Epic, hugely successful first high-altitude test of Starship.

Twitter ^ | 12/09/20 | Eric Berger

[rlmorel]

You should check out this Free Republic thread I started in September of 2017:

How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster (Spacex video showing landing failures)

It isn't that I have a need to self promote, but I did a search for "Bill Whittle Spacex failure" and...near the top on DuckDuckGo was my thread from FR...:)

The main point was: failures can be useful-very useful. And as Bill Whittle had pointed out when he showed it during a live SpaceX stream...this is a sign of a good company with a healthy attitude.

They are realistic, they KNOW there are going to be failures, so the extract every ounce of lessons learned and...positivity out of them, even to the point of making this highly entertaining video!

Bill Whittle was also right-NASA would be wringing its hands over each failure. SpaceX says, okay, lets fix the problem and test again.

Love it.

[mlo]

"Not sure how the Astronuts are supposed to survive that."

This is a prototype. It's purpose was to make the flight to see how it performed. It was never going to fly again no matter how it landed. They got what they wanted out of it.

Spacex crashed a lot of Falcon boosters before perfecting the landing of those. Now it's routine.

[Ozark Tom]

No.

[markman46]

You do understand that starship is in development and this was a test flight. And bad stuff happens, also SpaceX has more protypes already either built or in different stages of building

[minnesota_bound]

I would hate to be a asto nut in future flights if this happens.......

Spacex super heavy starship landing crash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d8kd3LHNV0&feature=emb_logo

[Ozark Tom]

The B-17 almost failed acceptance by the AAC in testing, as Boeing’s 299 prototype crashed upon takeoff of the second outing. Boeing built 13 more at their own expense and loaned them for testing against the Douglas B-18 Bolo. 12,000 B-17 versus 350 B-18 built.

That wouldn’t have been ideal for the war effort. That’s the whole point of prototypes put through testing. Fix it and fly again. All X-programs break hardware to step up to a better version through iterations adding more capability.

SN8 odds were 3/10 for a landing. That it performed properly until the last two seconds was an engineering success beyond expectations. They were very pleased that it pulled-off the return to vertical at the landing zone.

[Ozark Tom]

Full-up launch will likely be 18 miles from inhabited areas. Perhaps they will actually build a sea launch platform.

[mad_as_he$$]

+. Exactly. Hugh success.

[JustaTech]

Passengers will need gimbaled seats to handle the transition from horizontal to vertical. Looks like a fun ride when they get it reliable.

[UNGN]

I understand that, but this type of landing is hundreds of times less safe than a parachute landing or winged landing, because the vertical speeds are so much higher.

When a government safety bureaucrat see’s something like this, they say to themselves “not on my watch”.

Muskateer Kids that think people will be rocketing off to Tokyo by 2027, have not met Joe Biden’s FAA, yet.

[COBOL2Java]

"We look forward to working with President Biden on sharing space technology"

[mlo]

"When a government safety bureaucrat see’s something like this, they say to themselves “not on my watch”."

Nobody is looking at it that way. This flight is part of the development process. Spacex is using iterative development, meaning the build things and see how they perform, and improve with each version. They weren't flying something they expected to be the final version. This was draft #1, specifically built to make one flight intended to lead to information to improve the design. Everyone involved knows this.