Hacker News

Top stories

Live mirror
30 storiesupdated just nowView source snapshot
  1. Parley: Federated, decentralised chat that speaks plain IRC (mills.io)
    43comments
  2. AI companies in race to demonstrate their model most threatening to humanity (thecivilian.co.nz)
    152comments
  3. Show HN: Hntui – A TUI for Hacker News (github.com/ahmd-sh)
    7comments
  4. 37,500 border drawings: a map of the world as people remember it (habibicode.org)
    19comments
  5. Footguns with Postgres "at time zone 'UTC'" (bookofrevenue.com)
    41comments
  6. Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock (colo.to)
    355comments
  7. SpaceX's Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today (space.com)
    60comments
  8. Ember-1 (fireworks.ai)
    227comments
  9. When did Google get so weird? (sancho.bearblog.dev)
    779comments
  10. Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain (nissan-global.com)
    150comments
  11. Thinking fast and slow in AI: The role of metacognition (2021) (arxiv.org)
    45comments
  12. Self-Hosting on the Dark Web (alvarezrosa.com)
    95comments
  13. Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps (2025) (inkandswitch.com)
    55comments
  14. Functional Mechanical Sympathy [video] (youtube.com)
    7comments
  15. Guitar amp and effects pedal built on the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.06 (github.com/dashersw)
    56comments
  16. Alan Kay's answer to “Did the ENIAC have a BIOS”? (quora.com)
    43comments
  17. Made by Mechanical Means (felixrieseberg.com)
    13comments
  18. Show HN: PaperMono, e-ink fridge magnet shopping list with mobile web page (github.com/seamusc)
    1comments
  19. The smart home graveyard is getting crowded (theverge.com)
    19comments
  20. Prompting Claude Opus 5.5 (claude.com)
    155comments
  21. Lunar Terminator Paradox (secretsauce.net)
    60comments
  22. Don't couple your Go code to GitHub (iain.rocks)
    133comments
  23. The state of SIMD in Rust in 2026 (shnatsel.github.io)
    43comments
  24. Show HN: Lofi Cities – Pixel-art city nights with browser-generated lofi (loficities.com)
    114comments
  25. In an $80 motel room, a discovery to shed light on the origins of life (nytimes.com)
    97comments
  26. Deterministic Concurrency [video] (youtube.com)
    5comments
  27. Three Days in August: What a DDoS Attack Exposed in Our Network (nine.ch)
    8comments
  28. Reading’s Bayeux Tapestry (diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)
    22comments
  29. Imp is a full port of DSPy to the BEAM (github.com/deepfates)
    7comments
  30. What I did at Recurse Center (thill.me)
    38comments

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

161 pointsby 4h agospace.com
58 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)

2h agoHN ↗

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

Also can recommend the restream of everyday astronaut Tim Dodd

2h agoHN ↗

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

ETA: Sorry this was ambiguous, I'm complaining that the stream on spacex.com uses x.com, whereas there used to be a much better stream through youtube.com

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?

30m agoHN ↗

The streams are great, I just wish they were streamed on youtube like they used to be.

1h 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”

1h agoHN ↗

Only on X, sadly.

And it's SpaceX, not ESA, sadly.

1h 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.

2h 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.

2h 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

18m agoHN ↗

Could someone give me a eli5 of what makes that launch impressive compared to other rocket launches?

1h 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.

30m agoHN ↗

It certainly is, but my mind is more boggled by the Saturn V that did it 60 years ago. Space launch technology feels like it had a 30 year gap, as in, nothing significant happened between the Space Shuttle and the Falcon 9. And now, we are just catching up. Not just SpaceX, there is also Blue Origin, Rocketlab,... and everything that's happening in China.

An by the way, the whole point of Starship is not just doing it, it is doing it cheaply (by space standards). The whole reusability thing is part of it, and so is the "assembly line" approach that lets SpaceX treat their experimental rockets like fireworks. If the goal was just to lift a lot of mass off the ground, it is not even a great design, reusability in particular is costly in terms of payload capacity.

