Thread

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

304 points · 367 comments · geox

paulus_magnus2 · 1790605967 · focus · HN ↗
Starship is not yet reusable but they have the MVP and a fantastic position to iterate forward.
-- they have an orbital launcher with the largest diameter cargo bay
-- larger sats have bigger antennas and bigger PV area and more bus power. this scales as diam^2
-- 26 x Starlink v3 ~40-65 tons to LEO
-- every launch generates revenue, locks out the orbit for competitors.
-- they can launch more volume, more mass and cheaper than anyone else by a large margin
-- the design is validated - things will work
-- there is technical debt, issues but the rocket did the job
Caveats
-- timelines for full reusability are optimistic etc
-- there will be other issues in scaling to launching gigawats into orbit
-- cooling will have to be
-- Musk might go Full Villan mode before the thing works
[meta] I really didn't like that other negative comment getting voted to the top. Looks like it's made by someone who never worked in a bigco. For every bigco I worked, at any time there were hundreds if not thousands of open issues. You could list them and try arguing the company is about to fail and you'd scare people who don't know better.
It's the judgement of the severity of the issue that matters not #no_of_issues. And if there were 0 issues would our job exist?
[edit] getting the formatting right is very hard, maybe we could get a preview / TinyMCE ?
1. fluidcruft · 1790608367 · focus · HN ↗
  > Locks out the orbit for competitors
  I swear to God LinkedIn would describe taking a shit in a public park this way. The West Coast is out of their damn minds.
  1. rkagerer · 1790627116 · focus · HN ↗
    Could you elaborate on your counterpoint?
    Genuinely interested. How does or doesn't an existing satellite constrain other operators from desirable orbits? Is it irrelevant because many satellites can share the same orbit at different phase angles (i.e. satellite train), and there are more than enough similar orbits to go around? How many spacecraft would it take to actually be a concern (accounting for attrition from end-of-life ones going out of service, and the point of crowding where diminishing spatial/temporal buffers available for the collision avoidance adjustments needed to practically maintain your desired orbit become too risky).
    fluidcruft · 1790638287 · focus · HN ↗
    To elaborate: the park is a shared resource and people don't want to picnic next to dog shit. Suppose you have a dog that shits in the park significantly faster than other dogs. LinkedIn/California types would celebrate the dog's ability to stake claim to the entire public park (as progress as the commuter I replied to has done) without even a smidgen of self-awareness they are stealing from the commons.
    ggreer · 1790645466 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think that analogy really maps, as nothing else is in those orbits, nor have those orbits ever been used by anyone. Is it really a park if nobody has ever set foot in it? Orbits seem more analogous to claiming land for a homestead. By being the first to stake your claim and do useful work on the land, you become the owner.
    Also Starlink V3 orbits are at 330–370km, which is below pretty much everything else in space. Atmospheric drag is high enough that without ion thrusters, satellites will deorbit in a couple years. If SpaceX doesn't keep launching stuff, it will self-clean and allow others to use it.
    rlt · 1790650009 · focus · HN ↗
    Plus, VLEO (<400km) is only really economical at scale with Starship, or at least Falcon 9. Without SpaceX no one would be using it anyway.
    fluidcruft · 1790652429 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not about the analogy, it's about what the original commenter spun about shitting out satellites fastest to claim orbital space and deny it to others as some sort of laudable SpaceX competitive advantage.
2. 7e · 1790608691 · focus · HN ↗
  The biggest issue is payload. Right now they’re launching with very light payloads, way less than the Saturn V or even the Falcon. Definitely short of their goals. They’ve never demonstrated a real payload weight. Until this happens their progress is illusory and a skeptic would claim their engines can’t take a real launch payload weight.
  1. Polizeiposaune · 1790611394 · focus · HN ↗
    The Starlink V3 sats launched today are much bigger and heavier than the Starlink satellites they've been launching on Falcon. Even if they fit within the Falcon fairing, they'd be too heavy to launch on F9.
  2. ggreer · 1790620978 · focus · HN ↗
    Today's launch was the 3rd largest payload ever put in orbit (52 tons). Only Skylab (77 tons) and Buran (80 tons) exceed it.
    Zigurd · 1790691557 · focus · HN ↗
    That is a completely un skeptical estimate of the payload capacity: were the satellites fully fueled? If they carried a 50% load of fuel that would knock off half a ton from each satellite. Was the upper stage fully fueled, including the fuel needed to return to where it was launched? If not, there's enough fudge in the numbers that the actual payload capacity could be zero, if not for scavenging weight from other parts of the mission plan.
    Is skepticism warranted? At least they didn't call it Fully Satellite Deploying.
    ggreer · 1790703187 · focus · HN ↗
    The only way the payload is much lower than 52 tons is if SpaceX is lying about the mass of their satellites. That seems unlikely, as correct masses are required for FAA debris assessment.
    Each Starlink V3 satellite weighs approximately 2 tons. They use ion thrusters for propulsion, so propellant on each satellite is 50-100kg, not half a ton. The current payload bay can hold around 60 V3 satellites, so they'd launch fewer of them (as they did in this launch) instead of putting partially fueled satellites into orbit.
