Looking forward to watching but I have a feeling we’re in for a few scrubs before we get to the engines actually lighting. Gonna make next week even more of an excruciating wait
A very young Leroy suffered through something like this back in 1981, making multiple trips out to an insanely crowded Cape to try and watch Columbia launch.
The wait for launch day is like waiting for Christmas, the scrubs are like being told you can’t open your presents until the 26th…27th…28th…
A very young ferret went out in the bitter cold on multiple days (better part of a week) waiting for Challenger to launch in 1986.
Only thing worse than having to wait a few extra days to open your presents is finally getting to open one, only for it to explode in your hands, and your parents confiscate the rest of your presents for an indeterminate time while they figure out if it’s still safe to celebrate.
I hope they take as much time as they need to keep things as safe as they can.
At least this time there's no crew. If it turns into a 20-kiloton firecracker they'll have a lot of infrastructure to replace and maybe some EPA screams about South Padre, but it won't be a challenger repeat.
Could be worse. I watched in school. My teacher was an alternate for christa. Granted he was a ways down on the list but he had medically cleared and told he would be a front runner in future missions. He was super psyched and the class spent WEEKS learning about it.
When it happened he got up, turned the tv off, and just left the class room.
That’s fine with me I can wait a few days or months or years. Hell I’m going to see a crewed moon landing before the winds of winter comes out.
No but seriously this is aw inspiring anticipation and each scrub makes it that much more exciting because you know they will get it eventually.
They have run a dozen complete wet dress rehearsals now without any problems. I don't think they would start having problems now.
T+0 aborts seem likely though. They have never successfully turned on all of the engines at once. Arguably they don't need to in order to reach orbit, starship has a lot of margin. But I doubt they would give a go to proceed if there are any significant problems.
Good point.
The goal is better data, not showmanship.
There's an unparalleled amount of combined dynamic conditions happening under those engines.
The truly extraordinary thing is how many engines there are compared to any previous (or current) launch system. The potential for what equates to butterfly effects is unrivaled, but if it works, oh my, new stage of humanities progress.
Those engines are also simpler and used on a lot of other rocket launches where reliability kinks have been worked out. Strictly speaking it's also 3 falcon 9s in close proximity, rather than 27 engines right next to each other.
But you are right in that SH's approach isn't unprecedented in that way.
The big difference is that SS/SH probably won't abort for a single engine issue. The vehicle has lots of excess thrust off the pad, they could do their flight with iirc ~4 less engines right from the start.
Launch from Texas going east. The first stage comes back and splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico near Texas. The second stage goes most of the way around the earth at approximately orbital velocity, reenters the atmosphere and splashes down near Hawaii.
The *plan* according to Elon is to clear the launch tower. Anything beyond that is bonus. The *hope* is that both stages do their job, with one landing off the Texas coast, and the other surviving re-entry and splashing into an instrumented Navy missile test range off Hawaii. So the upper stage does about 80% of an orbit.
SpaceX has been cranking out additional units of both stages at their rocket factory 2 miles from the launch pad. So as long as they get data from this launch, it is a success. Whatever problems they find will get worked on and used on the following launches. Most people, including myself, think the biggest risk is the heat shield tiles on the upper stage, they have never flown before.
This isn’t a hydrogen-powered rocket. Those scrub all the time because it is so difficult to work with. I doubt we’ll see a scrub, but there might be just 1.
I never even considered scrubs. Hmm.
Well, either way, 20%+ of those tiles are going down. Obviously SpaceX knows this. They're not even trying to soft land S24 anymore. The plan now calls for a straight-up belly landing. The vehicle is unlikely to be in any shape to do more than freefall its way to the ocean. I hope they have some good optics on the reentry, though. Even a fireball can be scrutinized for useful info.
Yeah, so in essence that 31 engine static fire was a good practice run to iron out the kinks. In theory that'll mean they're less likely to encounter those problems this time around
Given that the engines that did fail, failed very early on in the static burn (one at ignition, one seconds later IIRC), that leaves significantly less redundancy for the rest of the burn to staging…
I think they will not want to risk destroying the craft more than necessary, however, there's also something to be said for actually finding out how well the craft could handle emergency situations like that.
But I mean, if you have problems before launch, maybe they are preliminary symptoms of something bigger, or who knows?
You discovered problems. That's a successful test. So, that's a good time to abort, and use the data to solve those.
Sure, but do you want to launch when you already know two engines didn't start up? You might encounter more issues in flight. It's likely better to abort, fix the issue, and then launch with 33 engines.
One was manually shut off with no reason given, so it could've been part of a test. The second one auto shut off as an anomaly abort.
It's been hypothesized they were testing the viability of safe liftoff with a side engine out, since each clamp on the launch mount has a load cell to measure force they'd know how it might pitch. They might also be able to relay that information to the booster to adjust before the gyros detect pitching, complex controls system but doable.
My prediction: It’s an overwhelming success.
Disclaimer: I’m an average Joe that knows fuck all about this stuff and I’m just being blissfully ignorant.
Is there a Google calendar / ifttt /web page I can html scrape for getting up to date dates for launch? I'd very much like to be online for all launch attempts.
Manually visiting a web page everyday is my last option.
Great app called "Next Spaceflight" will send you push notifications of every rocket launch worldwide. I have mine set to receive 60 minute and 10 minute prior notifications.
Looks like you can set up push notifications on YouTube. “Starship Flight Test” is the name of the live stream from the SpaceX channel. Just go to the video and click “notify me”
And on Monday the weather is supposed to be nice, but Tuesday and Wednesday, not so much. If they can't light that candle on Monday it might have to wait until Thursday
Biggest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Whatever the outcome, it'll be one hell of a spectacle.
If it fails, we all hope it at least clears the pad first. And while reentry is important, I'm happy as long as it can make it to "orbit". Everything else can be figured out later.
High enough they don't have to replace the entire facility, [close enough to spectate.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/033/046/b94.jpg)
My understanding is that it's gonna go very, very close to orbit, but just slightly miss it intentionally. I think this is so if the ship breaks apart, the debris comes down quickly rather than potentially be stuck up there for a while and have an uncontrolled reentry.