19m agoHN ↗

It's incredible to witness what humanity is capable of when pushed to our limits and appropriately motivated. The space race was in many ways a civilizational and existential fight for the U.S. The innovations this spurred in a relatively short span of time (and the risks the astronauts took) are numerous and impressive. I sometimes wonder that if in the absence of adversity, humans tend towards comfort and security and stability. Maybe that's obvious. Maybe most people with full bellies, warm homes, and physical security just aren't motivated to work 16 hour days for years on end and risk lives.

I suppose we should be grateful that SpaceX has found and collected enough of these crazy people in one place on this mission.

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.

53m 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.

28m agoHN ↗

Payload is 26 starlink v3 satellites.

F9 fits how many?

14m agoHN ↗

29 v2 satellites (around 4 times lighter than v3)

2h 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-...

2h agoHN ↗

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

1h 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.

54m 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.

39m agoHN ↗

Surely AI stands for "American Intelligence"! Renaming incoming, Google will comply first.

33m agoHN ↗

There is (2 minutes before Flight 14, maybe it changes in 10 minutes) low chance, but not no chance.

This would be an ambitious but achievable cadence for Starship, particularly if the tanker Starships didn’t have to be reusable, and could be made without a heat shield or control surfaces. Just how much time SpaceX has to reach this cadence is an interesting question, since right now NASA and SpaceX are locked in a game of chicken around who can commit to the least realistic timeline. But it probably has to get in gear by early 2027.

This is good evaluation. A launch every week in 2027 is ambitious, but not impossible.

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.

1h agoHN ↗

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

1h 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.

52m 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.

40m agoHN ↗

Limits are security. Dont have to do this, don't have to risk that, no need for uncertainty, anxiety won't kill the weak confused mind...you can't fail if you never try (big brain!). That's the type. It is called cowards ;)

39m agoHN ↗

Totally, just like all the haters of the Hyperloop!

37m agoHN ↗

Different category of doubts. It's unreasonable to say starship can't work in a world where the Saturn V did work.

For datacenters in space to work, they have to solve a bunch of unsolved problems and be more economical than datacenters in earth.

9m agoHN ↗

You’re right, I’m just back from the city, took no time and was so cheap thanks to the hyperloop. Next week I go to Asia, I think I will use the rocket transport system Musk announced a few years ago. It’s so nice how my Tesla is making me so much money while I’m traveling, offering taxi service to everybody around. Next will I will get the add-on to have it join the Tesla compute fleet - it’s free compute if you think about it, given the solar roof is generating the energy! Might even get one of those humanoid robot to replace me at work. Just hope it’s not raining too much, my cybertruck steel plates are rusting a bit. Also, my kids are really enjoying their summer camp at the Mars colony!

27m agoHN ↗

Watching that take off is breathtaking. I've been a space nerd since a little kid and I cannot believe how cool this is. Fuck yeah!

26m agoHN ↗

Status update: It launched. Looks very good so far. At nearly 100km altitude four minutes in, most engines nominal. Superheavy separated successfully.

Inspiring to watch, really.

21m agoHN ↗

They seem to have reached near-orbit with one vacuum engine failing. Lets see if they decide to go all the way to orbit or if the failure causes an abort.

19m agoHN ↗

Abort confirmed :(

Update: Or maybe not? They're reviewing the status now.

Update 2: Go for orbit!

Update 3: Orbital insertion complete!!

4m agoHN ↗

What was interesting is how short the single engine burn was to bring it from suborbital to orbital. It was just a few seconds. I'm not even sure I saw the altitude change.

7m agoHN ↗

Confirmed, orbit!

Hell yeah, that was the longest 10 minutes.

20m agoHN ↗

Not a fan of Elon Musk at all, but SpaceX is damn impressive. Watching these key launches always makes me emotional for our species and what we can accomplish together.

17m agoHN ↗

I tuned in at T+11 just in time to hear the announcer talking about splashdown in the Indian ocean and that they weren't going to orbit today, followed immediately by saying the team is still considering options and trying to find a way to get to orbit. We'll see what happens.

T+22: Go for orbit!