And we have liftoff

[Lazaran]

Applying what is essentially 20th century tech to the problem of colonizing the moon, mars, etc seems ridiculously far fetched.

Elon’s folly is just that imho.

Would a colony on the moon or Mars be must watch TV???

Hell yeah.

Would it be worth the risk and investment???

Hell no. (imho)

 

[Bray123]

A serious mission to Mars doesn't stop off at the Moon for R & R.
The thing gets assembled in orbit and slingshots straight there, there's no benefit in entering another gravity field, stopping and then starting again.

 

[Dribble]

Let's beak it down for my ignorant Democrat friends.

We have been supporting this program for over 20 years with public funds. And the "best" they can do it a 20 second flight and a big boom.

Now...let's put this in context. In just over 9 years...we went from putting monkeys in space...to putting a man on the moon and bringing them back. And we did this with slide rules.

Does this make any sense? 20 years...and boom under the leadership of a con artist...or just over 9 years we put a man on the moon.

Keep smoking your dope. Fuck you people are high

 

[icanhelp1]

A serious mission to Mars doesn't stop off at the Moon for R & R.
The thing gets assembled in orbit and slingshots straight there, there's no benefit in entering another gravity field, stopping and then starting again.

Rockets aren’t the answer.

 

[RoryN]

Let's beak it down for my ignorant Democrat friends. We have been supporting this program for over 20 years with public funds.

^^^
Wrong - wildly inaccurate, in fact.

But, continue...

Now...let's put this in context. In just over 9 years...we went from putting monkeys in space...to putting a man on the moon and bringing them back. And we did this with slide rules.Does this make any sense? 20 years...and boom under the leadership of a con artist...or just over 9 years we put a man on the moon.

Hilariously-specious argument. Seriously, do you know anything about space programs or travel?

Meanwhile, people like you - and even NASA - said for years that no one would ever be able to land a rocket vertically, much less re-use it afterwards. SpaceX has since done it over 185 times.

 

[Grendelpuppy]

Rockets aren’t the answer.

Beanstalks are better than rockets, but you have to build them from orbit.

 

[Rotadom]

uuhhh - there's thousands of satellites orbiting earf.
they're there for shit you take for granted.

Now respond to my question. What has the Rover done? Granted, it produces better quality than bank cams but still.

 

[phrodeau]

Now respond to my question. What has the Rover done? Granted, it produces better quality than bank cams but still.

Proved the concept.

 

[PhiloDaddy]

This is one of the best threads for making my penis shrivel and fall off. Congratulations Literotica!

 

[Rotadom]

This is one of the best threads for making my penis shrivel and fall off. Congratulations Literotica!

Bro. You open the Political Board and then proceeded to open this thread and then proceeded to comment. Were you hard before all that and then made several conscious decisions to end up here?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Let's beak it down for my ignorant Democrat friends.

We have been supporting this program for over 20 years with public funds. And the "best" they can do it a 20 second flight and a big boom.

Now...let's put this in context. In just over 9 years...we went from putting monkeys in space...to putting a man on the moon and bringing them back. And we did this with slide rules.

Does this make any sense? 20 years...and boom under the leadership of a con artist...or just over 9 years we put a man on the moon.

Keep smoking your dope. Fuck you people are high

Yes lets put this in context. We have been supporting Space X for a little over twenty years. What has the result been? They have had close to two hundred successful launches and landings. They have taken supplies and even astronauts to the ISS. All things said they have been a good use of government money.

We did not put a man on the moon with slide rules. We had computers. Granted the computers of the day were probably bigger than your home and had less processing power than your cell phone but still we weren't primitives.

I don't love Elon. Hell I'd put him high on the list of scum sucking shitbags. He doesn't even appear to be that smart. He is just one more person who was born with a silver spoon and knew how to turn a million into a billion. No different than Donald Trump, Vince McMahon (I love pro-wrestling but I'm curious about Elon cus it seems like racism is the secret ingredient.) any many others. That doesn't take away from the fact that Space X is a GOOD program. Tesla is a good(ish) company. I say good(ish) because the reality is they were the spearhead but its proving pretty obvious as things move forward that they don't make great cars and now that the ground work has been made actual car manufacturers are shooting right past them in terms of quality. But I'm still happy we're here.

TLDR: No plan survives the battlefield.

One of the other huge problems with this attitude is that and I believe it was Nancy Pelosi but Dick Chenney said something similar. "We have to pass this bill to see what's in it!" "There are known knowns, known unknowns, Unknown knowns and unknown unknowns." I think Mike Tyson put it best in his youth though in reverse. "Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth."

Okay we're back. If you prefer pumping money into exploring the ocean I'm not gonna fight you. That's an easy win honest. But our budget is measured in TRILLIONS. I know you all have a hard time with numbers but a billion is ONE THOUSANE MILLION. A trillion is ONE THOUSAND BILLION. I don't give a fuck about a few hundred million dollars. We have a budget give of take of 3.5 T before we run a deficeit which we always do. If you are bitching about a few million you're thinking like a peasant.

