Someone made a game where you manually land the Super Heavy booster. It's fun! https://mechazilla.io/
The real landing will be incredible. I'm also very excited to see Starship make it all the way through reentry fully intact. We got some amazing video last time.
Anyone know if they plan to relight Starship's engines in space this time? I think the capability for a deorbit burn is the last thing they need to demonstrate before they can do orbital missions and deploy satellites. Looks like it's not on the mission timeline though.
That's a beatiful game. Mechanically it's simple enough, but the author seems to have put a lot of the work into failure effects. There are many different ways you can break the catcher, the booster, or both.
> Anyone know if they plan to relight Starship's engines in space this time?
No. I don't know why, but their plan for second stage is the same as before, go suborbital, reenter, soft splashdown into the Indian Ocean. Hopefully now without flaps burned through.
The autogen pressurization system for the liquid oxygen tank pollutes the tank with carbon dioxide and water ice. The same thing happens on the booster, but they have systems to manage the issue in place. Presumably they don't want to bother with this step for v1 ships or don't have the mass margin to do so.
It's not a problem for the landing as that sources from a separate clean tank.
CSI Starbase seems to think that Raptor v3 might stop using oxygen pre-burner gas for oxygen tank autogenous pressurization and use oxygen gas generated by using liquid oxygen as a coolant, like is already done on the methane side. That would reduce a lot of weight for filtering that they have had to add to prevent dry ice clogging of engine oxygen intakes.
I would guess they still need to learn more about the behaviour during reentry. Relighting the engines or opening the payload door could mean they lose proper attitude control like in the 3rd flight, so they get less info from reentry.
Nice game. @author Please just consider removing super-thrust effect when booster is punctured. Obviously engines have much more thrust than the gas escaping through the puncture, so crazy rotations after puncture are not realistic at all. Better behaviour would be a rapid loss of oxygen or CH4 and loss of engine thrust.
Considering most of the HN crowd is likely to switch to Firefox because of the Manifest v3 debacle, the person you are replying to is asking a good question. Assuming whoever made the game is a HN nerd like us.
This exactly. I am starting a shadow project to transfer people to Firefox and want to know what is going in people's heads when they do something like this.
Just tried again, and the same behaviour as before is happening here.
Also using Firefox (131.0.2, 64-bit) on Linux (Debian Bookworm).
The JS console is showing a bunch of likely relevant messages:
21:21:11.333 WEBGL_debug_renderer_info is deprecated in Firefox and will be removed. Please use RENDERER. u.loader.js:1:8342
21:21:14.067 Initialize engine version: 6000.0.11f1 (fa01dd6b76d5) u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.067 Creating WebGL 2.0 context. u.loader.js:1:1294
21:21:14.071 Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, or similar u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.219 The referenced script on this Behaviour (Game Object 'Prefab Indexer') is missing! u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36032
21:21:14.233 ERROR: Shader u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.233 Hidden/PostProcessing/MultiScaleVO shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable) u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.234 ERROR: Shader u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.234 Hidden/PostProcessing/Debug/Vectorscope shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable) u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.234 ERROR: Shader u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.234 Hidden/PostProcessing/Debug/Histogram shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable) u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.234 ERROR: Shader u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.234 Hidden/PostProcessing/Debug/Waveform shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable) u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.269 ERROR: Shader u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.269 Hidden/PostProcessing/Debug/LightMeter shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable) u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.270 ERROR: Shader u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.270 Hidden/PostProcessing/ScreenSpaceReflections shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable) u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.311 UnloadTime: 0.000000 ms u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.343 Unity Ready. main.e426c3cb719a53b4bcdc.js:2:73856
21:21:14.514 0(94) : error C7532: global function uintBitsToFloat requires "#version 330" or later
0(94) : error C0000: ... or #extension GL_ARB_shader_bit_encoding : enable
0(94) : error C0000: ... or #extension GL_ARB_gpu_shader5 : enable u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
21:21:14.514 Note: Creation of internal variant of shader 'Hidden/PostProcessing/Lut2DBaker' failed. u_wgl.framework.js.br:9:36071
No idea why it's working for your system, and not mine. My system is using an RTX 3070 with the Nvidia proprietary drivers (535.x).
Interesting how it took exactly the maximum limit they are alloted.
I wonder if the people in these agencies treat it like school projects where you use deadlines as a framework for how long you can screw around before it's absolutely necessary to get started. Where it's not treated as a worst case upper maximum.
Sounds like a great way to get politicians to give the agency 3 days next time, under the guise of optimization but with the actual intent and effect to completely neuter the agency...
The lesson being that the FAA should use more resources on airplanes that carry millions of passengers a day vs worrying about unmanned rockets crashing into the ocean?
They absolutely do. It's a bureaucracy. Budget is on a use it or lose it basis. FAA is requesting a 36% budget increase next year. Wouldn't be able to justify that if they stopped wasting resources nitpicking every piece of the launch plan.
Dismissing a review as “wasting” is like listening to a junior engineer tell everyone it’s pointless to waste time testing invalid user input because an enduser would have no chance at even innocently sending bad data to a system.
Every months (or weeks) long review of a minor decision has been a complete waste at every company I have ever been at. It's also a complete waste at the government.
“Malicious compliance”, sort of like CA is now refusing to allow more launches because they don’t like Elon’s support of the candidate they don’t approve of. Democracy!
Conspiracy thinking: Musk may have made some personal enemies by stealing Twitter from the left and siding with Trump's camp in the upcoming US presidential election.
It will be interesting to see if the FAA reaction time is markedly different if/when Bezos' Blue Origin ever gets something bigger than that phallic tourist attraction called New Shepard up and running. Bezos thus far has outwardly given the impression to align with 'the left' and his WaPo (also dubbed 'Pravda on the Potomac') certainly acts as the loyal flag carrier for the desired narrative. If there is any truth to this conspiracy thinking I'd expect the FAA to jump to the occasion to enable SpaceX' competitor to get up and running.
The more the merrier, hope they succeed and hope politics won't play a role in which company gets chosen for future missions. Given the successful launch and capture of Starship/Superheavy today it looks like SpaceX will still be ahead for the foreseeable future, New Glenn lies between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy in capacity.
There was a letter circulating around on X recently, showing that the FAA asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to do their thing faster. Assuming that was real, things got moving after the pressure from Congress.
In August, they said the rocket was ready to fly .. but they were quite visibly still doing significant work to the catch mechanism on the launch tower.
SpaceX operates on a rapid iterative cycle where they will knowingly test with deficiencies to improve later. If they get delayed for a massive chunk of time, they are definitely going to use it to make all of the known improvements they can.
Take that with a BIG grain of salt. When SpaceX says they are ready and the FAA is holding them up, it is actually Elon saying they are ready. For example, take a look at the "Starships are meant to fly" post from September: https://www.spacex.com/updates/
As someone who has been following these developments for a while, I can 100% detect Elon's fingerprints all over this post. They are basically completely dismissing government oversight as "unnecessary obstacles to progress". Keep in mind, the area where SpaceX operates Starship is a wildlife sanctuary and was only chosen because it is one of the few undeveloped, southernmost points of the US, which matters because the closer you are to the equator, the more advantage you can take of the Earth's rotational velocity.
Every launch pad in the US is a de jure or de facto wildlife sanctuary. Launch pads need a large human keep-out zone. Keeping out humans is great for wildlife.
The site was chosen because it was it could launch East over water. The rotation of the earth gives a boost to easterly launches. Boca Chica isn't a great launch location because there's a fairly narrow window of directions it can launch in without overflying land, requiring expensive dog legs to hit different inclinations. They might have been better off with a piece of coastline in Maine, but try and find a piece of Eastern coastline in the US without any development in a 4 mile radius around the site...
> Every launch pad in the US is a de jure or de facto wildlife sanctuary. Launch pads need a large human keep-out zone. Keeping out humans is great for wildlife.
Would note that ULA's Vulcan 4 October launch test at Cape Canaveral sprayed debris and presumably propellant around the same area [1]. Vulcan's GEM SRB burns a perchlorate fuel [2]. Perchlorates are toxic [3].
SpaceX isn't taking any crazy risks, particularly relative to the technology risk and potential pay-off, with its IFTs.
Being so far South is quite nice, gives you quite the performance boost, do you have any analysis on what the dog legs cost compared to more Northern launch sites? Would be interesting to consider. Clearly Florida was the right place to do this for the US in the 1960s.
As recently as last week FAA was saying no launch license before late November, and even if you don't believe SpaceX was ready in August they are clearly ready today. That's what SpaceX complained about, and it got fixed. What more proof do you need that the FAA was the holdup here? https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fupkny/the_f...
SpaceX already provided all the required information. FAA was not waiting for anything from SpaceX. They had inexplicably decided a new environmental review was required for trivial changes to the launch license, and today they reversed that decision in a "written re-evaluation" which as far as I can tell is not based on any new information.
- SpaceX requested to amend its existing "Programmatic Environmental Assesment" of 2022 to support jettisoning the interstage heat shield and (importantly) using an updating sonic boom model based on flight data. In my opinion, this is the critical point of this assessment.
- The impact on endangered wildlife is reassessed based on a report submitted by SpaceX.
- There are other points like concerns about waterway closures, and the water discharged by the deluge system. I know there was some controversy about the deluge system and the cleanliness of that water, but according to this report, it's all good.
The new evaluation of the sonic boom using flight data shows that SpaceX's original assessment was way off and the intensity and area affected by these sonic booms is much larger in reality. The FAA then goes through a significant amount of rationalizations (with sources, to be fair) to justify that the predictions of the new sonic boom model are still acceptable.
The biological resources section also shows that SpaceX underestimated the effects of their launch operations on local wildlife, but some research and monitoring measures are proposed to counteract this.
All in all, my opinion is that the FAA is doing everything it can to not be an obstacle. But they do have to analyze this stuff much more rigorously than SpaceX does. That is quite literally their job after all.
Stop willfully misinterpreting it. The new 60 day window was something newly added this time just to give other agencies time to complain if they wanted.
The FAA did their normal review like they’ve done for every other starship and falcon launch in a timely manner.
Boca Chica is not the Southernmost point in the US. One if the Florida Keys is.
The main reason that area was a wildlife sanctuary was that nobody wanted it for anything else, so it was a cheap political move to make it "protected."
