The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
If the purpose of Starship is to launch people to Mars, then yes, it seems to be in trouble.
If, as has been suggested, the purpose of Starship is to allow Elon Musk to milk billions of dollars from US taxpayers, then no, it is working exactly as designed.
Doesn't look like the Iranians agree that "now is the time for peace":
41 minutes ago: Missile barrage from Iran: This is a big attack, impacts reported in the north and center, with dozens of interceptors being fired and interceptions seen in the sky over Tel-Aviv
No one outside the region is going to much care or notice at further largely toothless barrages at Israel. The risk is if Iran targets US bases or economic activity in the strait. Quite a big 24-48hrs but if that passes without note, then other things replace this in the news.
Topically (if rather behind the news), today's Rawnsley on this super sunny Sunday:
People in the British government admit that they have little better idea of what is in the US president’s head from this moment to the next than anyone else who follows his posts on Truth Social. A US decision to directly enter the conflict would confront Sir Keir with the most acute foreign policy dilemma of a premiership which that has been far more about geopolitics than he anticipated. “I never thought I’d be in this position,” he has been heard to say to his inner circle.
Any kind of UK backing will give him a share of responsibility for the consequences. Even if Fordow is destroyed, the US cannot be sure that force will eliminate Iran’s nuclear ambitions once and for all. Trying to engineer regime change may fail, or produce a successor we like even less. Iran could attack US and British forces and assets, as well as disrupting gas and oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz. Any UK collaboration would more closely align this country with an Israeli government whose horrific onslaught in Gaza has caused outrage in much of the world and much of the Labour party.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Apollo had lots of near misses. Which is one of the reasons that NASA wanted the program terminated and the Shuttle instead. The lunar lander was considered especially dangerous - a large number of items that were single point of failure.
As to Starship - they have enough money to continue the program indefinitely. SpaceX (thanks to Starlink) has a bigger turnover than the NASA budget. Each launch costs them about $90 million - of which $55 million is the booster. They will be moving to the semi-finalised design of the booster by the end of the year, so keeping and catching that for most flights. The V2 design of Starship (which is the one exploding) is already being replaced with V3.
That's very much the bullish view - and I take those costings with a massive pinch of salt.
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
1. Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true
2. Whatever they say, the people who start wars are often thinking chiefly about domestic politics
3. The rationale given for a war will change over time, such that actual success or failure in achieving a named objective is less relevant than one might think
Doesn't look like the Iranians agree that "now is the time for peace":
41 minutes ago: Missile barrage from Iran: This is a big attack, impacts reported in the north and center, with dozens of interceptors being fired and interceptions seen in the sky over Tel-Aviv
No one outside the region is going to much care or notice at further largely toothless barrages at Israel. The risk is if Iran targets US bases or economic activity in the strait. Quite a big 24-48hrs but if that passes without note, then other things replace this in the news.
The odd one makes it through and causes civilian casualties. The pervasive view there would be that this is a regrettable price to pay to have had the existential risk taken off the table. Before long Iran runs out of launchers.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Doesn't look like the Iranians agree that "now is the time for peace":
41 minutes ago: Missile barrage from Iran: This is a big attack, impacts reported in the north and center, with dozens of interceptors being fired and interceptions seen in the sky over Tel-Aviv
No one outside the region is going to much care or notice at further largely toothless barrages at Israel. The risk is if Iran targets US bases or economic activity in the strait. Quite a big 24-48hrs but if that passes without note, then other things replace this in the news.
The odd one makes it through and causes civilian casualties. The pervasive view there would be that this is a regrettable price to pay to have had the existential risk taken off the table. Before long Iran runs out of launchers.
Iran has sources for getting additional missiles & it is getting a lot better at penetrating the Iron Dome.
Anyway, my point was ....
Trump wants Iran to stop firing missiles at Israel & immediately sue for peace. Trump has threatened that if Iran doesn't sue for peace, then he'll keep bombing Iran.
Iran is continuing to fire missiles at Israel & shows no signs of immediately suing for peace. Therefore, Trump will now have to keep bombing Iran, and the US is now in a war with Iran & today wasn't just a limited once-off bombing.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
If the purpose of Starship is to launch people to Mars, then yes, it seems to be in trouble.
If, as has been suggested, the purpose of Starship is to allow Elon Musk to milk billions of dollars from US taxpayers, then no, it is working exactly as designed.
Anyone who suggests that, meets the clinical definition of moron. I’m quite sure you however were not.
Anyone who suggests that, meets the clinical definition of moron. I’m quite sure you however were not.
A collective cheer echoed throughout the internet on the 6th of March as yet another Starship spectacularly exploded across the Caribbean sky. Some of this derision came from the understandable backlash to the now-outed billionaire nazi-sympathiser neo-fascist goon at the head of SpaceX. But a surprising amount came from a chorus of disgruntled engineers, physics teachers and people with common sense. You see, SpaceX’s plans for Starship are demonstrably stupid. In fact, it is so stupid in so many different ways a lot of us, myself included, struggle to get a big-picture view and articulate why this moronic giant phallus will never work. I want to correct that with this article. So, come with me as I will lay out in glorious detail the 7 Deadly Sins of Starship and why this project is destined for the scrap heap.
When historians describe WWIII, will today be counted as the first day?
No.
Yeah. They’ll say it started when Israel attacked Iran a week or so back.
Yes, Iran has been attacking Israel for decades via intermediaries. But Israel going straight after Iran is hard to justify under international law. And then the US attacking Iran is flat out illegal under international law.
If you are Putin or Xi wanting to do what you like with impunity, that tosser Trump has just given you the green light to do what you like.
Doesn't look like the Iranians agree that "now is the time for peace":
41 minutes ago: Missile barrage from Iran: This is a big attack, impacts reported in the north and center, with dozens of interceptors being fired and interceptions seen in the sky over Tel-Aviv
No one outside the region is going to much care or notice at further largely toothless barrages at Israel. The risk is if Iran targets US bases or economic activity in the strait. Quite a big 24-48hrs but if that passes without note, then other things replace this in the news.
The odd one makes it through and causes civilian casualties. The pervasive view there would be that this is a regrettable price to pay to have had the existential risk taken off the table. Before long Iran runs out of launchers.
Iran has sources for getting additional missiles & it is getting a lot better at penetrating the Iron Dome.
Anyway, my point was ....
Trump wants Iran to stop firing missiles at Israel & immediately sue for peace. Trump has threatened that if Iran doesn't sue for peace, then he'll keep bombing Iran.
Iran is continuing to fire missiles at Israel & shows no signs of immediately suing for peace. Therefore, Trump will now have to keep bombing Iran, and the US is now in a war with Iran & today wasn't just a limited once-off bombing.
Iran has a limited number of launchers left, perhaps 90 from ~300. The Israelis will continue mopping them up. The only reason the Trump would order the US directly assist is if they’re used on US military or economic interests. So far, and it’s early, they have not.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Apollo had lots of near misses. Which is one of the reasons that NASA wanted the program terminated and the Shuttle instead. The lunar lander was considered especially dangerous - a large number of items that were single point of failure.
