I still remember vast majority of HN comments suggest SpaceX's Starship couldn't be done.
Can they use a mostly modular tile? Can they hold the tiles in place with their current strategy? Will their approach to both of the above sufficiently protect the vehicle? How much will it take to reset the shielding after each launch?
Heck, even when I set out to drive around Africa there was a mountain of hatred and anger saying it was impossible, and I would be beheaded in the first country. (Spoiler: I wasn't, I had a great time).
I think it's important to remember that the very, VERY vast majority of people on the internet have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Unfortunately it seems the people with the least idea are the loudest, and get given the biggest microphone.
That makes it hard when some rando on the internet comes in to doubt or criticize, because it's virtually impossible for that rando to have more expertise than the entire SpaceX team.
If a person actually run the numbers and backed up their thoughts with legitimate reasons and a better idea that would be one thing. But that never happens, which is the problem.
If a government is aiming to increase the amount of renewable power, or a car company aims to make their cars more efficient, or a public transit operator wants to increase their service, or literally any one of billions of things that can be done, it is a waste of everyone's time for someone to chime in and say "Won't work because I said so" when they have absolutely zero experience, expertise or evidence to back up their thought that has no basis in reality.
Does it never happen, or do you just never see it?
Earlier today there was an HN post of an article suggesting that the Starship launch has more environmental and property risk than FAA or SpaceX has acknowledged, using data like the fact that a 50% thrust test in February produced sound pressures of 110db three miles away, while SpaceX estimates 100% thrust will produce 90-100db at that distance.
The post was flagged and removed very quickly.
I don't know the provenance of the article or its author, and maybe they made numbers up out of whole cloth, but none of the HN commenters rebutted the data or conclusions, it was just lots of "this anti-progress scumbag wants us to live in communist China" ad hominems.
So maybe there just is no legitimate, fact-based criticism. Or, maybe, there is and it is just filtered out from the communities I typically frequent. Seeing that this morning definitely gave me some pause.
This forum attracts some of the smartest and most influential people on the planet (The person most directly responsible for the search results of the biggest search engine on the planet used to contribute regularly...)
Taking 'controversial' discussions off the table is a dangerous thing, because it means many real issues are never being discussed or addressed, and there is no hope of them ever being fixed.
It's exactly like a family forbidding conversations about topics that are difficult. That leads to very bad things down the road, and I think HN is the same, but potentially has even more responsibility.
As it stands, I don't know if your explanations are spot-on and the actual sound pressure will be as SpaceX estimates, and most people don't even know if there's a question about it. That doesn't seem... ideal, for the principles HN purports to support.
I maintain a very high ethical standard for the people I choose to associate with personally and professionally. I would happily go back to working at SpaceX if there was good alignment with my personal goals. It seems unlikely since I now have kids and appreciate infinitely flexible work life balance, but I do look back fondly on my years at SpaceX. Financially and career wise, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I don't feel taken advantage of at all. Viewed as an investment, I can only describe my experience as a cornucopia of riches.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33973607
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368497
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31153986
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21944855
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30353028
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21400885
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215739
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27010713
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27765151
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23077358
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24460854
The 2022 timeline comment focus for me was about the need to fundraise and have a "down round", which was wrong. Also their implication with "there's never been an engine production line which could build much more than one engine per week" and "the raptor engine production line is running much too slow" was resolved less than a year later when SpaceX was up to building a raptor engine every day[1] and is, as of February, at nearly 2 engines a day [2]
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-is-now-buildi...
[2] https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2022/02/starships-self-susta...
Even if starship fails to fully achieve the very optimistic estimates on every one of those fronts, the starship program can be very successful.
HN has in my experience been fairly supportive of Starship's chance of success while pushing back on some of the wildly optimistic claims made about the program.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368497
And there was nothing in the comment saying Starship could not be done. Was about something else.
I assume you quoted this to demonstrate it being inaccurate or wrong. My point is that Starship is theoretically able to do this today. The launch got scrubbed so we're missing confirmation of how ready it is, but presumably there's a high confidence level it's ready for orbital flight because otherwise the wouldn't be launching it just to explode millions of dollars of rocket. And going from orbital flight to ready to land on mars is a pretty simple roadmap and clearly something they'll have within 4 years (5 years from the comment being made)
Well, no, its theoretically capable of doing it in 6 months from an optimal launch window, which eats up at least 10% (I don’t have a calendar of launch windows for the 6 month to Mars mission profile handy) of the high end of the 3-5 year window for landing off the bat.
But theory and practice are only the same in theory, not in practice.
