Thread

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

304 points · 367 comments · geox

Zigurd · 1790601391 · focus · HN ↗
Having an impossible critical path will be the demise of the starship project. Too many things have to work that cannot be tested out of order. Too many of those things that needed to work years ago still don't. And those are the easy ones.
The items I'm listing here are just a subset of the critical path, and each milestone along the way will take months, optimistically, and years more realistically. To the point that starship won't be relevant to moon missions or any commercial use by the time it does what it needs to do to even partially fulfill the plans for it:
It needs to meet payload specifications. Currently it is off by a factor of two, which sounds doable until you realize the spec is 100 tons, and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system.
It needs a launch cadence fast enough so that refueling doesn't take 15 separate starship tankers. Currently it would take years to refuel one single starship to make a one-way trip to the moon.
There's just a minor milestone on the way to that launch cadence: catching both stages.
Once both stages are reliably caught after a mission, refurbishment needs to be minimal. Proving that out will take several missions.
This is a simplified list of items on the critical path, but reaching each of these items has risks, and if those risks prove to be problems to solve, then each of those problems has a list of tasks and tests associated with it.
Some people think very highly of Elon for proposing technologically elegant solutions. But he's got a really big blind spot for the project management implications.
1. peab · 1790601626 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm sure you also thought falcon was going to fail, Tesla would never work out, and Twitter would collapse after Elon bought it.
  1. toasty228 · 1790601861 · focus · HN ↗
    Conveniently ignoring every of his failed projects, a timeless classic
    inglor_cz · 1790602190 · focus · HN ↗
    As far as space goes, there isn't any. The closest is Falcon Heavy, which turned out much more complicated and expensive than originally expected. But it flies.
    ronnier · 1790603060 · focus · HN ↗
    Failure is a part of life and is one aspect of our growth as humans. If one has never failed then one has probably never attempted to do much in life.
    toasty228 · 1790603488 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    orangecat · 1790605114 · focus · HN ↗
    Noted failure Babe Ruth struck out 1330 times, which was a record that lasted until Mickey Mantle failed even harder.
  2. Zigurd · 1790601906 · focus · HN ↗
    Reusable falcon 9 boosters are an informative history: how many years did it take to successfully land a falcon 9 booster? Scale your expectations appropriately.
    SenHeng · 1790602289 · focus · HN ↗
    But it happened still.
    panick21_ · 1790603048 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a bad comparison. Falcon 9 wasn't developed to be reusable. And it it didn't actually take that long. Also Starship has already proven that Starship booster can land. And Starship itself has cleanly landed on the ocean.
    There is still a question about turnaround time, but just comparing the state now to early Falcon 9 is not accurate.
  3. oblio · 1790602286 · focus · HN ↗
    Musk also has FSD, the Boring Company, Tesla Solar Roof, Cybertruck, Hyperloop, etc.
    Let's stop pretending he's God.
    ronnier · 1790602654 · focus · HN ↗
    Fsd is amazing. I use it daily, it completely changed my daily drive in that I don’t. All of my driving is now on fsd, I sit back and chill while the car takes me to my destination.
    totallymike · 1790603310 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    peab · 1790605005 · focus · HN ↗
    The craziest part about FSD is that people still think it doesn't work.
    The fact that you can pay the average price for a car, and get a car that fully drives itself today, is mind boggling.
    peab · 1790603468 · focus · HN ↗
    FSD is on the path of being incredibly successful. You really have to try it, if you haven't already.
    Boring Company is also on the path to being successful, it's just not advertised much.
    Solar roof - yes, this one I would mark as a failure.
    Cybertruck - they're still selling, so not a failure. But not as great as originally promised.
    Hyperloop - this could still come after boring company succeeds.
    Nobody is saying he's god. But maybe, he understands engineering better than some commenters on HN, that's all.
    oblio · 1790608109 · focus · HN ↗
    > Boring Company is also on the path to being successful, it's just not advertised much.
    ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? It's a marketing gimmick with lower transport capacity than a horse and buggy (and similar travel speed!) that's distracting cities like Vegas and Nashville from actual public transit.
    It's an abject failure.
    > If you were to take what should be public transportation planning and turn it into a neoliberal nightmare, this is exactly what you would get".
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegas_Loop" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegas_Loop
    > Hyperloop - this could still come after boring company succeeds.
    If my grandma had wheels, she'd be a bycicle.
    Also, my guess is that you guys are all American. For the kind of money they're investing they could just start an automous train/tram company and the environment and humanity would be much better off.
    peab · 1790611698 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah yes - a company is such a failure that it recently raised 3 billion dollars at a 23 billion dollar valuation?
    If it's successful, their boring machine will tunnel 10x faster and 10x cheaper than competitors, and it will be the one making new tunnels for all sorts of trains.
    oblio · 1790615037 · focus · HN ↗
    That just says Musk is a good company salesman. Speaking of which, I can't find news about this funding round (found it; turns out there is a lot of dumb money out there). Plus Musk is famous for shady company operations (SolarCity being acquired by Tesla at an inflated price to pay off his family).
    Last I read about them their tunnel boring tech wasn't revolutionary, it was just smaller diameter tunnels.
    blisterpeanuts · 1790644991 · focus · HN ↗
    Typically, tunneling involves abandoning the tunneling machine underground because it's too difficult and expensive to retrieve. The Boring Company's innovation was to find a way to retrieve the machine inexpensively, thus significantly reducing the cost of tunneling.
    They also operate the machines remotely, so that humans are not risking their lives underground.
    Tunnels are a good thing. They cut across a city without paving over more greenery. They will reduce surface traffic.
    [deleted] · 1790605061 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    oblio · 1790608156 · focus · HN ↗
    We have truly lost the plot, oh well, once you make something part of your identity, reason won't take it out.
    qwerpy · 1790611781 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah seriously. Saw a Rivian parked with all kinds of anti-Elon accessories: custom license plate, anti-Elon bumper sticker AND a anti-cybertruck sticker. Was fun to park my cybertruck next to it and take some joke photos but in retrospect I should probably keep my distance from unhinged people like that.
    albatross79 · 1790645703 · focus · HN ↗
    Lol, you bought a cybertruck?
    qwerpy · 1790694688 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah it’s awesome! Can’t think of a better, safer vehicle for an active family. Charges for free from my roof solar. Carries all the large toys. Best of all it drives itself anywhere I need to go, it’s like I have my own driver.
  4. rTX5CMRXIfFG · 1790602321 · focus · HN ↗
    i personally wanted those to work (except Twitter, i believe social media is net net bad for society)... and yet i don't feel the need to jerk him off with my hands
  5. snarfy · 1790602329 · focus · HN ↗
    Cybertrucks, solar roofs and SolarCity failed just the same.
    marcusverus · 1790602637 · focus · HN ↗
    Cybertruck? The best selling electric truck on the market?
    jsiepkes · 1790603811 · focus · HN ↗
    Best selling electic truck on the market? Doesn't seem like it: <a href="https://electrek.co/2026/01/13/ford-f150-lightning-outsold-tesla-cybertruck-canceled-not-selling-enough/" rel="nofollow">https://electrek.co/2026/01/13/ford-f150-lightning-outsold-t...
    And the biggest customer is SpaceX: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-bought-tesla-cybertrucks-megapack-ipo-s1-2026-5" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-bought-tesla-cybertru...
    marknutter · 1790605172 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh, it's only the second best selling electric truck on the market. What a massive failure.
    kg · 1790603867 · focus · HN ↗
    It sold so well that Musk had to have SpaceX buy up millions and millions worth of unsold inventory.

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