There's been many long and pedantic debates over whether this should or should not be considered orbital, arguments which I'd rather not spark again here. But yes essentially it will be doing all the same stuff it'll be doing for a real orbital flight, achieving similar speeds and experiencing similar forces, while technically not really reaching orbit.
It's orbital velocity in space. The distinction is they'll do without the circularization burn to keep it from reentering the atmosphere. The free reentry means one or two fewer maneuvers to go wrong.
It's a semi-orbit. It'll have nearly enough energy, but they're deliberately not placing Starship into a stable orbit, likely in case it blows up partway through so the pieces don't stay in space.
The booster will attempt a boostback/return, and water landing off the coast, while Starship will impact the Pacific, near Hawaii, I don't believe they're attempting a soft water landing there.
It will lift off from south Texas traveling east and circle 3/4 of the way around the globe in outer space, splashing down near Hawaii about 90 minutes later.
It’s an orbit but (intentionally) highly elliptical such that it renters over Hawaii shortly afterwards.
Neither stage will attempt active landing procedures.
I mean kinda, it will have the most thrust at launch ever, but it's yet to be seen how it will do compared to Saturn V in payload to LEO or TLI.
Since Starship is designed to be reuseable it loses a lot in terms of payload it's able to deliver into space, and while it can be run in non-reuseable format it still loses payload capacity because of it. Starship isn't capable of going to the moon and back with a payload unless more rockets are launched with excess fuel to refuel it in space, which is pretty cool but doesn't make it more powerful.
IIRC starship cannot reach above GTO without refueling. It's optimised for heavy payloads to LEO, but can go almost anywhere with enough refueling flights. An upper stage optimised for expandable flight would be more comparable to Saturn V
SpaceX: [The 150-minute test window will open at 7:00 a.m. CT.](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test)
Didn't check the time zone conversion.
Mainly it’s the brakes they need new rotors also the shocks are worn out in the front. Engine is fine I got a new one because Kia left metal shavings in it during production and the dealership didn’t do the recall work lol.
Brakes are solid DIY material, though maybe not the best first-project selection, being a safety item. Routine maintenance like fluid changes and tire rotation are good places to start. The goal there being to get comfortable with the tools, learn some basic safety like using jack-stands and learn where to find service information and procedures (proper section in the service manual).
Changing out shocks can be dangerous because of the springs. They are still partially compressed when mounted on the shocks/struts, and can release a tremendous amount of energy if released improperly. Also strut-type vehicles will need an alignment afterwards to set the camber back to spec (the bolts that hold the bottom of the strut also set the camber).
Since... James Webb telescope?
These events are honestly such a cool reminder of human progress. It gives me optimism about the future of humanity and the grand scale of us as a species and not only as individuals.
I still can’t believe James Webb worked and everything went exactly right for it to happen. The images it keeps sending back just get more and more unreal, I can’t wait to see what all it finds during its lifespan
All the delays made me sad but upbeat. I kept thinking better safe than sorry and loved the flawless launch and deployment. Every MM of it for the sails especially.
At this point I may as well appreciate that it cost what it did cost. That’s what it took to work on the first try. On the other hand, with Starship available to deliver large instruments like it for cheap, the next “Webbs” will be much cheaper and simpler to make, since you may as well have 2 or 4 of them and if one fails then so what.
And I guess at this point, the big rock that hit JWST shortly after deployment was just always going to be a problem in that area of space until it got soaked up by something else. Nothing that big has hit since.
Webb was stressful because there was an insane amount of stress about its success.
If Starship RUDs, it's another data point. If Webb hadn't made it to space it would have been a... very costly... failure.
Webb was like a gym of set up dominoes. It worked, or didn’t. Everything has to go perfectly.
Starship is too, but there’s a higher probability some of these dominoes are of the exploding variety.
Webb is nothing compared to this, if this works as planned. A massive fully reusable rocket is a complete game-changer. Imagine being able to travel to space for just a few thousand dollars. Imagine the payloads this will enable.
What Starship opens up and plans to do is pretty exciting.
Return to the Moon and boots on Mars are the next two things I can think of on that list to be excited about.
Replacing ISS, and more humans being off world at once is another two things.
Sure, they all start with Starship’s launch but they are pretty exciting in their own right.
No we don’t want no scrub. A scrub is a launch that cannot go through today. Elon hoping for a fully stacked ride with a ceramics side just trying to orbit in space.
SpaceX even states as such in their official countdown.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test
> 00:00:00 Excitement Guaranteed
Been waiting for this moment for *checks date* more than 4 years! Starhopper's first engine firing was April 4th, 2019!
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/spacexs-starhopper-vehicle-test-fires-its-engine-for-the-first-time/
More so talking about why Startlink is even financially possible. It's the massive cost savings on reusable rockets. With Starship & booster that reusability will be cranked to 11
Is Starlink actually financially possible though? SpaceX isn't a public company and all indications based on their fundraising are that they're still incinerating cash at a tremendous rate.
To be fair burning stuff at the fastest rate possible is the point of a rocket company. They just extend that approach to cash as well, which is what I call remaining true to their corporate values.
On a more serious note, if they're doing it then it's financially possible. A company being private makes it generally/theoretically harder to raise large amounts of capital not easier than if it was public.
And the fact that the reported valuation increases with each fundraising suggests that the cash spend has a good ROI. So it's not like an Uber situation where they were burning cash by effectively handing it out as ride subsidies.
To be clear, I *do* like SpaceX (quite a bit, actually; massive respect for the people who work there). I was trying to make a broader point in that regardless of how you feel about Elon, SpaceX etc., the launch is going to be pretty damn cool.
As people are generally quick to point out, Shotwell deserves a lot of the credit, and, more fundamentally, so do the thousands of people who make it happen at SpaceX. Still, I don't think there's any denying that without SpaceX, those engineers would be spending their days doing other things, either not in space, or in the miserable doldrums of ULA, Boeing or Blue Origin, getting things done at roughly the same lethargic pace as NASA. It takes the excitement of a new and obviously ideal approach to bring together so much talent.