As to Starship - they have enough money to continue the program indefinitely. SpaceX (thanks to Starlink) has a bigger turnover than the NASA budget. Each launch costs them about $90 million - of which $55 million is the booster. They will be moving to the semi-finalised design of the booster by the end of the year, so keeping and catching that for most flights. The V2 design of Starship (which is the one exploding) is already being replaced with V3.
That's very much the bullish view - and I take those costings with a massive pinch of salt.
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
The coatings come from two different outside organisations - one rather hostile to SpaceX.
Worth remembering the number of stretches and engines upgrades before we got to F9 as it is now.
The history of rocketry is pretty much - “.. and then they stretched the tanks and upgraded the engines”.
Blue Origins New Glenn will require a stretch or two to reach its performance goals. And Vulcan was below its original planned capability for the test launch.
Perhaps the most extreme examples are Atlas V and Delta IV - which were the flying Ships of Theseus.
UK political reaction begins: Former Defence Secretary and ex MP Sir Grant Shapps claims Sir Keir Starmer’s calls for restraint were “dangerously naïve” and the US strikes were “absolutely the right call”.
But Plaid Cymru MP & Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts, by contrast, says the attacks bring the Middle East to a “volatile and potentially uncontrollable position” and the "UK must not be drawn into escalating warfare"
Doesn't look like the Iranians agree that "now is the time for peace":
41 minutes ago: Missile barrage from Iran: This is a big attack, impacts reported in the north and center, with dozens of interceptors being fired and interceptions seen in the sky over Tel-Aviv
No one outside the region is going to much care or notice at further largely toothless barrages at Israel. The risk is if Iran targets US bases or economic activity in the strait. Quite a big 24-48hrs but if that passes without note, then other things replace this in the news.
The only thing that has changed is the timeline. Maybe it gets pushed back a decade. But the Iranian regime's desire to destroy the state of Israel burns brighter today than yesterday.
Cruise missiles and B-2 bombers can undertake what is really required - regime change.
Sould read "Cruise missiles and B-2 bombers cannot undertake what is really required - regime change."
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
If the purpose of Starship is to launch people to Mars, then yes, it seems to be in trouble.
If, as has been suggested, the purpose of Starship is to allow Elon Musk to milk billions of dollars from US taxpayers, then no, it is working exactly as designed.
Anyone who suggests that, meets the clinical definition of moron. I’m quite sure you however were not.
Why?
The SS Artemis program is giving SpaceX nearly $3 billion for their program, with $2.8 billion already having been given, and a possible extension up to $4 billion. We're seeing very little stuff that is directly lunar-related, and lots of stuff to help SpaceX launch Starlinks into orbit. (*)
SS is also a really, really poor lunar lander - because the basic ship was not designed for that. It was designed to go to, and land, on Mars, which is a very different prospect.
Musk's companies have always relied on the munificence of the American taxpayer. It's a shame there isn't an NGO that was looking for waste in US government spending, as Musk would be a really large target for it...
(*) Though to be fair, the lunar stuff will always be later in the program. But I'd expect to see much more in a program that (already delayed...) is due to land on the Moon in two years time.
@mahamyahya The only immediate winner right now is #Netanyahu . He lured the #US into a conflict, Americans do not want, and successfully scuttled the #US #Iran talks & conference to recognize the state of #Palestine in one shot.
UK political reaction begins: Former Defence Secretary and ex MP Sir Grant Shapps claims Sir Keir Starmer’s calls for restraint were “dangerously naïve” and the US strikes were “absolutely the right call”.
Topically (if rather behind the news), today's Rawnsley on this super sunny Sunday:
People in the British government admit that they have little better idea of what is in the US president’s head from this moment to the next than anyone else who follows his posts on Truth Social.
If they can't see from following Truth Social that his head's as empty as a eunuch's underpants they're even dumber than I thought.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Apollo had lots of near misses. Which is one of the reasons that NASA wanted the program terminated and the Shuttle instead. The lunar lander was considered especially dangerous - a large number of items that were single point of failure.
As to Starship - they have enough money to continue the program indefinitely. SpaceX (thanks to Starlink) has a bigger turnover than the NASA budget. Each launch costs them about $90 million - of which $55 million is the booster. They will be moving to the semi-finalised design of the booster by the end of the year, so keeping and catching that for most flights. The V2 design of Starship (which is the one exploding) is already being replaced with V3.
That's very much the bullish view - and I take those costings with a massive pinch of salt.
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
The coatings come from two different outside organisations - one rather hostile to SpaceX.
Worth remembering the number of stretches and engines upgrades before we got to F9 as it is now.
The history of rocketry is pretty much - “.. and then they stretched the tanks and upgraded the engines”.
Blue Origins New Glenn will require a stretch or two to reach its performance goals. And Vulcan was below its original planned capability for the test launch.
Perhaps the most extreme examples are Atlas V and Delta IV - which were the flying Ships of Theseus.
Yes. But the big difference between (say) NG / Vulcan and SH/SS is that the former have much more room to expand performance. BO were *very* conservative with the BE-4 engines, and it is widely believed they have lots of room to improve performance. SpaceX have already highly optimised the Raptor design, and they have much less headroom - whatever the fanbois fantasise about.
Remember, every kg you add onto the second stage requires many kg of fuel in the first and second stages to lift it. Every change SpaceX makes to the design to improve SS's reliability means that you need much more fuel - as these sorts of changes almost always mean more mass. You can then get into a negative cycle of increasing stack mass and complexity requiring more mass to lift it - and those changes requiring more mass, and reducing reliability.
ISTR one small rocket launching company admitted a year or so ago that their design - launched twice, both failures - was dead for exactly this reason. The changes required to get to orbit would need more mass than the rocket could feasibly lift. So they had to go with a new design. (Annoyingly, I cannot remember which company it was... ABL perhaps...)
Anyone who suggests that, meets the clinical definition of moron. I’m quite sure you however were not.
A collective cheer echoed throughout the internet on the 6th of March as yet another Starship spectacularly exploded across the Caribbean sky. Some of this derision came from the understandable backlash to the now-outed billionaire nazi-sympathiser neo-fascist goon at the head of SpaceX. But a surprising amount came from a chorus of disgruntled engineers, physics teachers and people with common sense. You see, SpaceX’s plans for Starship are demonstrably stupid. In fact, it is so stupid in so many different ways a lot of us, myself included, struggle to get a big-picture view and articulate why this moronic giant phallus will never work. I want to correct that with this article. So, come with me as I will lay out in glorious detail the 7 Deadly Sins of Starship and why this project is destined for the scrap heap.
I know nothing of the topic but that introduction sounds very like something that people will laugh at in the future. Like someone explaining why the world will only ever need two or three computers.
Doesn't look like the Iranians agree that "now is the time for peace":
41 minutes ago: Missile barrage from Iran: This is a big attack, impacts reported in the north and center, with dozens of interceptors being fired and interceptions seen in the sky over Tel-Aviv
No one outside the region is going to much care or notice at further largely toothless barrages at Israel. The risk is if Iran targets US bases or economic activity in the strait. Quite a big 24-48hrs but if that passes without note, then other things replace this in the news.
