Their fully reusable rocket concept is pretty cool. Like a mini Starship.
More competition is always good, glad to see them progress quite fast.
More competition is always good, glad to see them progress quite fast.
SpaceX is a mix of mindblowing engineering with sometimes baffling decisions. I can never help but wonder how much input Elon has, and if he is responsible for all those questionable choices, as he honestly appears to be a bit of an idiot.
I've been following Starship's development avidly, but knowing he's involved always makes me cringe a little.
Let me get this straight. You believe that Stoke space is somehow the near perfect design. The designer or Shuttle and Starship were probably idiots for not coming up with the same ideas as Stoke. But maybe the reason that they are so dumb, is simply because Musk is part of the design team.
Maybe you should consider, just maybe, that if Starship isn't exactly like Stoke spaces design, it could have actual reasons. Maybe, just maybe the most successful rocket company in history had actual technical reason for their design choices. But no that couldn't be it, could it?
But instead of asking the saying 'Stoke Space design seems really awesome, I wonder why SpaceX made difference choices', you just jumped to 'well Musk is cringe and therefore that must be the reason'.
- I said I much prefer it to starship, not that it's near perfect.
"The designer or Shuttle and Starship were probably idiots"
- I dont know much about the design of Starship, that stuff is not in the public domain atm. But the space shuttle designers were not idiots, they just had to deal with some impossible requirements from higher up. The space shuttle as-built has some clearly bad design elements (eg. the shuttle itself not being on top of the stack at launch, as it was in the original design). It had a famously long and torturous design process with many different stakeholders all wanting it to be capable of wildly different missions. Just one example: https://youtu.be/_q2i0eu35aY?feature=shared
So one could say management meddling with the design is what killed the space shuttle. I am wondering is the same meddling happening in SpaceX?
https://grook.ai/saved_session?id=e269e88a7b1a71eff4f176c864...
Of course we dont know exactly why each decition was taken, but there are some pretty clear technical reasons that one could think about before using 'cringe' as an explnaition.
Just an incredible public display of cognitive dissonance.
All jokes aside - having different implementations/ideas competing for similar goals is nothing but good. We cannot pretend to have "min-maxed" space travel or rocketry at this point in time - so there's still lots of ideas to experiment with.
Any organization that can successfully design, assemble, test, and launch a new rocket into space is a huge victory for the US, space exploration, and ultimately the world. Making space more accessible is likely to lead to all kinds of new discoveries and technology that benefits earth and beyond.
Meanwhile, if we look at Apollo style reentry, it just works. From first time and every time and even for interplanetary entries. Clearly that's something that isn't broken and not in need of a fix.
Is it really the hardest part?
I would say that for fully reusable rockets, the hardest part is quick turnaround. For future space activities, it will be a huge economic difference if you can send the ship back in, say, 12 hours vs. 120 hours.
The shuttle was originally envisaged to be cheap and rapidly re-usable for the time. As built it didnt turn out that way, it would have been overall cheaper and probably faster to launch a fully un-reusable rocket than a shuttle.
Of those two, I am fairly sure that SpaceX can produce great engines. The Raptors are not quite there yet, but their 4th or 5th iteration will likely be extremely good.
Not so sure about the heat shields. Much less aggregated corporate experience there.
On the other hand, the at least the reusability of the lower stage shouldn't be a problem.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20040095922/downloads/20...
Not money. Not timing. Not even the engineers, because Blue Origin had every opportunity to hire the best. It was the leadership.
Let me answer that for you: it's well-documented and confirmed by many insiders, including Tom Mueller and Gwynne Shotwell, that a) Musk has always had a lot of technical input, and b) he is responsible for the good choices that made SpaceX into what it is today.
Of course the truth falls afoul of the "Musk is evil now" memo mentioned downthread, so you keep believing what you believe.
Being an asshole isn't required for success, but it unfortunately also doesn't necessarily inhibit it either.