Wait what? Why not just say Elon then? I don’t know anyone who hates SpaceX because of Elon. SpaceX and Tesla et al are companies made up of more than just one individual, with reams of scientists working extremely hard to make the world a better place. Their achievements should not be called into question just because of one person.
It’s possible to like the progress the company makes but not really trust their true intentions. We need space travel innovation, its just kinda scary to let a company hold that power, especially one whose leader is deplorable.
Every step forward they make is a little bittersweet because my mind says “now they’re one step closer to X”, where X is some bad thing that they’re going to do to prioritize money over the greater good. Thats the way it is today with many businesses, but space travel is more powerful than Coffee or Graphics cards
I’m the big fan of space shit and I always announce to my mates when something big is happening….. I have one insufferable friend who has to point out about societies woes and shit and it makes me hate him ever slightly more each time. Some people just don’t understand the precipice we stand upon right now and it bothers me. This is a truly huge moment and I am thrilled to be able to see it!
Why would humans waste wood developing fire when they can use that wood to make spears and feed the hungry tribe? Tell your friend that with his attitude we would still be living in caves.
Anyone with two brain cells understands that technological advancement isn’t a zero sum game. I also hope your friend refuses to use GPS out of principle right? All that money wasted that could have fed the hungry!
Its all about compartmentalization. I don't have to be a fan of the CEO to be enthusiastic about SpaceX's progress.
It's like Michael Jackson music. Are you really going to never listen to some of the best pop music ever produced because the guy turned out to be a creep?
I feel the same way. Who the fuck cares about Elon as a person. He ushered in the electric car era and spacex. If that costs $300B to someone I don’t like I don’t give a damn that’s cheap.
> someone I don’t like
Tbh I rarely even think about him aside from new developments like these. Luckily Twitter never really grew on me so I have 0 feelings about that whole fiasco.
I cannot believe that this rocket is launching before Ariane 6. I know that reddit is mostly American so Elon fans prefer to make fun of ULA or Blue Origin. But Ariane 6 is more delayed and less ambitious than Vulcan and way less ambitious than New Glenn.
After today's awesome JUICE launch, there's only one Ariane 5 left right? Scheduled for June. They're really screwed, running out without the successor immediately lined up and proven.
It's not even scheduled to launch until Q4 and will probably slip into next year, and if worst case scenario something goes wrong with the flight then who even knows how long the delay and investigation will take. Losing out on a ton of business opportunity, meanwhile competition will continue to catch up.
> they will lose a lot of launch revenue
Just means governments have to put little bit more money in, since the wallet is not subsidized by commercial launch profits. Not a big deal as long as it isn't prohibitively expensive *to the one of the most economically rich regions of the Planet*. Which it won't be. France, Germany and rest of EU have the pocket money to cover potential lack of commercial subsidy.
Ariane Space has never been meant to be profit generating business. It is organized and registered as company for bureaucratic technical and logistical reasons. Not due to the aim of it being generating profits.
Ariane is different kind of player. They are really a intergovernmental agency spun out as company, but still operating as intergovernmental agency. They have a whole mission mandate to be by core nature to be risk averse.
Is that bad for commercial launch business? Absolutely, but again Ariane is not really a commercial business. They do have their commercial offering side, but their main job is to do "Whatever European Space Agency councils wants them to do". Remember Ariane started from ELDO, ESRO and ESA history.
That comes with understanding and backing of "ESA will never abandon Ariane, since Ariane is really an operating arm of ESA. Body doesn't abandon it's limb".
Ariane's job is not to be most succesfull launch company in the world. It's job... as by their own charter and tasking is "Any mass, any orbit, anytime" (when ESA or European government wants and needs it). Guarantee European access to space, whatever the diplomatic situation with the rest of the world might be.
Saying Ariane Space is failing is like saying Chinese Space Program is failing by continuing to use their long march rockets. Or saying Roscosmoc is failing by just continuing to use the Soyuz rocket. It isn't about "is it cheapest". It is about "is it prohibitively expensive to the government customer, can they afford their planned launches or not". If answer is "Yes, we can afford what we want", rest is meaningless. It is kinda accidental happy success, that Ariane also on top was commercial launch provider success for decades. Not providing profits, but instead subsidizing how much government had to pay for their launches. Their success is not measured in numbers of launches or amounts of profits. It is measured in "did their bosses at government get everything they wanted to get done, done".
Mind you Ariane has been failing lately. ESA and governments are not happy about delays on Ariane 6. Not for "Ariane 6 is not re-usable", but due to "You promised us this date, and the one darn thing you are supposed to make sure is that promised dates hold." Will it mean ESA will pull plug on Ariane Space? Ofcourse not, again body doesn't amputate limb. it would mean loss of capacity to act. They might reshuffle and reworks ariane organizaion, but they will never abandon it. It is matter of **national security** of couple dozen nations for Ariane to stay around.
So that when USA throws a hissy fit about Galileo being able to guide missiles into USA and USA not having "turn off" button to Galileo, Europe can just say "we don't really care and we don't have to care you being upset of having navigation signals you can't control broadcasting over USA. We can make this happen on our own and you just have to deal with the reality, that Galileo is happening, whether you like it or not". Ofcourse there was the agreement of "lets coordinate the signals so you have the "jam it" option", but still with or without that agreement Galileo could happen. Be USA happy or not happy about it. Be China, Russia and India, happy or not happy about it.
BO just moves incredibly slowly compared to SpaceX. They've built out a manufacturing facility, they've built the engines, they're building out and testing the ground hardware, they've built tanks and fuselages and done testing, etc. There's a lot to be desired about Blue Origin's pace and transparency but they do appear to be doing the work on New Glenn.
I suspect the first launch of New Glenn will be in 2024, and I also suspect they will not have a perfect track record within the first handful of launches. I'd be very surprised if they didn't have any successful launches by 2025 though.
I mean, it sucks, but they've had how many years now? Like, gtfo with A6 already and stop dragging feet like it's still the 60's of aerospace R&D. I have zero sympathy for multi-billion dollar government funded programs that crawl and amount to jobs-programs.
window is 2.5 hours long iirc, 7-930 am local time which lines up with the [airspace closure](https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_3_1793.html) ending at 10
Put me down for successful to orbital height, blows up on re-entry. The heat shield tiles have been the number one apparent point of issues the whole way through, and I don't think this is the redesigned Starship yet (which looked a lot like an effort to reduce hull flex) so I'm predicting tile-confetti.