A launch site needs more than latitude. It needs possible launch trajectories that star by going over water to avoid possible debis falling in people or property.
Launch sites at higher altitude are better than those at lower altitude.
Regardless of how it was preserved it is still a valuable habitat for some vulnerable species. And a recreational amenity for people. Nor would the absence of a sanctuary make it automatically ok to kill wildlife or cause pollution.
Have you been to that "wildlife sanctuary." I have. People are driving cars up and down that beach all day. Best thing that could happen to the wildlife is if it were shut down permanently for rocket launches.
> They are basically completely dismissing government oversight as "unnecessary obstacles to progress".
SpaceX works quite well with the government and doesn't mind oversight with regards to safety at all. What they don't care for is frivolous oversight/bureaucratic rubber stamping without looking at the intention behind the rules. They also don't like being surprised last minute. All of which happened in the prelude to that update post you referenced. I know a lot of people on this site are from Europe or have European sentiments, but the two places really function quite differently normally. The job of regulators isn't to be obstructionist for the sake of it. It's to create rules that actually improve safety and overall move society forward.
I understand the US and Europe work differently. Although I am European, I also have a strong dislike of bureaucracy and am sympathetic to advancing society through technological progress.
But there should be some oversight. You cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress.
> cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress
We don't.
The question was why the FAA was enforcing rules that have nothing to do with its remit. There is protocol of regulatory agencies having each others' backs. But it was silly in this situation—it probably calls for reviewing the regime.
Having a 60 days consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service whether a falling hot-stage ring (essentially dumb steel piece) causes danger to fish is just silly.
> But there should be some oversight. You cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress.
Then we're in agreement as is SpaceX and even Elon Musk. He's previously stated he's in favor of regulations in general. He just is against an overwhelming overbearing quantity of them that just exist because they've always been there.
> SpaceX works quite well with the government and doesn't mind oversight with regards to safety at all. What they don't care for is frivolous oversight/bureaucratic rubber stamping without looking at the intention behind the rules.
How could you possibly know this? There's no way an outsider can be privy to all of the details of this situation to make an objective call.
Looking at it from the outside it's obvious to me that one party has a financial interest while the other doesn't, and the party that has a financial interest is run by a person who is more than willing to misrepresent situations to his financial benefit.
SpaceX could be right in this situation but you and I will never know.
Other way around - with foreknowledge of how fast the FAA was working, SpaceX scheduled the launch last week to be one day after the expected license issue.
I like how SpaceX is willing to take risks. Their second launch tower is still months away from being finished, and now they're trying to catch the booster using the first one.
FAA doesn't care if they blow up the tower, as long as SpaceX can explain why it happened and show that it didn't cause undue risk to the public.
People freaked out and said the same thing after IFT-1 dug up the concrete underneath the launch mount, and yet the investigation was closed within 6 months and SpaceX conducted IFT-2 2 months later.
IFT-1 presented no danger to the public at all and it still took 6 months. That’s a long time to an actual technology company attempting to innovate. The FAA slow walks SpaceX because of Musk’s political views, it’s not even an “open secret” just a fact of life. Their only recourse is to shine a light on the FFA so the public can see the politics in display.
The time for the mishap report of IFT-1 was reasonable enough, they had a pretty serious issue in that the booster's FTS turned out to be insufficient. It also took them until the end of July to repair the pad and test the new deluge system. By mid-August they submitted their incident report to the FAA. The investigation was closed in early September. This was something even Elon admitted, saying that retesting the FTS would probably be the limiting factor for when IFT-2 could fly because it didn't destroy the vehicle as it was supposed to.
The unreasonable delay you might be thinking of, was between the FAA's closing of the investigation in early September, to the IFT-2 launch in November. That was under pretty similar circumstances to now, Fish and Wildlife Services was taking forever to do its part of the job, SpaceX went to Congress, the resulting pressure forced them to get things done faster.
This might be the first launch that tops the jaw-dropping excitement of the Falcon 9 LZ-1 landing way back in 2015. Godspeed starship and best of luck to all the SpaceX team.
I only got to see the tail end of the shuttle launches (too young) but I imagine watching the first launch/landing felt something like I experienced watching those two boosters land together.
The FH synchronised side booster landing was visually epic and is timeless, but nothing quite tops the distinct feeling of actually seeing a the first stage of an orbital-class rocket return to Earth in a non-mangled up state. This video helps to relive the goosebumps: https://youtu.be/brE21SBO2j8?si=EZ8y5vcRTmG3eU75
Short of the moon landings that I never got to experience, the dual landing (especially that first one!) is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in space flight. Could watch again and again.
Omg, how is this the top result when searching for SpaceX on youtube?
Also the AI clone of Musk is eerily good, you can tell today (not just because the brazenly scammy script), but will you able to a year from now? Especially if the guys running the scams get a bit more subtle?
The tower catch will be a highlight but technically just as important will be the second full reentry of the upper stage. Last time we had the amazing 'little flap that could' that was basically ripped apart put just valiantly continued to do its job. Musk said they had solutions for this in place, will be interesting to see how the hinge holds up. This could be a came changing flight test.
Because the rocket goes back to launch sites, lots of people will have really good cameras set up, lots of views. We will see this catch attempt with a lot of detail.
I don't think the ship being launched has all of the planned improvements to the fins/hinge. This launch is S30, with the big improvements coming with S33.
Newer versions of the ship have smaller flaps, hinging from points offcenter, so that they are protected by the body of the ship.
Images probably demonstrate this better than words.
This one has a 'stronger' heat shield though, although they haven't clarified stronger in what sense. The tiles were stripped off and replaced shortly after IFT-4.
If they struggle with first stage re-usability for a while, that merely adds cost. Further they probably want to iterate and scale anyways, so in the short term they're gonna be building a lot of first stages anyways.
Second stage reentry is necessary for this thing to ever carry people, ostensibly the mission the ship was designed for. It is a hard requirement.
First attempt to catch the booster back at the launch site.
The "mechazilla" launch tower has two "chopstick" arms which are used to pick up and stack both stages and which are intended to be able to catch the returning booster and maybe also the returning Starship upper stage.
Yes. The booster has two pins that stick out at the top that are designed to hold the weight of the entire booster when empty. The plan is for the booster to return to the launch tower, position itself between the arms which will close on it and then the pins will “land” on the arms, completing the catch.
I’d say the main difference, then, is that the booster will be supported by those pins resting on top of the arms. Chopsticks use friction to hold up their load.
yes the booster’s structure is very strong vertically but not nearly as strong horizontally. There may be some “squeezing” forces from the chopsticks but this is effectively for fine positioning only. It will not support the weight. The booster will “land” by getting its pins (which stick out a bit) on the top rail of the arms.
It should be better described as having the booster land on the arms. The arms will probably be able to adjust a little to assist in alignment, but the booster is doing most of the work to be 'caught'.
How could it possibly be meant literally? Do you consider it possible for a rocket to be caught by a literal person with literal wooden sticks?
I guess I don't really understand what you are asking. There's a tower with some huge metal arms that is meant to catch the rocket. They call them chopsticks in a joking manner. Obviously, I would have thought.
Yeah I totally envisioned a person holding wooden chopsticks trying to catch a booster /s
You missed the quoted part about > which are intended to be able to catch
Which would be the unique thing to clarify. As in "something like" the "chopsticks" moving to > catch < the thing -- Like Mr. Miyagi moving the chopsticks to > catch < the thing
It allows removing the landing gears on the booster, which saves wheight, which saves fuel, which increases efficiency and reduces costs. It also avoid having to fetch the booster from wherever it would have landed.
Given that a lot of the landing failures we've seen started with a near perfect landing followed by the rocket tipping over, I suspect one benefit is that the contact point is now above the center of gravity and thus it can't really tip over.
Of course, it can't tip over unless something fails or the rocket ends up in the wrong spot (and fails to get caught) and the previous tip-overs also had to involve failures (of the landing strut, in the latest loss) or landing in some way that isn't perfectly aligned.
Their launch license requires them to initially aim at the water, and only shift to aiming at their tower if both the booster internally judges it's in perfect health, and they send the signal from their control system.
I think there is a reasonable possibility that something goes wrong enough at some point for the booster to go in the drink. But if that happens, maybe it'll be close enough to the shore that we'll get some nice video of it?
This is also standard procedure for Falcon 9 landings. They would do it this way even if the launch license didn't require it, because they know the probability of some sort of failure of the booster is high, and they don't want to destroy the launch tower if they can help it.
There is a great app, called:
next spaceflight.
it seems to work great. Android and Apple. Simple settings, non invasive. (Thanks to cryptoz.) Of course there is a website, but for once I see a reason to have a notification setting, one hour or ten minutes before any launch.
This will be so exciting to watch, maybe as much as the first booster landing, or even more than it, if it succeeds.
What I wonder about is why they never tested catching boosters with the ones they've been using all along. They know these boosters inside out, so it would be a good platform to gain experience with.
>What I wonder about is why they never tested catching boosters with the ones they've been using all along. They know these boosters inside out, so it would be a good platform to gain experience with.
The Falcon 9 is incapable of hovering, because given the number of Merlins and their limited ability to throttle it cannot achieve a thrust/weight ratio (TWR) of 1 even on a single engine throttled to the lowest it can go. Rockets are almost entirely fuel by weight at launch, when empty they are very light. Since it has a TWR >1 when near-empty, lighting up an engine means F9 will want to go up again. So with F9 SpaceX must do a "hoverslam" to land, wherein the computer lights the engine at just the right point such that it hits relative velocity of zero right at the altitude of the landing pad (be it on ship or on land). That won't do for catching one however.
With Starship all of this was considered from the start. Raptor has better throttling capability (itself an amazing technical achievement), and of course on Super Heavy there are lots of them which is another advantage of the "many, smaller engines" approach. It means that they can effectively throttle it to just 1/33*min-throttle of max thrust. And SH is also just plain heavier construction, for good reason in an economics designed big rocket but also helpful here. Combined it is actually capable of hovering when near empty.
Apparently they landed the SH booster within half a centimeter of the target position at the last attempt.
So I'd say they definitely have carried over some important lessons from Falcon 9.
The actual catching part might perhaps not have been very transferable, given how Falcon 9 can't roll using it's single engine unlike Starship booster, and the large difference in mass.
