NASA, nor anyone else, has done this before. I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say NASA did this already.
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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I hate Elon just as much as the next guy, but pretending that this wasn’t a marvel of engineering is really disingenuous. People with intelligence beyond my comprehension made that a reality, and just because the company had his face on it, it doesn’t make it any less impressive
Wait, when did NASA land a fully reusable rocket like fucking Buck Rogers?
Then do it again, but capture it with the freakin' launch tower?
When did NASA even have a reusable rocket? Oh, the shuttle, the bastardized money pit for NSA/NRO/Air Force, that appears to have been designed to orbit a surveillance satellite chassis, which most people know as Hubble (it's one of many, this one being used to surveil the universe, instead of the earth).
And the shuttle was a quasi-reusable orbiter, not a rocket.
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I've seen so many people grudgingly pretending what they saw wasn't one of the coolest fucking things they've seen all year all because they hate Musk. Like, you know he's not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right? By all accounts he's more of a hindrance and these amazing fears of engineering have been accomplished despite him, not because of him.
I personally don't really care how big of a douche Musk is, as long as he's willing to fund these kinds of things.
So I was teaching some kids snowboarding, one kid started talking to me about musk on the chairlift. He tells me that musk is the greatest engineer to ever live. I say that he's really more of a business man buying up companies. Kid is not convinced. I tell him that the only engineering that musk may have done was software engineering on PayPal. Kid thinks that's great support of his claim.
Adults and 11 year olds are pretty much the same, so I would say there's lots of people that think musk is a super genius. Probably a dwindling amount, but there's a lot of people on earth.
He bought co-founder status at Paypal too IIRC. He was ousted in part because he wanted to rename it "x.com". Weird that.
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these amazing fears of engineering
😱
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Because they are impressive in the way NASA was. Which is the problem - we should be doing this as a nation and not subsidizing whatever a billionaire fancies at the moment.
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For me being impressed with SpaceX is kinda like loving a piece of art even though the creator turned out to be an asshole. Or liking Star Trek, even though Berman was shady af to put it mildly.
What SpaceX does is very impressive from a technical point of view. Even if the rocket never amounts to anything except this one successful test, it's still amazing they pulled it off. It tickles my engineer brain. And I think it's worth to honor all the people that made it happen, despite them having to work for Musk. Combine this with what could be in the future and you can hopefully see why people hail this test flight.
Now I still have serious doubts about Starship in the moon program. The on orbit refueling seems very sketchy and unproven at this point. Sure they will get two rockets into orbit, mate them up and transfer some fuel, that's a given at this point. But how much fuel are we talking? And how fast does the turnaround need to be to prevent losing a lot of it? How many ships and how many launches? Will this completely offset the cheaper launch costs due to reusability? It's a huge unknown and will push back the moon program to well into the 2030s.
first of all, allow me to State my opinion of Elon musk in one short sentence.
second of all, I will answer your question.
Lots of people here with very well fleshed out takes. Mine is simpler though, and by no means mutually exclusive:
Good marketing.
They know how to advertise themselves as a brand. They're easy to follow on any social media platform. For one or another, people are going to be looking at them- either in admiration, comparing it to others, just to be critical, or simply out of curiosity.
NASA makes extensive use of contractors. The moon hardware was largely designed, built and tested by private companies.
If SpaceX landing and reusing rockets is not impressive to you then what is?
Disclaimer: Fuck Elon Musk and all the shady shit he's been pulling off.
That said, this is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in terms of the potential it holds to shape the future.
Up until 5 short years ago we had:
- No main booster recovery
- No rocket nearly as powerful as this one
- No successful flight of a full-flow stage engine
- Nobody even considering the catch with chopsticks thing
- No private company testing super heavy lift vehicles (BO is about to enter the chat as well)
- No push for reusability at all
This was all built on top of the incredible engineering of NASA, but this one launch today has all of the above ticked.
This is like making the first aeroplane that's able to land and be flown again. SpaceX uses this example as well, like, imagine how expensive any plane ticket would have to be if you had to build a brand new A380 every single time people wanted to fly and then crashing it into the sea.
