First time's the charm: SpaceX catches a descending Super Heavy Booster SpaceX's engineers performed two significant feats on Saturday: catching Starship's Super Heavy Booster with mechanical arms on the rocket's launch tower, and achieving a pinpoint landing of Starship itself in the Indian Ocean. The flight was the fifth for SpaceX's monster rocket, which comprises the Super Heavy Booster and …
This post has been deleted by its author
Everything about the test looked ridiculous and I simply assumed it was going wrong, right up until the moment it went almost perfectly right...
The Guardian put up a highlights reel from launch to catch here.
A full copy of the SpaceX stream including the simulated ship landing in the Indian Ocean is here.
Wasn't there a lot of subsidy involved? As politicians know, that's a well that'll never run dry..
However, that does not deter from frankly a remarkable feat, amplified by the fact that they got it right the very first time.
It also shows how beneficial it is for these companies to keep Musk busy elsewhere. Tesla, take note :).
SpaceX are spending around $2bn a year on starship with current development costs estimated to be around $8bn paid for with private funding. NASA have given them a contract for HLS worth around £3bn but this is paid as milestones are reached. Not sure how much has been paid out so far but I think its less than a billion.
"Wasn't there a lot of subsidy involved?"
ort
Some, yes. Starship is an important part of NASAs Project Artemis. But they are only getting a fraction of what Boing is getting. SpaceX are not only doing what they much cheaper, they also other uses for the product. I'm not sure what, if any, other uses Boeing have for the $billions spent on SLS and the huge overspend on the one off transporter designed for this one rocket.
Also, SpaceX shares are not on the open market, so the people investing are the sort who put a lot in and understand where it is going.
I gather there are some "elon handlers" that let Gwynne Shotwell get on with the business of running a reliable rocket company. The DoD are not thrilled about Elon's apparent support of Putin and undermining Ukrainian operations. They have a hard interest in SpaceX being a reliable partner if they're going to keep putting defence payloads on Falcon.
I'd be amazed if SpaceX need to try and keep him away all that hard given that he can't have much time to do anything other than show up for launches and gatecrash the odd Teams call in between trolling on Twitter, pumping Trump rallies and launching terrible Tesla concepts (two seats, no luggage space, reinventing the minibus?).
And he'll have even less spare time if Trump gets the opportunity to make him a "government efficiency tsar".
There aren't enough hours in the day for him to have any more than the most casual strategic overview of actual SpaceX operations.
In aviation many things are suggested and abandoned or tried and abandoned because they don't work out.
"Nothing new under the sun " when it comes to ideas, it's when the combination of need and technical ability come together that we get a product.
I can point to examples in WWII when aircraft designers suggested aircraft with armoured cockpits built around a single large gun for ground attack.
Or, in the early days of low jet engine power and short aircraft carriers, reducing aircraft weight by omitting the landing gear - the "rubber landing deck".
So sad.
Merger with McDonnell Douglas: In 2020, Quartz reported that after the merger there was a "clash of corporate cultures, where Boeing's engineers and McDonnell Douglas's bean-counters went head-to-head", which the latter won, and that this may have contributed to the events leading up to the 737 MAX crash crisis.[21]
Just wait until you watch it again.
For any of you that did watch the SpaceX stream, I suggest you watch the launch and landing sequences that Everyday Astronaut broadcast. Their ground camera was quite distant from the SpaceX tracking camera and the view was equally, if not more, spectacular from their angle.
Another thought is that I can't wait to see if Trevor Mahlmann was photographing this launch and landing...the man has vision and talent.
There's no chopsticks on the moon or Mars. This seems like an earth-only gimmick just like the landing falcon9 on a barge or land. From a cost perspective and labour perspective it might be cheaper and faster to just use and throwaway the boosters instead of wasteful mission targets like catching a flaming boomstick from midair. More expensive and more complex and more Swiss cheese.
A full load of propellant for ship and booster is under $1M. Rocket Lab can launch and destroy a small rocket profitably for $7.5M so that cost includes licensing and operating a launch. The incremental cost of launching a fully re-usable Starship will be order of magnitude $10M. Replacing the booster would add about $90M of cost per launch. The economics of booster recovery are thoroughly proven. There are two main groups of people complaining about Falcon launch prices. One group says SpaceX are taking an excessive amount of profit from each launch. The other complains that SpaceX prices are so low they are are barrier to new companies entering the market. Both groups can be correct at the same time. All the US rocket startups have re-use as a major component of their business plan. China is working hard on re-use. Even the EU has worked out single use boosters are not competitive despite a strong political incentive to not see it.
The booster will never operate from Mars or the Moon. An Earth only trick for recovering it is perfectly acceptable - with bonus points if the infrastructure can also be used to recover the upper stage. Double bonus if the infrastructure was needed to stack the rocket in the first place.
"Replacing the booster would add about $90M of cost per launch."
It could be more. Just the engines are over $30mn and version 1 of the booster isn't up to scratch to send 100t into space so V2/3 will need to be even bigger, more engines, better engines. There's an incredible amount of risk catching the booster as can be seen on flight 5 as bits blew off right as it approached the tower and something was on fire. Looked like a vent turned flamethrower, but that wasn't good. The whole point is to be able to turn the booster around for reuse in a minimal amount of time. The loss of a booster will be expensive and even worse if it destroys ground support equipment.
There is a huge amount of room for different opinions for the engine cost. The big one is what number you divide the non-recurring engineering cost by. If you think of Starship as a Starlink launcher with the occasional big payload for NASA then the R&D really pushes up the cost. If you take the words of an extremely unreliable source at face value then manufacturing 1000 ships per year to colonise Mars brings R&D contribution down to rounding error on each launch.
There is a large amount of speculation that later versions will use thinner steel which will reduce cost. Raptor 3 engines have fewer parts which should reduce costs but some of those parts may be more expensive to manufacture.
"so V2/3 will need to be even bigger, more engines, better engines."
Go have a look at their new Raptor 3 engines. Cheaper, more powerful and remarkable less complex.
I'm waiting to see if we get details of how the current engines stood up to acting as a heat shield. Some damage has been announced (warped engine bells), but I'm hoping they will be open about whether they survived enough to be reused economically.
"Go have a look at their new Raptor 3 engines. Cheaper, more powerful and remarkable less complex."
Oh, I'm quite familiar with rocket engines and a lot of what's being done is leveraging 3D printing to absorb external plumbing into a more comprehensive base structure. There are pluses and minuses with that approach. The type of engine cycle and how far they are pushing it is a big concern since they're hitting the edge of what the materials can withstand. With this supposedly part of a 'rapidly reusable" system, living on the edge isn't a grand idea. The complex 3D engine structure is incredibly difficult to QC and re-certify.
The engines aren't being used as a heat shield. The booster never goes fast enough to generate critical heating on it's decent back through the atmosphere.
I am guessing that SpaceX must have some pretty good data by now with Raptor, they have test fired hundreds if not thousands of times now and I can't see them changing design on a whim by now. The recognise the re-entry heating is going to be an issue so as mentioned most of the plumbing is now internal and they added regen cooling on V3 for all external surfaces. As for re-use, again they have a lot of data by now, not just from Raptor but thousands of Merlin launches. Totally agree that problems are harder to fix with the newer design but on the flip side they are being designed that they don't need frequent refurb and unless you have insider info then right now I wouldn't bet against SpaceX.