The odd one makes it through and causes civilian casualties. The pervasive view there would be that this is a regrettable price to pay to have had the existential risk taken off the table. Before long Iran runs out of launchers.
Iran has sources for getting additional missiles & it is getting a lot better at penetrating the Iron Dome.
Anyway, my point was ....
Trump wants Iran to stop firing missiles at Israel & immediately sue for peace. Trump has threatened that if Iran doesn't sue for peace, then he'll keep bombing Iran.
Iran is continuing to fire missiles at Israel & shows no signs of immediately suing for peace. Therefore, Trump will now have to keep bombing Iran, and the US is now in a war with Iran & today wasn't just a limited once-off bombing.
Iran has a limited number of launchers left, perhaps 90 from ~300. The Israelis will continue mopping them up. The only reason the Trump would order the US directly assist is if they’re used on US military or economic interests. So far, and it’s early, they have not.
Is there not at least a chance that, as has been reported, these specific strikes were done at Israel's prompting because the targets were not vulnerable to Israel's weapons, and that in return the Americans have got some kind of pledge about Israeli restraint over further attacks on Iran? I'd have thought the best hope is that Israel can be persuaded the "job has been done" and will stop there, and that Iran will therefore stop responding. If so, obviously the main danger is that Iran feels it has to retaliate against the USA, in which case the last thing the Americans should be trying to do is topple the Iranian regime.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
If the purpose of Starship is to launch people to Mars, then yes, it seems to be in trouble.
If, as has been suggested, the purpose of Starship is to allow Elon Musk to milk billions of dollars from US taxpayers, then no, it is working exactly as designed.
Anyone who suggests that, meets the clinical definition of moron. I’m quite sure you however were not.
Why?
The SS Artemis program is giving SpaceX nearly $3 billion for their program, with $2.8 billion already having been given, and a possible extension up to $4 billion. We're seeing very little stuff that is directly lunar-related, and lots of stuff to help SpaceX launch Starlinks into orbit. (*)
SS is also a really, really poor lunar lander - because the basic ship was not designed for that. It was designed to go to, and land, on Mars, which is a very different prospect.
Musk's companies have always relied on the munificence of the American taxpayer. It's a shame there isn't an NGO that was looking for waste in US government spending, as Musk would be a really large target for it...
(*) Though to be fair, the lunar stuff will always be later in the program. But I'd expect to see much more in a program that (already delayed...) is due to land on the Moon in two years time.
SpaceX major revenue is (in no especial order)
1) Starlink 2) Commercial launches 3) Military launches 4) Flying astronauts to the space station 5) Flying cargo to the space station 6) Military contracts for Starshield.
Starship is about $1-1.5 billion per year of development cost
The reason they won the lunar lander project is simply that no one else could conceive of doing it on the money available - SLS and Orion ate the budget.
Altair (the original plan for a lunar lander, under the Constellation program) was *estimated* at $40 Billion. And we all know how those estimates turned out. It was abandoned decades ago - leaving SLS as the rocket to nowhere. This was why Obama proposed a mission to an asteroid, instead of the moon. No need for a lander.
When historians describe WWIII, will today be counted as the first day?
No.
Yeah. They’ll say it started when Israel attacked Iran a week or so back.
Yes, Iran has been attacking Israel for decades via intermediaries. But Israel going straight after Iran is hard to justify under international law. And then the US attacking Iran is flat out illegal under international law.
If you are Putin or Xi wanting to do what you like with impunity, that tosser Trump has just given you the green light to do what you like.
That doesn't necessarily mean WWIII, but I'd agree that the likelihood of another protracted large war just increased significantly.
Doesn't look like the Iranians agree that "now is the time for peace":
41 minutes ago: Missile barrage from Iran: This is a big attack, impacts reported in the north and center, with dozens of interceptors being fired and interceptions seen in the sky over Tel-Aviv
No one outside the region is going to much care or notice at further largely toothless barrages at Israel. The risk is if Iran targets US bases or economic activity in the strait. Quite a big 24-48hrs but if that passes without note, then other things replace this in the news.
The odd one makes it through and causes civilian casualties. The pervasive view there would be that this is a regrettable price to pay to have had the existential risk taken off the table. Before long Iran runs out of launchers.
Iran has sources for getting additional missiles & it is getting a lot better at penetrating the Iron Dome.
Anyway, my point was ....
Trump wants Iran to stop firing missiles at Israel & immediately sue for peace. Trump has threatened that if Iran doesn't sue for peace, then he'll keep bombing Iran.
Iran is continuing to fire missiles at Israel & shows no signs of immediately suing for peace. Therefore, Trump will now have to keep bombing Iran, and the US is now in a war with Iran & today wasn't just a limited once-off bombing.
Iran has a limited number of launchers left, perhaps 90 from ~300. The Israelis will continue mopping them up. The only reason the Trump would order the US directly assist is if they’re used on US military or economic interests. So far, and it’s early, they have not.
The Israelis have reportedly undertaken a few missions after the launches earlier and mopped some up already.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Apollo had lots of near misses. Which is one of the reasons that NASA wanted the program terminated and the Shuttle instead. The lunar lander was considered especially dangerous - a large number of items that were single point of failure.
As to Starship - they have enough money to continue the program indefinitely. SpaceX (thanks to Starlink) has a bigger turnover than the NASA budget. Each launch costs them about $90 million - of which $55 million is the booster. They will be moving to the semi-finalised design of the booster by the end of the year, so keeping and catching that for most flights. The V2 design of Starship (which is the one exploding) is already being replaced with V3.
That's very much the bullish view - and I take those costings with a massive pinch of salt.
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
The coatings come from two different outside organisations - one rather hostile to SpaceX.
Worth remembering the number of stretches and engines upgrades before we got to F9 as it is now.
The history of rocketry is pretty much - “.. and then they stretched the tanks and upgraded the engines”.
Blue Origins New Glenn will require a stretch or two to reach its performance goals. And Vulcan was below its original planned capability for the test launch.
Perhaps the most extreme examples are Atlas V and Delta IV - which were the flying Ships of Theseus.
They still keep blowing up, though.
I can't think they learned much from this last event.
When historians describe WWIII, will today be counted as the first day?
No.
Yeah. They’ll say it started when Israel attacked Iran a week or so back.
Yes, Iran has been attacking Israel for decades via intermediaries. But Israel going straight after Iran is hard to justify under international law. And then the US attacking Iran is flat out illegal under international law.
If you are Putin or Xi wanting to do what you like with impunity, that tosser Trump has just given you the green light to do what you like.
No, there won’t be a third world war, and even if there was who’d be around to write the history. We’re already in a proxy war with Russia over Ukraine.
International law, like the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, is there to apply to African dictators and east Europeans. Nations like the US, Israel, Russia, China, will just do what they want without any comeback. A sanction here, a sanction there, life goes on.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
If the purpose of Starship is to launch people to Mars, then yes, it seems to be in trouble.
If, as has been suggested, the purpose of Starship is to allow Elon Musk to milk billions of dollars from US taxpayers, then no, it is working exactly as designed.
Anyone who suggests that, meets the clinical definition of moron. I’m quite sure you however were not.
Why?
