OT: Crew Dragon Liftoff!

3Diva

namffuak said:

Divamakeup said:

Luciel said:

LeatherGryphon said:

kyoto kid said:

Paintbox said:

I loved the live stream, and personally I cant wait to see Starship succesfully launch for the first time. It will be like going from a small wooden raft that can sail the undeep waters near shore, to a ship that can sail the high seas!

..having some misgivings about the Starship project.  Just the look of it sort of reminds me of the old television  series Salvage One. There just seems to be something "cheap" about it and not in a good sense of the term. How many failures now with the worse being the explosion the other day of SN4. Meanwhile the completed portion of the SN6 body nearly crumpled in high winds while being moved (there is still a serious dent in it).  Compared to the Falcon series, this looks like a "backyard" operation, sort of like strapping a rocket engine to a metal farm silo.   

Yeah, that's been my developed opinion.  Oak tree mechanics.  Images of rockets out of a child's book.  Too much hype, too little engineering.  If they keep it up they might learn enough to get above the clouds.  Either that, or run out of money.  But even if they succeed I would not be signing up to be the first passenger.  The Falcons on the otherhand are proper rockets.  And the recovery of the 1st stages is very impressive.  However, this Starship thing is a pipedream.  But I so wanted to believe in it.

Although, I've told the story here before, when I started college in 1966 at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida 40 miles south of the Space Center our orientation night was an evening gathering on the grass in the quadrangle to watch projected movie films of early Cape Canaveral rocket failures.  The college was founded and taught by engineers from the Cape.  And the admonition was, "you're here to learn to not repeat these mistakes".

Private places generally do everything as cheap as possible with as few "extras" and as little effort as they can. Money is the main target after all, so "cheap and good enough" is always good enough.

 

Actually, the government most often gives the contracts to the lowest bidder. They're less likely to be concerned about quality than a private business too - since they don't have to worry about backlash from customers or shareholders.

The fascinating aspect here is that astronaut survival has become an absolute requirement now that private industry is doing the work. NASA didn't want to spend the money back when they were the only game in town.

Sadly, you're probably right. Which is likely what lead to disasters like Challenger and Columbia. 

davidwski_16294691f0

kyoto kid said:

Paintbox said:

I loved the live stream, and personally I cant wait to see Starship succesfully launch for the first time. It will be like going from a small wooden raft that can sail the undeep waters near shore, to a ship that can sail the high seas!

..having some misgivings about the Starship project.  Just the look of it sort of reminds me of the old television  series Salvage One. There just seems to be something "cheap" about it and not in a good sense of the term. How many failures now with the worse being the explosion the other day of SN4. Meanwhile the completed portion of the SN6 body nearly crumpled in high winds while being moved (there is still a serious dent in it).  Compared to the Falcon series, this looks like a "backyard" operation, sort of like strapping a rocket engine to a metal farm silo.   

The entire design and development philosophy for what SpaceX and Virgin are doing right now is totally different than when NASA was running everything.

The current NASA Mars (Boeing) prototype is ten years old and is just getting ready for it's FIRST test.  SpaceX SN4 was less than two years old and had four other successful tests.  SN5 is already less than one month from testing.  They don't care about the number of failures, they learn from each of them, and build it better for the next test, which gets that much farther.

Which philosophy seems to be working better?

The Starship protypes that exist are basically missing ALL of the exterior features that will make them look pretty, and are another 4-8 years from actual functionality.  Personally, I'll trade aesthetics for functionality.

davidwski_16294691f0

Divamakeup said:

namffuak said:

Divamakeup said:

Luciel said:

LeatherGryphon said:

kyoto kid said:

Paintbox said:

I loved the live stream, and personally I cant wait to see Starship succesfully launch for the first time. It will be like going from a small wooden raft that can sail the undeep waters near shore, to a ship that can sail the high seas!

..having some misgivings about the Starship project.  Just the look of it sort of reminds me of the old television  series Salvage One. There just seems to be something "cheap" about it and not in a good sense of the term. How many failures now with the worse being the explosion the other day of SN4. Meanwhile the completed portion of the SN6 body nearly crumpled in high winds while being moved (there is still a serious dent in it).  Compared to the Falcon series, this looks like a "backyard" operation, sort of like strapping a rocket engine to a metal farm silo.   

Yeah, that's been my developed opinion.  Oak tree mechanics.  Images of rockets out of a child's book.  Too much hype, too little engineering.  If they keep it up they might learn enough to get above the clouds.  Either that, or run out of money.  But even if they succeed I would not be signing up to be the first passenger.  The Falcons on the otherhand are proper rockets.  And the recovery of the 1st stages is very impressive.  However, this Starship thing is a pipedream.  But I so wanted to believe in it.

Although, I've told the story here before, when I started college in 1966 at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida 40 miles south of the Space Center our orientation night was an evening gathering on the grass in the quadrangle to watch projected movie films of early Cape Canaveral rocket failures.  The college was founded and taught by engineers from the Cape.  And the admonition was, "you're here to learn to not repeat these mistakes".

