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Starship destroyed on second consecutive test flight (spacenews.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Is it me, or is Starship getting worse with every try?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Eh, there was incremental progress throughout the first six flights, but switching to Ship version 2 has been a definite (though hopefully temporary?) setback.

Flight 1: Made it off the pad.
Flight 2: Made it to staging.
Flight 3: Made it to reentry.
Flight 4: Made it to splashdown.
Flight 5: First booster catch.
Flight 6: First zero-g raptor relight.
Flight 7 and 8: Successful booster catches, ship RUD on ascent.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

It's just you. They are trying progressively more difficult tests/missions with Starship.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

I'm pretty disappointed in the last two, but the failures were both ship v2 that completely redid the plumbing. But yeah, you'd think they'd be doing better by now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It is, but if you look at SpaceX's history with Falcon 1, it had 5 flights. 3 failed to reach orbit and of the 2 that succeeded only 1 was a satellite and not a mass simulator. And even then that satellite failed right after orbit (not SpaceX's fault, but still no successes).

I suspect that super heavy and starship may be near the limits for size and weight for rockets leaving earth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The booster is great, which makes sense, since it's basically Falcon-but-bigger, but Starship is basically conceptart that's being forced to fly WAY before it's anywhere near ready.

I'm 100% convinced they're just sending up Starship mockups to keep the capital coming, and not actually learning anything from the failures. Starlink relies on the future promise of Starship making things cheaper to bring in more capital, and the Falcon program relies on Starlink to maintain an affordable pricepoint through scale. It's a giant circle of mutual propping-up, and it all relies on Starship being the promised-land of LEO-launching.

I can't help but compare it with other programs that all do MUCH better right out of the gate, while starship is firmly rethreading either ground from the 40's and 50's, or the early 80's.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Starlink relies on the future promise of Starship making things cheaper to bring in more capital

No, Starlink has been cash flow positive for a year or so now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It’s gonna be very cash flow positive going forward now that eel-on-musk apparently has some sort of insider deal to do a shitty version of GPS because apparently we “rely too much on GPS” (?????)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

There is no mention of GPS in that article.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This is really annoying for me 😇 . I am not one who would believe words of the Elon and I would say that intuitively it didn't make financial sense but I've looked into it and to my surprise the numbers are actually getting kinda close:

they claim they have 4 million customers - at 100 USD per customer / month x 12 - 4.8 billion USD. There will be some tax, but they have also deals with US military (StarShield) or GSM Operator and wide range of "enterprise services" , so I suspect the income could be at around those 5 billion USD from starlink alone.
they did 90 launches last year maintaining and expanding the network. It's hard to say how much a falcon 9 launch cost - but CNBC says it was sold for 67 million USD in 2022. Not sure how much margin Elon gets on a single launch, but 5 billion / 90 is over 55 million USD - which is right there in the area..

Now this is ignoring the cost of the satellites, the maintenance of 150 ground stations, development of the HW /SW, advertising and god knows what else - but still at least in the "ballpark numbers".

To my unpleasant surprise - the Elon might not be joking on this one 🧐 - the Starlink might be one day paying for the development of the Starship - if it isn't already 😲 Also - this is bloody cool 🤬

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, we can't really know that, there's really only guesses and statements, and statements from Musk are famously unreliable. But aside from that, right now, Starlink is still in the happy days where they've got new satellites.

Their launch cadence has been pretty steady since januari 2022. With a 5-6 year lifespan, that means they'll start hitting the maximum constellation size around januari 2027 to 2028. From that point, every new launch is a replacement and the only way to grow the numer of sats is to increase launch cadence.

They've got 2 more happy years, and then it's going to hit the ceiling. You can already see this is coming from the price hikes over the past years, and increasing congestion. There's also some weirdness going on since last year with lots of sats being parked without use.

On the bright side for Starlink, there are some big fat government contracts coming, I'm sure. And entirely fairly and profitably too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Well, we can't really know that, there's really only guesses and statements, and statements from Musk are famously unreliable.

We've gotten statements from Shotwell too, not just Musk.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I suspect that super heavy and starship may be near the limits for size and weight for rockets leaving earth.

You think? Aside from the initial materials and production costs, it's generally more efficient to operate a large rocket than a small one.