 

[jaF0]

I don't think we should be molesting and polluting other places, regardless of cost.

 

[LupusDei]

I don't think we should be molesting and polluting other places, regardless of cost.

While it's an adorable sentiment, molesting other places is always preferable to our own. Especially, if those other places are effectively unused and can't sue us. Yes, that's a bit cynical take, but that's the reality, we won't stop our destructive behavior anytime soon, and if we can offload some of it off world, it's a net positive to the average.

 

[jaF0]

There is nothing positive about allowing the Human plague to spread.

 

[RoryN]

I'll add some additional color here, only because the media has managed more dumb takes on Starship than I anticipated (and I anticipated a lot):

*The Starship program has NOT been around 20 years. It was barely on paper in 2016 and didn't start physical testing until 2019. Most analysts thought it was a joke; four years later, it built a prototype that withstood max q. That's called a mic drop.

*The Starship program receives funding from the U.S. military, but NOT primarily for space flight. The military has an interest because the Starship concept could get supplies to soldiers overseas in hours, not days. Same with any type of cargo. (Same with people, but that's far more aspirational.) This was originally a key promise of the Space Shuttle.

*Elon is a total ass (yes, that's being kind), but he's sharp re: engineering. He can tell you how every part works in SpaceX's rockets, and his Falcon 9s are a technical marvel. His stubbornness probably caused the explosion you saw yesterday, though - at the very least, that launch site needs a flame trench, the debris as a result of not having one most likely damaged that thing when the engines started.

*Starship itself has already flown and landed successfully. If you watch the videos, you'll swear you're watching a grain silo belly flop, and then pivot to land on its butt. It's remarkable.

*The savings of using Starship vs. anything else NASA has in its arsenal are so immense that NASA engineers are having trouble with the calculations. Starship's concept is to be able to put massive amounts of cargo pretty much anywhere; NASA still measures things more or less by the cubic inch/foot.

*There's an environmental impact to what Starship is doing at Boca Chica, specifically when it comes to sea turtles. The thread starter focused on the environment initially, but didn't mention this - that's because she has no clue what she's talking about.

 

[LupusDei]

It's so sad the toxic personality of one man poisoning the perception of the most exciting developments in the past half century.

This is the stuff that in my mind absolves all that's wrong of having manchild billionaires around. Could it be done better? Seemingly, but the evidence says it apparently cannot.

I would love for one person to tell me want we will gain from this rocket in the next 50 years that we couldn't have achieved in other ways. One. Should be simple. Don't Google. If SpaceX is "legit" tell me within one minute how.

Cheap "mundane" orbital stuff of all kinds and flavors doesn't even show up on your radar I suppose. You apparently don't realize how deeply it is integrated in your everyday life already. And for all the drawbacks, I still would prefer US supremacy in aerospace to be preserved against the obvious alternatives, for now. Like it or hate it, Starship is the best if not the only chance at it. You may want to bow out of the arms race, but it won't stop because of that. And who owns the orbit, owns the planet. Starship, once fully operational will own the orbit for decades to come, with little to no competition.

And if an orbital telescope with unfolding mirrors the size of Starship doesn't make you hard or wet, there's little hope to argue anything else. And yes, astronomy is our best fundamental science laboratory, and that in turn enables everything.

Orbital manufacturing. It's the quiet thing nobody seems to mention, but potentially is the most revolutionary in very short term. Yes, the current list of known products that can't possibly be produced any other way and REQUIRES microgravity in their process aren't very long and remains somewhat disappointing, but much of it stops at the prohibitive cost and difficulty of orbital access. Nevertheless, for example more than one company right now explore possibilities of production (of optical cables, specifically) in single use orbital capsules, one roll of cable per launch, and somehow believe they can turn profit even so. Something like Starship makes such very straightforward and several orders of magnitude cheaper, enabling new interest in such research with potential avalanche effects.

Asteroid mining. Yes, that's still a long shot, but it's the only way forward. There's literally little to no alternative eventually, and as sooner we can take some of the most destructive mining off world the better. Again, Starship is the first and so far only viable option to potentially enable such activities. Interplanetary missions goes here as an asterisk, it's fun for fun and science, but not very consequential indeed, especially the obsession with Mars (if anything cloud cities in Venus upper atmosphere makes more sense and should be easier as an outpost.

Orbital solar power. Much hype, and much drawbacks, and the numbers doesn't quite come together, but if it ever does make sense, it's likely impossible without something like a Starship.

Will it prevent Covid? Will it clean up the planet? Will it help us control CO2?

Maybe. Yes. Yes.

If we're going to launch rockets, and we have to anyway, the switch to methane is overall good direction. Sure, there's always hydrogen, but it has a lot of problems of it's own. Right now, methane makes much sense, and almost everyone is switching over to it. But just like with electric cars, without the crazy guy it may or may not have happened as swiftly it goes.

We have been supporting this program for over 20 years with public funds. And the "best" they can do it a 20 second flight and a big boom.

WTF are you even talking about?