Going to space is EXPENSIVE. If this program succeeds it will both massively reduce the cost to space and spin off hundreds of companies looking to do the same in various ways.
Look at any new rocket currently in development, they all include some level of reusability in the design and that's all thanks to the incredible engineers of SpaceX paving the way, first with Falcon 9 and now with Starship.
We're talking industrial revolution levels of progress and new frontiers in our lifetimes, which is very, very exciting.
no rocket as powerful as this one.
So I'm confused on this because people still seem to be using Starships's old estimates of 100 tons to LEO orbit, which the SLS can put 145 tons to LEO.
Then 6 months ago Musk got on stage and updated the specs to Say that Starships's current design can only do 40-50 tons.
This feels awfully familiar for anyone that's seen early Tesla specs/presentations/promises and I can't help but wonder as to the validity of everyone saying SpaceX is mostly insulated from Musk's "influence."
To be very honest even if Starship is able to only lift 50 tons, which I'm sure they'll be able to hit 100/150 tons eventually. The huge difference in cost would easily cover the extra times Starship would have to fly, compared to SLS. Considering each flight of a SLS will be around 4 billion dollars.
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A bit of a timeline correction. The falcon 9 started landing succesfully in 2016. So 8 years ago but your argument still stands.
That can't be right! 2016 was just.... Fuck I'm getting old so fast
I hate Musk and his personal everything, but Like SpaceX. However, when people gush about reusability, they seem to forget the 135 Space Shuttle missions (2 fatal failures , yes.). All done with 5 vehicles. Yes expensive etc, but truly amazing.
Also, I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary. Impressive? Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right. There’d be no NASA by now.
Like SpaceX. However, when people gush about reusability, they seem to forget the 135 Space Shuttle missions (2 fatal failures , yes.). All done with 5 vehicles. Yes expensive etc, but truly amazing.
The Space Shuttle was a marvel of engineering. But while it was reusable, it wasn't actually good at it. Reusability was supposed to bring down cost and turnaround time and it did neither. And not just that, it was actually much more expensive than competing expendable rockets. Plus, it had lots of other issues like being dangerous as fuck. You couldn't abort at all for major parts of the ascent and there was the whole issue with the fragile heat protection tiles, both of which caused fatalities.
I think part of the reason why people aren't impressed by the Shuttle anymore is because it flew 135 missions. It's 40 year old technology. And it's not like SpaceX are just doing the same thing again 40 years later, they're reusing their rockets in a completely different way, which no one else had done before. And in doing so they seem to be avoiding most of the disadvantages that came with the Shuttle's design.
Also, I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary. Impressive? Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
Sure, I wouldn't say that no one else could do this with a similar amount of money (and the will to actually do it). Whether you want to call it revolutionary or not is subjective, but they're definitely innovating a lot more than any other large player in spaceflight. The Falcon 9 is a huge step forward for rocket reusability and SpaceX have also been the first to fly a full-flow staged combustion engine as well as the most powerful rocket ever. They're making spaceflight exciting again after like 40 years of stagnation and I think that's what resonates with people.
I think your last sentence answers the OP in a nutshell. There's nothing more to it than that, and there needn't be.
The space shuttle wasn't as reusable as it was claimed to be.
Each airframe required massive refurbishment after every flight.
And the "crashes" you're talking about were part of the project process, articles that were never going to be any more than test objects to begin with.
NASA crashed a lot of stuff, unintentionally. Three off of the top of my head, killed 15 astronauts, all which were preventable (not to mention the launch pad failures getting to Apollo).
NASA/NACA/Air Force crashed a lot of stuff along the way.
Ffs they knew Columbia had a tile problem, and said "it'll be OK". They knew it had been too cold for the booster seals on Discovery, and launched anyway.
Yes, but it’s essentially incremental engineering, made possible by ginormous funding, including NASA money, and a private company doing things that NASA can-t politically afford.
NASA spent about 50 Billion today-dollars developing (not launching) the shuttle program and that went to private contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, United Space, etc.) Starship has a long way to go to hit those numbers.
