They plan on flying this month. They had a seemingly successful static fire of the Ship not too long ago, though there are signs that they might do another.
They haven’t paused at all. In fact, they’re moving fairly rapidly given the circumstances. As I think you know, they had a little setback at the “Massey’s” test facility, where they do static fires of the Ship. That blew up real good.
The only other facility remotely capable of handling a static fire for the Ship is the launch pad itself–but that is only designed to hold the Booster, not the Ship. Aside from diameter, the mounting for the two vehicles is completely different.
But somehow they whipped up an adapter in a matter of weeks and have already put it to use. Quite a risk, really, since if the Ship had another failure it would take out their one complete launch mount. But maybe not as bad as it seems as they’re making progress on another mount.
They still aren’t quite ready yet but August seems at least plausible if there are no more RUDs.
If they launch, and the first stage goes well, and then they have another upper-stage fire and loss of attitude control in mid-course, then one of two things: either they’ve completely botched the design or else I swear they ought to start looking for an anti-Musk saboteur somewhere in the engineering team. I’m serious, there are so many people who hate Musk in general and the Starship program in particular, that if anyone like some of the commentators you read online managed to secret themselves into the program…
I came here to announce the same thing. TIL that he actually went to the moon TWICE, although never landed. I just wish that he could have seen us return to the moon, and say the same thing about Buzz Aldrin…..sort of.
The “sort of” is because I have a feeling that we are not supposed to go back there, and can’t quite define why.
Or maybe we don’t deserve to. But still, it does pain me that it looks ever more like none of that generation of Moon Men will get to welcome home the next.
For the record, five out of the 24 people who flew to the moon during the Apollo program remain living (Buzz Aldrin, 95; Fred Haise, 91; David Scott, 93; Charlie Duke, 89; and Harrison Schmitt, 90)
This isn’t quite on-point since “walked on the moon” is a subset of “orbited the moon” and Lovell was a member of the larger set only, but:
from xkcd: 65 Years.
So, 4 moonwalkers left (Haise didn’t walk on the moon; the other 4 did). According to that chart, they’re just to the right of the shaded zone. I wonder if Randal found a table to use that allowed him to account for the astronauts having been selected from a much more physically fit population.
OTOH, each of them spent a bunch of time in space and the radiation appurtenant thereunto. Either prior to, during, or post-Apollo. Seems like that might be a decent offsetting penalty for their better-than-normal health status.
Heck, it’s pretty clear that simply being US upper middle class college educated white is worth an extra decade or so above the US average and 15-20 above the US non-white low-education poor folks.
The point on the chart that matters is the drop from 5 to 4. The probability centerline has that occurring in 2020. Our cohort is outlasting the predicted average by 5 years. The 95th percentile confidence interval drops to 4 in about 2024, so our cohort is even outlasting the 95%ile confidence line. Suggesting our cohort is much healthier than whatever table he did use. Despite the radiation. Fierce men of fierce constitution indeed.
The only tables I’ve been able to find and use are SSA’s which are all-USians, segregated only by sex. See SSA - Actuarial Life Table if interested.
If anyone has a cite to more sub-grouped tables I’d be interested in those.
The remaining cohort is certainly getting up there. According to the linked actuarial table, they all have around 3-4 years left. So the xkcd chart looks reasonably accurate. One of them might last to 2035 but only if we’re lucky.
The astronauts do seem to have somewhat bimodal longevity. Lots of them reached >85; way more than the average US male life expectancy. But a handful died quite early.
Also, they released a report on the Flight 9 and Ship 36 problems:
In short:
The booster was lost because the propellant downcomer failed during descent, caused by heavy loads from the aggressive angle of attack. They don’t explicitly say so, but IMO this wasn’t especially unexpected. They intentionally went for a high angle of attack as a test, and had always planned on ditching in the ocean. They have a better idea now of their structural margin.
The upper stage failed due to damage to the “main fuel tank pressurization system diffuser”. I don’t know exactly what this does, but the failure affected both the reaction control system and the cargo doors. This was clearly not an expected failure, but also seems to be novel.
Ship 36 was lost on the ground due to the COPV failure, as we already knew. They’ve reduced the pressure and improved testing.
Overall, this seems fine. The failures are still new ones, not a repeat of old ones. Obviously I’d like to see them have a total success on the next flight, but clearly they’re still making forward progress with the failures. And the failures wouldn’t even exist if Starship was an ordinary rocket.
Frankly after the latest string of failures Starship seemed to be losing ground. The upper stages need to survive to splashdown before they can even evaluate whether the heat shielding is working. Two years ago I’d have thought they’d be test-landing upper stages back at the launch site by now.
