SpaceX’s Starship vehicle suffered its second consecutive test flight failure March 6, tumbling in space before breaking up and reentering over the Caribbean.
  • Tar_AlcaranEnglish
    82·
    3 days ago

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

    • threelonmusketeersOPMEnglish
      131·
      3 days 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.
    • TrollceptionEnglish
      61·
      2 days ago

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

    • burble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      41·
      2 days 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.

    • sorghumEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • threelonmusketeersOPMEnglish
        3·
        2 days 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.

      • Tar_AlcaranEnglish
        52·
        2 days ago

        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.

        • threelonmusketeersOPMEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          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.

          • yojimbo@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            3·
            2 days 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 🤬

          • Tar_AlcaranEnglish
            32·
            2 days ago

            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.

            • threelonmusketeersOPMEnglish
              1·
              2 days 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.