The SS Artemis program is giving SpaceX nearly $3 billion for their program, with $2.8 billion already having been given, and a possible extension up to $4 billion. We're seeing very little stuff that is directly lunar-related, and lots of stuff to help SpaceX launch Starlinks into orbit. (*)
SS is also a really, really poor lunar lander - because the basic ship was not designed for that. It was designed to go to, and land, on Mars, which is a very different prospect.
Musk's companies have always relied on the munificence of the American taxpayer. It's a shame there isn't an NGO that was looking for waste in US government spending, as Musk would be a really large target for it...
(*) Though to be fair, the lunar stuff will always be later in the program. But I'd expect to see much more in a program that (already delayed...) is due to land on the Moon in two years time.
SpaceX major revenue is (in no especial order)
1) Starlink 2) Commercial launches 3) Military launches 4) Flying astronauts to the space station 5) Flying cargo to the space station 6) Military contracts for Starshield.
Starship is about $1-1.5 billion per year of development cost
The reason they won the lunar lander project is simply that no one else could conceive of doing it on the money available - SLS and Orion ate the budget.
Altair (the original plan for a lunar lander, under the Constellation program) was *estimated* at $40 Billion. And we all know how those estimates turned out. It was abandoned decades ago - leaving SLS as the rocket to nowhere. This was why Obama proposed a mission to an asteroid, instead of the moon. No need for a lander.
"The reason they won the lunar lander project is simply that no one else could conceive of doing it on the money available - SLS and Orion ate the budget. "
I don't believe that's true. BO's alternative design *may*, with a fair wind, launch an uncrewed Mk1 pathfinder lander with the potential to carry 3 tonnes to the Moon this year. For much less money. There's zero way we'll get a SS Lunar lander on the Moon this year. Next year is looking *really* unlikely.
I don't mind people worshipping SpaceX. I do mind when it causes them to hype Musk and denigrate every other space company and NASA.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Apollo had lots of near misses. Which is one of the reasons that NASA wanted the program terminated and the Shuttle instead. The lunar lander was considered especially dangerous - a large number of items that were single point of failure.
As to Starship - they have enough money to continue the program indefinitely. SpaceX (thanks to Starlink) has a bigger turnover than the NASA budget. Each launch costs them about $90 million - of which $55 million is the booster. They will be moving to the semi-finalised design of the booster by the end of the year, so keeping and catching that for most flights. The V2 design of Starship (which is the one exploding) is already being replaced with V3.
That's very much the bullish view - and I take those costings with a massive pinch of salt.
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
The coatings come from two different outside organisations - one rather hostile to SpaceX.
Worth remembering the number of stretches and engines upgrades before we got to F9 as it is now.
The history of rocketry is pretty much - “.. and then they stretched the tanks and upgraded the engines”.
Blue Origins New Glenn will require a stretch or two to reach its performance goals. And Vulcan was below its original planned capability for the test launch.
Perhaps the most extreme examples are Atlas V and Delta IV - which were the flying Ships of Theseus.
Yes. But the big difference between (say) NG / Vulcan and SH/SS is that the former have much more room to expand performance. BO were *very* conservative with the BE-4 engines, and it is widely believed they have lots of room to improve performance. SpaceX have already highly optimised the Raptor design, and they have much less headroom - whatever the fanbois fantasise about.
Remember, every kg you add onto the second stage requires many kg of fuel in the first and second stages to lift it. Every change SpaceX makes to the design to improve SS's reliability means that you need much more fuel - as these sorts of changes almost always mean more mass. You can then get into a negative cycle of increasing stack mass and complexity requiring more mass to lift it - and those changes requiring more mass, and reducing reliability.
ISTR one small rocket launching company admitted a year or so ago that their design - launched twice, both failures - was dead for exactly this reason. The changes required to get to orbit would need more mass than the rocket could feasibly lift. So they had to go with a new design. (Annoyingly, I cannot remember which company it was... ABL perhaps...)
If you run the rocket equations against SS/SH, the margins for airframe for both first and second stages are pretty wide.
The next upgraded engine design (Raptor 3) is on the test stands and has accumulated quite a lot of hours.
They haven’t reached the end of where you can take FFSC Methlox, by a fair margin.
As to Blue, they are deep in redesigning the first stage - the version they launched was a serious battleship stage. It’s the major hold up for them at the moment.
Vulcan is being held up by Blue not releasing the next step in engine performance.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Apollo had lots of near misses. Which is one of the reasons that NASA wanted the program terminated and the Shuttle instead. The lunar lander was considered especially dangerous - a large number of items that were single point of failure.
As to Starship - they have enough money to continue the program indefinitely. SpaceX (thanks to Starlink) has a bigger turnover than the NASA budget. Each launch costs them about $90 million - of which $55 million is the booster. They will be moving to the semi-finalised design of the booster by the end of the year, so keeping and catching that for most flights. The V2 design of Starship (which is the one exploding) is already being replaced with V3.
That's very much the bullish view - and I take those costings with a massive pinch of salt.
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
The coatings come from two different outside organisations - one rather hostile to SpaceX.
Worth remembering the number of stretches and engines upgrades before we got to F9 as it is now.
The history of rocketry is pretty much - “.. and then they stretched the tanks and upgraded the engines”.
Blue Origins New Glenn will require a stretch or two to reach its performance goals. And Vulcan was below its original planned capability for the test launch.
Perhaps the most extreme examples are Atlas V and Delta IV - which were the flying Ships of Theseus.
Yes. But the big difference between (say) NG / Vulcan and SH/SS is that the former have much more room to expand performance. BO were *very* conservative with the BE-4 engines, and it is widely believed they have lots of room to improve performance. SpaceX have already highly optimised the Raptor design, and they have much less headroom - whatever the fanbois fantasise about.
Remember, every kg you add onto the second stage requires many kg of fuel in the first and second stages to lift it. Every change SpaceX makes to the design to improve SS's reliability means that you need much more fuel - as these sorts of changes almost always mean more mass. You can then get into a negative cycle of increasing stack mass and complexity requiring more mass to lift it - and those changes requiring more mass, and reducing reliability.
ISTR one small rocket launching company admitted a year or so ago that their design - launched twice, both failures - was dead for exactly this reason. The changes required to get to orbit would need more mass than the rocket could feasibly lift. So they had to go with a new design. (Annoyingly, I cannot remember which company it was... ABL perhaps...)
If you run the rocket equations against SS/SH, the margins for airframe for both first and second stages are pretty wide.
The next upgraded engine design (Raptor 3) is on the test stands and has accumulated quite a lot of hours.
They haven’t reached the end of where you can take FFSC Methlox, by a fair margin.
As to Blue, they are deep in redesigning the first stage - the version they launched was a serious battleship stage. It’s the major hold up for them at the moment.
Vulcan is being held up by Blue not releasing the next step in engine performance.
I'd like to see your sources for some of those claims...
This war is unlikely over. But the causes that defined the Islamic Republic have taken an incalculable set back. The regime has only the goal of survival left. Iran’s leaders, isolated and scattered, now must decide how best to preserve their order & regain a bargaining position
There are two divergent pathways to strengthen the regime: seek peace, reconciliation, and give Iranians the promise of openness and prosperity. The other is war: expand the fight, invite more death and destruction, and hope anger rallies the people around the regime.