BTW, they have already announced block 2 will be 35 engines on the booster and 6 sea level + 3 vacuum optimised on the ship. Doing the sums, they are running at around 80% which gives them 3 engine flame out capability, potentially 4 engines on block 2.
These are interesting sums, but certainly not the whole picture. There are a couple obvious additional costs with reusable boosters, beyond those of the boosters themselves:
1) The cost of the infrastructure required to "catch" the returning booster, I don't know how much this is, but could be comparable to that of the booster itself, or even more? Multiply that, plus clean-up costs, by the probability of a failed "catch" for the recurring costs. Are we expecting a 50% success rate, 9%, 99%? Succeeding first time is impressive, and it sounds like it wasn't entirely expected. If there is a failure here, what happens? The booster may not be full of fuel, as it would on launch, but will have enough in it to operate the engines for a controlled landing, so I can think of several failure modes here that would result in complete destruction of the landing tower, and the subsequent need to clean up a tangled mess of half-melted metal and toxic waste produced from an uncontrolled fire.
2) Servicing costs. Once a rocket engine is no longer disposable, and is intended for re-use, it presumably has to be designed to be stripped down and rebuilt after every use, and this servicing has to be performed. I don't know if the entire booster assembly gets disassembled and rebuilt, but if not, then I'd imagine the likelihood of failure on the next launch would rise significantly, due to uneven stresses and heating on the thing whilst it's belching flame and travelling at supersonic* speeds. After each landing, the landing tower presumably also has servicing costs, too. These costs may not be comparable to the cost of the booster itself, although I'd imagine it makes the engines more expensive than they'd otherwise be, but I'm sure they'd be significant enough.
*not having watched the launch, I'm not sure at what point the booster detaches, if it's reasonably early in the launch, it might not be going *that* fast when it detaches, but reporting suggests it was still travelling at supersonic speeds not long before landing. There's a very definite shockwave to deal with when breaking the sound barrier. It's worth noting that this was a suborbital launch, so won't have been trying to get anything to escape velocity, either which is a mite over 11 kilometres per second.
1. That infrastructure cost is a one time investment. Any subsequent savings will pay this back over time. Not worth it for one launch or ten but very much worth it if you're planning hundreds if not thousands of launches like SpaceX is doing. Nobody knows exactly what the expected failure rate will be but it's unlikely a missed landing would destroy the tower, there really isn't all that much fuel and oxidizer remaining and it's likely success rate is expected to be in the high 99% range. The booster is also not directly targeting the tower, it's trajectory is designed to miss the launch mount until it's certain all engines are operating normally and all systems are good to go. That's why you see it make the weird 'dog leg"/swerve just before getting caught. That's on purpose.
2. SpaceX Raptor and Merlin engines are designed NOT to require a full rebuild or service after every launch. They're given a brief inspection but nothing is disassembled. That's one of the main reasons the F9 (and hopefully in future Starship) can be turned around so fast. If they had to detach all engines, rebuild them and reattach them the turnaround time per booster would be far too long, especially for the 33 engined starship heavy booster. Service costs to the tower would definitely without a doubt be FAR lower than the cost of a single booster. I really don't know what you'd spend several million euros to service on the launch/catch tower.
*The booster is moving at a measly mach 4 or so at stage separation and at an altitude of about 72 km. It reaches an apogee of around 95km iirc before starting it's decent again. Which is the same it would be on an orbital launch, the booster has to give the same performance whether orbital or suborbital and the difference is made up by ending the starship orbit insertion burn early or not. The booster also reaches a maximum of about mach 4 again on the way back down (at about 30km altitude) before slowing back down due to aero drag to about mach 1.2 before starting it's final landing burn at about 5 km altitude. There is a heatshield between the engine bells at the bottom of the booster that is glowing a bright yellow hot during the re-entry phase, so yes, there's a lot of energy getting dumped there.
1. That infrastructure cost is a one time investment.
This was my point, though. It's a one-time cost, if every landing is successful. Otherwise that cost (plus remediation cost) is multiplied by the failure rate, multiplied by the number of launches. If the failure rate is 1%, and you do 1000 launches, then you'd expect to be rebuilding it ten times.
All that red tape that Elon complains about is precisely because you want that failure rate to be as close to zero as possible. If you take a gung-ho attitude of ignoring safety and impact assessments, sooner or later, something goes bang loudly on your launch pad, and you need to build a new one.
It's worth noting that Booster + Ship is bigger than SLS. And Boeing spent billions building a transporter to shift a fully stacked SLS to the launchpad. SpaceX tower, including the "catch" arms was significantly cheaper and can user their "normal" transporters to move Booster and Ship to the launch tower and stack them using the tower. I think even if they never caught a booster or ship, it's still cheaper and more efficient than SLS + transporter
"And Boeing spent billions building a transporter to shift a fully stacked SLS to the launchpad. "
I'd love to see a full accounting on that as the money spent seems crazy. They had a template for a transporter from way back during Apollo. It's not as if it was needing a complete redesign. The thing is a flatbed truck to get a very heavy load, very slowly to a destination too far away. Yes, there are details, but really?! Billions? It's not like they are going to make it out of wood having just visited the lumber store yesterday and seen what prices are like.
Boeing didn't build the crawler or the mobile launch tower. The crawlers were refurbished from Apollo era. The launch tower contract was another cost plus masterpiece f*ckup that when to Bechtel National. A contract that has go from $383m to £2,700m and still increasing.
Ah, but the second tower at Boca Chica is being built to take into account the lessons learned from the first tower. That's why, incidentally, they demolished the legs at Cape Canaveral based on the experience of the first tower, and will likely build a flame trench there, just as they are with the second Boca Chica tower. The orbital launch mount as a stool idea is clearly not as effective as they first thought, but at least they have tried it.
If there is one criticism of SpaceX it is that they go ahead and do something, then back out, undo it, and do something else. But that is inherent in the way the company works. There is no better data than real-world data and it means they can respond very quickly. So if there ever is a mishap with a Booster landing they will likely already have one or more launch towers available so it won't stop things, and they'll at least get valuable data to improve reliability for all subsequent catch attempts. A catch failure, while unwelcome, can still be very much a positive.
They all laughed when they said they would land the spent Falcon booster on a boat in the middle of the sea -- what a stupid, crazy idea. But now everyone is being forced to reassess how the space industry operates. Even the Europeans, who are very upset that the rug has been pulled under their cosy corporate featherbed. That's what disruptive technology does. Gwynne Shotwell has said SpaceX must be disruptive to itself, always looking to see how it can make its current technology obsolete before someone else does. Hence Starship will make Falcon 9 obsolete.
"But that is inherent in the way the company works."
Yeah, ignore the bad results when it was tried before. There is a tremendous amount of R&D that is free for the asking from NASA. In the 1950's and 1960's, gobs of money was spent going up all sorts of blind alleys. To do the analysis on slide rules and hope that nobody dropped a decimal point was slower and more expensive than just building a scale model and giving it a try. Today with FEA and CFD, all sorts of ideas can be tried out before ordering up 30 trucks of concrete and a ship load of steel beams.
"They all laughed when they said they would land the spent Falcon booster on a boat in the middle of the sea -- what a stupid, crazy idea."