I assume they have access to the full GPS resolution. They had a ship in the vicinity AFAIK, so could use that to improve accuracy through data augmentation.
as for why they haven't done it yet i imagine its because you can easily over optimize for something out of order, they had bigger priorities with making the launch work in 100 other ways so until those hurdles were cleared even attempting to worry about catching wasn't worth their time and manpower yet
- 10% chance of an "FTS triggering event" on ascent.
- 70% chance of an ocean landing, no catch attempted.
- 5% chance of a successful catch (with leeway for after-catch problems).
- 15% chance of a catch attempt resulting in all the
windows on South Padre Island needing to be replaced.
Ship I think has much more chance of being substantially more successful than IFT4.
I think the window opens in a few hours (?!?!) - that is, tomorrow morning 7am CT - for Flight 5, which should include an attempt to catch the booster with the tower.
Watching us push forward in hard problems like this is important not only for the direct benefits, but the general belief in a better future it affords.
I appreciate anything that helps reignite wonder and hope in all of us, and a rocket launch and recapture is just more visceral (not better) than others.
Good luck to the team, I’ll be watching with bated breath.
Based on the Oct 12 change log, "changed flight 4 to "starship super heavy" -- this reads that they can perform multiple flights with the same mission profile. So they can do a few quick test catches and avoid relicensing?
I love that SpaceX has these amazing broadcasts that connect us to what’s happening. I’m surprised that the older rocket companies have no video or low res pixelated video.
SpaceX and by extension Starship are critical for the entire western space industry. Last year SpaceX was responsible for something like 90% of the stuff sent up. Then China and then Russia. There is simply no one else in even in the market right now. SpaceX has lowered costs by an order of magnitude already and hopes Starship will drop it by another.
If you don’t like Elon Musk that’s fine. But his companies get stuff done. Blue Origin has been around longer, has gotten more from the government (Yeah, really) and been getting a billion a year from Bezos with nothing to show for it. It’s insane how much SpaceX has done while everyone else has been doing nothing.
I agree with all of that but it’s not like BO has nothing to show for it. They are likely to reach orbit soon with a new serious rocket. And I say this as a BO hater.
> SpaceX and by extension Starship are critical for the entire western space industry.
That is both true, and monumentally depressing.
>If you don’t like Elon Musk that’s fine. But his companies get stuff done.
For extremely broad values of "stuff" <glances over it the dumpster fire Twitter has been reduced to, and the CyberTaxi launch, and and and>
Yeah, SpaceX has been mostly hitting it out of the park. Tesla kinda was for a while 5 or 10 years back, but way less so these days. I can't think of another example of an Elon company "getting stuff done" in a positive way. I'm more inclined to think SpaceX succeeds due to the huge amount of luck a billionaire benefactor can bring to a hard problem, and succeeds in spite of rather than because of any other influence from Elon.
> I'm more inclined to think SpaceX succeeds due to the huge amount of luck a billionaire benefactor can bring to a hard problem, and succeeds in spite of rather than because of any other influence from Elon.
In my view its more because Musk's approach of first principles thinking works much better (compared to alternatives) in a highly conservative industry making complex physical things.
Twitter is a large part him failing to realize it is an ad company and thus he needs to make advertisers happy to spend money there, which means very active brand management and PR. He has had probably the most negative PR in history, in terms of volume of negative articles. That is an absolutely awful position from which to try and run an ad displaying business.
I have no idea the political shenanigans to which OP refers, but a missile defense shield destabilizes MAD and even if it works - which it won't - it'll be susceptible to jamming and maybe even EMPs since the satellites fly so low. Iron Dome is only effective against a limited number of slow unguided missiles, and too expensive to maintain. And SDI was a disaster.
It seems like Israel is a test-bed for weapon systems. It would be interesting to see how Iron Beam influences second-generation systems.
Having an effective counter to large numbers of nukes is likely to seriously risk Chinese and Russian escalations. MAD only works when it’s mutually assured.
Note that this launch has been ready to go for weeks and the FAA were stalling SpaceX. Elon joked that it's easier to build self landing rockets than push papers through the FAA. I really hope if Trump wins he guts that regulatory body.
> SpaceX provided information about the flight profile and its impact only in mid-August to FAA. [...]
> According to 50 CFR § 402.13, the other agencies have 60 days to give back their answers to the FAA.
> 15 August + 60 days = now.
You don't send a rocket without some sort of due diligence in terms of impact. Nobody likes bureaucracy, but I don't see how we're going to make the world a better place for everyone by letting billionaires basically do whatever they want with their toys without checks.
> t I don't see how we're going to make the world a better place for everyone by letting billionaires basically do whatever they want with their toys without checks
There is legal recourse to get people to pay for real damages — civil penalties. This is used all the time. Perhaps too often, but that's a different conversation.
SpaceX would be perfectly happy to pay penalties proportionate to the real damage the FWS is worrying about — literally, the rocket landing on a whale, which has approximately a 0% probability. But they aren't allowed to take that (nonexistent) risk and then pay for anything that went wrong.
> There is legal recourse to get people to pay for real damages — civil penalties.
Musk has the money to take any case to the Supreme Court, the court is controlled by Trump who is friends with Elon now. Any case against Elon will probably get thrown out or ruled in Elon's favour.
If Elon can buy the Supreme Court, why can't he buy a mid-level Fish and Wildlife employee to expedite the FAA review? That would be cheaper and less illegal, you'd think it'd be the first choice.
60 days per change is really pretty slow when you want to iterate quickly. It's probably worthwhile to figure out if we can speed that up. Perhaps by letting SpaceX pay a expedite fee (say, 2x the salary costs of the beurocracy employees who would look at it) to get it looked at faster?
It’s not like there’s a line around the corner for launch licenses. The fee should be $0 and it should take two weeks tops. Taxes fund the FAA not application fees.
Whether you like Elon Musk or his politics... or not I hope you can see that these actions demonstrate the danger of an overly powerful regulatory body. California Costal Commission members acting in their regulatory capacity while citing Musk's politics is out of line, abusive of their power, and not consistent with guarantees of freedom of expression or the democratic process. You don't win against MAGA or Trump by becoming them... and if you try to beat Trump at his own game... you aren't any damn better.
1. It's not clear the California Costal Commission actually have veto over federal land. Federal land ultimately is not within the power of the state to regulate. So they might be powerless.
2. The federal land is aimed at launches for national defense. It's not clear how commercial Starlink missions to mostly server commercial interests fits into this mandate
3. They actually okay'd 36 just not the full 50 - still an increase.
4. There's a fit a proper test to run a company - at some point Musk is gonna get called on this at the current rate.
> It's not clear the California Costal Commission actually have veto over federal land. Federal land ultimately is not within the power of the state to regulate. So they might be powerless.
> The federal land is aimed at launches for national defense. It's not clear how commercial Starlink missions to mostly server commercial interests fits into this mandate
"'I do believe that the Space Force has failed to establish that SpaceX is a part of the federal government, part of our defense,' said Commissioner Dayna Bochco."
OK, sure let's accept that assertion... but that's besides the point: should the commissioners be deciding these matters on the basis of their legally appointed areas of regulatory oversight or on their broader political sensitivities? If we're really saying its OK for regulatory bodies with a specific area of protection/oversight to express the agendas of constituencies outside of that concern, or allow commissioners to simply make enforcement actions based broadly on their own personal preferences rather than interpretation of laws and establish regulations, such as labor relations, "bad antics", and presidential elections... what have we really become and what is the point of the regulatory body?
In the end, I think the commissioner quoted above is simply making a shallow rationalization.
Moreover, why would a federal agency seek a state commission approval if it's not actually required? Doing so would just be asking for a political firestorm: there are incentives for the state to show they aren't beholden to the feds and the feds would simply be inviting controversy in cases where the state told them "no" and they went ahead anyway. You can see this in the article where the commission says Space Force disrespected them. Why opt into that kind of low-win scenario if you don't have to?
> There's a fit a proper test to run a company - at some point Musk is gonna get called on this at the current rate.
How is this in the purview of a commission that is ostensibly created to protect the coastal environment and things like public access to beaches?
This is why I am deeply suspicious of government: I'm given reason to be based on their actions and motivations. Who knows, maybe someday we'll normalize this deviance of regulatory purpose and our laws so much that maybe I'll be denied my next driver's license renewal for having said these things.
It's important to consider the broader implications of prolonged delays. They delay the potential benefits that these advancements could bring to society, for example in improved global communications, access to more natural resources in extraterrestrial sites, and the acquisition of more scientific knowledge through massively greater space exploration.
The cumulative effect of these delays will undoubtedlu outweigh the incremental safety benefits they provide. Each 30 days delayed sets back progress that will help address global challenges or catalyze economic growth through new industries and technologies.
And really, there is almost no downside to weigh faster approvals against. The checks you mention are already there, in the form of the deterrent effect of the threat of fines and lawsuits if they screw up. The checks should not come from centralized gatekeepers holding up progress by massively slowing the rate of iteration/experimentation.
Billionaires played a major part in the expansion of railroads, factories and the telegraph network in the 19th century. They played a major role in the expansion of private automobiles, the passenger plane fleet, and telecommunication networks, and the explosion of everyday consumer products, in the 20th century.
It is absolutely no surprise that they're now playing a leading role in pushing rocket technology forward, and the fact that they are shouldn't be used an excuse for obviously excessive restrictions on this enormously promising technology.
60 days is already sheer stupidity but the FAA was also quoting November before, well past the 60 day time.
It should be a short 5 business day window where other agencies can quickly check to see if they might care and file to expand to 60 if they think it needs a review. Default hold open of 60 days just in case is purely anti progress reactionary conservatism.
Falcon 9 (spacex's other rocket) wasn't human rated at first either.
The point of starship is to reduce the cost of kg to orbit, by being a fully, and rapidly reusable launch system.
The other long term and loftier) goal is to enable Mars colonization, a mission who's current main blocker is cost of kg to orbit.
By reducing the cost of putting things to orbit, you can do a whole lot more. Starlink is a good example, but if starship works it will be a paradigm shift that will result in a whole new space economy.
But falcon 9 is using a time tested approach and has safety systems. The starship has no backup if for some reason the engines fail to start…?