    A tower catch and an ocean splashdown require the same amount of propellant. The only difference is when the deorbit burn happens. Yes there will be some boil-off as the ship stays in orbit for longer, but a day in orbit would lose around 0.5% of the propellant. According to the live stream, both the booster & ship were loaded to about 98.5% of capacity. And filling the tanks completely would give them more payload capability, not less.
    If you need to see a satellite deploy followed by a tower catch to be convinced of their payload numbers, then you're asking for evidence that doesn't exist yet. But I'd be happy to bet on that. How about this: If before December 31st, 2027, SpaceX deploys a payload greater than 50 tons from Starship while recovering both the booster & ship (I assume via tower catch. Fishing out of the water doesn't count.) you pay me $1,000. If that doesn't happen, I pay you $1,000. If you like, we could both choose a charity and the loser donates to the charity of the winner's choosing.
  3. chasd00 · 1790621595 · focus · HN ↗
    > skeptic would claim their engines can’t take a real launch payload weight.
    full duration full throttle burns of Raptor3 are common and I'm pretty sure a part of qc for each new engine anyway. Payload weight doesn't strain the engines, once they're throttled at 100% then they're throttled at 100% no matter how much or how little payload there is.
  4. ButlerianJihad · 1790621980 · focus · HN ↗
    > a real launch payload weight
    Their engineers understand mass, and how to distinguish it.
3. trencedamp · 1790611117 · focus · HN ↗
  Is nobody concerned about putting things in a ship that explodes every other time they launch it
  1. fluidcruft · 1790611508 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably, but I assume it would depend on price differentials and payload. Something like constellations of multiple identical satellites could plan to tolerate losses. One-offs like space telescopes not so much.
  2. haaz · 1790611949 · focus · HN ↗
    99.9% of spacex rocket explosions are controlled experiments where they intentionally push the rocket past it's limit or try out new and unproven designs. Once they get the design down it's pretty reliable.
  3. rurban · 1790612250 · focus · HN ↗
    Not as long as they'll put people in this ship.
  4. jfoster · 1790612641 · focus · HN ↗
    Falcon 9 used to do that when being tested.
    They push them to the limits in testing/development to make them reliable in production.
    Starship still in testing/development.
    spwa4 · 1790625185 · focus · HN ↗
    Or you could do it like every other rocketry startup: either succeed first time or go bankrupt. Hell, occasionally they go bankrupt after succeeding at their first flight.
    People here act like SpaceX is the only or the best rocket startup. That trial-and-error is somehow the superior design strategy and that that is responsible for SpaceX's success.
    In reality, of course, SpaceX's only real distinguishing feature is how much they blow up and how they keep getting funding despite financial analysis after financial analysis saying "this will never work, it's a loss". But no worries! Starlink will fix it! Except ... when calculating Starlink profits they're ... also negative. Starlink caused a huge boost in SpaceX funding, while losing money. How do you do that?
    In my personal experience, creating a company that runs at a loss results in losing money. I guess SpaceX makes it up on volume?
    SpaceX's secret is dollars. Investor dollars. The amount of money Musk has (frequently literally) more than the funding of EVERY other private rocket startup COMBINED.
    QuiEgo · 1790626829 · focus · HN ↗
    SpaceX has some absurd majority of the launch market. Because their rockets work.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...
    I won’t comment on the finances, but their technical success is self-evident.
    spwa4 · 1790627213 · focus · HN ↗
    My point was that working rockets is not exactly a good explanation for SpaceX's success.
    Rocket Lab Electron works
    Galactic Energy Ceres-1 works
    Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket works
    Astra Rocket 3.3 works (no relation to OpenAI)
    Firefly AerospaceAlpha works
    And this is disregarding that of course these are hardly the only kind of organization with working rockets. Did you know a rocket startup with working rockets was forced into bankruptcy for fear it might give Congo access to ballistic rockets?
    ... What makes the difference for SpaceX is investor money, not engineering excellence. In fact most of the above companies got to orbit on their first try, no blowing up rockets and hundreds of millions of dollars required.
    mmustapic · 1790629237 · focus · HN ↗
    No, Spacex is different because of engineering. By being able to reuse rockets they can launch frequently (every week?). By launching frequently they can measure and improve the rockets, so reliability goes up and price down.
    [deleted] · 1790668717 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    spwa4 · 1790670795 · focus · HN ↗
    Really? Do you realize how insane it is what you're saying? A "fully loaded" cost for a Falcon launch, including the cost of development and of course the debt SpaceX took on to get here, comes an eye-watering 2.9 BILLION dollars per launch (just shy of double the space shuttle's cost). Of that debt, Musk spent about 100 million per launch on materials, employees, development, ... and kept 2.8 billion per launch for himself and his investors (that's why it's such brilliant financial engineering, also that's how you become a trillionnaire). To just keep it's current valuation, SpaceX needs something close to 2000 launches per year, indefinitely, more than double their current pace. That market doesn't exist. There aren't enough people to pay for launching satellites to launch that many rockets. And ... that's disregarding that SpaceX has competitors that are ~2 years behind and don't have SpaceX debt load, and should be able to launch whatever you want in about 2 years at half SpaceX's $/kg.