Only people that didn't know that landing rockets has been done since the 1960's and the reason it wasn't common was financial, not technical. Starship will not make Falcon obsolete. Starship is too expensive on many fronts. While it might be less expensive per kg if the rocket ever works, that assumes that 100t is being launched. There isn't the market other than large constellations in LEO for that sort of mass/volume. So, it may work for SpaceX/Starlink, but there's almost no market besides. The SpaceX HLS schema was designed to give the Starship another mission rather than it being a good fit for purpose. It's also meant another several billion bucks of government money for SpaceX to play with.
SpaceX Raptor and Merlin engines are designed NOT to require a full rebuild or service after every launch.
This is a good goal to have. I do wonder how many uses they'll get before they do need this, though. Do we have enough launches with these engines to know the mean-launches-to-failure?
"Do we have enough launches with these engines to know the mean-launches-to-failure?"
With a single first-use look, it's not good. There should be zero failed engines on first use since that means if they don't have the margin, subsequent uses might break bits that were stressed on the first go and if that isn't caught......
The Raptor has been taking a lot of external plumbing and building it into the base structure which is what Elon is pointing at. That has pros and cons. It does simplify a lot of things, but it can make is much more difficult to QC and inspect later on. I know people that worked on the Merlins, but not anybody that worked on the Raptors (they have lots of turnover) or I'd ask them about inspection issues.
Not sure where your experience is, maybe Boeing or one of the old school companies. Do you understand that breaking something is not failing if you learn from why something breaks ?
SpaceX is using a hardware rich development cycle, test early, learn from problems and fix them and test again. Yes its more expensive but it gets faster results. Knowing people at SpaceX I thought you would understand that. BTW, that phrase IFT, the T stands for Test which means it isn't production ready hardware, expect failures. Don't means that you should keep repeating failures, every IFT has improved on the previous one and TBH even SpaceX wasn't expecting the catch to work first time maybe not even the second but by third attempt they should have it nailed. As it turns out they managed it on the first attempt. Lets see how BO does with their first attempt with NS.
Anyway as for things failing on first flight, how do you know what the limit is until you pass it. You can do all the computational and test stand testing you want but until you do integrated testing then you just don't know for sure. And as its a test then why wouldn't you run at 100% or even 110%. If it works at 110%, great, you have a new limit. It don't work then you know your limit is too high. The important thing is to learn from it and in IFT some of the engine outs were fuelling problem, not engine problems.
As you know, V3 is highly integrated. They have been saying for sometime that a key goal is rapid turning around, I think the one hour Elon talks about its a bit of fantasy but even if it was one day turn around that means they won't be doing any detailed routine inspections, they will rely on quality control at production backed up with sensor and performance data to ensure engines will be OK. That means production line with consistent quality control, not hand made low volume like F5. Same as jet engines, they don't get stripped down after every flight. Or even brake on cars, how often do they get checked, at service, MOT and when when the wear light comes on ? Experience shows that production is consistent and limits have been found and tested.
Falcon 9 boosters appear to spend less than a fortnight being inspected and refurbished after a flight, during a launch stream a while ago it was mentioned that particular booster had gone through the process in nine days. There is absolutely no need to strip and rebuild engines between flights, even the Shuttle main engines didn't need it although inertia meant they generally were. SpaceX already have a lot (as in hundreds of reflights) of experience in reusing rockets.
" It's worth noting that this was a suborbital launch, so won't have been trying to get anything to escape velocity, either which is a mite over 11 kilometres per second."
This was an "almost orbital" launch - the speed achieved by the booster was the same as for a true orbital launch, but starship itself stopped *just* short of orbital speeds to ensure that it would reenter the atmosphere without having to restart the engines. Just a few more seconds of thrust and they would have reached it.
Not all Ships/ Boosters will make landings on the Moon/ Mars/ other bodies. The greater majority will be servicing those specialist 'Landers' eg: refueling, and/or delivering other customer payloads to orbits.
Certainly a 'landable' ship will *probably be required, and a way to overcome eg: no aerobraking (Moon) I cannot quite see how any of that will work (and I think Artemis is lunacy) but then I couldn't comprehend what I witnessed yesterday.
If there is a faster and more economical way to turnaround a booster (and ship) then by all means have at it on the back of a napkin.
*What about a landable 'Lego' tower? If they can be accurate with ships and boosters why not payloads?
Pack modular tower sections in ships as payload-to-the-surface, delivered under their own power, let them land on top of one another until you have snapped an automated Mechzilla together - bring in an orbital ship sans legs.
Or, don't bother as payload and assembly - launch and land a tower complete - I dunno, I'm not a rocket surgeon, isn't a Starship merely a form of powered payload on top of a Superheavy booster - and after yesterday, what is the definition of madness really?
HLS and martian variants will have legs... at least for a long time.
And it's not as if landing legs are an unknown technology, it's just that not having to carry legs strong enough to deal with a 250 ton booster landing is an obvious mass saving on the booster, which is worth even more payload.
"Certainly a 'landable' ship will *probably be required, and a way to overcome eg: no aerobraking (Moon) I cannot quite see how any of that will work (and I think Artemis is lunacy) but then I couldn't comprehend what I witnessed yesterday."
We've already seen the ship successfully land on legs. 1/6th or 1/3rd G on the target bodies will help too. Many of the launches will likely be "tanker missions" to fill an orbiting tanker, and those will be "caught" back at the launch site, so the lack of legs means more fuel to go into the orbiting tanker. One of the space oriented YouTubers did a thing on how many launches it might take to get enough fuel into an orbiting tanker for a Moon mission a while a go, and it was quite a significant number. But I think he was basing that on what he knew then of the performance. Raptor 3 engines have been shown since then, along with newer versions of the booster and ship. But still suspect it's not going to be as easy as Musk is making out. It's worth remembering, if you look at a Saturn V or SLS side by side with Starship, the bit that actually gets to the destination is far, far bigger on Starship compared to the tiny little speck at the top of an SLS stack. I'm not sure Starship could even reach the Moon, let alone land, without refuelling. On the other hand, if you can launch 10 starship tankers + one Moon vehicle for the price of one SLS and still have all the bits to re-use at the end of it, SpaceX still comes out ahead :-)
"On the other hand, if you can launch 10 starship tankers + one Moon vehicle for the price of one SLS and still have all the bits to re-use at the end of it, SpaceX still comes out ahead :-)"
How about one depot, twenty+ tanker flights and one HLS? Once the orbital depot starts being fueled, there's boil off so any disruptions to the tanker cadence can reset the whole process back to square one.
Correct, there are no chopsticks on Mars or the Moon but there will at least 12 to 15 earth launches for every mars or moon mission so that is where the bulk of the cost saving will be. A SH Booster runs to around $50m assuming mass production plus another $8m for engines. That compares to $2m to $3m launch costs. Even adding on a couple of million for refurbishing every couple of flights that is a significant saving in cost and turnaround time. The offset is around 15% payload performance hit (compared to 20% on F9), might even be less once optimised.