As awful as it would be for the Iranian people, the regime might decide that continuing to fight is the best option, both because it would dilute the idea that the war was against only the IRGC or nuclear program, and because a longer war would not suit its aggressors.
But I would stress that we’re in uncharted territory here. Only the regime knows how much damage it has sustained, and what it has left with which to fight. Peace or war are binary ends on a spectrum. Where each side’s next moves will lead is unknowable. May cooler heads prevail.
When historians describe WWIII, will today be counted as the first day?
No.
Yeah. They’ll say it started when Israel attacked Iran a week or so back.
Yes, Iran has been attacking Israel for decades via intermediaries. But Israel going straight after Iran is hard to justify under international law. And then the US attacking Iran is flat out illegal under international law.
If you are Putin or Xi wanting to do what you like with impunity, that tosser Trump has just given you the green light to do what you like.
Point of order. Putin is already doing what he likes; no one (except Ukraine obviously) seems that willing to stop him.
When historians describe WWIII, will today be counted as the first day?
No.
Yeah. They’ll say it started when Israel attacked Iran a week or so back.
Yes, Iran has been attacking Israel for decades via intermediaries. But Israel going straight after Iran is hard to justify under international law. And then the US attacking Iran is flat out illegal under international law.
If you are Putin or Xi wanting to do what you like with impunity, that tosser Trump has just given you the green light to do what you like.
Point of order. Putin is already doing what he likes; no one (except Ukraine obviously) seems that willing to stop him.
As is Xi, of course, although generally within China's borders thus far.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Apollo had lots of near misses. Which is one of the reasons that NASA wanted the program terminated and the Shuttle instead. The lunar lander was considered especially dangerous - a large number of items that were single point of failure.
As to Starship - they have enough money to continue the program indefinitely. SpaceX (thanks to Starlink) has a bigger turnover than the NASA budget. Each launch costs them about $90 million - of which $55 million is the booster. They will be moving to the semi-finalised design of the booster by the end of the year, so keeping and catching that for most flights. The V2 design of Starship (which is the one exploding) is already being replaced with V3.
That's very much the bullish view - and I take those costings with a massive pinch of salt.
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
The coatings come from two different outside organisations - one rather hostile to SpaceX.
Worth remembering the number of stretches and engines upgrades before we got to F9 as it is now.
The history of rocketry is pretty much - “.. and then they stretched the tanks and upgraded the engines”.
Blue Origins New Glenn will require a stretch or two to reach its performance goals. And Vulcan was below its original planned capability for the test launch.
Perhaps the most extreme examples are Atlas V and Delta IV - which were the flying Ships of Theseus.
Yes. But the big difference between (say) NG / Vulcan and SH/SS is that the former have much more room to expand performance. BO were *very* conservative with the BE-4 engines, and it is widely believed they have lots of room to improve performance. SpaceX have already highly optimised the Raptor design, and they have much less headroom - whatever the fanbois fantasise about.
Remember, every kg you add onto the second stage requires many kg of fuel in the first and second stages to lift it. Every change SpaceX makes to the design to improve SS's reliability means that you need much more fuel - as these sorts of changes almost always mean more mass. You can then get into a negative cycle of increasing stack mass and complexity requiring more mass to lift it - and those changes requiring more mass, and reducing reliability.
ISTR one small rocket launching company admitted a year or so ago that their design - launched twice, both failures - was dead for exactly this reason. The changes required to get to orbit would need more mass than the rocket could feasibly lift. So they had to go with a new design. (Annoyingly, I cannot remember which company it was... ABL perhaps...)
If you run the rocket equations against SS/SH, the margins for airframe for both first and second stages are pretty wide.
The next upgraded engine design (Raptor 3) is on the test stands and has accumulated quite a lot of hours.
They haven’t reached the end of where you can take FFSC Methlox, by a fair margin.
As to Blue, they are deep in redesigning the first stage - the version they launched was a serious battleship stage. It’s the major hold up for them at the moment.
Vulcan is being held up by Blue not releasing the next step in engine performance.
I'd like to see your sources for some of those claims...
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
If the purpose of Starship is to launch people to Mars, then yes, it seems to be in trouble.
If, as has been suggested, the purpose of Starship is to allow Elon Musk to milk billions of dollars from US taxpayers, then no, it is working exactly as designed.
Anyone who suggests that, meets the clinical definition of moron. I’m quite sure you however were not.
Why?
The SS Artemis program is giving SpaceX nearly $3 billion for their program, with $2.8 billion already having been given, and a possible extension up to $4 billion. We're seeing very little stuff that is directly lunar-related, and lots of stuff to help SpaceX launch Starlinks into orbit. (*)
SS is also a really, really poor lunar lander - because the basic ship was not designed for that. It was designed to go to, and land, on Mars, which is a very different prospect.
Musk's companies have always relied on the munificence of the American taxpayer. It's a shame there isn't an NGO that was looking for waste in US government spending, as Musk would be a really large target for it...
(*) Though to be fair, the lunar stuff will always be later in the program. But I'd expect to see much more in a program that (already delayed...) is due to land on the Moon in two years time.
SpaceX major revenue is (in no especial order)
1) Starlink 2) Commercial launches 3) Military launches 4) Flying astronauts to the space station 5) Flying cargo to the space station 6) Military contracts for Starshield.
Starship is about $1-1.5 billion per year of development cost
The reason they won the lunar lander project is simply that no one else could conceive of doing it on the money available - SLS and Orion ate the budget.
Altair (the original plan for a lunar lander, under the Constellation program) was *estimated* at $40 Billion. And we all know how those estimates turned out. It was abandoned decades ago - leaving SLS as the rocket to nowhere. This was why Obama proposed a mission to an asteroid, instead of the moon. No need for a lander.
I find some commentators on here really quite odd. Like sitting down in 1969 praying the moon landings failed because you really hated Dick Nixon. The same kind of mindset after the landings ultimately led to Apollo Denialism.
America is evil and failing. Landing on the moon is impressive and difficult. Therefore America did not land on the moon. Musk is a baddie and is stupid. Therefore everything Musk does is bad and stupid. He is only rich because he is a baddie.
When Spacex eventually succeed in landing on mars, I’m sure the narrative will shift to: musk is bad and stupid. What spacex did was impressive and difficult. Therefore musk is nothing to do with spacex.
- a group of maybe 100 young happy people - all races creeds and cultures -
All singing “Valerie” in chorus - a la Amy Winehouse
Just a glimpse. A glimpse
Not the Stevie Winwood track, which is better in every conceivable way
Different song I think. Amy's was a cover of the Zutons'.
Yes, and the Monkees did a belter called ‘Valleri’, again a different track but better than the Whinehouse one IMHO
And who did the remix of the Winwood version with the soft-porn video set in an aerobics class?
Why that would be Eric Prydz, and I didn’t need to google it.
Call on Me.
Would be frowned on today.
I believe Steve re-recorded "Call on me" specifically for Eric Prydz. The hit of Valerie was a remastering (with an orchestral flavour) version of the rather subdued track on Arc of a Diver.
