one of them off. They don’t need all three for the landing; it’s just a good idea to start with three in case one of them fails.
Looks like all this happened above the cloud deck as well, so third-party footage also isn’t showing anything.
At any rate, part of Dynetics’ objection was that SpaceX had failed their Starship landings. I think it’s a dumb objection since they won’t be doing the bellyflop on the moon, but in any case, I agree that this takes the wind out of their argument.
That complaint pissed me off. Dynetics knows damned well that SpaceX has chosen an iterative development process with expendable prototypes, and these early prototypes are all going to be scrapped and plenty will crash. It means nothing in the long run. They’re just trying to use the optics of the crashes to smear SpaceX.
If I were Dynetics, I’d be more concerned that I had designed a lunar lander that NASA says can’t possibly work. That’s kind of a deal breaker. I’m guessing they are just used to the ‘old way’ of doing things where these competitions would be kind of bullshit and they’d just have to come up with something that could pass scrutiny since they knew they’d get the work anyway, but this time there was a new competitor who isn’t playing the same games.
The biggest problem with the other two options is that they are staged, and therefore not fully reusable.
Dynetics at least only has to replace the fuel tanks, but there’s no way you can build a sustainable lunar presence with a lander that leaves a descent stage on the Moon each time it flies.
Some criticism has to go to Congress, though, for cutting the budget to the point where NASA had no choice but to accept SpaceX’s bid for financial reasons (being able to defer payment). A good example of why there’s so much bloat and failure in government in the first place - people who don’t know what they’re talking about making budgeting decisions for those who do, and people overriding sound engineering decisions for political reasons (see: SLS again).
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Not anymore. They eliminated the drop tanks. Possibly also the reason why the lander was overweight.
In a way, I’m happy at the limited budget since it guaranteed a SpaceX win. And while in principle, I’d support a second source, I’m disappointed in the BO and Dynetics proposals. BO’s because it’s basically an straight implementation of the reference design (come on, put something in there that stands out), and Dynetics because it’s apparently not capable enough to actually work.
I’m also disappointed in how BO decided to go immediately into an oldspace structure, with a fractal hierarchy of subcontractors. Every business loses agility after a while, but you don’t try for that going in! Ugh.
At any rate, although I am optimistic, I am still crossing my fingers. I won’t be too annoyed if Congress goes all “that’s not what we meant!” when cutting NASA’s budget and gives them enough money to pick a second. Though personally I’d rather them spend the money on something else (like an actual lunar base, which becomes possible if we can land 100 tons at a time).
Some cool footage of Starship backflipping out of the clouds:
I really like the look of the two independently-gimballing engines. Gives it a real Ironman look, like it has two legs, each with a thruster, that it’s using to balance as it descends.
I admit I was quite worried. If the fire were large they’d be wise not to vent in case that spreads the fire. When I saw the venting happening, I figured the fire must have gotten somewhat under control. But by then the water stream was reduced quite a lot, as though their water tank was running out.
Thank goodness for the non-explosion this time!
I was mildly worried, but fires like that aren’t too uncommon, and the whole thing is designed to take quite a bit of heat. The bigger worry was that the fire was a result of some kind of damage that might get worse. In any case, it’s great to see that wasn’t the case.
Looks like they’ve got their big crane nearby now, but SN15 hasn’t moved yet. No need to rush the recovery since it’ll be a little while before SN16 is ready. Not clear yet if SN15 will ever launch again; I guess it depends on what they find.
Not quite related to the recent events, but I ran across this video recently:
Sandy Munroe and his company were popularized after doing some teardowns of a Model 3, which he was initially very critical of but later more complimentary after realizing that, unlike other makes, body panel alignment was not a useful proxy for overall engineering prowess.
At any rate, they did an interview with Musk down in Texas, but in addition got a nice tour of the facility and was able to sit in on a multi-hour meeting on Starship. They were impressed with Musk’s grasp of the technical details. I don’t know if that would surprise most people at this point, but I still run across a few that seem to think Musk has no technical ability at all. One doesn’t have to believe he’s Iron Man to think that being Chief Engineer isn’t just an honorary title.
I’m impressed at how generally open they were–they mention their tour guide describing the header tank problems with SN8 and their solutions, for instance. And letting them into the design meeting also shows a great deal of openness.
I recently read Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine, a book about the rapid development of a minicomputer in the late 70s (I picked it up after hearing comparisons between it and Eric Berger’s Liftoff). It was an excellent read, but part of the novelty for me was about having a journalist embedded in a technical program (I’d only ever heard of that in a military context). It makes me think that SpaceX should be doing precisely this–have a journalist actually on campus full-time, sitting in on meetings and getting to know the key players personally. I think this was a minor weakness of Liftoff in comparison; because it was about events over a decade ago (Falcon 1 development), it lost some of the immediacy that The Soul of a New Machine had. Emotionally, it was just a tad more removed.