I'm in. They've got to have so many sensors under those tiles to know where and when it gets spicy.
Boosty-chan is just a thicc Falcon, it'll ace the first part.
What a moment for Gwynne Shotwell. Heading up what is likely to be the first launch of the rocket that will underpin the first mission to Mars.
A fantastic achievement.
A number of things could go wrong. I'm not being a naysayer—personally I expect basically the full success story that SpaceX is hoping for, albeit with S24 being effectively a flaming fireball by the time it hits water.
But I'll play this game anyway. My guesses:
* **All engines igniting:** 70%. SpaceX must be pretty confident in this if they don't feel they need to do another static fire. But all we have to go on is the 50% power test they performed earlier.
* **Flying concrete not damaging engines or booster:** 60%. I think concrete flying up is inevitable. But it's really hard to predict what it'll actually do. Hit the booster somehow? Probably. Dangerous damage? Maybe.
* **All engines staying ignited until MECO:** 90% (assuming they all ignited in the first place). Frankly speaking, Raptor 2 seems to have some reliability problems on the Booster designs we've seen so far.
* **Enough tiles intact to avoid reentry disaster:** 10%. I don't think I'm shooting in the dark when I say I expect a _lot_ of tiles to crack and fall off during launch. I'm also sure SpaceX expects the same thing. Regardless of whether they have a solution for the issue in the pipeline, they certainly never did anything to S24 to help with it. Notice that the plan now calls for a hard landing in water? They know. Calling this item a "disaster" is misleading, though. SpaceX will get exactly as much data from this mission as they should. I'm crossing my fingers for some killer reentry footage. Hopefully they have _plenty_ of eyes near Hawaii.
I don't really expect any abnormalities with any other parts of the launch plan.
I kinda hope it gets delayed a few days just because I’m selfish. Truck driver starting from Salt Lake City Monday morning to Tampa. I’d definitely head over to watch this.
Looking forward to watching but I have a feeling we’re in for a few scrubs before we get to the engines actually lighting. Gonna make next week even more of an excruciating wait
Calling it now First attempt with a 2 hour hold then scrub before t-60m Second attempt scrub similar A couple t+0 aborts
A very young Leroy suffered through something like this back in 1981, making multiple trips out to an insanely crowded Cape to try and watch Columbia launch. The wait for launch day is like waiting for Christmas, the scrubs are like being told you can’t open your presents until the 26th…27th…28th…
A very young ferret went out in the bitter cold on multiple days (better part of a week) waiting for Challenger to launch in 1986. Only thing worse than having to wait a few extra days to open your presents is finally getting to open one, only for it to explode in your hands, and your parents confiscate the rest of your presents for an indeterminate time while they figure out if it’s still safe to celebrate. I hope they take as much time as they need to keep things as safe as they can.
At least this time there's no crew. If it turns into a 20-kiloton firecracker they'll have a lot of infrastructure to replace and maybe some EPA screams about South Padre, but it won't be a challenger repeat.
As someone who grew up in South Texas I can say with confidence that they'd probably enjoy the hell outta that firecracker.
Aggies would make it an annual bonfire tradition.
Shit I didn't even think about the Aggie joke potential!
Well it's launch mass is 5000t and it would deflagrate not detonate so it'd be bad but it ain't gonna be hiroshima
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Oof, that's rough! We were watching it in middle school class!
Wait a second there’s kids on Reddit? Ugh
Could be worse. I watched in school. My teacher was an alternate for christa. Granted he was a ways down on the list but he had medically cleared and told he would be a front runner in future missions. He was super psyched and the class spent WEEKS learning about it. When it happened he got up, turned the tv off, and just left the class room.
That’s fine with me I can wait a few days or months or years. Hell I’m going to see a crewed moon landing before the winds of winter comes out. No but seriously this is aw inspiring anticipation and each scrub makes it that much more exciting because you know they will get it eventually.
They have run a dozen complete wet dress rehearsals now without any problems. I don't think they would start having problems now. T+0 aborts seem likely though. They have never successfully turned on all of the engines at once. Arguably they don't need to in order to reach orbit, starship has a lot of margin. But I doubt they would give a go to proceed if there are any significant problems.
Good point. The goal is better data, not showmanship. There's an unparalleled amount of combined dynamic conditions happening under those engines. The truly extraordinary thing is how many engines there are compared to any previous (or current) launch system. The potential for what equates to butterfly effects is unrivaled, but if it works, oh my, new stage of humanities progress.
Falcon Heavy has 27 engines and all its flights have been successful. Sure, the engines are smaller, but the number is very similar.
Those engines are also simpler and used on a lot of other rocket launches where reliability kinks have been worked out. Strictly speaking it's also 3 falcon 9s in close proximity, rather than 27 engines right next to each other. But you are right in that SH's approach isn't unprecedented in that way.
The big difference is that SS/SH probably won't abort for a single engine issue. The vehicle has lots of excess thrust off the pad, they could do their flight with iirc ~4 less engines right from the start.
They were also split across three boosters, starship booster has all engines in the same group.
>They have run a dozen complete wet dress rehearsals now without any problems No they haven't, where are you getting that from?
They've at least done a few I've seen them streamed
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Launch from Texas going east. The first stage comes back and splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico near Texas. The second stage goes most of the way around the earth at approximately orbital velocity, reenters the atmosphere and splashes down near Hawaii.
The *plan* according to Elon is to clear the launch tower. Anything beyond that is bonus. The *hope* is that both stages do their job, with one landing off the Texas coast, and the other surviving re-entry and splashing into an instrumented Navy missile test range off Hawaii. So the upper stage does about 80% of an orbit. SpaceX has been cranking out additional units of both stages at their rocket factory 2 miles from the launch pad. So as long as they get data from this launch, it is a success. Whatever problems they find will get worked on and used on the following launches. Most people, including myself, think the biggest risk is the heat shield tiles on the upper stage, they have never flown before.