Steve is only in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Traffic, which demonstrates what a load of old shite the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is, particularly if you check out some of the 3rd rate American inductees.
Steve's eldest daughter is married to a guy who bankrolls the Conservative Party. Can't remember his name mind.
I will be seeing Steve Winwood at Hyde Park on 13th July as he is one of the support acts for the last ever ELO concert.
You are right he should be in the Hall of Fame in his own right and again as a member of Blind Faith. Can't FInd My Way Home is one of the greatest tracks ever written. He was also part of the Electric Ladyland band for Hendrix and was in part responsible for the creation of Voodoo Chile.
I didn't know about the Hendrix connection. He must been incredibly young. Wasn't he just 16 when Keep on Running was hit?
Seemed content to play in Clapton's shadow although I consider him at least his equal and by all accounts a much nicer guy.
I saw Steve in Colston Hall around a decade ago, he did not disappoint.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
If the purpose of Starship is to launch people to Mars, then yes, it seems to be in trouble.
If, as has been suggested, the purpose of Starship is to allow Elon Musk to milk billions of dollars from US taxpayers, then no, it is working exactly as designed.
Anyone who suggests that, meets the clinical definition of moron. I’m quite sure you however were not.
Why?
The SS Artemis program is giving SpaceX nearly $3 billion for their program, with $2.8 billion already having been given, and a possible extension up to $4 billion. We're seeing very little stuff that is directly lunar-related, and lots of stuff to help SpaceX launch Starlinks into orbit. (*)
SS is also a really, really poor lunar lander - because the basic ship was not designed for that. It was designed to go to, and land, on Mars, which is a very different prospect.
Musk's companies have always relied on the munificence of the American taxpayer. It's a shame there isn't an NGO that was looking for waste in US government spending, as Musk would be a really large target for it...
(*) Though to be fair, the lunar stuff will always be later in the program. But I'd expect to see much more in a program that (already delayed...) is due to land on the Moon in two years time.
SpaceX major revenue is (in no especial order)
1) Starlink 2) Commercial launches 3) Military launches 4) Flying astronauts to the space station 5) Flying cargo to the space station 6) Military contracts for Starshield.
Starship is about $1-1.5 billion per year of development cost
The reason they won the lunar lander project is simply that no one else could conceive of doing it on the money available - SLS and Orion ate the budget.
Altair (the original plan for a lunar lander, under the Constellation program) was *estimated* at $40 Billion. And we all know how those estimates turned out. It was abandoned decades ago - leaving SLS as the rocket to nowhere. This was why Obama proposed a mission to an asteroid, instead of the moon. No need for a lander.
I find some commentators on here really quite odd. Like sitting down in 1969 praying the moon landings failed because you really hated Dick Nixon. The same kind of mindset after the landings ultimately led to Apollo Denialism.
America is evil and failing. Landing on the moon is impressive and difficult. Therefore America did not land on the moon. Musk is a baddie and is stupid. Therefore everything Musk does is bad and stupid. He is only rich because he is a baddie.
When Spacex eventually succeed in landing on mars, I’m sure the narrative will shift to: musk is bad and stupid. What spacex did was impressive and difficult. Therefore musk is nothing to do with spacex.
Who on here says America did not land on the Moon?
The narrative is already that Musk is bad and stupid - and yes, even intelligent people can do stupid things. And he's certainly stupid compared to the 'genius' moniker people like to give him.
And to be clear: I want a permanent presence for mankind on the Moon; in the same way I want a permanent presence in LEO. And landing on Mars would be cool, especially for science.
The Netflix documentary on the Apollo 13 debacle is, perhaps predictably, quite brilliant
Moving and poignant. What a story
I'm unsure the documentary is very good if your conclusion was that Apollo 13 was a 'debacle'. It wasn't. It was a failure in a massively high-risk endeavour that they managed to turn into just a loss of mission, not loss of crew.
The debacle was the Apollo 1 fire a couple of years earlier, which should never, ever have happened.
A propos. Is Starship in trouble? Every rocket is blowing up at the moment. I know the development philosophy is different but at this point in the programme Saturn V was sending astronauts to the moon without any mishaps at all.
Apollo had lots of near misses. Which is one of the reasons that NASA wanted the program terminated and the Shuttle instead. The lunar lander was considered especially dangerous - a large number of items that were single point of failure.
As to Starship - they have enough money to continue the program indefinitely. SpaceX (thanks to Starlink) has a bigger turnover than the NASA budget. Each launch costs them about $90 million - of which $55 million is the booster. They will be moving to the semi-finalised design of the booster by the end of the year, so keeping and catching that for most flights. The V2 design of Starship (which is the one exploding) is already being replaced with V3.
That's very much the bullish view - and I take those costings with a massive pinch of salt.
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
The coatings come from two different outside organisations - one rather hostile to SpaceX.
Worth remembering the number of stretches and engines upgrades before we got to F9 as it is now.
The history of rocketry is pretty much - “.. and then they stretched the tanks and upgraded the engines”.
Blue Origins New Glenn will require a stretch or two to reach its performance goals. And Vulcan was below its original planned capability for the test launch.
Perhaps the most extreme examples are Atlas V and Delta IV - which were the flying Ships of Theseus.
Yes. But the big difference between (say) NG / Vulcan and SH/SS is that the former have much more room to expand performance. BO were *very* conservative with the BE-4 engines, and it is widely believed they have lots of room to improve performance. SpaceX have already highly optimised the Raptor design, and they have much less headroom - whatever the fanbois fantasise about.
Remember, every kg you add onto the second stage requires many kg of fuel in the first and second stages to lift it. Every change SpaceX makes to the design to improve SS's reliability means that you need much more fuel - as these sorts of changes almost always mean more mass. You can then get into a negative cycle of increasing stack mass and complexity requiring more mass to lift it - and those changes requiring more mass, and reducing reliability.
ISTR one small rocket launching company admitted a year or so ago that their design - launched twice, both failures - was dead for exactly this reason. The changes required to get to orbit would need more mass than the rocket could feasibly lift. So they had to go with a new design. (Annoyingly, I cannot remember which company it was... ABL perhaps...)
If you run the rocket equations against SS/SH, the margins for airframe for both first and second stages are pretty wide.
The next upgraded engine design (Raptor 3) is on the test stands and has accumulated quite a lot of hours.
They haven’t reached the end of where you can take FFSC Methlox, by a fair margin.
As to Blue, they are deep in redesigning the first stage - the version they launched was a serious battleship stage. It’s the major hold up for them at the moment.
Vulcan is being held up by Blue not releasing the next step in engine performance.
I'd like to see your sources for some of those claims...
L2
Now must get on the water
Enjoy!
But if I were you, I'd take the stuff on L2 with some caution...
Amongst all the the sycophantic drivel spouted over the Prince of Wales on his birthday yesterday (a statesman who love puppies apparently), was there any update on his stated lifelong project of bringing peace to the Middle East?
I find some commentators on here really quite odd.
Well indeed
NASA and Apollo were really good and successful
Starship keeps blowing up because the design is really not good or successful
And your conclusion is that Elon Musk is a genius...
