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SpaceX's Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today

126 pointsby 3h agospace.com
32 comments
2h agoHN ↗

Only on X, sadly.

My experience however is that NASASpaceflight provides an overall better coverage than the official stream, only recasting when they don't have camera angles themselves (Such as when the ship is in space or during reentry)

1h agoHN ↗

They have a stream on their page starting 40min before launch.

Also can recommend the restream of everyday astronaut Tim Dodd

1h agoHN ↗

Yeah but it's just a white-labelled version of the X stream with all its warts.

1h agoHN ↗

That's the opposite of the criticism that was levelled at him, during earlier launches, when he was preferring his own cameras even though they only caught fog.

1h agoHN ↗

Which warts? I mean if you dislike Space X, what do you expect to get from it at all?

24m agoHN ↗

That’s sounds perfect. No “commentators” no “own angles”, no “buy our merch”, no whining about “my crappy blackmagic camera may have been damaged”

38m agoHN ↗

Only on X, sadly.

And it's SpaceX, not ESA, sadly.

51m agoHN ↗

I use to watch the nasaspaceflight and everyday astronaut streams but the official one is best for the actual launch. The other two are good for the commentary because if you ask a question in the chat they’ll sometimes answer it.

1h agoHN ↗

What an incredible feat of engineering, even if it doesn't make orbit. Just getting that much mass off the pad is mind-boggling.

1h agoHN ↗

Well considering the point of it is the make orbit, it would be a bit useless if it didn't.

Would HN describe a huge program that didn't do the thing it was designed to do a "feat of engineering"?

1h agoHN ↗

Yes. The Starship program is pushing the limits of engineering, if it fails today it doesn't make it unimpressive

I'd also consider the attempts at fusion energy to be very impressive engineering projects even though none have them have yielded a stable source of fusion energy

28m agoHN ↗

Blowing something up so hard it almost gets into space is a feat of engineering, even if all it does is rain debris from ahigh.

1h agoHN ↗

Both expected to be caught by chopsticks. Will be a first for Starship.

SpaceX's flight profile says both are splashdowns?

1h agoHN ↗

Article must be wrong.

  > During operational flights, SpaceX plans to bring both Super Heavy and Ship back to the launch pad, where they'll be caught by the tower's "chopstick" arms. The company has already done this three times with Super Heavy but has not yet attempted it with Ship.
1h agoHN ↗

That is operational flights, today’s is still a test. Splashdowns today.

1h agoHN ↗

Failed an eval lol. Corrected it, thanks.

11m agoHN ↗

The live channel has some video of recovery of the last starship which is pretty cool - it remained floating so they crawled up and removed some of the tiles to see how they performed, and actually reinstalled a few of them for the upcoming flight. So this mission will actually see some of the tiles flying for a second time.

1h agoHN ↗

Ship will also have to be outfitted with a life-support system ahead of crewed missions, which could be coming relatively soon. For example, NASA picked Ship to the be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to land people on the moon for the first time in 2028 on the Artemis IV mission.

Don't worry, there is absolutely no chance this will happen in 2028. There are many detailed takedowns of why the "Human Landing System" schedule is preposterous, but here's HN's idlewords:

https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/how-should-we-think-about-...

1h agoHN ↗

The official (completely unrealistic at this point) 2028 target is probably kept because Donald Trump's term ends in January 2029.

25m agoHN ↗

They could probably generate one with an AI model and he would believe it. No on e in his inner circle contradicts him anyway.

13m agoHN ↗

Don't you know that it's called "Super Intelligence" or SI now because Artificial sounds fake?

His lordship announced this to the world at the UN.

1h agoHN ↗

planned 6 orbits, 10hr's in space the load of satelites will deploy 10x the banwidth of a single falcon launch making the economics of this venture rather startling for any 'competition'. if they nail the deploy, relights, and soft landings, it will time for everybody to rethink everything * * keep in mind they are already tinkering with on orbit fuel tranfer technology, which will lead to routine bunkering * other things, like doing visual condition inspections of every ship in orbit means there experience base grows at a rate that other companys litteraly cant imagine.

19m agoHN ↗

How can you compare the economics of it if you just have the bandwidth and not the cost?

36m agoHN ↗

I remember all the Twitter account that keep saying Starship isn't physically / scientifically possible.

I am so looking forward to a successfully launch today.

10m agoHN ↗

Same with data centres in space, "Noooooo it cant work, heating in space, blah blah" same people, will never achieve anything in life as they only see limits.