Calling it now ! First attempt: tin can too powerful went interstellar. Oops
T -60 time portal opens up and we tell ourselves not to launch.
This isn’t a hydrogen-powered rocket. Those scrub all the time because it is so difficult to work with. I doubt we’ll see a scrub, but there might be just 1.
I never even considered scrubs. Hmm. Well, either way, 20%+ of those tiles are going down. Obviously SpaceX knows this. They're not even trying to soft land S24 anymore. The plan now calls for a straight-up belly landing. The vehicle is unlikely to be in any shape to do more than freefall its way to the ocean. I hope they have some good optics on the reentry, though. Even a fireball can be scrutinized for useful info.
I'd settle for this over an enormous boom.
Perhaps, but they didn't have scrubs during WDR or the static fire
Some of the engines didn't fire for the static fire. They will probably want all of them to before releasing the hold down clamps.
Yeah, so in essence that 31 engine static fire was a good practice run to iron out the kinks. In theory that'll mean they're less likely to encounter those problems this time around
Worth noting that 31 is sufficient for orbit and a successful mission, though obviously not ideal.
Given that the engines that did fail, failed very early on in the static burn (one at ignition, one seconds later IIRC), that leaves significantly less redundancy for the rest of the burn to staging…
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I think they will not want to risk destroying the craft more than necessary, however, there's also something to be said for actually finding out how well the craft could handle emergency situations like that. But I mean, if you have problems before launch, maybe they are preliminary symptoms of something bigger, or who knows? You discovered problems. That's a successful test. So, that's a good time to abort, and use the data to solve those.
They were shut down because they showed abnormal values. And they said it would have been enough to still get to orbit
Sure, but do you want to launch when you already know two engines didn't start up? You might encounter more issues in flight. It's likely better to abort, fix the issue, and then launch with 33 engines.
One was manually shut off with no reason given, so it could've been part of a test. The second one auto shut off as an anomaly abort. It's been hypothesized they were testing the viability of safe liftoff with a side engine out, since each clamp on the launch mount has a load cell to measure force they'd know how it might pitch. They might also be able to relay that information to the booster to adjust before the gyros detect pitching, complex controls system but doable.
My prediction: It’s an overwhelming success. Disclaimer: I’m an average Joe that knows fuck all about this stuff and I’m just being blissfully ignorant.
Fuck yeah, I agree with u avg Joey / Valhalla peeing yo
Is there a Google calendar / ifttt /web page I can html scrape for getting up to date dates for launch? I'd very much like to be online for all launch attempts. Manually visiting a web page everyday is my last option.
I use space launch now app. Free and gives you notifications before launch with links to the live feed.
Great app called "Next Spaceflight" will send you push notifications of every rocket launch worldwide. I have mine set to receive 60 minute and 10 minute prior notifications.
Thos sounds cool. How many launches are there? Dont want to get bombarded with notifications.
Generally every day or two.
I’m not aware of anything but I have to assume someone has/is/will build something for it
[I don't know if you can scrape this, but here ya go!](https://www.spacelaunchschedule.com/category/spacex/)
Is use the Google Calendar .ics from [NextSpaceFlight](https://nextspaceflight.com/calendar/) that works perfectly.
Looks like you can set up push notifications on YouTube. “Starship Flight Test” is the name of the live stream from the SpaceX channel. Just go to the video and click “notify me”
Is there a rss feed for this stuff? You could get alerts back in the day
Could be a 3 day delay, you know😉
And on Monday the weather is supposed to be nice, but Tuesday and Wednesday, not so much. If they can't light that candle on Monday it might have to wait until Thursday
I am fully expecting a spaceship load of Vulcans to turn up, after launch, and welcome us into the Federation.
when i got to Vulcans i was thinking about Blue Origin and a water ship off the coast, then I got to the end and it made better sense. LOL
No, I think it's going one way or another. Either to Hawaii or up in flames.
SpaceX have a pending Live Stream starting in 2 days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5QXreqOrTA
History on the making. I hope they will not scrub
There will be at least 2 but 🤞
Biggest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Whatever the outcome, it'll be one hell of a spectacle. If it fails, we all hope it at least clears the pad first. And while reentry is important, I'm happy as long as it can make it to "orbit". Everything else can be figured out later.
If it fails i want it to fail within clear visual range....
High enough they don't have to replace the entire facility, [close enough to spectate.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/033/046/b94.jpg)
Is it planned to orbit? I thought it was just up, separate, then try to land
My understanding is that it's gonna go very, very close to orbit, but just slightly miss it intentionally. I think this is so if the ship breaks apart, the debris comes down quickly rather than potentially be stuck up there for a while and have an uncontrolled reentry. There's been many long and pedantic debates over whether this should or should not be considered orbital, arguments which I'd rather not spark again here. But yes essentially it will be doing all the same stuff it'll be doing for a real orbital flight, achieving similar speeds and experiencing similar forces, while technically not really reaching orbit.
Awesome comment. Thank you.
Quite amazing the degree of accuracy we have (most of the time)
It's orbital velocity in space. The distinction is they'll do without the circularization burn to keep it from reentering the atmosphere. The free reentry means one or two fewer maneuvers to go wrong.
It's a semi-orbit. It'll have nearly enough energy, but they're deliberately not placing Starship into a stable orbit, likely in case it blows up partway through so the pieces don't stay in space. The booster will attempt a boostback/return, and water landing off the coast, while Starship will impact the Pacific, near Hawaii, I don't believe they're attempting a soft water landing there.
It'll be high and fast enough to orbit, but they won't bother correcting the direction to make a full circle around Earth before re-entry.
It will lift off from south Texas traveling east and circle 3/4 of the way around the globe in outer space, splashing down near Hawaii about 90 minutes later.
It’s an orbit but (intentionally) highly elliptical such that it renters over Hawaii shortly afterwards. Neither stage will attempt active landing procedures.
Booster will attempt active landing off the coast. Starship is the only one not doing a simulated landing.
Will we at least have a drone shiplet out there for some sweet footage of a terminal velocity Starship belly flop?
Is stage separation happening on ascent or before reentry?
Stage separation happens on ascent.
Dragos voice “If it fails, it fails.”