(For the passenger angle)
I don’t think the limiter to mars is cost to orbit:
- Having a vessel where people can live for a couple of years
- finding someone willing to take the (most likely) one-way ticket to mars
- all the challenges of having a mars habitat. Radiation, dust, etc
Reducing the cost: sure, starship has only been launched with no payload so far so the numbers are yet to be determined… and it’s only impressive (theoretical) numbers are to LEO.
The cost to orbit is the current limiter for a mars mission because no one will invest in solving all the other challenges until cost to orbit is solved. It's also a lot easier to solve the problems you raised when cost to orbit is lowered.
Early variants of starship will not be human rated. That will only happen once Starship has a proven track record. The is also no reason a human rated starship variant could not be built using the same safety systems seen with the dragon capsule.
It sounds like you are having trouble seeing merit in starship. Falcon 9, whilst great, is not going to the end of launch system development. SpaceX believes Starship will bring significant improvements/benefits. This process is no different to how Automobiles and aircraft have seen improvements to their capabilities over the years.
The previous one could have made it to orbit as well. They are intentionally not going there to derisk failed re-entry ignition since the focus of these tests is entirely behavior in atmosphere.
No, I don’t think one in every eight people on earth is going to see the catch attempt or even care about it. The launch and catch attempt is exciting but I don’t think it’s something that most of the planet is following. Even in the US, I doubt many people will watch it. It’s not the next moon landing.
We need an administration that will greenlight Starship flights immediately, so that the pace of its development can increase. The FAA is currently far too conservative in approving launches, by overindexing on the local risks posed by launches relative to the global risks of delaying space expansion.
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I'll also add that the US could potentially massively benefit if regulatory agencies like the FAA switched from pre-market approval to post-market surveillance. This article explains the difference and singles out the FAA and how we could have had actual "flying cars" by now had its regulatory approach been like the Department of Transportation's (DOT):
Doesn't seem like a very good article... a good journalist puts statements in the appropriate context and that seems to be lacking here.
For instance, it mentions "high levels of potentially toxic chemicals like Zinc and hexavalent Chromium", but doesn't say what that means. What is "high"?
E.g. the quoted Prof says he "wouldn't recommend drinking it", but would he recommend drinking regular rainwater discharge from this (industrial) area (or even regular city rainwater?) and would he say its worse than that? How many grams/tons of these materials are in the discharge? What is the likely concentration by the time it gets to any animals, how much would actually get inside them and how does that compare with the known levels that would be damaging to health? How does it compare with the concentrations from rain runoff?
A good journalist should find an appropriate expert and ask these sorts of questions so they can include them in the article and give the reader context, otherwise the reader will often come away feeling informed when in fact they know nothing of substance because there is nothing to anchor these unquantified facts to.
You seem to have a poor grasp for what makes a good journalist.
The whole point of the story would get lost if at every step the author is embedding irrelevant minutiae e.g. how many parts per million of Zinc versus the baseline, what constitutes normal etc. Information that an ordinary reader would not be able to make use of.
You need to make the story engaging, interesting and succinct whilst being factual.
> You need to make the story engaging, interesting and succinct
Yes, that is the job of a journalist. I.e. it’s why they get paid.
> whilst being factual.
IIUC, there is no such requirement. Approximately nobody cares if what is written is strictly true or not. There are no negative consequences if something untrue is written. (Except for libel and other special cases.)
> Musk “seems to care a lot more about 100,000 years from now than now here on Earth.”
I mean.. I think Musk is an arsehole and his plan to colonise Mars is insane, but this does not feel like a criticism! This environmentalist seems to care a lot more about short term issues than the long term viability of life on Earth.
> “At least one egg in every nest was either damaged or not there,” LeClaire says.
Ok let's assume that they are keeping count of the number of eggs in every nest... One egg? If these birds are going to die out because one egg in each nest breaks they aren't going to survive anyway.
I'm not saying the environment is unimportant, but I think you have to weight it against the importance of the thing you're stopping in the name of the environment.
It's like all the solar farm projects that get stopped in the UK because people think sticking some poles in a field is going to kill all the newts. Like, what do you think is going to happen to the newts when it's 40C in the summer?
> “At least one egg in every nest was either damaged or not there,” LeClaire says.
I think this is another good example of the lack of context I complain about above. These are the closest nests, how far away is the average nest and what's the damage there? What is the normal rate of egg damage or disappearance? How many eggs do these birds lay?
I hope it is more successful than their previous launch. I also hope that it does less damage to the wildlife sanctuary near the launch pad than the previous attempt. They are going to spray huge amounts of water to try and avoid destroying the launch pad. There is some concern that the water may become contaminated with harmful combustion products from the launch and flow into protected areas nearby. They will be doing some testing after the launch to better understand how big a problem this might be.
The water deluge system has been in operation for all launches save the first and has been functioning well, protecting the pad from damage. It uses drinking-quality water and outflow has been sampled after each launch, with negligible traces of contaminants detected.
There was a disagreement between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the US EPA about the specific type of permit that SpaceX needed from TCEQ for the deluge system but that was a paperwork/documentation issue only.
No damage was significant done to the wildlife near the launch pad in any previous launch, at least no more than is done to the wildlife during any launch that happens anywhere in the world.
They only destroyed the pad on the very first launch. The pad has taken no notable damage during any of the subsequent three launches between that one and this one (this is the 5th launch).
The combustion products of Methane and Oxygen are Water and Carbon Dioxide so there is nothing to damage the nearby areas.
Someone made a game where you manually land the Super Heavy booster. It's fun! https://mechazilla.io/
The real landing will be incredible. I'm also very excited to see Starship make it all the way through reentry fully intact. We got some amazing video last time.
Anyone know if they plan to relight Starship's engines in space this time? I think the capability for a deorbit burn is the last thing they need to demonstrate before they can do orbital missions and deploy satellites. Looks like it's not on the mission timeline though.
That's a beatiful game. Mechanically it's simple enough, but the author seems to have put a lot of the work into failure effects. There are many different ways you can break the catcher, the booster, or both.
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> Anyone know if they plan to relight Starship's engines in space this time?
No. I don't know why, but their plan for second stage is the same as before, go suborbital, reenter, soft splashdown into the Indian Ocean. Hopefully now without flaps burned through.
The autogen pressurization system for the liquid oxygen tank pollutes the tank with carbon dioxide and water ice. The same thing happens on the booster, but they have systems to manage the issue in place. Presumably they don't want to bother with this step for v1 ships or don't have the mass margin to do so.
It's not a problem for the landing as that sources from a separate clean tank.
CSI Starbase seems to think that Raptor v3 might stop using oxygen pre-burner gas for oxygen tank autogenous pressurization and use oxygen gas generated by using liquid oxygen as a coolant, like is already done on the methane side. That would reduce a lot of weight for filtering that they have had to add to prevent dry ice clogging of engine oxygen intakes.
I would guess they still need to learn more about the behaviour during reentry. Relighting the engines or opening the payload door could mean they lose proper attitude control like in the 3rd flight, so they get less info from reentry.
Nice game. @author Please just consider removing super-thrust effect when booster is punctured. Obviously engines have much more thrust than the gas escaping through the puncture, so crazy rotations after puncture are not realistic at all. Better behaviour would be a rapid loss of oxygen or CH4 and loss of engine thrust.
See also SpaceX's own official Starship game: https://starshipthegame.spacex.com
Does it always just say pending regulatory approval and get stuck that way? Is that the joke?
Finishes loading and runs here, using Firefox on Linux if that helps.
Mine finished loading, but it’s a good joke.
"Optimized for Chrome". Why?
Maybe it's because it's a small project about a specific event, and that whoever made it already uses Chrome and has mostly tested it on chromium?
Considering most of the HN crowd is likely to switch to Firefox because of the Manifest v3 debacle, the person you are replying to is asking a good question. Assuming whoever made the game is a HN nerd like us.
This exactly. I am starting a shadow project to transfer people to Firefox and want to know what is going in people's heads when they do something like this.
Wow, this game is great. Reminds me of a miniclip game
Doesn't seem to work on Firefox?
Works fine for me (linux, firefox)
Interesting. For me it's not showing anything in the middle of the screen, just upper and lower stuff (like a ~header and ~footer).
Is that what you see?
... no, that wouldn't be fine at all. I see a playable game, got to level 13 before giving up.
Just tried again, and the same behaviour as before is happening here.
Also using Firefox (131.0.2, 64-bit) on Linux (Debian Bookworm).
The JS console is showing a bunch of likely relevant messages:
No idea why it's working for your system, and not mine. My system is using an RTX 3070 with the Nvidia proprietary drivers (535.x).What gpu/drivers do you have?
Fedora and Intel arc A380
"Starship's fifth flight test is targeted to launch on Sunday, October 13. The 30-minute launch window opens at 7 a.m. CT.",
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
Edit: that's 12p.m. UTC, I think.
Tomorrow? It was issued only one day in advance?
SpaceX provided information about the flight profile and its impact only in mid-August to FAA.
The FAA forwarded the requests to the related agencies and had to wait (for example, what happens to the polluted water).
According to 50 CFR § 402.13, the other agencies have 60 days to give back their answers to the FAA.
15 August + 60 days = now.
The FAA mentioned they positively collaborate with SpaceX despite "upper stage failure in July and unsuccessful landing in August".
Quite exciting to see!
Interesting how it took exactly the maximum limit they are alloted.
I wonder if the people in these agencies treat it like school projects where you use deadlines as a framework for how long you can screw around before it's absolutely necessary to get started. Where it's not treated as a worst case upper maximum.
Alternatively, one or more agency may not have responded at all and so the FAA was obligated to wait the 60 days. Just speculation.
Sounds like a great way to get politicians to give the agency 3 days next time, under the guise of optimization but with the actual intent and effect to completely neuter the agency...
Sounds like a great way to make sure we don’t learn the lessons from the FAA’s lax oversight of Boeing.
The lesson being that the FAA should use more resources on airplanes that carry millions of passengers a day vs worrying about unmanned rockets crashing into the ocean?
They do, hence it takes so long to approve a starship flight, because resources are prioritised elsewhere.
They absolutely do. It's a bureaucracy. Budget is on a use it or lose it basis. FAA is requesting a 36% budget increase next year. Wouldn't be able to justify that if they stopped wasting resources nitpicking every piece of the launch plan.
Dismissing a review as “wasting” is like listening to a junior engineer tell everyone it’s pointless to waste time testing invalid user input because an enduser would have no chance at even innocently sending bad data to a system.