I really don’t find anything SpaceX is doing revolutionary
Really? Nothing? Many people said what Falcon 9 now does on a regular basis could not be done. No one was even trying. The closest plans were still going to land horizontally and went nowhere. Now, you have to explain why you're not landing your booster, and what your plans are to fix that going forward: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/international/2024/09/11/china-wants-to-replace-jeff-bezos-as-musks-greatest-space-threat/
They quite literally revolutionized the space industry in terms of the cost to launch to orbit.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right. There’d be no NASA by now.
Yet another way they've revolutionized the industry. Almost everyone is doing expendable tests now so that they can move forward quickly. Columbia started construction in 1975, launched for the first time in 1981. When they launched it, it was a fully decked out space shuttle and they put the whole thing on the line - including two astronauts. Imagine NASA trying to do that now. They'd be grounded so hard they'd be jealous of Mankind having a table to land on.
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The Space Shuttle missions did not recycle the rockets, not to mention that the SpaceX missions were rated super-heavy: Only Apollo has done this before in America.
Imagine NASA crashing 4 Shuttles before getting landing right.
You think they didn’t?
The Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) from shuttle launched were recycled. They parachuted into the ocean after being jettisoned and were recovered and refused. They just didn't land themselves. The external fuel tank was not reused.
There was an extensive amount of refurbishment required to re-use the SRBs. Not to mention they had to be physically recovered, and salt water certainly made the process more complicated.
The shuttle itself needed each of its heat shield tiles replaced, which due to the shape of the shuttle were all unique.
The fuel tank was not reused.
The shuttle was meant to be a leap forward in rocket reusability, but it didn’t really pan out that way. There’s good reason the program was scrapped and not replaced with another space plane.
The Starship booster has the potential to launch multiple times per day. The only refurbishment period is how long it takes to refuel it.
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TIL, thanks. That’s just a small part of the rocket though
Between the orbiter (reused), the boosters (reused), and the external fuel tank (not reused), which parts are not "just a small part" (in terms of technology/complexity/cost, not physical size)?
I take the part about "a small part" back as that's a misleading term for what I meant: The Super Heavy booster is much bigger in both technology/complexity and physical size and has many more parts than the old space shuttle rockets as it needs to carry the weight of two space shuttle orbiters. Plus, spaceplane is weird.
Remember, unless we're talking about Enterprise, "space shuttle rockets" includes the orbiter itself. The orbiter's main engines were where all that fuel from the external tank was going, after all! From that perspective, I would argue that the main "space shuttle rocket" was definitely much more complex than the Super Heavy booster, because the crew stuff, cargo stuff, spaceplane stuff, etc. was integrated into it.
I feel like your criticism of the shuttle system being less reusable than advertised might have been more applicable if we were talking about the Soviet Buran (which indeed used expendable Energia rockets to reach orbit), not NASA's shuttles.
I was under the impression that a "rocket" does not include the payload. Now that I search it up, I am not sure what to call that part.
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Here's some solid numbers:
The Shuttle was so expensive that it might have been better to keep using the Saturn V. It accomplished a lot, but was ultimately a failure at its original goal of a reusable rocket with a fast turnaround. Some of the old hopes for it were to launch 100 Shuttle missions per year. As problems were found, it was clear it would never be close to that.
Falcon 9 was already an order of magnitude drop from what came before. Being able to grab the Starship booster by the chopstick method means it can quite possibly do the quick turnaround the Shuttle promised. That could mean another order of magnitude drop. Possibly even two orders of magnitude.
That's transformative. It's not just cheaper. It let's things be done that weren't possible before.
One subtle thing that's already come out of this is related to Starlink. Now, this has a whole lot of problems that I won't get into here, but it does have one fascinating effect. A rocket coming back down generates plasma that blocks radio signals to the ground. This means there's a blackout time where everyone in mission control stands by nervously while waiting to hear if it blew up or not.
What Starlink does is provide a high bandwidth link above the rocket, letting them relay data back to the ground. This means that not only do we have full communication during reentry, but even a live video feed of the exterior. This was not possible until fairly recently.
It should also be noted that we SpaceX didn't do this on their own. They benefited from decades of NASA R&D, launch facilities, and funding. Their biggest success comes from working around the pork barrel politics that hangs around NASA's neck.