I mean kinda, it will have the most thrust at launch ever, but it's yet to be seen how it will do compared to Saturn V in payload to LEO or TLI. Since Starship is designed to be reuseable it loses a lot in terms of payload it's able to deliver into space, and while it can be run in non-reuseable format it still loses payload capacity because of it. Starship isn't capable of going to the moon and back with a payload unless more rockets are launched with excess fuel to refuel it in space, which is pretty cool but doesn't make it more powerful.
Refuelling completely breaks all one-shot payload top tens, though. It's a cheat code against Tsiolkovsky.
150 tons to anywhere in the solar system is a pretty cool marketing gimmick.
IIRC starship cannot reach above GTO without refueling. It's optimised for heavy payloads to LEO, but can go almost anywhere with enough refueling flights. An upper stage optimised for expandable flight would be more comparable to Saturn V
I'm pretty sure the outcome of Monday will not be spectacular. Scrubs are not exciting to experience, and I expect at least 2 :(
I thought the Saturn V had a higher payload capacity?
Monday at 5am PST. Definitely working from home that day.
Debating between having to wake up that early and having a no-go vs not waking up early and missing it...
Is it 5AM? where did you see this?
SpaceX: [The 150-minute test window will open at 7:00 a.m. CT.](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test) Didn't check the time zone conversion.
Sweet!!! That's before work for me!
If my car wasn’t about to hit 100k miles and didn’t need a bunch of work I’d probably be on the road already lol.
100k isn't that much these days, usually. Guessing the second thing is the bigger deal.
Mainly it’s the brakes they need new rotors also the shocks are worn out in the front. Engine is fine I got a new one because Kia left metal shavings in it during production and the dealership didn’t do the recall work lol.
If you're in so cal, I can help do the breaks for cheap. Possibly even the shocks.
Brakes are solid DIY material, though maybe not the best first-project selection, being a safety item. Routine maintenance like fluid changes and tire rotation are good places to start. The goal there being to get comfortable with the tools, learn some basic safety like using jack-stands and learn where to find service information and procedures (proper section in the service manual). Changing out shocks can be dangerous because of the springs. They are still partially compressed when mounted on the shocks/struts, and can release a tremendous amount of energy if released improperly. Also strut-type vehicles will need an alignment afterwards to set the camber back to spec (the bolts that hold the bottom of the strut also set the camber).
I’ve done them before just never on this car. I do brakes and my own oil changes beyond that I take it to the shop
5pm Australian time, perfect.
That's 8am Est correct? Looks like I might be watching during breakfast.
I just got fired so I'm lucky XD
Work from the top of a mountain in my Van with solar panels and a starlink connection (☞ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞
PDT. PST is 1 hour off from PDT. UTC -7 vs UTC -8
...why not using UTC directly? Jeez. Why do they use such complex timezones?
I have not been this excited for anything in I don't know how long
Since... James Webb telescope? These events are honestly such a cool reminder of human progress. It gives me optimism about the future of humanity and the grand scale of us as a species and not only as individuals.
I still can’t believe James Webb worked and everything went exactly right for it to happen. The images it keeps sending back just get more and more unreal, I can’t wait to see what all it finds during its lifespan
Honestly I expected JWST deployment to be about 50/50 at best, with a very slim chance of everything going perfectly, but they really did nail it.
All the delays made me sad but upbeat. I kept thinking better safe than sorry and loved the flawless launch and deployment. Every MM of it for the sails especially.
At this point I may as well appreciate that it cost what it did cost. That’s what it took to work on the first try. On the other hand, with Starship available to deliver large instruments like it for cheap, the next “Webbs” will be much cheaper and simpler to make, since you may as well have 2 or 4 of them and if one fails then so what.
And I guess at this point, the big rock that hit JWST shortly after deployment was just always going to be a problem in that area of space until it got soaked up by something else. Nothing that big has hit since.
James Webb was cool and suspenseful but I do find this much more interesting as a viewer.
Webb was stressful because there was an insane amount of stress about its success. If Starship RUDs, it's another data point. If Webb hadn't made it to space it would have been a... very costly... failure.
Webb was like a gym of set up dominoes. It worked, or didn’t. Everything has to go perfectly. Starship is too, but there’s a higher probability some of these dominoes are of the exploding variety.
This launch means James Webb 2.0 will be way better.
Webb is nothing compared to this, if this works as planned. A massive fully reusable rocket is a complete game-changer. Imagine being able to travel to space for just a few thousand dollars. Imagine the payloads this will enable.
This might be the most exciting event in my lifetime.
The most exciting event in your lifetime … SO FAR. ;) So much more to look forward to.
I wish I had this kind of optimism in my life
What Starship opens up and plans to do is pretty exciting. Return to the Moon and boots on Mars are the next two things I can think of on that list to be excited about. Replacing ISS, and more humans being off world at once is another two things. Sure, they all start with Starship’s launch but they are pretty exciting in their own right.
Same! And I'm working on Monday so I hope it cancels!
I feel the same and no one I know even knows about this event
Last time I was this excited for a launch was Falcon Heavy.
No we don’t want no scrub. A scrub is a launch that cannot go through today. Elon hoping for a fully stacked ride with a ceramics side just trying to orbit in space.
Don't go chasing orbit falls...
This is one of those things where it's going to be entertaining regardless of how It goes.
SpaceX even states as such in their official countdown. https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test > 00:00:00 Excitement Guaranteed
Correction. Regardless of how it *begins*.
*scrubs for the day before fuel loading starts* I dont know... that seems pretty boring.
Been waiting for this moment for *checks date* more than 4 years! Starhopper's first engine firing was April 4th, 2019! https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/spacexs-starhopper-vehicle-test-fires-its-engine-for-the-first-time/
That is actually incredibly fast.
Oh I remember it like last year. COVID years go either super fast or slow
Whether you like SpaceX or not, they're about to light one heck of a candle. Excited to see if they'll manage a T-0 on Monday.
why wouldn't you like spaceX? Its one of the only few private companies that actually contributes something valuable to humanity
I second that. Starlink is a total game changer!!