Every months (or weeks) long review of a minor decision has been a complete waste at every company I have ever been at. It's also a complete waste at the government.
“Malicious compliance”, sort of like CA is now refusing to allow more launches because they don’t like Elon’s support of the candidate they don’t approve of. Democracy!
Conspiracy thinking: Musk may have made some personal enemies by stealing Twitter from the left and siding with Trump's camp in the upcoming US presidential election.
It will be interesting to see if the FAA reaction time is markedly different if/when Bezos' Blue Origin ever gets something bigger than that phallic tourist attraction called New Shepard up and running. Bezos thus far has outwardly given the impression to align with 'the left' and his WaPo (also dubbed 'Pravda on the Potomac') certainly acts as the loyal flag carrier for the desired narrative. If there is any truth to this conspiracy thinking I'd expect the FAA to jump to the occasion to enable SpaceX' competitor to get up and running.
New Glenn is pretty close to being ready, although last I heard they hadn't gotten the necessary permits yet.
The more the merrier, hope they succeed and hope politics won't play a role in which company gets chosen for future missions. Given the successful launch and capture of Starship/Superheavy today it looks like SpaceX will still be ahead for the foreseeable future, New Glenn lies between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy in capacity.
> 15 August + 60 days = now
Close enough. Sixty days is October 14. Today is the twelfth. Tomorrow, 13 October, is the launch.
"End of day" shenanigans?
“Wouldn’t want it to take the maximum amount of time now would we”
Not much different from the prior flights.
Flight 4 was licensed on June 4th, was originally scheduled to launch on June 5th, and actually launched on the 6th.
Flight 3 received its license on March 13th and launched on March 14th.
Flight 2 received its license on November 15th 2023, and launched on November 18th.
Flight 1 received its license on April 14th; it launched on April 20th.
The main difference here is that up until just a few days ago, the FAA was saying that they didn't plan to issue a license until late November.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-five-late-novem...
There was a letter circulating around on X recently, showing that the FAA asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to do their thing faster. Assuming that was real, things got moving after the pressure from Congress.
> up until just a few days ago, the FAA was saying that they didn't plan to issue a license until late November
This might be a case where the FAA's PR department should link to a press release instead of repeatig it contemporaneously.
Should also be noted that Flight 1 was originally attempted to launch on April 17th.
> It was issued only one day in advance?
Officially, yes. Practically, I was hearing earlier this week that this was coming, as obviously was SpaceX given they're ready to attempt.
SpaceX has claimed they'd been ready to fly since August. It's not a surprise they'll launch very quickly after receiving the license.
In August, they said the rocket was ready to fly .. but they were quite visibly still doing significant work to the catch mechanism on the launch tower.
SpaceX operates on a rapid iterative cycle where they will knowingly test with deficiencies to improve later. If they get delayed for a massive chunk of time, they are definitely going to use it to make all of the known improvements they can.
The perfect is the enemy of the good, and SpaceX lives by this. If they have time to spare, why not spend it improving nice-to-haves?
being ready to launch is one thing, being ready to catch/land is another. so technically, they weren't wrong
Take that with a BIG grain of salt. When SpaceX says they are ready and the FAA is holding them up, it is actually Elon saying they are ready. For example, take a look at the "Starships are meant to fly" post from September: https://www.spacex.com/updates/
As someone who has been following these developments for a while, I can 100% detect Elon's fingerprints all over this post. They are basically completely dismissing government oversight as "unnecessary obstacles to progress". Keep in mind, the area where SpaceX operates Starship is a wildlife sanctuary and was only chosen because it is one of the few undeveloped, southernmost points of the US, which matters because the closer you are to the equator, the more advantage you can take of the Earth's rotational velocity.
Every launch pad in the US is a de jure or de facto wildlife sanctuary. Launch pads need a large human keep-out zone. Keeping out humans is great for wildlife.
The site was chosen because it was it could launch East over water. The rotation of the earth gives a boost to easterly launches. Boca Chica isn't a great launch location because there's a fairly narrow window of directions it can launch in without overflying land, requiring expensive dog legs to hit different inclinations. They might have been better off with a piece of coastline in Maine, but try and find a piece of Eastern coastline in the US without any development in a 4 mile radius around the site...
> Every launch pad in the US is a de jure or de facto wildlife sanctuary. Launch pads need a large human keep-out zone. Keeping out humans is great for wildlife.
Would note that ULA's Vulcan 4 October launch test at Cape Canaveral sprayed debris and presumably propellant around the same area [1]. Vulcan's GEM SRB burns a perchlorate fuel [2]. Perchlorates are toxic [3].
SpaceX isn't taking any crazy risks, particularly relative to the technology risk and potential pay-off, with its IFTs.
[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/10/04/ula-launches-second-vu...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite-Epoxy_Motor
[3] https://wwwn.cdc.gov/tsp/ToxFAQs/ToxFAQsDetails.aspx?faqid=8...
Being so far South is quite nice, gives you quite the performance boost, do you have any analysis on what the dog legs cost compared to more Northern launch sites? Would be interesting to consider. Clearly Florida was the right place to do this for the US in the 1960s.
Noob question: How comes hurricanes aren’t a problem?
> How comes hurricanes aren’t a problem?
They're slow and unsurprising. You don't launch in a hurricane.
You just launch the day before...
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/european-mission-depar...
You launch in the eye of the hurricane:
"Marooned" m.imdb.com/title/tt0064639/
As recently as last week FAA was saying no launch license before late November, and even if you don't believe SpaceX was ready in August they are clearly ready today. That's what SpaceX complained about, and it got fixed. What more proof do you need that the FAA was the holdup here? https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fupkny/the_f...
I would guess SpaceX decided to provide everything the FAA/other agencies were asking for and thus their launch license was issued.
SpaceX already provided all the required information. FAA was not waiting for anything from SpaceX. They had inexplicably decided a new environmental review was required for trivial changes to the launch license, and today they reversed that decision in a "written re-evaluation" which as far as I can tell is not based on any new information.
Okay, I read the FAA's written reevaluation (source: https://www.faa.gov/media/85696).
My notes:
- SpaceX requested to amend its existing "Programmatic Environmental Assesment" of 2022 to support jettisoning the interstage heat shield and (importantly) using an updating sonic boom model based on flight data. In my opinion, this is the critical point of this assessment.
- The impact on endangered wildlife is reassessed based on a report submitted by SpaceX.
- There are other points like concerns about waterway closures, and the water discharged by the deluge system. I know there was some controversy about the deluge system and the cleanliness of that water, but according to this report, it's all good.
The new evaluation of the sonic boom using flight data shows that SpaceX's original assessment was way off and the intensity and area affected by these sonic booms is much larger in reality. The FAA then goes through a significant amount of rationalizations (with sources, to be fair) to justify that the predictions of the new sonic boom model are still acceptable.
The biological resources section also shows that SpaceX underestimated the effects of their launch operations on local wildlife, but some research and monitoring measures are proposed to counteract this.
All in all, my opinion is that the FAA is doing everything it can to not be an obstacle. But they do have to analyze this stuff much more rigorously than SpaceX does. That is quite literally their job after all.
So in your opinion, as soon as SpaceX uploads a PDF, the launch license should be issued immediately?
P.S.: I wish SpaceX succeeds in bringing down the cost of access to space.
Stop willfully misinterpreting it. The new 60 day window was something newly added this time just to give other agencies time to complain if they wanted.
The FAA did their normal review like they’ve done for every other starship and falcon launch in a timely manner.
Boca Chica is not the Southernmost point in the US. One if the Florida Keys is.
The main reason that area was a wildlife sanctuary was that nobody wanted it for anything else, so it was a cheap political move to make it "protected."
A launch site needs more than latitude. It needs possible launch trajectories that star by going over water to avoid possible debis falling in people or property.
Launch sites at higher altitude are better than those at lower altitude.
Boca Chica at 25°59′49″N is within 50 N/S miles of Cape Sable, Florida 25°7′6″N the southernmost point on the U.S. mainland. It's just about the southernmost place not near a town. -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_th...
Regardless of how it was preserved it is still a valuable habitat for some vulnerable species. And a recreational amenity for people. Nor would the absence of a sanctuary make it automatically ok to kill wildlife or cause pollution.
Honolulu is like 100 miles further south than the Florida keys
Ever tried shipping anything to Hawaii?
True. Updated my comment.
Have you been to that "wildlife sanctuary." I have. People are driving cars up and down that beach all day. Best thing that could happen to the wildlife is if it were shut down permanently for rocket launches.
I have. Really enjoyed my time there. But obviously, there are no roads to the places where the endangered species live.
Yeah except for the beach that people drive on all the time.
And lack of roads is an attraction for all those people riding their quad bikes and other off road vehicles.
> They are basically completely dismissing government oversight as "unnecessary obstacles to progress".
SpaceX works quite well with the government and doesn't mind oversight with regards to safety at all. What they don't care for is frivolous oversight/bureaucratic rubber stamping without looking at the intention behind the rules. They also don't like being surprised last minute. All of which happened in the prelude to that update post you referenced. I know a lot of people on this site are from Europe or have European sentiments, but the two places really function quite differently normally. The job of regulators isn't to be obstructionist for the sake of it. It's to create rules that actually improve safety and overall move society forward.
I understand the US and Europe work differently. Although I am European, I also have a strong dislike of bureaucracy and am sympathetic to advancing society through technological progress.
But there should be some oversight. You cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress.
> cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress
We don't.
The question was why the FAA was enforcing rules that have nothing to do with its remit. There is protocol of regulatory agencies having each others' backs. But it was silly in this situation—it probably calls for reviewing the regime.
Having a 60 days consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service whether a falling hot-stage ring (essentially dumb steel piece) causes danger to fish is just silly.
I wonder if fishing boats need to have a 60 day consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service before each fishing expedition.
It seems to me that fishing expeditions pose a significant threat to the welfare of fish.
> But there should be some oversight. You cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress.
Then we're in agreement as is SpaceX and even Elon Musk. He's previously stated he's in favor of regulations in general. He just is against an overwhelming overbearing quantity of them that just exist because they've always been there.
> SpaceX works quite well with the government and doesn't mind oversight with regards to safety at all. What they don't care for is frivolous oversight/bureaucratic rubber stamping without looking at the intention behind the rules.