And Mars and Moon both have significantly different atmosphere density and gravity and lack of ground infrastructure, initially anyway. The expectation given by SpaceX is for propulsive landing similar to Falcon 9 booster which means developing landing legs. It will happen over time but SpaceX who have actual data of propulsive landing vs catch tower have decided for the time being that catch tower gives more payload performance, less complexity in the flight hardware and quicker turnarounds. One of the things mentioned yesterday was that even with RTLS F9 landings, they need a crane and a transporter to move the booster back to processing facility, If even they could relaunch without processing then they would still need to move the booster.
"A SH Booster runs to around $50m assuming mass production plus another $8m for engines. "
Not sure how you reckon the engines are less than the rest of the booster...
The final target is ~$8m (33 engines at $250k), which accounts for about a quarter of the dry mass of the booster.
It would be surprising if the rest of the booster cost more than the engines, even including the grid fins, plumbing and other ancillary systems.
"SpaceX who have actual data of propulsive landing vs catch tower have decided for the time being that catch tower gives more payload performance"
Pretty trivial to verify that - the lifting lugs are going to be alot lighter than any landing leg system, and mass saved on the booster is going to result in better performance.
The comparison is landing legs *and* a downrange landing vs no landing legs and a RTLS.
Yes, improvements have been made, but the booster on fire and still having a melty upper stage isn't going to instill confidence from NASA about using this for getting crews from lunar orbit down to the surface and back. Blue had an issue with a vendor provided solid rocket booster, but it still flew the mission with mass and some customer payloads on its first go. I'd put money on the New Glenn nailing the next flight. SpaceX still needs to do a in-space relight of a Raptor engine to make sure they can deorbit Starship (flt 5 was sub-orbital). They'd have a hefty chunk of rocket left in LEO if they can't get it down and exactly where it needs to go.
By all means if you believe you can do better on the first try hop off to Starbase and introduce yourself to Muskrat.
You are missing the point.
This has never, ever been done, the competition can't even get the calamity capsule to work properly with all the simulations they have (purportedly) run.
Starship suffered burn through again but a) fared better than last time and b) The next ship to fly will likley be a block 2 which has a different flap setup to mitigate this further.
Raptor relight *should* be ok, it works elsewhere on the booster but controlling where it lands and getting there in the same number of bits as left the pad is more important right now. A failed light in low orbit. RUD or engine that wont shut off at that altitude could be all kinds of bad at this stage.
Baby steps, although the catch was not a baby step.
this junk can't even get a fucking ton into space yet. and the clown expects to lunch multiple to refuel 1 ship within days to get any where near the moon never mind mars.
Remind you they are already supposed to be on the fucking way by now!!!!.
And the junk hasn't even got a crew space in it!!!.
the catch was a fucking tiny baby step
"this junk can't even get a fucking ton into space yet."
Except of course that it did - it put an entire SS into space (and the SH depending on where you draw the karman line).
The SS also acheived orbital energy (both altitude and velocity), but deliberately aimed that orbit to intersect with the atmosphere.
"Wow - a test flight without a payload didn't put a payload into space."
Funny how most other rocket companies will put a test payload in their rockets even on the first flight. Might be a free (and really risky) ride for somebody or just a "mass simulator", but there will be something to stand in as a payload.
"Funny how most other rocket companies will put a test payload in their rockets even on the first flight"
You might not have noticed, but SpaceX aren't exactly following the 'traditional' rocket design and test flight process - what they launched was a prototype which didn't represent the latest hardware in a number of different ways.
I can't recall a suborbital test of SLS, or indeed any other orbital class system (at least not since the very early days of space flight).
This post has been deleted by its author
"Raptor relight *should* be ok, it works elsewhere on the booster"
I don't think they've had a relight in a microgravity environment yet - all of their ignitions have been under acceleration (with the header tanks in the SS being filled and positioned to deal with the lateral acceleration at that point in the flight.
"The fact that the flying muskrats haven't had reason to do it during the past five Starship tests is extremely unlikely to suggest that they can't."
It was on the test card for flight 4 but they skipped it. I don't recall if it was on flight 3. They've had the reason and it must be done to show NASA it can be done as a milestone in the HLS contract.
"Baby steps, although the catch was not a baby step."
Yup, it was. Look at the F9 landings. It was a tighter target for the booster, but with RT2 D-gps, it's down to having a good control loop that is well tuned to the rocket's performance. Instead of landing on it's 'feet', it's landing on the grid fins with the feet dangling.
We had these sorts of discussions at a company I worked for. We could take the landing legs off and land our rockets back in a cradle, but the risk was deemed to be too much and really outside of the technology we were working on perfecting. We all hoped it would be something we could do later. The last thing we wanted was to destroy a load of money in one go and lose our jobs to not having enough investor interest to give us more.
It's not landing on the grid fins, but the lifting lugs underneath.
Very small pins (comparatively), need the rotational control to be spot on.
It's a big step in terms of demonstrating that they aren't completely barmy - they've put the booster back on the launch mount now as well, which is another significant step on that path.
"By all means if you believe you can do better on the first try hop off to Starbase and introduce yourself to Muskrat."
What? and take a 70hr/week job with a megalomaniac for $50k/yr. Madness. I do other things now, for more money, from my own facilities.
I've done rockets both as a hobby (solid fuel) and a profession (liquid fuel). I've made my own propellants and sent my own rockets above where the commercial jets fly. I've worked with some very talented people. I also have no intention of going to work for somebody that would never acknowledge my contribution and simply take all the credit for themselves.
" but the booster on fire and still having a melty upper stage isn't going to instill confidence from NASA about using this for getting crews from lunar orbit down to the surface and back"
Booster landed safely, and won't have people anywhere near it as part of the artemis program.
HLS starship won't be reentering, in fact it won't even have flaps.
"It was venting methane...
What did you expect to happen to that methane?"
It was venting methane at the top. At the bottom they lost something that turned into a flamethrower. That something went bang as they were closing in on the tower and we've seen in the past how many Starship fires turn into debris all over the place. That the flamethrower was directed towards the tower was also a concern.
Its wasn't a flame thrower by any stretch of the imagine, yes it was leaking methane from the quick disconnect and yes it ignited and I'm sure its something they will fix. The tower was fine, its survives launch with 33 raptors at full power.
NSF was saying they do vent the excess nitrogen cold gas thruster propellant to help control any risk of major fire in the engines. And you can see excess venting at the top once the booster had been caught. What was surprising was based on the frost lines there was still 500 tons of methane and oxygen left.
"What was surprising was based on the frost lines there was still 500 tons of methane and oxygen left."
I'd be really surprised if they actually had 500 tons left... that's about 15% of a full load, and would approximately triple the mass of the vehicle, and therefore triple the mass being caught by the arms (which is a dynamic loading).
At the same time I'd expect a substantially larger margin than (will be) usual, since a) you don't cut it to 0.5% on your first attempt and b) there should have been plenty of spare performance available.
It surprised me as well. I assume that the booster has more capacity then needed at the moment as they are planning on adding a couple more engines and I'm not sure they are planning on making the booster bigger for block 2 and 3 starship.
I think NSF said the recent testing they did with the water bags with much heavier than the ones from a few years ago plus they did a lot of reinforcements of the catch arms.
BTW, if you haven't seen the video of them putting the booster down on the OLM its worth checking NSF, while they did catch the booster on the pins the booster wasn't quite in the right place and slightly too close to the tower. So they had to wiggle the arms to move the booster along the arms a bit so it was over the OLM.