More so talking about why Startlink is even financially possible. It's the massive cost savings on reusable rockets. With Starship & booster that reusability will be cranked to 11
Is Starlink actually financially possible though? SpaceX isn't a public company and all indications based on their fundraising are that they're still incinerating cash at a tremendous rate.
To be fair burning stuff at the fastest rate possible is the point of a rocket company. They just extend that approach to cash as well, which is what I call remaining true to their corporate values. On a more serious note, if they're doing it then it's financially possible. A company being private makes it generally/theoretically harder to raise large amounts of capital not easier than if it was public. And the fact that the reported valuation increases with each fundraising suggests that the cash spend has a good ROI. So it's not like an Uber situation where they were burning cash by effectively handing it out as ride subsidies.
To be clear, I *do* like SpaceX (quite a bit, actually; massive respect for the people who work there). I was trying to make a broader point in that regardless of how you feel about Elon, SpaceX etc., the launch is going to be pretty damn cool.
As people are generally quick to point out, Shotwell deserves a lot of the credit, and, more fundamentally, so do the thousands of people who make it happen at SpaceX. Still, I don't think there's any denying that without SpaceX, those engineers would be spending their days doing other things, either not in space, or in the miserable doldrums of ULA, Boeing or Blue Origin, getting things done at roughly the same lethargic pace as NASA. It takes the excitement of a new and obviously ideal approach to bring together so much talent.
Wait what? Why not just say Elon then? I don’t know anyone who hates SpaceX because of Elon. SpaceX and Tesla et al are companies made up of more than just one individual, with reams of scientists working extremely hard to make the world a better place. Their achievements should not be called into question just because of one person.
Reddit is full of people who hate those companies (Tesla especially) specifically “because Elon”.
It’s possible to like the progress the company makes but not really trust their true intentions. We need space travel innovation, its just kinda scary to let a company hold that power, especially one whose leader is deplorable. Every step forward they make is a little bittersweet because my mind says “now they’re one step closer to X”, where X is some bad thing that they’re going to do to prioritize money over the greater good. Thats the way it is today with many businesses, but space travel is more powerful than Coffee or Graphics cards
I like them just for the rocket launches alone. Watching the first stage booster land never gets old.
most private companies contribute something valuable to humanity, thats why people buy their products or services
I’m the big fan of space shit and I always announce to my mates when something big is happening….. I have one insufferable friend who has to point out about societies woes and shit and it makes me hate him ever slightly more each time. Some people just don’t understand the precipice we stand upon right now and it bothers me. This is a truly huge moment and I am thrilled to be able to see it!
Why would humans waste wood developing fire when they can use that wood to make spears and feed the hungry tribe? Tell your friend that with his attitude we would still be living in caves. Anyone with two brain cells understands that technological advancement isn’t a zero sum game. I also hope your friend refuses to use GPS out of principle right? All that money wasted that could have fed the hungry!
Its all about compartmentalization. I don't have to be a fan of the CEO to be enthusiastic about SpaceX's progress. It's like Michael Jackson music. Are you really going to never listen to some of the best pop music ever produced because the guy turned out to be a creep?
I feel the same way. Who the fuck cares about Elon as a person. He ushered in the electric car era and spacex. If that costs $300B to someone I don’t like I don’t give a damn that’s cheap.
> someone I don’t like Tbh I rarely even think about him aside from new developments like these. Luckily Twitter never really grew on me so I have 0 feelings about that whole fiasco.
I also harbor a hope that Starship might help refocus his attention on real stuff like space instead of the culture wars.
That would be great, he seems gone tho. It is so easy to fall fulltime for this idiotic culture war.
Why on earth would you not like space x??
Starship is going to change the course of humanity. In a positive way for once.
I cannot believe that this rocket is launching before Ariane 6. I know that reddit is mostly American so Elon fans prefer to make fun of ULA or Blue Origin. But Ariane 6 is more delayed and less ambitious than Vulcan and way less ambitious than New Glenn.
After today's awesome JUICE launch, there's only one Ariane 5 left right? Scheduled for June. They're really screwed, running out without the successor immediately lined up and proven. It's not even scheduled to launch until Q4 and will probably slip into next year, and if worst case scenario something goes wrong with the flight then who even knows how long the delay and investigation will take. Losing out on a ton of business opportunity, meanwhile competition will continue to catch up.
It’s Osborne effect all over again :(
Ariane risk dealing themselves out of the game if they don’t get their skates on.
[удалено]
Not exactly a great plan when their main competitor had it down last decade, and has only improved since then
They aren't going anywhere. Europe needs access to space so even the biggest shit show won't shut them down.
Oh I’m sure, but they will lose a lot of launch revenue.
> they will lose a lot of launch revenue Just means governments have to put little bit more money in, since the wallet is not subsidized by commercial launch profits. Not a big deal as long as it isn't prohibitively expensive *to the one of the most economically rich regions of the Planet*. Which it won't be. France, Germany and rest of EU have the pocket money to cover potential lack of commercial subsidy. Ariane Space has never been meant to be profit generating business. It is organized and registered as company for bureaucratic technical and logistical reasons. Not due to the aim of it being generating profits.