Private places generally do everything as cheap as possible with as few "extras" and as little effort as they can. Money is the main target after all, so "cheap and good enough" is always good enough.

 

Actually, the government most often gives the contracts to the lowest bidder. They're less likely to be concerned about quality than a private business too - since they don't have to worry about backlash from customers or shareholders.

The fascinating aspect here is that astronaut survival has become an absolute requirement now that private industry is doing the work. NASA didn't want to spend the money back when they were the only game in town.

Sadly, you're probably right. Which is likely what lead to disasters like Challenger and Columbia. 

Sadly, people who make statements like that probably understand little to nothing about how the military actually operates.

3Diva

davidwski_16294691f0 said:

Divamakeup said:

namffuak said:

Divamakeup said:

Luciel said:

LeatherGryphon said:

kyoto kid said:

Paintbox said:

I loved the live stream, and personally I cant wait to see Starship succesfully launch for the first time. It will be like going from a small wooden raft that can sail the undeep waters near shore, to a ship that can sail the high seas!

..having some misgivings about the Starship project.  Just the look of it sort of reminds me of the old television  series Salvage One. There just seems to be something "cheap" about it and not in a good sense of the term. How many failures now with the worse being the explosion the other day of SN4. Meanwhile the completed portion of the SN6 body nearly crumpled in high winds while being moved (there is still a serious dent in it).  Compared to the Falcon series, this looks like a "backyard" operation, sort of like strapping a rocket engine to a metal farm silo.   

Yeah, that's been my developed opinion.  Oak tree mechanics.  Images of rockets out of a child's book.  Too much hype, too little engineering.  If they keep it up they might learn enough to get above the clouds.  Either that, or run out of money.  But even if they succeed I would not be signing up to be the first passenger.  The Falcons on the otherhand are proper rockets.  And the recovery of the 1st stages is very impressive.  However, this Starship thing is a pipedream.  But I so wanted to believe in it.

Although, I've told the story here before, when I started college in 1966 at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida 40 miles south of the Space Center our orientation night was an evening gathering on the grass in the quadrangle to watch projected movie films of early Cape Canaveral rocket failures.  The college was founded and taught by engineers from the Cape.  And the admonition was, "you're here to learn to not repeat these mistakes".

Private places generally do everything as cheap as possible with as few "extras" and as little effort as they can. Money is the main target after all, so "cheap and good enough" is always good enough.

 

Actually, the government most often gives the contracts to the lowest bidder. They're less likely to be concerned about quality than a private business too - since they don't have to worry about backlash from customers or shareholders.

The fascinating aspect here is that astronaut survival has become an absolute requirement now that private industry is doing the work. NASA didn't want to spend the money back when they were the only game in town.

Sadly, you're probably right. Which is likely what lead to disasters like Challenger and Columbia. 

Sadly, people who make statements like that probably understand little to nothing about how the military actually operates.

I'm not sure I catch your drift. NASA isn't the US Military, neither was the company that build Challenger and Columbia.

fred9803

The reality is that almost no one outside the military services ever become astronauts. Some haven't been but the vast majority are. Like most of their predecessors both the SpaceX crew are military people. A large number of NASA missions including the space shuttle had military payloads. I'm not saying it's agood or bad thing but just the way things have been since NASA was founder in 1958.

 

kyoto kid

davidwski_16294691f0 said:

kyoto kid said:

Paintbox said:

I loved the live stream, and personally I cant wait to see Starship succesfully launch for the first time. It will be like going from a small wooden raft that can sail the undeep waters near shore, to a ship that can sail the high seas!

..having some misgivings about the Starship project.  Just the look of it sort of reminds me of the old television  series Salvage One. There just seems to be something "cheap" about it and not in a good sense of the term. How many failures now with the worse being the explosion the other day of SN4. Meanwhile the completed portion of the SN6 body nearly crumpled in high winds while being moved (there is still a serious dent in it).  Compared to the Falcon series, this looks like a "backyard" operation, sort of like strapping a rocket engine to a metal farm silo.   

The entire design and development philosophy for what SpaceX and Virgin are doing right now is totally different than when NASA was running everything.

The current NASA Mars (Boeing) prototype is ten years old and is just getting ready for it's FIRST test.  SpaceX SN4 was less than two years old and had four other successful tests.  SN5 is already less than one month from testing.  They don't care about the number of failures, they learn from each of them, and build it better for the next test, which gets that much farther.

Which philosophy seems to be working better?

The Starship protypes that exist are basically missing ALL of the exterior features that will make them look pretty, and are another 4-8 years from actual functionality.  Personally, I'll trade aesthetics for functionality.

...but how much more can he really sink into such a project if such failures keep occurring.  He may be wealthy but doesn't have the resources of a government behind him like NASA had during the space race of the 1960s.  Furthermore, both the Mercury and Gemini programmes used rockets originally developed for use as ICBMs (Redstone, Atlas and Titan). The Saturn series was developed for the Apollo programme.