If SpaceX is generally this open, they should really get someone to write the same kind of book. We’re getting plenty of outside coverage, but little on the inside.
Sounds like they’re gonna give it a shot, maybe even before SN16:
It makes sense if there’s nothing to learn from tearing it down. Fly it again and see where it breaks.
For historical purposes I agree. If Musk doesn’t, it’s probably just because he doesn’t want the distractions. They’re moving pretty fast over there.
I see it as a gift that Elon chooses to publicize and display SpaceX’s flights very openly, reminiscent of the NASA of the 1960’s, including everything, successes, failures and all. Very attractive; I’ve been a big SpaceX booster since they first started making waves. Telling literally everyone I know, “watch SpaceX…these guys know what they’re doing…” So even if we don’t get the “Soul of a New Machine” treatment for SpaceX, we are getting quite a lot of good stuff, enough to satisfy me (for now).
OTOH it’s hard to get excited about the Blue Origin (Amazon?) space program. Maybe it is their secretiveness. And their lack of actually having orbited anything, despite some obviously good work going on. (Those closed cycle engines…cool.)
I like to use SpaceX to show how to spot a real engineering project from hype.
In real engineering, you solve the critical show-stoppers as quickly as you can. You identify critical paths to success, and get on them.
In fake engineering for PR, you spend a lot of time building nicely painted mockups, or models of futuristic terminals or CG models of products with your investment money. And of course, you spend lots of money on artistic design and marketing.
Compare Starship to Hyperloop. While the Starship people are doing the hard work of solving critical problems the fastest way possible and with as little fanfare as possible, the hyperloop people are out there sponsoring design compeitions for futuristic end terminals, or building throwaway fiberglass shells of trains for no reason other than to give an impression of prgress, while serious engineering challenges that must be solved are ignored.
I’ll believe a hyperloop company is serious if they are investing their money into fixing the metal expansion problem, or getting patents for new designs of expansion joints, vacuum seals or high performance vacuum pumps. Instead, we get highly publicized ‘compeitions’ to see who can build a skateboard that can go fastest through an open tube, which solves nothing but does get your company’s name into the media.
Instead of getting press reveals of pretty fiberglass shells from Hyperloop companies, we should be seeing plans for emergency egress mid-tube, tests of vacuum failure scenarios, and engineering evaluations of mitigation strategies for metal expansion.
SpaceX is showing jow disruptive engineering is actually done - through hard work and baby steps.
When SpaceX’s stuff works, it looks like science fiction. That landing shot looks like the finest special effects and cinematography.
I hope they figure out a way to land safely without those annoying little fires, though. Your spacecraft is not suppose to be on fire after landing.
I agree, we are getting a ton of good stuff right now. And I don’t anticipate that changing. I’m just thinking one or two decades out. The inside story of what happened will be compelling. Sure, you can always interview people later, but it’s hard to recapture how things were at the time.
Agreed. I want to get excited, but they don’t make it easy. The fact that their coat of arms has two turtles on it sorta rubs it in. I feel like most people take the wrong message from The Tortoise and the Hare. It shouldn’t be that slow and steady wins the race. It should be: if you’re the hare, don’t take a nap! (it seems SpaceX is keeping this in mind)
Maybe, but the embedded journalist approach doesn’t really have to be a distraction. Kidder just hung around the Data General cubes and labs, became friends with the people, and took notes on what was going on. Totally impossible with the secrecy of most tech companies these days, but clearly not true of SpaceX.
SpaceX have finally posted a recap of the SN15 flight
Some beautiful footage in there. SpaceX recently filed their flight plan for the first orbital flight:
https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=273481&x=
First flight is fully expendable, but with attempts at a soft landing. The booster stage will fly back and soft land about 20 mi offshore from Boca Chica. Second stage will attempt to land near Kauai. I’m guessing they want to maximize the amount of ocean they use as a target while also being near a place that has good telemetry facilities (from Barking Sands?).
It looks like it just flies from Texas to Hawaii. Is it an orbital flight if it doesn’t, you know, orbit? The ‘flight plan’ (which looks more like a press release) doesn’t make it clear.
Orbit means you’re on a stable freefall trajectory around another body. Doesn’t matter if you actually complete a full revolution or not. Starship is actually performing most of a full orbit, and at a seemingly fairly low altitude (probably so that if something fails, it will reenter quickly). Still well above the 100 km official boundary for “space”, of course.
The hard part of orbit is going fast enough. Everything else is just minor details. Their planned trajectory is such that Starship must be reaching orbital speeds.