It was two minutes of flight, in a test where ridiculously may things went wrong from the start. Yes, it's a bit of bummer they didn't get to test reentry of the Starship, and the engines in vacuum regime, so yes, against the maximum program it was a failure, but as a test flight it was a success. The whole Starship program has been exceptionally quick and inexpensive and is nowhere near 20 years old, and is run how rocketry is done best. Are all the decisions optimal? Perhaps no, perhaps hell no, but we don't know yet, and that's the very point. But even if Starship forever remains elusive toy of a madman...

...If you talk about SpaceX in general, Falcon 9 is the most successful rocket in history by an insane margin already. To the point they are sailing dangerously close to becoming the only game in town. Indeed, it's the only current provider of human spaceflight besides Russia and China, and are pricing small rocketry out of existence now by providing ridesharing. It will go only worse in next five years or so, before any notable completion shows up and it's not a given. The only other medium to heavy lift non-Chinese (or Russian) rocket you can more or less reliably get a ride booked right now is India quasi-state. Everyone else is either sold out and sunsetting or not yet flying. Hell, some of those not yet flying are sold out years in advance.

Yes, SpaceX could enjoy and milk their total monopoly instead of toying with a pet project. But if successful, that pet project would cement their leadership by at least another order of magnitude, safe for likely several decades, so it's a very reasonable investment.

 

[Grendelpuppy]

^^^ 'Rumper, we can't even 'beam' power across a room and you and your Orange Brain think we can 'beam' it thousands of miles?

you are probably writing this idiotic comment that utilizes WiFi or Bluetooth and maybe satellite internet. the technology to beam power with high efficiency is well proven. it is just a question of the product of the antena and rectena areas.

 

[LupusDei]

And we have boom.

Testing the actual action of the emergency flight abort system (blowing the out of control ship up) was a little if any setback. The test didn't anticipate recovery of either first or second stage anyway, even if the optimal test program was longer.

The one thing they anticipated to reuse however, was "stage zero" -- the Orbital Launch Mount. To not have a proper flame trench and/or flame diverter was an aspirational and in hindsight very stupid decision, traceable to Elon himself.

That's where things went wrong in this test, some if not all other other problems propagated from and what would potentially constitute the greatest redesign and delay they will have. Because, they will at very
minimum need a month for the new concrete to set. And some concrete they will have to pour at any case, because what they had under the launch mount went into that little sandstorm the launch caused.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuPvv2mXgAIJgui?format=jpg&name=900x900

The scale of everything is huge here. It's more than 30 feet between those legs, and the structure inside the leg casing on the left is a staircase, those slabs likely 8 to 10 feet above each other. And under it in the crater it's already the groundwater seeping in.

 

[RoryN]

Musk just tweeted that they'll be ready to launch again in 1 - 2 months. Sounds very aggressive re: timeframe, but he said they have a diverter system ready to go now. Needs to be built and damage repaired, though...

 

[jaF0]

Seems eLonnie fired the smart people that told him he didn't know squat about building a launch pad.

 

[jaF0]

Asteroid mining.

That alone should be grounds to prohibit further development.


Seriously, the sooner Humans go extinct, the better for the future.

 

[icanhelp1]

Reaching for the stars is the essence of human consciousness.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

Asteroid mining. Yes, that's still a long shot, but it's the only way forward.

Not a long shot, and an absolute game changer. Access to abundant elements, factories in zero G. Starship, by slashing the $/lb in orbit, brings it to the near term goal. Exciting times!

 

[Grendelpuppy]

Testing the actual action of the emergency flight abort system (blowing the out of control ship up) was a little if any setback. The test didn't anticipate recovery of either first or second stage anyway, even if the optimal test program was longer.

The one thing they anticipated to reuse however, was "stage zero" -- the Orbital Launch Mount. To not have a proper flame trench and/or flame diverter was an aspirational and in hindsight very stupid decision, traceable to Elon himself.

That's where things went wrong in this test, some if not all other other problems propagated from and what would potentially constitute the greatest redesign and delay they will have. Because, they will at very
minimum need a month for the new concrete to set. And some concrete they will have to pour at any case, because what they had under the launch mount went into that little sandstorm the launch caused.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuPvv2mXgAIJgui?format=jpg&name=900x900

The scale of everything is huge here. It's more than 30 feet between those legs, and the structure inside the leg casing on the left is a staircase, those slabs likely 8 to 10 feet above each other. And under it in the crater it's already the groundwater seeping in.

Yep. Elon got into a bit of a hurry. I've actually visited the launch pads or the Saturn V rockets. Those diversion trenches and the water injection towers are there for a reason. A rocket motor with thousands of tons of thrust is just a nuke detonating in slow motion.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Yep. Elon got into a bit of a hurry. I've actually visited the launch pads or the Saturn V rockets. Those diversion trenches and the water injection towers are there for a reason. A rocket motor with thousands of tons of thrust is just a nuke detonating in slow motion.

I’ve seen The Incredibles so even I know big rockets need diversion trenches. It’s a major plot point.