NASA are fine with the progress so far and said so yesterday.
HLS is going to be significantly different in landing as there is little atmosphere on the Moon and HLS won't be doing the bellyflop landing and instead will be propulsive like Falcon booster. However NASA recognise that due to the large number refuelling of starship launches per mission that recovering starship on earth is critical to the overall mission and in order to do a recover you need to be able to land accurately which is what they demoed yesterday. As for the melting flap, ship 31 already has a new design with the flap further round the side giving and base more protection and I believe there is a new heat shield tile material design as well. If all goes well then we may even see IFT-6 happen before the end of the year.
As for booster, SpaceX have said they need to improve the skirt around the engine as that deformed, umbilical connection which is where it leaked from and strengthen the chimes as they lost part of one. Overall, small changes and yesterday indicated the overall design works.
"If all goes well then we may even see IFT-6 happen before the end of the year."
I don't think this one will need an incident report... and the hardware for IFT is already built, so are we almost back to waiting on the license again already?
SpaceX don't tend to do the same test multiple times, so I wonder what the next challenge will be - maybe orbit and a relight in a microgravity environment..
"and the hardware for IFT is already built, so are we almost back to waiting on the license again already?"
Depends on what flight profile they want to use. I would for booster it would the same as IFT-5, I don't think there are any significant booster changes till block 2 when they integrate the hot stage ring and start using V3 raptors maybe.
But would they want to repeat the same profile for the ship ? I would think they want to try something new, even maybe go orbital.
"But would they want to repeat the same profile for the ship ? I would think they want to try something new, even maybe go orbital."
If they wanted the same profile then they've already got the licence, IFT5 licence allowed for another flight with the same profile. I think they'll go for obit/deorbit on the ship, and a repeat of the booster.
Be interesting to see when they decide to actually re-fly a booster.
"But would they want to repeat the same profile for the ship ? I would think they want to try something new, even maybe go orbital."
It might be best to clear the test card before moving on. Another couple of thousand meters/second is more energy to throw off during decent so if the heat tiles aren't doing the job now, they'll have an even tougher time. SpaceX needs to get close and have enough left to examine to be able to make informed improvements. It might even make sense to have a shorter flight to see if burn through is going to happen at 3/4 of the speed to get a bracket on what works and what doesn't.
They're already doing orbital velocity, they're just keeping the perigee inside the atmosphere.
Going fully orbital and then running a deorbit burn would end up with basically the same entry profile.
As you say, they know they have improvements in the heat shield for future ships, so getting different burn through would, in many respects, be better data.
"They're already doing orbital velocity, they're just keeping the perigee inside the atmosphere."
They are about 2,000m/sec shy of orbital velocity and well above the atmosphere for the majority of the flight.
If the were at orbital velocity, the craft would stay in orbit. It would also need a "de-orbit" engine burn to slow down to the point where it would re-enter the atmosphere. This is why it's important they test the engines in space after being off and having had a chance to cool down. If they can't run the engine(s), a rocket at orbital velocity won't come back down in a controlled manner. It will come down when it's good and ready and has been slowed down by bashing into things.
"after being off and having had a chance to cool down."
They have already shown relight capability. Not in orbit yet but I would imagine they are confident.
Looks like IFT-6 could be happening by end of November as they just rolled out Booster 13 today and Ship 31 has already been tested. They were checking ground systems this week and doesn't appear there is any major repairs required. They have a launch license for similar profile to IFT-5 and will need a new license if they change the profile. Expect flap damage again as there doesn't appear to be major changes to its design.
IFT-7 should be Booster 14 and Ship 32 which is the first block 2 with redesigned ship and many other changes but booster seems fairly unchanged, no Raptor 3 engines, no removal of heatshield and no integrated hot stage ring.. Both are built and Ship 32 is heading off to Masseys for testing this week. They might go for orbit with that test. Maybe launch attempt early next year.
"They are about 2,000m/sec shy of orbital velocity and well above the atmosphere for the majority of the flight."
Of course they're well above the atmosphere for most of the flight... that's why it's able to get to the indian ocean.
At reentry they were doing 26,747km/h (telemetry from T+46:22. that might not be the peak speed, but it's fairly close), which is 7,430m/s - that's orbital velocity at about 800km altitude, or just 200m/s off the ISS - Not 2000m/s.
"If the were at orbital velocity, the craft would stay in orbit."
Not if the perigee is atmospheric (or lower) - you orbit around the CoM of the earth (the barycentre is indistinguishable here), and so long as the perigee is subject to significant aero drag then the apogee will decay whilst that drag is in place... if you calculate it correctly (which SpaceX clearly did) then you end up completely capturing in a single "dip" and never completing an orbit.
In the extreme case throw a ball across the room... that path it's following is actually an orbital path, it's just that the ground gets in the way. If the earth was a point mass and that ball had that location/velocity then it would be in an extremely elliptical orbit.
"This is why it's important they test the engines in space after being off and having had a chance to cool down"
Absolutely - as far as I'm aware they haven't done this yet (all of their relights have been in an accelerating frame of reference). That's why I think it'll be their next target for the ship... They've already shown they know how to do this with Merlin, so it's not something I'd put at a high risk.
"They've already shown they know how to do this with Merlin, so it's not something I'd put at a high risk."
The Merlin engine is a different design using a different fuel with different tankage. To say they already know how to do it is far from demonstrating they can and have identified and considered all of the variables. It's very high risk if you must count on it to work. There isn't another way to de-orbit in a controlled way if it doesn't work.
I can remember in the early days of STL 3D printing that Porsche built a transparent transmission casing to find out why one of their race transmissions was breaking so often. As is usual with transmission problems, it was a fluid stagnation. They had been building race transmissions for decades that worked just fine. Some element of their design bit them on the bum and until they knew what it was, there was no way to fix it. The same will go with SpaceX if they always fail so hard there is nothing much to analyze and they just assume something is going to work.
""They've already shown they know how to do this with Merlin, so it's not something I'd put at a high risk."
The Merlin engine is a different design using a different fuel with different tankage. To say they already know how to do it is far from demonstrating they can and have identified and considered all of the variables. It's very high risk if you must count on it to work. There isn't another way to de-orbit in a controlled way if it doesn't work."
Yes it's different, that's why it needs testing - as I've said earlier it's of the main things they haven't demonstrated yet.
But liquid in a microgravity environment is a pretty well understood issue - and SpaceX have quite a bit of experience in the area.
"NASA are fine with the progress so far and said so yesterday."
Of course they did. So would I, in their shoes.
Yet there's no denying that with Artemis they have essentially gone back to Apollo-era technology. Granted, it's bigger, better and upgraded, and the 'nauts will even have that most sybaritic of luxuries that the Apollo heroes had to do without (a toilet) but other than that it's an improvement much like the marine quadruple expansion steam engine being an improvement over Newcomen's original design.
Seeing as they've had the Space Shuttle for decades, and now robot rovers on Mars and near-autonomous space probes among the outer gas giants, one would expect them to come up with something a little better. Something a little more ground breaking. Something a little more (dare I say it) SpaceX like.
It wasn't BO who had an issue with SRB, it was ULA with Vulcan. I assume that is what you were referring to ?
