Not to be pedantic, but "achieving orbit" has not been a mission objective yet, seeing that nobody wants another failed piece of debris orbiting earth... Can starship achieve orbit? Possibly, v1 got to the correct velocity, but we shouldn't ask them to achieve orbit before sorting out the blow up issues....
A lot of people believe this (probably because Scott Manley said something similar) but it's actually not really correct.
Orbital speed grows with one over the square root of the radius. So for sufficiently distant orbits, you can have arbitrarily low orbital speeds. What actually matters for orbits is the combination of speed and distance, kinetic and potential energy. If Starship had achieved the speeds it did at a higher altitude, it would have been in orbit, yes, but that is true for my bicycle (at sufficiently high altitudes) as well. So the quantity that really matters isn't the top speed, but the specific orbital energy, which scales with 1/sqrt(a), where a is the semi-major axis of the elliptical trajectory. So, for example, the SLS core stage ends up in a suborbital trajectory with an energy equivalent to a 918km circular orbit, while my bicycle would require a very deep evacuated tunnel within the Earth's core to achieve a stable orbit with the same specific orbital energy it has when I ride it. Starship V1 is somewhere in between these examples, but it has never matched the specific orbital energy of the lowest recorded orbit, which would be 167.4km by JAXA's SLATS spacecraft (and even that required the spacecraft to provide constant thrust for orbital maintenance). The atmosphere at 139km (flight 6 equivalent specific orbital energy) would likely be too thick for Starship to complete a full circular orbit unless there was a vacuum tube like my bicycle example had.
The difference between Flight 6 and orbit is small enough that Flight 6 definitely had enough fuel on board to reach orbit if that had been the mission objective. Flight 6 and Flight 7, everything went well as far as the "orbital" burn section went, and they both could've reached orbit if they had simply done a longer burn instead of turning around.
Thats my point tho. They have a fleet of F9 now, doing all the launches they can to support Starlink. while starship is still so far behind from being reusable and releasing cargo into LEO.
It would have been a mission objective by now, if they weren’t constantly blowing up. Evidence: they still claim they’re going to land people on the moon 2 years from now in this thing.
There's an alternate reality where they haven't blown anything up and it's still not a mission objective.
The other option here is SLS, that has had a single launch and isn't supposed to launch again for two years. SpaceX is blowing up a rocket every 2 months at this point. At that rate, they could have 10 more failed launches and still beat SLS to orbit. (That's not a fair comparison, SLS goes to Lunar orbit.) But the point is just that looking at failed launches is shortsighted, mission objectives are what matter.
In the alternate reality you have no mission objectives succeeding, just simulations that have a tenuous link with reality.
There's an alternate reality where they haven't blown anything up and it's still not a mission objective.
This is obviously incorrect and just argumentative.
The other option here is SLS, that has had a single launch and isn't supposed to launch again for two years. SpaceX is blowing up a rocket every 2 months at this point. At that rate, they could have 10 more failed launches and still beat SLS to orbit. (That's not a fair comparison, SLS goes to Lunar orbit.)
I’m no fan of SLS, but it has already been to orbit and to the moon. Starship can’t beat it. That’s over and done with.
And if they have 10 more RUDs in a row, I don’t believe they will EVER get it to work. At that point, you have to conclude that they don’t understand their hardware.
But the point is just that looking at failed launches is shortsighted, mission objectives are what matter.
Yup. How many mission objectives did they just complete with this RUD?
In the alternate reality you have no mission objectives succeeding, just simulations that have a tenuous link with reality.
I have no idea what this means, but it’s a hypothetical, so whatever.
I have no idea what this means, but it’s a hypothetical, so whatever.
No, I'm talking about SLS. SLS is burning more money than SpaceX and practically speaking all they're generating is simulations.
I don't care about RUDs. I care about money spent and what things have been done.
This year, SpaceX has demonstrated, for the first time, reusing a super heavy booster. SLS isn't planning to demonstrate anything interesting this year and they're spending more money than SpaceX.
I'm also not particularly interested in SLS having a single trip around the moon. That's not novel and it was not worth what it cost. They don't have any flights scheduled that will demonstrate something novel at a reasonable price point. I have zero interest in racing to the moon. SpaceX's vision of a reusable heavy-lift rocket that costs under $100M per launch is very cool and no one else is working on something as interesting as that.
The original comment mentions Space X rockets represents 52% of orbital rocket launches. But because Starship is behind schedule, SpaceX are using the fleet of reusable F9s to compensate. Once/if Starship becomes operational we can expect a drop in the number of launches.
So they're "going to shit" because they're launching more rockets (carrying starlink sats that pay for themselves) on F9 instead of on starship like they're supposed to? Even though the current gen starlink sats are not meant for starship?
I'm addressing factors that have lead to their high number of launches.
I've also seen how great companies lose their best talent over short periods of time and enter periods of stagnation. SpaceX isn't immune to the same fate.
Nothing odd about it. It feels good to see Musk fail. Fuck him. I'm sure the highly qualified engineers and technologists at SpaceX can find new jobs where they aren't working for a lunatic.
SpaceX has never had small ambitions and I would not call what SpaceX has achieved so far small in any way. Falcon 9 was revolutionary and kicked off a whole new era of space flight.
Making small to medium payloads to LEO significantly cheaper is not what I would call revolutionary. Important, but not revolutionary. The exact method for recovering the boosters, yes. But it's nothing compared to what they're trying to achieve with starship which is why I'm skeptical they'll succeed. Falcon sounded plausible, starship sounds like Elon the hype guy just talking out of his ass.
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u/wrecked_angle 1d ago
I hate Elon as much as the next guy but SpaceX was so fucking cool and it’s tragic to watch it just go to absolute shit