Almost 90% of total mass sent to orbit globally last year was launched by spacex, a company founded and majority owned by Elon Musk, also its CTO.
Starship is an r&d project to take man to mars, rather than an operational launch platform, so it’s a little early to say its design is “not good or successful”.
I find some commentators on here really quite odd.
Well indeed
NASA and Apollo were really good and successful
Starship keeps blowing up because the design is really not good or successful
And your conclusion is that Elon Musk is a genius...
There is a lot to be said for SpaceX's approach of "fail early, fail often". It can lead to very rapid iterations early in a project. Have a hardware-rich pipeline to allow you to test rapidly.
But it also becomes increasingly expensive as a project matures. You do not just lose one engine in a test stand; you lose dozens in flight. You lose test stands. You lose launch pads. You lose credibility. You lose money and, most importantly, you lose time.
IMV there comes a time when "fail early, fail often" needs to become "Now let's just get it right". I think SH/SS are well beyond that point now.
UK political reaction begins: Former Defence Secretary and ex MP Sir Grant Shapps claims Sir Keir Starmer’s calls for restraint were “dangerously naïve” and the US strikes were “absolutely the right call”.
The Tories are going in very gung ho over Iran. Dame Priti last week and now Shapps. I am expecting Sir Boris's next piece in the Mail to call for an all out nuclear attack.
They are the Gods of Hellfire, and we on PB love 'em!
- a group of maybe 100 young happy people - all races creeds and cultures -
All singing “Valerie” in chorus - a la Amy Winehouse
Just a glimpse. A glimpse
Not the Stevie Winwood track, which is better in every conceivable way
Different song I think. Amy's was a cover of the Zutons'.
Yes, and the Monkees did a belter called ‘Valleri’, again a different track but better than the Whinehouse one IMHO
And who did the remix of the Winwood version with the soft-porn video set in an aerobics class?
Why that would be Eric Prydz, and I didn’t need to google it.
Call on Me.
Would be frowned on today.
I believe Steve re-recorded "Call on me" specifically for Eric Prydz. The hit of Valerie was a remastering (with an orchestral flavour) version of the rather subdued track on Arc of a Diver.
Steve is only in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Traffic, which demonstrates what a load of old shite the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is, particularly if you check out some of the 3rd rate American inductees.
Steve's eldest daughter is married to a guy who bankrolls the Conservative Party. Can't remember his name mind.
I will be seeing Steve Winwood at Hyde Park on 13th July as he is one of the support acts for the last ever ELO concert.
You are right he should be in the Hall of Fame in his own right and again as a member of Blind Faith. Can't FInd My Way Home is one of the greatest tracks ever written. He was also part of the Electric Ladyland band for Hendrix and was in part responsible for the creation of Voodoo Chile.
Can't find my way home is one of my favourite songs. The best version I heard was Clapton with Ray Cooper on percussion at the Albert Hall about 40 years ago.
Amongst all the the sycophantic drivel spouted over the Prince of Wales on his birthday yesterday (a statesman who love puppies apparently), was there any update on his stated lifelong project of bringing peace to the Middle East?
Replacing republics like Iran, the US and Israel with more peaceable constitutional monarchies like ours perhaps ?
UK political reaction begins: Former Defence Secretary and ex MP Sir Grant Shapps claims Sir Keir Starmer’s calls for restraint were “dangerously naïve” and the US strikes were “absolutely the right call”.
The Tories are going in very gung ho over Iran. Dame Priti last week and now Shapps. I am expecting Sir Boris's next piece in the Mail to call for an all out nuclear attack.
They are the Gods of Hellfire, and we on PB love 'em!
Grant Shapps is neither here nor there, but one wonders how much message discipline there is on this within the PCP, or even if there is a central line from Kemi at all. On an awful lot of occasions, it feels like Shadow Cabinet members are just giving their own thoughts.
Fortunately we can't be associated with the "new war". It happened on a Saturday/ Sunday and Starmer had already knocked off at six on Friday. We can't blame him for this.
UK political reaction begins: Former Defence Secretary and ex MP Sir Grant Shapps claims Sir Keir Starmer’s calls for restraint were “dangerously naïve” and the US strikes were “absolutely the right call”.
The Tories are going in very gung ho over Iran. Dame Priti last week and now Shapps. I am expecting Sir Boris's next piece in the Mail to call for an all out nuclear attack.
They are the Gods of Hellfire, and we on PB love 'em!
Grant Shapps is neither here nor there, but one wonders how much message discipline there is on this within the PCP, or even if there is a central line from Kemi at all. On an awful lot of occasions, it feels like Shadow Cabinet members are just giving their own thoughts.
Do we know what Shappsy ha been doing since his defenestration by the voters? Given his Jewish background, one might expect him to take a strong-looking line.
Comments
If, as has been suggested, the purpose of Starship is to allow Elon Musk to milk billions of dollars from US taxpayers, then no, it is working exactly as designed.
Something big landed in Tel Aviv this morning
https://x.com/upholdreality/status/1936655156961272241
And you show the problem. They're onto V3 of the design, without even having got V1 or V2 (oh, the irony of those!) working. They are using previously-heralded expansions to increase payload just to scrabble to reach the payload they predicted for the first version.
The SH/SS program is in serious trouble. Can they fix it? Perhaps. But perhaps the design itself is unworkable - especially SS.
Five things to remember about war:
1. Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true
2. Whatever they say, the people who start wars are often thinking chiefly about domestic politics
3. The rationale given for a war will change over time, such that actual success or failure in achieving a named objective is less relevant than one might think
4. Wars are unpredictable
5. Wars are easy to start and hard to stop
https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1936642958989615307
Anyway, my point was ....
Trump wants Iran to stop firing missiles at Israel & immediately sue for peace. Trump has threatened that if Iran doesn't sue for peace, then he'll keep bombing Iran.
Iran is continuing to fire missiles at Israel & shows no signs of immediately suing for peace. Therefore, Trump will now have to keep bombing Iran, and the US is now in a war with Iran & today wasn't just a limited once-off bombing.
More B2s took off yesterday and flew the other way
https://medium.com/predict/starship-will-simply-never-work-55678f280cf4
Yes, Iran has been attacking Israel for decades via intermediaries. But Israel going straight after Iran is hard to justify under international law. And then the US attacking Iran is flat out illegal under international law.
If you are Putin or Xi wanting to do what you like with impunity, that tosser Trump has just given you the green light to do what you like.
Worth remembering the number of stretches and engines upgrades before we got to F9 as it is now.
The history of rocketry is pretty much - “.. and then they stretched the tanks and upgraded the engines”.
Blue Origins New Glenn will require a stretch or two to reach its performance goals. And Vulcan was below its original planned capability for the test launch.
Perhaps the most extreme examples are Atlas V and Delta IV - which were the flying Ships of Theseus.