As for New Glenn, who knows. They plan on landing the booster which TBH I have little confidence of them succeeding. They have had several setbacks including having an overpressure event in stage 2 testing which damaged one of the building and managing to crash the booster will transporting it. They started development of NG before Starship was announced and have yet to have a test flight by which time SpaceX will likely have performed IFT-6 which has now demonstrated booster recovery, ability to go orbital if they wanted and accuracy on stage 2 landing. They also have twice the payload capacity of NG so a different class of rocket. New Glenn payload is actually less than Falcon Heavy even though it has a larger fairing. For example it would not be able to perform the Europa Clipper mission that is happening today. A mission that was due to use SLS, lol.
You are mixing up ULA's Vulcan that uses NG SRBs and Blue Origin's New Glenn that won't. ULA planned to essentially complete Vulcan development before their first launch so their first launch being 99% successful a mixture of expected and impressive. Blue are aiming to get it right first time but to continue improving the rocket as they gain experience. Both companies are using pretty much the opposite strategy to SpaceX.
SpaceX is hardware rich. Instead of aiming to launch a dozen times a year they are aiming to create a factory that churns out Starships. They are currently at about one full stack per month and currently limited to 5 orbital launches per year from Texas. They scrap more rockets than they launch. If they can learn something from a launch without killing people then they will not delay. If you think of IFT1 as an advert for Starship capabilities it was a complete disaster of every possible level. On the other hand it was a very educational use of a manufacturing test article that would otherwise have been scrapped without a launch.
The fire was not a surprise. The booster has a big tank of warm methane gas over some residual liquid methane. It was warming up in the sunlight.
Plan A: Let the methane boil and increase the pressure until the tank explodes.
Plan B: Let the methane boil and vent the methane so it mixes with air. Wait for a spark to cause a huge air enhanced gas explosion.
Plan C: Let the methane boil and vent but deliberately ignite it before a huge volume of methane / air mixture builds up.
Plan D: Lower the booster back down to the launch table and reconnect the propellant supply lines. Detank the residual propellant through the chillers and back into the tank farm like they do with a scrub or wet dress rehearsal.
SpaceX went for a mixture of C and D.
(Most of) NASA understands iterative development gets it explosions done early so they do not happen later with crew. The Artemis 2 crew are very brave.
Plan C: Let the methane boil and vent but deliberately ignite it before a huge volume of methane / air mixture builds up.
Do we know this was true? The fire seemed to be accidental/incidental and the booster did look like it was venting from the top. The fire also looked like it was low temperature, but extended under the skirt and there were a few bits falling out. Very impressive to watch, and to succeed on the first catch attempt. Best thing is having recovered the booster intact, the engineers will be able to study it and determine what changes need to be made. Like maybe adding fire extinguishers to the tower to hose down boosters. It'll give SpaceX a lot of data to study wrt actual re-usability and turnaround times though.
Then there was the Starship. That still seemed to have problems with the heat shielding and burnthrough, but apparently that was flying with some experimental tiles attached. This is where most of the work is still needed given currently, the Starship can't actually do anything useful/saleable. So no payload dispensing, or human stuff. So a long way to go before we can put boots on the Moon again. I'm still curious how that's going to work and if vertical landing and takeoff will ever be safe or feasible. I guess one of the critical aspects will be what effect any redesigns will have on the mass budget and thus useful payload.
In terms of fire suppressant system, they've already got one the same system they use for launch, its not clear why it didn't activate but it was supposed to.
The venting from the top was perfectly normal as part of safeing the vehicle following a landing,and was really methane btw.
The fire was coming from the quick disconnect port where they fuel the vehicle, they can fix that and the chine that fell off somewhere.
The melty engines were the bits falling off post landing, again they can fix that fairly easily and raptor v3 is already in production
The burn through on the SS flaps, there's already a redesign in the next batch of ships, they'll fix that too.
Overall it looked like one of those early Falcon 9 landings, a few things to work on, not perfect but the principle works, which I don't think anyone thought was possible before it happened.
I think the only fire suppression system is just in the launch table?
The water deluge at launch isn't the same, wouldn't be "kind" to the booster if it were to impinge on it, and there's no water or gas (used to force it out) left after the launch for another use (they were using tankers to ship in water to fill the storage tanks - is that still the case?).
"I think the only fire suppression system is just in the launch table?"
Nope - they've got CO2 purge systems that flood the engine bay to prevent buildup of methane/oxygen - but they did in fact run the deluge system again, albeit at lower flow rates, for the landing.
Quite clear to see in Tim Dodd's footage.
My error - I'd got the propellant tanks inverted in my head - they do need to get rid of any residual fuel from the QD - but that might be a later "we'll purge earlier in the process".
The issues all looked pretty minor - though I haven't seen any images of the supposedly warped outer raptors.
"The fire was coming from the quick disconnect port where they fuel the vehicle, they can fix that and the chine that fell off somewhere."
It looked more like something blew off rather than just came loose.
I wonder of there were an over pressure of the tank or a section of fuel line. With the rocket coming in ass-backwards, heat and fire gets pushed upwards towards the rocket. It might be fine if the engines are running and forcing all of that down and away, but if they've lost an engine/fuel line, it could get too toasty in places.
. If you think of IFT1 as an advert for Starship capabilities it was a complete disaster of every possible level. On the other hand it was a very educational use of a manufacturing test article that would "otherwise have been scrapped without a launch."
IFT-1 had a ton of positives, the fact it even took off was a huge positive and the tower was mainly intact.
"Yes, improvements have been made, but the booster on fire and still having a melty upper stage isn't going to instill confidence from NASA about using this for getting crews from lunar orbit down to the surface and back."
The booster isn't going to the Moon, it's not even going to orbit. And the ship bit doesn't have to worry about "melty bits" on the Moon because even NASA know that lunar landers don't need heat shields. Project Artemis doesn't require SpaceX for the trip to the Moon nor for landing back on Earth. Starship won't be landing people on Earth for a while yet because they clearly do have a lot more work to do on that aspect.
"The booster isn't going to the Moon, it's not even going to orbit. And the ship bit doesn't have to worry about "melty bits" on the Moon because even NASA know that lunar landers don't need heat shields. Project Artemis doesn't require SpaceX for the trip to the Moon nor for landing back on Earth. Starship won't be landing people on Earth for a while yet because they clearly do have a lot more work to do on that aspect."
Look at the whole system that all has to work to get that one craft to the moon. Boosters can't blow up or catch fire, orbital depots must work and a way to transfer cryogenic propellants needs to be worked out. Tanker Starships are supposed to be relanded and reused so if they melt, that's a big problem. All of that before any sort of SpaceX lander can get to the moon, much less show that it can land and remain standing on the surface (and take off again).
Yep - but we know they're already several designs ahead of the IFT5 test article.
Orbital propellant transfer and storage are the two big things not really touched yet... A tanker version with a few QD arms and possibly arms to lock onto the lift/landing pins of the ships.
SLS/Orion still seems rather disappointing - but SpaceX do have the dragon which is human rated... if they can dock that to the HLS in LEO then the lucky astronauts would have alot of space to play with going to the moon. But that's not the plan... so we'll see how far Orion can get, and watch SpaceX develop the technologies required for HLS (which also happens to be many of the same technologies they'll need for mars).
"Yep - but we know they're already several designs ahead of the IFT5 test article."