Not really, unless you mean "crash" landing.
The 4 year estimate is overly optimistic as a result. Forget launch windows, just handling refueling and long term loitering (with engine restart after that) required for Mars mission with any reasonable chance of success will take majority of those 4 years. Especially if you are not willing to blow starships all the time.
And that's also ignoring the tiny detail that Mars is not even in top3 priorities for starship even after successful fully orbital test and landing of both stages. Getting to high flight rate / launching Starlink v2 sats / HLS is much more important for SpaceX
That it can be done never really was the question. The tech is actually pretty well proven, a lot of it coming from soviet design. The issue is more about economics: do we need a super heavy reusable rocket, will reusability keep its promises. It is not like everyone and his dog has to put something into orbit, and in fact, we don't want too much stuff into orbit mostly because of the risk of space debris. Interestingly, the biggest customer may be SpaceX itself, with Starlink, and I think it is not a coincidence. We already had the Space Shuttle which was supposed to revolutionize space operation, and while the shuttle did work as a launcher, but it was ultimately a failure, hence the skepticism over Starship, it addition to the well known tendency of Elon Musk to overpromise and underdeliver.
Personally, I think SpaceX did better than I expected, and I think Starship will become at least a working launcher. SpaceX is essentially the only hope of the US government when it comes to rocketry, they won't let them go, especially now that the relationship with Russia is a bit tense. But as for how game changing it will be, I have absolutely no idea.
There is a Moon mission though, and I think SpaceX quickly switched the focus on that as soon as Artemis was starting to become a reality. But while it is part of the plan, the real "moon rocket" is SLS and the spaceship is Orion, Starship is "just" a lander. A weird situation if you ask me, but hey, politics.
So yeah, the think SpaceX is selling is a rocket to put tons of heavy stuff into orbit, with Mars and the Moon being the extra plan, if the government decides to take it. I am not convinced about Mars, unless maybe China starts a pissing contest, which may be the best thing that can happen to space travel, but it looks like the Moon is getting at least something (of which China is probably no stranger to), still wait an see of a settlement.
But the Soviet were at the forefront of staged combustion engines, of which the Raptor engine famously is. And the "Super Heavy" booster is reminiscent of the N1 rocket, using a large number of small, efficient engines.
It's comparing two rockets that are kind-of similar in height when you squint and arguing we have to somehow give the soviet the credit.
Elon was probably talking about the engines, which the soviets toyed with as a concept, but SpaceX delivered as an existing product.
What I think Elon Musk and engineers at SpaceX though was: hey, we are not in the cold war anymore, we have access to what the soviet did, so let's pick that up, take the good parts implement them with modern technology.
The way I understand it, the USSR was better in some fields, like metallurgy, and made designs that took advantage of it. So now that the US can do even better metallurgy, then maybe take these soviet designs instead of the US designs that were made with material limitations. And also take advantage of, say, better electronics to succeed where the soviet failed.
Maybe I am wrong, but that's my interpretation. It is not full credit to the soviet, but more like giving them credit because they couldn't have done it on western technology alone.
The N1 has no connection with Starship. The only similar thing is the amount of engines, but Starship uses a different fuel which means a completely different plumbing technology. They have nothing in common. I mean, have you heard about that whole coming back part?
The original proposal (ITS) was for a vehicle that could deliver 300 tons to LEO. Then that got scaled to down to 150 tons.
They had proposed doing "Earth to Earth" (rocket travel from city to city) with it. Not on the table now as I understand it.
They did pull off a steel-based design and an FFSC engine which is really cool. But they HN commenters were absolutely right that the original design was a fantasy.
I believe earth-to-earth is still a consideration, too, if only because the US military has expressed interest in such capabilities.
https://spacewatch.global/2022/01/spacex-wins-102-million-ai...
It's just that it's packed with recognised emotive names like Musk and SpaceX and it's unconventional: no prior rocket looks like that or does the same landing thing. However, rockets are basically understandable enough ("big fire go down, thing go up") that everyone can have some opinion, and when they go wrong there's often a huge cinematic explosion. Musk's companies are also high-cadence and PR-rich so there's always a video to make, unlike, say, SLS which just grinds away dully outside the limelight. A diss video rather than a technical video is easier to make and draws using emotions: fans to argue and critics to validate. It's perfect capital-C Content.
What video gets more clicks: "Elon Musk's new StarShip is DOOMED, here's why" with a flaming explosion in the thumbnail. Or "TLB invalidation strategy in certain ARMv7a cores is slow on some workloads: here's why"?
If there are clicks on the table, there's money on the table.