How could you possibly know this? There's no way an outsider can be privy to all of the details of this situation to make an objective call.
Looking at it from the outside it's obvious to me that one party has a financial interest while the other doesn't, and the party that has a financial interest is run by a person who is more than willing to misrepresent situations to his financial benefit.
SpaceX could be right in this situation but you and I will never know.
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I think it's more that they launch as soon as they get the permit.
Other way around - with foreknowledge of how fast the FAA was working, SpaceX scheduled the launch last week to be one day after the expected license issue.
Flight 3 license was also issued only one day in advance.
As I write this comment, it is Oct 12, 3:30 pm Central time. So the launch window starts in 15 and a half hours.
https://mytime.io/7am/CT
Hmmm, that mytime.io place doesn't seem super accurate.
It's using the wrong time zone for my location anyway, and therefore the gives the wrong local time.
How frustrating. Hopefully my comment above didn't lead anyone to miss any part of that historic event yesterday. Mea culpa!
Nah, I had already looked everything up some time before.
The "timeanddate" meeting planner is my go-to these days for figuring out cross tz stuff:
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
Not always super intuitive, but I have yet (heh!) seen it give wrong time info. :)
This video explains how they plan to catch the booster with Mechazilla [1]. The team at SpaceX has some serious guts to be doing this!
[1] https://youtu.be/ub6HdADut50
I like how SpaceX is willing to take risks. Their second launch tower is still months away from being finished, and now they're trying to catch the booster using the first one.
If they blow up the first tower, it will be 3+++ months to get FAA flight clearance again, so no great loss.
FAA doesn't care if they blow up the tower, as long as SpaceX can explain why it happened and show that it didn't cause undue risk to the public.
People freaked out and said the same thing after IFT-1 dug up the concrete underneath the launch mount, and yet the investigation was closed within 6 months and SpaceX conducted IFT-2 2 months later.
IFT-1 presented no danger to the public at all and it still took 6 months. That’s a long time to an actual technology company attempting to innovate. The FAA slow walks SpaceX because of Musk’s political views, it’s not even an “open secret” just a fact of life. Their only recourse is to shine a light on the FFA so the public can see the politics in display.
The time for the mishap report of IFT-1 was reasonable enough, they had a pretty serious issue in that the booster's FTS turned out to be insufficient. It also took them until the end of July to repair the pad and test the new deluge system. By mid-August they submitted their incident report to the FAA. The investigation was closed in early September. This was something even Elon admitted, saying that retesting the FTS would probably be the limiting factor for when IFT-2 could fly because it didn't destroy the vehicle as it was supposed to.
The unreasonable delay you might be thinking of, was between the FAA's closing of the investigation in early September, to the IFT-2 launch in November. That was under pretty similar circumstances to now, Fish and Wildlife Services was taking forever to do its part of the job, SpaceX went to Congress, the resulting pressure forced them to get things done faster.
Yeah… commercial aviation is in shambles, Boeing isn’t doing great, and FAA is understaffed so Occam’s razor.
Don’t have to believe everything Musk says during an election year
FAA is doing the testing, SpaceX is sitting around watching FAA
This might be the first launch that tops the jaw-dropping excitement of the Falcon 9 LZ-1 landing way back in 2015. Godspeed starship and best of luck to all the SpaceX team.
… and the dual landings from the first Falcon Heavy flight. Even today that footage looks like cgi
The live view of a Starship fin being attacked by plasma during reentry was pretty close too.
The dual landings for me were far superior. It was straight out of science fiction.
I only got to see the tail end of the shuttle launches (too young) but I imagine watching the first launch/landing felt something like I experienced watching those two boosters land together.
Can confirm.
> the dual landings from the first Falcon Heavy flight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyO-h59RO5g
The FH synchronised side booster landing was visually epic and is timeless, but nothing quite tops the distinct feeling of actually seeing a the first stage of an orbital-class rocket return to Earth in a non-mangled up state. This video helps to relive the goosebumps: https://youtu.be/brE21SBO2j8?si=EZ8y5vcRTmG3eU75
Short of the moon landings that I never got to experience, the dual landing (especially that first one!) is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in space flight. Could watch again and again.
And a "SpaceX" fake stream (probably a crypto scam) has currently 260.000 viewers on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=slu4rTF-Bz0
I reported it hours ago, but YouTube doesn't seem to be very good at preventing scams.
Omg, how is this the top result when searching for SpaceX on youtube?
Also the AI clone of Musk is eerily good, you can tell today (not just because the brazenly scammy script), but will you able to a year from now? Especially if the guys running the scams get a bit more subtle?
After over 10 hours, the scam is still going. Something is really wrong at YouTube.
The viewer count isn't real people, it's mostly botted.
Doubt it
The tower catch will be a highlight but technically just as important will be the second full reentry of the upper stage. Last time we had the amazing 'little flap that could' that was basically ripped apart put just valiantly continued to do its job. Musk said they had solutions for this in place, will be interesting to see how the hinge holds up. This could be a came changing flight test.
Because the rocket goes back to launch sites, lots of people will have really good cameras set up, lots of views. We will see this catch attempt with a lot of detail.
I don't think the ship being launched has all of the planned improvements to the fins/hinge. This launch is S30, with the big improvements coming with S33.
Newer versions of the ship have smaller flaps, hinging from points offcenter, so that they are protected by the body of the ship.
Images probably demonstrate this better than words.
Current: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;...
New: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;...
This one has a 'stronger' heat shield though, although they haven't clarified stronger in what sense. The tiles were stripped off and replaced shortly after IFT-4.
Good stuff. Fingers crossed this will help a bit.
1st stage reusability matters more so they can reach a cost model similar to F9, second stage is really just bonus.
If they never get the second stage working with reusability they could strip the design down to a simple S2
If they struggle with first stage re-usability for a while, that merely adds cost. Further they probably want to iterate and scale anyways, so in the short term they're gonna be building a lot of first stages anyways.
Second stage reentry is necessary for this thing to ever carry people, ostensibly the mission the ship was designed for. It is a hard requirement.
It's going to be one helluva show. Which ever way it goes. Best of luck to SpaceX
I don't follow these things often: How is this different than the four before?
First attempt to catch the booster back at the launch site.
The "mechazilla" launch tower has two "chopstick" arms which are used to pick up and stack both stages and which are intended to be able to catch the returning booster and maybe also the returning Starship upper stage.
> has two "chopstick" arms ... which are intended to be able to catch the returning booster
Do you mean this literally? As in something like Mr. Miyagi catching a fly with chopsticks in the orig Karate Kid?
Yes. The booster has two pins that stick out at the top that are designed to hold the weight of the entire booster when empty. The plan is for the booster to return to the launch tower, position itself between the arms which will close on it and then the pins will “land” on the arms, completing the catch.
I’d say the main difference, then, is that the booster will be supported by those pins resting on top of the arms. Chopsticks use friction to hold up their load.
yes the booster’s structure is very strong vertically but not nearly as strong horizontally. There may be some “squeezing” forces from the chopsticks but this is effectively for fine positioning only. It will not support the weight. The booster will “land” by getting its pins (which stick out a bit) on the top rail of the arms.
The arms are also used to lift the rocket onto the pad, so can carry the full weight, not "just" the empty.
The rocket is not filled until the last minute, by fueling arms on the tower. And the weight is like 90% fuel, so it makes a pretty big difference.
Thanks for the explanation! That makes it much more interesting than simply another launch
Main difference (besides scale) is that the booster is cooperating with the chopsticks, navigating to hover at a point between the arms.
Yes, literally, but the arms are massive and not directly controlled by humans.
It should be better described as having the booster land on the arms. The arms will probably be able to adjust a little to assist in alignment, but the booster is doing most of the work to be 'caught'.
They do have to be wide open and close pretty fast once the end on the booster had passed them.
How could it possibly be meant literally? Do you consider it possible for a rocket to be caught by a literal person with literal wooden sticks?
I guess I don't really understand what you are asking. There's a tower with some huge metal arms that is meant to catch the rocket. They call them chopsticks in a joking manner. Obviously, I would have thought.
>How could it possibly be meant literally? Do you consider it possible for a rocket to be caught by a literal person with literal wooden sticks?
in ordinary English there are many degrees of "literally".
In ordinary English literally is a synonym of figuratively since 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ImRMJX68s
Yeah I totally envisioned a person holding wooden chopsticks trying to catch a booster /s
You missed the quoted part about > which are intended to be able to catch
Which would be the unique thing to clarify. As in "something like" the "chopsticks" moving to > catch < the thing -- Like Mr. Miyagi moving the chopsticks to > catch < the thing
What benefit does catching the booster provide? (Or, what's a good written guide to that system?)
It allows removing the landing gears on the booster, which saves wheight, which saves fuel, which increases efficiency and reduces costs. It also avoid having to fetch the booster from wherever it would have landed.
What others said is true, but I think the endgame is also to literally land on the launchpad, allowing for a quick turnaround.
Don’t need landing legs/gear on the ship. Saves weight
Given that a lot of the landing failures we've seen started with a near perfect landing followed by the rocket tipping over, I suspect one benefit is that the contact point is now above the center of gravity and thus it can't really tip over.
Of course, it can't tip over unless something fails or the rocket ends up in the wrong spot (and fails to get caught) and the previous tip-overs also had to involve failures (of the landing strut, in the latest loss) or landing in some way that isn't perfectly aligned.
This is the first time they are going to attempt to catch the booster using their launchpad.
Either you'll see one of the most impressive technical achievements in human history, or a very cool explosion.
Their launch license requires them to initially aim at the water, and only shift to aiming at their tower if both the booster internally judges it's in perfect health, and they send the signal from their control system.
I think there is a reasonable possibility that something goes wrong enough at some point for the booster to go in the drink. But if that happens, maybe it'll be close enough to the shore that we'll get some nice video of it?
This is also standard procedure for Falcon 9 landings. They would do it this way even if the launch license didn't require it, because they know the probability of some sort of failure of the booster is high, and they don't want to destroy the launch tower if they can help it.
At the moment of landing burn ignition the booster will already target the beach near the tower.
Elon has pissed me off beyond all reason these last few years but when he says “excitement guaranteed”, it’s the truth.
They're going to try to catch the first stage on part of its own launch tower.