That infers that they are still in the design phase and probably have a load of deprecated hardware sitting on site due to that. Not only has propellant transfer not been worked out, there's the whole interior of all the vehicles that hasn't been shown yet (maybe it's done, maybe not). There's a life support system for the lunar lander. Some way needed to provide propellants to a lunar lander or manage boil off unless they suddenly shift to storeable propellants which would mean a 2-stage lunar Starship.
SpaceX isn't taking astronauts to the moon, just from lunar orbit to the surface and back. A lot of plans would have to change to the point where the whole schema goes out the door. Space inside a Dragon capsule would be very limited. More life support, supplies for much longer duration, EVA suits, tools and all sorts of other things that aren't needed when Dragon is used to ferry people to and from ISS.
Yes Starship is still under development, they have V3 raptors still to come. They have Block 2 booster and ship, AFAIK SN31 was tested and suffered an electrical fire during cryo testing back in May but it has been repaired and SN32 is mostly complete and is the first Block 2. They have started work as far ahead as SN36. Based on past history not every booster or ship fly (RIP SN26 ;)
They did have 5 licenses for this year and next but they have changed how licenses work and currently have 8 more licenses for Boca Chica with a requirement for flight plans for each launch to be individually licensed, they have a IFT-6 license already if they fly the same profile as IFT-5 but I would imagine they will now look to change it. My guess is after what has happened with IFT-5 that they will aim for IFT-6 before the end of the year, repeat booster landing, no fire and chime issue and maybe clear the tower within say 60 minutes which would be one orbit for the ship. Maybe go for orbit with the ship and test deorbit burn and targeted landing again but this time near the west coast of US instead of Oz. SN31 still has the existing flap design so expect burn through again before the new design that has been implemented in SN32.
Next year I suspect they aim to launching monthly and then increasing that to every couple of weeks. They have shown they can got from full stack to flight in under a week.
In the meantime, they have restarted work at KSC tearing down OLM and installing ground equipment at pad 39A and though environment study hasn't been completed I am going to guess that its not going to take too long and they have applied for 44 launch licenses. They have also applied for 2 more towers in Florida which would make it 2 towers in Texas and 3 in Florida.
For propellant transfer, the have shown some videos of what their plans are and looks like one of the ships under construction currently is a tanker variant but hard to say.
They have a HLS mockup, testing and training of airlock, elevator and some of the internals has been going on this year. Another poster mentioned that NASA has now paid $2bn out of the $3bn HLS contract so I am guessing they are pretty happy with progress and have done a lot more then has been publicly revealed.
Do agree that using Dragon for lunar transport is a non-starter. Just too much development work unless they have been working on it in the background.
"Do agree that using Dragon for lunar transport is a non-starter."
Only needs to do launch and landing (and maybe the return journey depending on the TEI burn requirements).
Polaris Dawn had a crew on board for 5 days, and I doubt that was pushing the boundaries of what the capsule can sustain - but the Apollo return journeys were about 60 hours (under three days)
I don't think it's remotely likely (at least not whilst SLS has budget), but it's technically possible.
"That infers that they are still in the design phase and probably have a load of deprecated hardware sitting on site due to that."
They are still in the design phase... it's just that they're using hardware rich design, where they fly something to see what breaks.
They tend to scrap hardware though, rather than storing it - this was booster 12, on flight 5... that's more than half of all booster prototypes that they haven't tried to fly (and don't intend to fly). It was also ship 30 (though 15 was the last of the ship only tests, and 20 was the first to be stacked) - again half of all ships made have been scrapped or just aren't going to fly.
"There's a life support system for the lunar lander."
I'm sure there is a team working on that, along with the rest of the internal designs - and partly I am sure of that because we do get occasional updates. But it's not yet the limiting factor.
"Some way needed to provide propellants to a lunar lander or manage boil off unless they suddenly shift to storeable propellants which would mean a 2-stage lunar Starship"
Or they need to add cryo coolers to maintain the fuels - but that's known to be an issue, since they're planning on this thing going to mars, a journey with much greater boil off issues.
"SpaceX isn't taking astronauts to the moon, just from lunar orbit to the surface and back. A lot of plans would have to change"
I know - But they will have all the bits in place that could allow it to happen. HLS to LEO (as planned), then dragon to LEO and dock.
Then HLS -> lunar orbit, drop dragon.
Then HLS -> land -> orbit (as planned) and pick up dragon again.
The challenge is whether there is then enough dV to to a return burn - because Dragon's original geat shield design was for Lunar return.
So for the vast majority of the time they'd be in HLS, not dragon.. That does launch and return (as per ISS missions) and potentially some of the return, depending on when they scrap the HLS - all of the return if they scrap it at the moon and take a service module (i.e. a small F9 second stage) with them for the return.
There are a huge number of challenges involved with that process, noone is claiming otherwise... but then there are a huge number of challenges with SLS as well...
"This event reminded me of Karate Kid"
Cue all future streamed booster catchings to be overplayed with Joe Esposito's You're the best!
*I had the same thought each time they said the word "chopsticks"!
In English the two words meter and metre have very different meanings.
The fact that a country which pretends not to use one of them can't spell that one isn't relevant.
Of course most people understand when a USian says "two meters long", but it just smacks of poor understanding.
This post has been deleted by its author
A Starship block-3 stack is already planned to be three quarters* of a furlong in length.
Going full kerbal and adding 3 more boosters under the stack would (apart fom being well over the furlong) I think impart nearly the same energy to a stack as the single booster does to the Starship itself, with 140+ motors & smidgen under 15KT of fuel, the flight-1 RUD would be <see icon!>
* near as doesn't matter
Trust His Muskiness to spout nonsense about something he has absolutely no knowledge of.
Kudos to the incredible SpaceX team and the CEO who has managed to keep Musk at arms' length and stop him from imposing stupid decisions that would have undoubtedly made sure SapceX never got to where it is now.
As far as SpaceX is concerned, Musk can spout his bullshit. Everyone knows who is doing the job and, as long as he isn't a decider, people will continue to trust that the engineers are doing their job right.
If only Boeing could back into that mindset.
Except (certainly early on) Musk WAS doing a lot of the deciding between different engineering takes. The whole "chopsticks" thing wasn't 100% his idea from any of the sources I've read, but Musk WAS definitely the person who decided in a meeting where most engineers where siding with the "landing legs" solution that they would instead go with the plan of the one engineer who was passionately arguing for using the launch tower (what would become "mechazilla"). And also promptly put that engineer in charge (sort of a "good plan, but on your head be it").
"And as an aerospace engineer, I will ask what makes you think it was a fluke ?"
It's not a fluke and not really hard. Landing on a barge at sea is hard. The rocket is moving and the barge is moving. It's not that large of a target either.
The concern is risk. Plenty of Falcons have hit the barge rather hard, caught on fire, fell over and sank into the swamp. Not good, but the barge is tough and can be repaired. Having an incident at the launch tower means no more launches until it's repaired (hence, serial number 2). Bad things happening to the tower during launch means no place to come back to. A miss could mean no more tank farm and in the case of Boca Chica, it's not that far from an international border so a missed landing could be an international incident.
Firstly, the clear surprise from the actual technical and engineering staff that this worked perfectly first time, which has the subtext that maybe they were pushed to try to do too much, too fast, amidst instructions "from above" to throw caution to the wind that go against sound engineering principles.