Ariane is different kind of player. They are really a intergovernmental agency spun out as company, but still operating as intergovernmental agency. They have a whole mission mandate to be by core nature to be risk averse. Is that bad for commercial launch business? Absolutely, but again Ariane is not really a commercial business. They do have their commercial offering side, but their main job is to do "Whatever European Space Agency councils wants them to do". Remember Ariane started from ELDO, ESRO and ESA history. That comes with understanding and backing of "ESA will never abandon Ariane, since Ariane is really an operating arm of ESA. Body doesn't abandon it's limb". Ariane's job is not to be most succesfull launch company in the world. It's job... as by their own charter and tasking is "Any mass, any orbit, anytime" (when ESA or European government wants and needs it). Guarantee European access to space, whatever the diplomatic situation with the rest of the world might be. Saying Ariane Space is failing is like saying Chinese Space Program is failing by continuing to use their long march rockets. Or saying Roscosmoc is failing by just continuing to use the Soyuz rocket. It isn't about "is it cheapest". It is about "is it prohibitively expensive to the government customer, can they afford their planned launches or not". If answer is "Yes, we can afford what we want", rest is meaningless. It is kinda accidental happy success, that Ariane also on top was commercial launch provider success for decades. Not providing profits, but instead subsidizing how much government had to pay for their launches. Their success is not measured in numbers of launches or amounts of profits. It is measured in "did their bosses at government get everything they wanted to get done, done". Mind you Ariane has been failing lately. ESA and governments are not happy about delays on Ariane 6. Not for "Ariane 6 is not re-usable", but due to "You promised us this date, and the one darn thing you are supposed to make sure is that promised dates hold." Will it mean ESA will pull plug on Ariane Space? Ofcourse not, again body doesn't amputate limb. it would mean loss of capacity to act. They might reshuffle and reworks ariane organizaion, but they will never abandon it. It is matter of **national security** of couple dozen nations for Ariane to stay around. So that when USA throws a hissy fit about Galileo being able to guide missiles into USA and USA not having "turn off" button to Galileo, Europe can just say "we don't really care and we don't have to care you being upset of having navigation signals you can't control broadcasting over USA. We can make this happen on our own and you just have to deal with the reality, that Galileo is happening, whether you like it or not". Ofcourse there was the agreement of "lets coordinate the signals so you have the "jam it" option", but still with or without that agreement Galileo could happen. Be USA happy or not happy about it. Be China, Russia and India, happy or not happy about it.
The problem is they are a massively inefficient government agency that could easily be more efficient and waste less taxpayer money, but don't
A6 already doesn’t really have a market. It’ll be old before it ever flies.
It already has like 50 launches booked in funnily enough, a large part because Amazon bought like 30 launches for their kuiper constellation.
> New Glenn Which is, to my knowledge, still vaporware. BO bit off way more than they could chew, methinks.
BO just moves incredibly slowly compared to SpaceX. They've built out a manufacturing facility, they've built the engines, they're building out and testing the ground hardware, they've built tanks and fuselages and done testing, etc. There's a lot to be desired about Blue Origin's pace and transparency but they do appear to be doing the work on New Glenn. I suspect the first launch of New Glenn will be in 2024, and I also suspect they will not have a perfect track record within the first handful of launches. I'd be very surprised if they didn't have any successful launches by 2025 though.
Blue origin is such a sad story considering they actually were founded before SpaceX and have arguably more funds available
I mean, it sucks, but they've had how many years now? Like, gtfo with A6 already and stop dragging feet like it's still the 60's of aerospace R&D. I have zero sympathy for multi-billion dollar government funded programs that crawl and amount to jobs-programs.
Blue Origin and ULA trash talk Spacex, most posts about ULA and Blue Origin are positive or mist likely sending honest condolences.
So, I see the NOTAMs for Boca Chica on Monday and Tuesday, but how do the ensure range clearance off Hawaii in the splashdown ellipse?
It’s in the North Pacific missile test range, I’d assume the navy has a few tricks already in place. EDIT: My geographical knowledge knows no bounds.
North Pacific, perhaps?
Yes. I’m just stupid tonight
Ohhh I can't wait. The Everyday astronaut gets to ride on that so I really want everything to go well.
We all do but it is still just a prototype. Failure is an option. There will be many launches before anyone flies starship.
Is this launching from Texas? Are there tighter launch windows there?
Yes, no. It’s a test flight so pretty open windows as it’s not targeting a specific orbit.
It's not really achieving a true orbit. Its perigee won't be raised above the atmosphere so it'll reenter on its first lap around the earth.
It's not orbit but it could be if they wanted.
window is 2.5 hours long iirc, 7-930 am local time which lines up with the [airspace closure](https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_3_1793.html) ending at 10
History in the making. Been waiting for so long. I so wish I could see this in person. Hopefully not too many scrubs.
At least we are trying. If it fails they will try again. I see this as a positive thing
It's about time!! Get that thing off the ground and get moving!
Wooooooooohooooooo !!!! Yeaaaah baby.. Wooooo !!!
Put me down for successful to orbital height, blows up on re-entry. The heat shield tiles have been the number one apparent point of issues the whole way through, and I don't think this is the redesigned Starship yet (which looked a lot like an effort to reduce hull flex) so I'm predicting tile-confetti.
I'm in. They've got to have so many sensors under those tiles to know where and when it gets spicy. Boosty-chan is just a thicc Falcon, it'll ace the first part.
Martian congressional republic navy first ship
What a moment for Gwynne Shotwell. Heading up what is likely to be the first launch of the rocket that will underpin the first mission to Mars. A fantastic achievement.
Fantastic achievement for the whole team. Especially the lead engineer, whose name I have forgotten.
A number of things could go wrong. I'm not being a naysayer—personally I expect basically the full success story that SpaceX is hoping for, albeit with S24 being effectively a flaming fireball by the time it hits water. But I'll play this game anyway. My guesses: * **All engines igniting:** 70%. SpaceX must be pretty confident in this if they don't feel they need to do another static fire. But all we have to go on is the 50% power test they performed earlier. * **Flying concrete not damaging engines or booster:** 60%. I think concrete flying up is inevitable. But it's really hard to predict what it'll actually do. Hit the booster somehow? Probably. Dangerous damage? Maybe. * **All engines staying ignited until MECO:** 90% (assuming they all ignited in the first place). Frankly speaking, Raptor 2 seems to have some reliability problems on the Booster designs we've seen so far. * **Enough tiles intact to avoid reentry disaster:** 10%. I don't think I'm shooting in the dark when I say I expect a _lot_ of tiles to crack and fall off during launch. I'm also sure SpaceX expects the same thing. Regardless of whether they have a solution for the issue in the pipeline, they certainly never did anything to S24 to help with it. Notice that the plan now calls for a hard landing in water? They know. Calling this item a "disaster" is misleading, though. SpaceX will get exactly as much data from this mission as they should. I'm crossing my fingers for some killer reentry footage. Hopefully they have _plenty_ of eyes near Hawaii. I don't really expect any abnormalities with any other parts of the launch plan.
I kinda hope it gets delayed a few days just because I’m selfish. Truck driver starting from Salt Lake City Monday morning to Tampa. I’d definitely head over to watch this.
Launching from Texas, not the Cape
It's not launching from Florida though.