UK political reaction begins: Former Defence Secretary and ex MP Sir Grant Shapps claims Sir Keir Starmer’s calls for restraint were “dangerously naïve” and the US strikes were “absolutely the right call”.
https://x.com/amandaakass/status/1936673223724179859
But Plaid Cymru MP & Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts, by contrast, says the attacks bring the Middle East to a “volatile and potentially uncontrollable position” and the "UK must not be drawn into escalating warfare"
The SS Artemis program is giving SpaceX nearly $3 billion for their program, with $2.8 billion already having been given, and a possible extension up to $4 billion. We're seeing very little stuff that is directly lunar-related, and lots of stuff to help SpaceX launch Starlinks into orbit. (*)
SS is also a really, really poor lunar lander - because the basic ship was not designed for that. It was designed to go to, and land, on Mars, which is a very different prospect.
Musk's companies have always relied on the munificence of the American taxpayer. It's a shame there isn't an NGO that was looking for waste in US government spending, as Musk would be a really large target for it...
(*) Though to be fair, the lunar stuff will always be later in the program. But I'd expect to see much more in a program that (already delayed...) is due to land on the Moon in two years time.
The only immediate winner right now is #Netanyahu . He lured the #US into a conflict, Americans do not want, and successfully scuttled the #US #Iran talks & conference to recognize the state of #Palestine in one shot.
Seems as though a number of aircraft were effectively decoys operations.
The point though is that the decision had already been made.
Remember, every kg you add onto the second stage requires many kg of fuel in the first and second stages to lift it. Every change SpaceX makes to the design to improve SS's reliability means that you need much more fuel - as these sorts of changes almost always mean more mass. You can then get into a negative cycle of increasing stack mass and complexity requiring more mass to lift it - and those changes requiring more mass, and reducing reliability.
ISTR one small rocket launching company admitted a year or so ago that their design - launched twice, both failures - was dead for exactly this reason. The changes required to get to orbit would need more mass than the rocket could feasibly lift. So they had to go with a new design. (Annoyingly, I cannot remember which company it was... ABL perhaps...)
Good morning, everybody.
1) Starlink
2) Commercial launches
3) Military launches
4) Flying astronauts to the space station
5) Flying cargo to the space station
6) Military contracts for Starshield.
Starship is about $1-1.5 billion per year of development cost
The reason they won the lunar lander project is simply that no one else could conceive of doing it on the money available - SLS and Orion ate the budget.
Altair (the original plan for a lunar lander, under the Constellation program) was *estimated* at $40 Billion. And we all know how those estimates turned out. It was abandoned decades ago - leaving SLS as the rocket to nowhere. This was why Obama proposed a mission to an asteroid, instead of the moon. No need for a lander.
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1936673974852674005?s=61
I can't think they learned much from this last event.
International law, like the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, is there to apply to African dictators and east Europeans. Nations like the US, Israel, Russia, China, will just do what they want without any comeback. A sanction here, a sanction there, life goes on.
I don't believe that's true. BO's alternative design *may*, with a fair wind, launch an uncrewed Mk1 pathfinder lander with the potential to carry 3 tonnes to the Moon this year. For much less money. There's zero way we'll get a SS Lunar lander on the Moon this year. Next year is looking *really* unlikely.
I don't mind people worshipping SpaceX. I do mind when it causes them to hype Musk and denigrate every other space company and NASA.
Flashback
Trump: “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective”
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1936592468461363382
The next upgraded engine design (Raptor 3) is on the test stands and has accumulated quite a lot of hours.
They haven’t reached the end of where you can take FFSC Methlox, by a fair margin.
As to Blue, they are deep in redesigning the first stage - the version they launched was a serious battleship stage. It’s the major hold up for them at the moment.
Vulcan is being held up by Blue not releasing the next step in engine performance.
This war is unlikely over. But the causes that defined the Islamic Republic have taken an incalculable set back. The regime has only the goal of survival left. Iran’s leaders, isolated and scattered, now must decide how best to preserve their order & regain a bargaining position
There are two divergent pathways to strengthen the regime: seek peace, reconciliation, and give Iranians the promise of openness and prosperity. The other is war: expand the fight, invite more death and destruction, and hope anger rallies the people around the regime.
As awful as it would be for the Iranian people, the regime might decide that continuing to fight is the best option, both because it would dilute the idea that the war was against only the IRGC or nuclear program, and because a longer war would not suit its aggressors.
But I would stress that we’re in uncharted territory here. Only the regime knows how much damage it has sustained, and what it has left with which to fight. Peace or war are binary ends on a spectrum. Where each side’s next moves will lead is unknowable. May cooler heads prevail.
https://x.com/AntiTrumpCanada/status/1936606431765025122
Now must get on the water
For those keeping score for the Trump regime
Trade deals: 0
Ceasefire agreements: 0
New wars: 1
America is evil and failing. Landing on the moon is impressive and difficult. Therefore America did not land on the moon. Musk is a baddie and is stupid. Therefore everything Musk does is bad and stupid. He is only rich because he is a baddie.
When Spacex eventually succeed in landing on mars, I’m sure the narrative will shift to: musk is bad and stupid. What spacex did was impressive and difficult. Therefore musk is nothing to do with spacex.
Seemed content to play in Clapton's shadow although I consider him at least his equal and by all accounts a much nicer guy.
I saw Steve in Colston Hall around a decade ago, he did not disappoint.
Enjoy Hyde Park. I never really "got" ELO.
NASA and Apollo were really good and successful
Starship keeps blowing up because the design is really not good or successful
And your conclusion is that Elon Musk is a genius...
The narrative is already that Musk is bad and stupid - and yes, even intelligent people can do stupid things. And he's certainly stupid compared to the 'genius' moniker people like to give him.
And to be clear: I want a permanent presence for mankind on the Moon; in the same way I want a permanent presence in LEO. And landing on Mars would be cool, especially for science.
But if I were you, I'd take the stuff on L2 with some caution...
IOW he doesn't care unless it affects his chances of succeeding to the top job.
Excellent thread by
@ksadjadpour
.
As he has previously said about Khamenei “A weak response risks losing face, an excessive response risks losing his head.”
It seems to me Khamenei and his regime are destined to lose both.
A regime at war with its own people is built on sand.
https://x.com/NazaninBoniadi/status/1936614047627248023
Starship is an r&d project to take man to mars, rather than an operational launch platform, so it’s a little early to say its design is “not good or successful”.
But apart from that, good point.
NEW THREAD
V1 didn't work
V2 didn't work
V3 will explode more spectacularly than V2...
Successful projects take a working design and make it better. Starship takes a non-working design and makes a bigger bang
But it also becomes increasingly expensive as a project matures. You do not just lose one engine in a test stand; you lose dozens in flight. You lose test stands. You lose launch pads. You lose credibility. You lose money and, most importantly, you lose time.
IMV there comes a time when "fail early, fail often" needs to become "Now let's just get it right". I think SH/SS are well beyond that point now.
They are the Gods of Hellfire, and we on PB love 'em!
On page one it says: "Both the United States and the United Kingdom recognize that this document does not constitute a legally binding agreement. " aka : 'This is not a trade deal.' POTUS - even head up his own butt POTUS - can't do trade deals
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/681d327d43d6699b3c1d2a9d/US_UK_EPD_050825_FINAL_rev_v2.pdf
On the UK side, I go for it being more like a pair of waterproof trousers worn by a farmer to stop their loose-bladdered cows p*ss*ng on them.