There is a great app, called: next spaceflight. it seems to work great. Android and Apple. Simple settings, non invasive. (Thanks to cryptoz.) Of course there is a website, but for once I see a reason to have a notification setting, one hour or ten minutes before any launch.
Thank you, that is something I’ve been looking for for a long time!
Fantastic app thank you
This will be so exciting to watch, maybe as much as the first booster landing, or even more than it, if it succeeds.
What I wonder about is why they never tested catching boosters with the ones they've been using all along. They know these boosters inside out, so it would be a good platform to gain experience with.
>What I wonder about is why they never tested catching boosters with the ones they've been using all along. They know these boosters inside out, so it would be a good platform to gain experience with.
The Falcon 9 is incapable of hovering, because given the number of Merlins and their limited ability to throttle it cannot achieve a thrust/weight ratio (TWR) of 1 even on a single engine throttled to the lowest it can go. Rockets are almost entirely fuel by weight at launch, when empty they are very light. Since it has a TWR >1 when near-empty, lighting up an engine means F9 will want to go up again. So with F9 SpaceX must do a "hoverslam" to land, wherein the computer lights the engine at just the right point such that it hits relative velocity of zero right at the altitude of the landing pad (be it on ship or on land). That won't do for catching one however.
With Starship all of this was considered from the start. Raptor has better throttling capability (itself an amazing technical achievement), and of course on Super Heavy there are lots of them which is another advantage of the "many, smaller engines" approach. It means that they can effectively throttle it to just 1/33*min-throttle of max thrust. And SH is also just plain heavier construction, for good reason in an economics designed big rocket but also helpful here. Combined it is actually capable of hovering when near empty.
Apparently they landed the SH booster within half a centimeter of the target position at the last attempt.
So I'd say they definitely have carried over some important lessons from Falcon 9.
The actual catching part might perhaps not have been very transferable, given how Falcon 9 can't roll using it's single engine unlike Starship booster, and the large difference in mass.
It's more likely it was half a meter and he misspoke. Landing with half a centimeter accuracy seems highly improbable.
how do they even measure a half centimetre accuracy?
I assume they have access to the full GPS resolution. They had a ship in the vicinity AFAIK, so could use that to improve accuracy through data augmentation.
They've been trying to launch and land the rocket at a precise point without explosion
as for why they haven't done it yet i imagine its because you can easily over optimize for something out of order, they had bigger priorities with making the launch work in 100 other ways so until those hurdles were cleared even attempting to worry about catching wasn't worth their time and manpower yet
First attempt at catching the 230ft tall booster!
My official booster predictions for tomorrow:
Ship I think has much more chance of being substantially more successful than IFT4.I think the window opens in a few hours (?!?!) - that is, tomorrow morning 7am CT - for Flight 5, which should include an attempt to catch the booster with the tower.
The discussion on r/spacex for the curious: https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1g24daz/faa_grants_...
"Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, Never let it fade away"
Watching us push forward in hard problems like this is important not only for the direct benefits, but the general belief in a better future it affords.
I appreciate anything that helps reignite wonder and hope in all of us, and a rocket launch and recapture is just more visceral (not better) than others.
Good luck to the team, I’ll be watching with bated breath.
Based on the Oct 12 change log, "changed flight 4 to "starship super heavy" -- this reads that they can perform multiple flights with the same mission profile. So they can do a few quick test catches and avoid relicensing?
The previous license also allowed multiple launches, so this license allowing multiple launches would be consistent.
As I understand it, only if the test article is identical. Any modification, new permit required.
I love that SpaceX has these amazing broadcasts that connect us to what’s happening. I’m surprised that the older rocket companies have no video or low res pixelated video.
And looking ahead, Deep Blue Aerospace does aerobatic chase drones.[1] Perhaps if someone in that space offered their services to SpaceX?
For Starship on orbit... photo/inspection cubesats are hard, but perhaps an externally-mounted 360 wifi camera ejector pack?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-g26Zt15lo
Bad news for sensitive wetlands
Excitement guaranteed!
So many crypto scams masquerading as official SpaceX streams on YouTube right now. This has been going on for years.
YouTube is so slow to react that the scam is long done before they do anything.
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SpaceX and by extension Starship are critical for the entire western space industry. Last year SpaceX was responsible for something like 90% of the stuff sent up. Then China and then Russia. There is simply no one else in even in the market right now. SpaceX has lowered costs by an order of magnitude already and hopes Starship will drop it by another.
If you don’t like Elon Musk that’s fine. But his companies get stuff done. Blue Origin has been around longer, has gotten more from the government (Yeah, really) and been getting a billion a year from Bezos with nothing to show for it. It’s insane how much SpaceX has done while everyone else has been doing nothing.
I agree with all of that but it’s not like BO has nothing to show for it. They are likely to reach orbit soon with a new serious rocket. And I say this as a BO hater.
> SpaceX and by extension Starship are critical for the entire western space industry.
That is both true, and monumentally depressing.
>If you don’t like Elon Musk that’s fine. But his companies get stuff done.
For extremely broad values of "stuff" <glances over it the dumpster fire Twitter has been reduced to, and the CyberTaxi launch, and and and>
Yeah, SpaceX has been mostly hitting it out of the park. Tesla kinda was for a while 5 or 10 years back, but way less so these days. I can't think of another example of an Elon company "getting stuff done" in a positive way. I'm more inclined to think SpaceX succeeds due to the huge amount of luck a billionaire benefactor can bring to a hard problem, and succeeds in spite of rather than because of any other influence from Elon.
> I'm more inclined to think SpaceX succeeds due to the huge amount of luck a billionaire benefactor can bring to a hard problem, and succeeds in spite of rather than because of any other influence from Elon.
In my view its more because Musk's approach of first principles thinking works much better (compared to alternatives) in a highly conservative industry making complex physical things.
Twitter is a large part him failing to realize it is an ad company and thus he needs to make advertisers happy to spend money there, which means very active brand management and PR. He has had probably the most negative PR in history, in terms of volume of negative articles. That is an absolutely awful position from which to try and run an ad displaying business.
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Why is the project bad? Besides being a heritage foundation project?
I have no idea the political shenanigans to which OP refers, but a missile defense shield destabilizes MAD and even if it works - which it won't - it'll be susceptible to jamming and maybe even EMPs since the satellites fly so low. Iron Dome is only effective against a limited number of slow unguided missiles, and too expensive to maintain. And SDI was a disaster.
It seems like Israel is a test-bed for weapon systems. It would be interesting to see how Iron Beam influences second-generation systems.
Having an effective counter to large numbers of nukes is likely to seriously risk Chinese and Russian escalations. MAD only works when it’s mutually assured.
Note that this launch has been ready to go for weeks and the FAA were stalling SpaceX. Elon joked that it's easier to build self landing rockets than push papers through the FAA. I really hope if Trump wins he guts that regulatory body.
To quote user rvnx:
> SpaceX provided information about the flight profile and its impact only in mid-August to FAA. [...]
> According to 50 CFR § 402.13, the other agencies have 60 days to give back their answers to the FAA.
> 15 August + 60 days = now.
You don't send a rocket without some sort of due diligence in terms of impact. Nobody likes bureaucracy, but I don't see how we're going to make the world a better place for everyone by letting billionaires basically do whatever they want with their toys without checks.
> t I don't see how we're going to make the world a better place for everyone by letting billionaires basically do whatever they want with their toys without checks
There is legal recourse to get people to pay for real damages — civil penalties. This is used all the time. Perhaps too often, but that's a different conversation.
SpaceX would be perfectly happy to pay penalties proportionate to the real damage the FWS is worrying about — literally, the rocket landing on a whale, which has approximately a 0% probability. But they aren't allowed to take that (nonexistent) risk and then pay for anything that went wrong.
> There is legal recourse to get people to pay for real damages — civil penalties.
Musk has the money to take any case to the Supreme Court, the court is controlled by Trump who is friends with Elon now. Any case against Elon will probably get thrown out or ruled in Elon's favour.
If Elon can buy the Supreme Court, why can't he buy a mid-level Fish and Wildlife employee to expedite the FAA review? That would be cheaper and less illegal, you'd think it'd be the first choice.
Money goes less far than you think.
Why do you think Elon can buy the Supreme Court. I am not making that argument you are.
60 days per change is really pretty slow when you want to iterate quickly. It's probably worthwhile to figure out if we can speed that up. Perhaps by letting SpaceX pay a expedite fee (say, 2x the salary costs of the beurocracy employees who would look at it) to get it looked at faster?
That incentivizes the FAA to hire an army of pencil pushers and take even longer to approve things
It’s not like there’s a line around the corner for launch licenses. The fee should be $0 and it should take two weeks tops. Taxes fund the FAA not application fees.
Sure, but its just not "billionaires" that need to be checked. Sometimes the checkers need some checking as well...
"California officials cite Elon Musk’s politics in rejecting SpaceX launches" (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/10/california-reject-m...)
Whether you like Elon Musk or his politics... or not I hope you can see that these actions demonstrate the danger of an overly powerful regulatory body. California Costal Commission members acting in their regulatory capacity while citing Musk's politics is out of line, abusive of their power, and not consistent with guarantees of freedom of expression or the democratic process. You don't win against MAGA or Trump by becoming them... and if you try to beat Trump at his own game... you aren't any damn better.
1. It's not clear the California Costal Commission actually have veto over federal land. Federal land ultimately is not within the power of the state to regulate. So they might be powerless.
2. The federal land is aimed at launches for national defense. It's not clear how commercial Starlink missions to mostly server commercial interests fits into this mandate
3. They actually okay'd 36 just not the full 50 - still an increase.
4. There's a fit a proper test to run a company - at some point Musk is gonna get called on this at the current rate.
> It's not clear the California Costal Commission actually have veto over federal land. Federal land ultimately is not within the power of the state to regulate. So they might be powerless.
> The federal land is aimed at launches for national defense. It's not clear how commercial Starlink missions to mostly server commercial interests fits into this mandate
"'I do believe that the Space Force has failed to establish that SpaceX is a part of the federal government, part of our defense,' said Commissioner Dayna Bochco."