And secondly, this:
"Elon Musk also used the event to criticize regulators – commenting that getting the license "was the limiting factor" and "it will get far worse, potentially impossible, if the slow strangulation by overregulation continues!
...which tells us that Elmo simply doesn't understand the need for tight regulation with things that can explodey very quickly above other people's heads, and rain fiery death down upon them. This tells us all we need to know about Space Karen's attitude towards other human beings, which is that they are all disposable pieces of meat to be exploited for his own gains as required.
Never forget that people who would do away with regulations, especially safety regulations, and human rights legislation, are those who we most need to regulate, because otherwise they'd have us all in chains working in mines with no safety equipment.
I think your comment on Musk's approach is spot on: how would he deal with a catastrophic event – and it would be more than naive to think there never will be one? He'd probably try and play it down and demand even more leeway next time.
Praise the science and the engineering, the management less so.
"Tight regulation" does not have to be the same as "bureaucratic regulation".
The FAA is built for one test launch of significant test vehicle a year, not ten or one hundred and can't cope. SpaceX are currently fighting their corner on the sharp end of that bureaucracy but, as more companies increase launch cadence and/or start to adopt the rapid iteration methodology, the FAA will be completely overwhelmed.
The FAA need to be re-structured for future needs, not expect time schedules and requirements to stay the same as those of 40 years ago.
The FAA were roasted* for allowing Boeing to mark it's own 737 homework, I don't think the FAA can (or should?) wrap it's head around the 'planned failure' aspect built into the SpaceX development approach, It's completely at odds with previous aviation/space development.
NTSB investigators may be a better fit for oversight due to that organisation spending its life analysing the reasons behind failure which is exactly what SpaceX do with every test flight, this would move the FAA one step away and only needing to read NTSB reports.
* correctly in my opinion.
"I don't think the FAA can (or should?) wrap it's head around the 'planned failure' aspect built into the SpaceX development approach, It's completely at odds with previous aviation/space development."
Maybe they can't, but they should. The times, they are a-changin'. If the FAA can't keep up they should go follow the dinosaur into extinction and make way for something that can deal with the new pace of development. Adapt or die out.
Or, if the FAA can't cope with a vastly increased "test flight licencing" role, there needs to be a new or off-shoot branch dedicated to space launches. After all the FAA already has enough to do with "air"craft. "space"craft are a whole other kettle of fish. :-)
"The FAA were roasted* for allowing Boeing to mark it's own 737 homework,"
There are different offices for aviation and CST (Commercial Space Transportation).
When I worked on rockets, I was often the person working with the local FAA/CST person and she was good. Tough but fair. I made sure she was kept in the loop so we didn't run into surprises. We didn't want to be ready with a new test vehicle and suddenly have issues with our procedure paperwork. I took the approach of not looking at them as an adversary. Was it the First Congregational Church of Skippy that had the tenet "Don't be a dick"? Vinegar or sugar.
"Tight regulation" does not have to be the same as "bureaucratic regulation".
This is absolutely true, but I'm not inclined to take Elon's characterisation of it as "bureaucratic" at face value. Years of observation have demonstrated that removal of regulations based on their perception as bureaucracy is literally the mechanism that private equity has used to carve off massive chunks of public infrastructure and run them into the ground for profit.
Exhibits A-G: Trains, water supplies, the postal system, gas, electricity, telecommunications, healthcare...
Sometimes tight regulation is exactly what is needed to protect public goods and public safety, and the means by which it is removed is rich and greedy people characterising them as bureaucracy.
While I agree with the principle, the other side of the coin is that entrenched bureaucracy can suffer from over-reach and empire building because often it's the chief bureaucrats only means to more power. A bureaucracy meant for and restricted to the public good and enforcing regulations for the public good is a good thing. But they inevitably grow beyond their own limits and reach a stage of "NO!, because..." instead of changing with the times.
"This is absolutely true, but I'm not inclined to take Elon's characterisation of it as "bureaucratic" at face value."
Every other company doesn't squawk about it. Like physical laws, you have to take the regulations into account and find ways to accommodate them. Larger companies have work groups that track the paperwork to make sure everything gets submitted on time and permissions/licenses are forthcoming. By now, SpaceX should know how long things take so they should be able to get it done well enough in advance. I know how long it takes me to prep my kit to take into the field including charging batteries, etc. I do all of that as reasonably in advance as I can so that's out of the way and I'm only down to dealing with the other things that cause delays and sometimes even when there is a call to advance the schedule or pick up a job at the last minute.
" you have to take the regulations into account and find ways to accommodate them. "
While SpaceX have certainly been tardy requesting approval, there is no doubt the current framework is not optimise for rapid testing. Works great in old school model where you develop for years then do a launch and go back to development and then launch a year later again. Not so great when you want to test changes every couple of months. FAA agrees and is trying to change the process.
The FAA is built for one test launch of significant test vehicle a year, not ten or one hundred and can't cope
Perhaps Elmo could fund it, then, it’s not like he's short a bob or two, it's just the concept of performing any sort of public service is anathema to him.
And then there'd be the inevitable outcry of "owning the regulator" and complaints every time a competitor got knocked back. And of course there's the current kerfuffle over Boeing "self regulating" and crashing 737MAX aircraft into the ground, twice, doors falling off mid-flight, flying a manned capsule with known faulty thrusters they say they fixed etc etc.
Firstly, the clear surprise from the actual technical and engineering staff that this worked perfectly first time, which has the subtext that maybe they were pushed to try to do too much, too fast, amidst instructions "from above" to throw caution to the wind that go against sound engineering principles.
Or maybe they were surprised and delighted that something which has never been done before worked first time? Also they're (mostly?) American and so prone to overexcitement ;-)
What "sound engineering principles" did they go against? Please give us the benefit of your vast experience of running a rocket research and development programme.
Please give us the benefit of your vast experience of running a rocket research and development programme.
Ah yes, the old "if you know better, do it yourself" straw man. What a worthless thing to say.
My point stands, if the people in charge of the launch were reportedly* nervous, and didn't appear to expect it to be successful, that indicates an expectation of failure. Admittedly, this was a test, where failures are expected to happen from time to time, but the expectation should be that things like smaller component tests, and modelling should give reasonable confidence of a success, not expectation of failure.
*Yes, reportedly, I'm not making concrete claims here, as you seem to think that I am. I am going on what is reported in the article.
I was being sarcastic rather than building some fallacious argument, which is probably closer to ad hominem than a straw man.
Either way you're right, it was rather worthless. Especially as you've attempted to use it as a distraction to change the subject away from my actual question: what are the sound engineering principles which have been ignored?
You go on to say that your point stands, and then back away from it as not being a "concrete claim" and give a tenuous chain of inferences from people looking nervous to what is rather close to an allegation of mismanagement.
On the subject of people looking nervous. You say that "the people in charge of the launch were reportedly* nervous", with the footnote being "*Yes, reportedly, I'm not making concrete claims here, as you seem to think that I am. I am going on what is reported in the article." Emphasis added - where in the article does it say that they were nervous? All that I can find is "To the clear surprise of SpaceX staffers", with no mention of nerves. I put it to you that as professional engineers they knew that they were attempting something unprecedented, with a low chance of success, and were understandably surprised when it worked first time.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