OK, sure let's accept that assertion... but that's besides the point: should the commissioners be deciding these matters on the basis of their legally appointed areas of regulatory oversight or on their broader political sensitivities? If we're really saying its OK for regulatory bodies with a specific area of protection/oversight to express the agendas of constituencies outside of that concern, or allow commissioners to simply make enforcement actions based broadly on their own personal preferences rather than interpretation of laws and establish regulations, such as labor relations, "bad antics", and presidential elections... what have we really become and what is the point of the regulatory body?
In the end, I think the commissioner quoted above is simply making a shallow rationalization.
Moreover, why would a federal agency seek a state commission approval if it's not actually required? Doing so would just be asking for a political firestorm: there are incentives for the state to show they aren't beholden to the feds and the feds would simply be inviting controversy in cases where the state told them "no" and they went ahead anyway. You can see this in the article where the commission says Space Force disrespected them. Why opt into that kind of low-win scenario if you don't have to?
> There's a fit a proper test to run a company - at some point Musk is gonna get called on this at the current rate.
How is this in the purview of a commission that is ostensibly created to protect the coastal environment and things like public access to beaches?
This is why I am deeply suspicious of government: I'm given reason to be based on their actions and motivations. Who knows, maybe someday we'll normalize this deviance of regulatory purpose and our laws so much that maybe I'll be denied my next driver's license renewal for having said these things.
Based on this comment alone, Elon Musk's politics should have nothing to do with their rejection of SpaceX launches.
It's important to consider the broader implications of prolonged delays. They delay the potential benefits that these advancements could bring to society, for example in improved global communications, access to more natural resources in extraterrestrial sites, and the acquisition of more scientific knowledge through massively greater space exploration.
The cumulative effect of these delays will undoubtedlu outweigh the incremental safety benefits they provide. Each 30 days delayed sets back progress that will help address global challenges or catalyze economic growth through new industries and technologies.
And really, there is almost no downside to weigh faster approvals against. The checks you mention are already there, in the form of the deterrent effect of the threat of fines and lawsuits if they screw up. The checks should not come from centralized gatekeepers holding up progress by massively slowing the rate of iteration/experimentation.
Billionaires played a major part in the expansion of railroads, factories and the telegraph network in the 19th century. They played a major role in the expansion of private automobiles, the passenger plane fleet, and telecommunication networks, and the explosion of everyday consumer products, in the 20th century.
It is absolutely no surprise that they're now playing a leading role in pushing rocket technology forward, and the fact that they are shouldn't be used an excuse for obviously excessive restrictions on this enormously promising technology.
60 days is already sheer stupidity but the FAA was also quoting November before, well past the 60 day time.
It should be a short 5 business day window where other agencies can quickly check to see if they might care and file to expand to 60 if they think it needs a review. Default hold open of 60 days just in case is purely anti progress reactionary conservatism.
Can anyone explain what the point of starship is? It won’t be human rated - are they just keeping launching them for keeping the funding rounds going?
Falcon 9 (spacex's other rocket) wasn't human rated at first either.
The point of starship is to reduce the cost of kg to orbit, by being a fully, and rapidly reusable launch system.
The other long term and loftier) goal is to enable Mars colonization, a mission who's current main blocker is cost of kg to orbit.
By reducing the cost of putting things to orbit, you can do a whole lot more. Starlink is a good example, but if starship works it will be a paradigm shift that will result in a whole new space economy.
But falcon 9 is using a time tested approach and has safety systems. The starship has no backup if for some reason the engines fail to start…?
(For the passenger angle)
I don’t think the limiter to mars is cost to orbit: - Having a vessel where people can live for a couple of years - finding someone willing to take the (most likely) one-way ticket to mars - all the challenges of having a mars habitat. Radiation, dust, etc
Reducing the cost: sure, starship has only been launched with no payload so far so the numbers are yet to be determined… and it’s only impressive (theoretical) numbers are to LEO.
The cost to orbit is the current limiter for a mars mission because no one will invest in solving all the other challenges until cost to orbit is solved. It's also a lot easier to solve the problems you raised when cost to orbit is lowered.
Early variants of starship will not be human rated. That will only happen once Starship has a proven track record. The is also no reason a human rated starship variant could not be built using the same safety systems seen with the dragon capsule.
It sounds like you are having trouble seeing merit in starship. Falcon 9, whilst great, is not going to the end of launch system development. SpaceX believes Starship will bring significant improvements/benefits. This process is no different to how Automobiles and aircraft have seen improvements to their capabilities over the years.
Starship is still under development, these launches are just testing. It’s not a finished product at all.
Will it finally make it to orbit?
Will there be any simulated load or is it empty again?
> Will it finally make it to orbit?
No. "Starship will fly a similar trajectory as the previous flight test" [1]. IFT-4 was a suborbital flight test [2].
[1] https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_flight_test_4
The previous one could have made it to orbit as well. They are intentionally not going there to derisk failed re-entry ignition since the focus of these tests is entirely behavior in atmosphere.
Will they do a simulated load?
Do you think more than a billion people will watch the catch attempt, either live or later, in this Starship flight test?
No, I don’t think one in every eight people on earth is going to see the catch attempt or even care about it. The launch and catch attempt is exciting but I don’t think it’s something that most of the planet is following. Even in the US, I doubt many people will watch it. It’s not the next moon landing.
If we’re talking about the near future? No, most people do not care.
If it’s successful it will likely be in the history books, so maybe billions of martians will one day watch.
Over how long of a time span are we giving this? I don't think so.
https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceX/streams = most popular live stream has 33M views
https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceX/videos = most popular video has 29M views
I'm pretty sure this also includes embedded views from news articles that embed the videos.
So to answer the question: In the short term, unlikely it seems. Over the span of hundreds of years? Likely so.
Honestly I don't even see a future Moon landing garnering that many people.
Maybe a Mars landing would, but non-techie people just don't seem very interested in space.
probably not live, i imagine that many people will hear news about it though
They should call it Spruce Goose II.
Repeating a previous comment on the FAA:
--
We need an administration that will greenlight Starship flights immediately, so that the pace of its development can increase. The FAA is currently far too conservative in approving launches, by overindexing on the local risks posed by launches relative to the global risks of delaying space expansion.
--
I'll also add that the US could potentially massively benefit if regulatory agencies like the FAA switched from pre-market approval to post-market surveillance. This article explains the difference and singles out the FAA and how we could have had actual "flying cars" by now had its regulatory approach been like the Department of Transportation's (DOT):
https://open.substack.com/pub/maximumprogress/p/how-the-faa-...
Worth a read https://www.npr.org/2024/10/10/nx-s1-5145776/spacex-texas-we...
Title: SpaceX wants to go to Mars. To get there, environmentalists say it’s trashing Texas
Doesn't seem like a very good article... a good journalist puts statements in the appropriate context and that seems to be lacking here.
For instance, it mentions "high levels of potentially toxic chemicals like Zinc and hexavalent Chromium", but doesn't say what that means. What is "high"?
E.g. the quoted Prof says he "wouldn't recommend drinking it", but would he recommend drinking regular rainwater discharge from this (industrial) area (or even regular city rainwater?) and would he say its worse than that? How many grams/tons of these materials are in the discharge? What is the likely concentration by the time it gets to any animals, how much would actually get inside them and how does that compare with the known levels that would be damaging to health? How does it compare with the concentrations from rain runoff?
A good journalist should find an appropriate expert and ask these sorts of questions so they can include them in the article and give the reader context, otherwise the reader will often come away feeling informed when in fact they know nothing of substance because there is nothing to anchor these unquantified facts to.
You seem to have a poor grasp for what makes a good journalist.
The whole point of the story would get lost if at every step the author is embedding irrelevant minutiae e.g. how many parts per million of Zinc versus the baseline, what constitutes normal etc. Information that an ordinary reader would not be able to make use of.
You need to make the story engaging, interesting and succinct whilst being factual.
> You need to make the story engaging, interesting and succinct
Yes, that is the job of a journalist. I.e. it’s why they get paid.
> whilst being factual.
IIUC, there is no such requirement. Approximately nobody cares if what is written is strictly true or not. There are no negative consequences if something untrue is written. (Except for libel and other special cases.)
I read it. Wasn't worth a read.
This was a particularly funny quote:
> Musk “seems to care a lot more about 100,000 years from now than now here on Earth.”
I mean.. I think Musk is an arsehole and his plan to colonise Mars is insane, but this does not feel like a criticism! This environmentalist seems to care a lot more about short term issues than the long term viability of life on Earth.
> “At least one egg in every nest was either damaged or not there,” LeClaire says.
Ok let's assume that they are keeping count of the number of eggs in every nest... One egg? If these birds are going to die out because one egg in each nest breaks they aren't going to survive anyway.
I'm not saying the environment is unimportant, but I think you have to weight it against the importance of the thing you're stopping in the name of the environment.
It's like all the solar farm projects that get stopped in the UK because people think sticking some poles in a field is going to kill all the newts. Like, what do you think is going to happen to the newts when it's 40C in the summer?
> “At least one egg in every nest was either damaged or not there,” LeClaire says.
I think this is another good example of the lack of context I complain about above. These are the closest nests, how far away is the average nest and what's the damage there? What is the normal rate of egg damage or disappearance? How many eggs do these birds lay?
I hope it is more successful than their previous launch. I also hope that it does less damage to the wildlife sanctuary near the launch pad than the previous attempt. They are going to spray huge amounts of water to try and avoid destroying the launch pad. There is some concern that the water may become contaminated with harmful combustion products from the launch and flow into protected areas nearby. They will be doing some testing after the launch to better understand how big a problem this might be.
The water deluge system has been in operation for all launches save the first and has been functioning well, protecting the pad from damage. It uses drinking-quality water and outflow has been sampled after each launch, with negligible traces of contaminants detected.
There was a disagreement between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the US EPA about the specific type of permit that SpaceX needed from TCEQ for the deluge system but that was a paperwork/documentation issue only.
see:
https://www.spacex.com/updates/#starships-fly
The previous launch was completely successful.
No damage was significant done to the wildlife near the launch pad in any previous launch, at least no more than is done to the wildlife during any launch that happens anywhere in the world.
They only destroyed the pad on the very first launch. The pad has taken no notable damage during any of the subsequent three launches between that one and this one (this is the 5th launch).
The combustion products of Methane and Oxygen are Water and Carbon Dioxide so there is nothing to damage the nearby areas.
The byproducts of this rocket’s combustion are CO2 and H2O
> harmful combustion products
Care to share what are they?