    Several of the already named startups had rockets that are reusable. You act like SpaceX is the origin, or the first working example of the idea of reusable rockets. They are not, and they are not a little bit short of that standard, but a reusable rocket flew to Space and landed over 60 years ago. SpaceX is an accounting/finance accomplishment, not an engineering accomplishment.
    At this point in time, both Europe (Arianespace) and China (CASC) have bet money they can duplicate the effort, Europe at less than 1% of the money SpaceX spent. Of course they usually go to a little over 2 times their planned budget. In other words, should come out below 2.5% the budget SpaceX spent ... (but does that matter given that SpaceX is not profitable?)
    The whole space shuttle program (where SpaceX got half its employees I might add) is not just an attempt at making reusable rocket motors work. It's a successful attempt at making reusable rockets work first try, in 1981 (first motor reuse 6 months later, same year).
    The engines on the orbiter could be, and regularly were, reused. This was done on its first ever launch (and second, obviously). The first 3 engines that launched the first Space Shuttle Orbiter were reused. Now how's that for engineering? A class above SpaceX, with 50 years older tech?. Obviously those engines landed. And even the Space Shuttle program over it's entire life (30+ years) lost less engines to everything than SpaceX lost designing it's rocket before launching it's first rocket to orbit.
    If you allow for pure demonstration flights you could even say the first demonstration of a reusable rocket launching to space (ie. above the 100km line) was NASA X-15 flight 90, by Joseph A. Walker on 19th July 1963. Joseph Walker landed that engine, and reused that very engine to do it again, by the way. Of course, that wasn't into orbit.
    And one of the startups had a reusable rocket at its first ever launch too. All these efforts had problems. Yes NASA did this first try, but very expensively. The startup did it cheaper than SpaceX did (and it wasn't remotely close), but wasn't able to continue (lack of money). You could complain their rocket was way smaller, and didn't make it to orbit (made it to space though).
    Critically, SpaceX engineering still falls into the "not good enough" category, as mean as that is to say. It does not have the kg/$ performance the market demands, and SpaceX is only destined for bankruptcy. Plus, given their debt load, it really can't take that long (let's say a decade, tops). Let me explain. There is a clear commercial standard, from the Iridium days. Replacing 4000 satellites in orbit every 5 years, forever, on the income you can get from such a network from subscriptions, is not commercially viable with SpaceX technology. And you could say, the math is clear: cheap enough only seems achievable with a "spaceplane" design, launching from an airstrip. That was the motivation for the Space Shuttle program, but they couldn't make that work. SpaceX uses 12000 satellites btw, so not only do they not solve the Iridium problem, they make it harder for themselves.
    And despite your comment asserting the opposite, SpaceX isn't even trying (the cost curve "Spaceship" is on does not reach commercial viability, not that it would even matter given the debt load SpaceX has)
    Oh and when it comes to Musk's usual promises vs performance? You know who launched a spaceship to Mars and who didn't? Blue Origin did. SpaceX did ... not.
    There is no engineering axis, other than perhaps eventual scale, where SpaceX wins on the engineering.
    And of course, Trump is really helping to destroy SpaceX by making it clear to Europe that access to SpaceX is contingent on Trump's seemingly somewhat unstable mood.
    luke5441 · 1790627431 · focus · HN ↗
    2025 SpaceX launches carried payloads from outside customers only 43 times. Most of it from US govt. The launch market it simply tiny and not growing much.
    Luckily SpaceX pivoted the narrative just in time to be an AI company, not a Space company. We'll see what the next narrative will be, if any.
    jve · 1790667021 · focus · HN ↗
    > when calculating Starlink profits they're ... also negative
    No.
    Starlink profits are positive since 2023: <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1720098480037773658" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1720098480037773658
    Their growth is insane. The operating income (not revenue which is double digits, but irrelevant) in 2025 was 4,4B and with the growth they have, they are profiting multiple billions a year.
    spwa4 · 1790690972 · focus · HN ↗
    And you don't understand what's wrong there?
    First "breakeven cash flow" does not equal profit. But that's just Musk, as the CEO (and thus accountable for financial statements he makes to the SEC), cannot actually say profit.
    More generally, never believe any kind of financial engineer when they say this. It's bullshit. Guaranteed. Why? Simple: if it was true, they would never tell you. They would take a shovel and put their own money in, they would charge large banks to let them put their money in (yes, seriously). They'd literally charge other rich people money to let them put their money in ... You would hear about it 20 years after the fact in an interview done after retirement, and only then.
    Specifically, what's wrong here Starlink pays for it's own launches in stock (they pay by issuing stock to SpaceX). If you think about it, that's creating money out of nothing:
    SpaceX holds Starlink debt, and counts that as assets (as a positive amount)
    Starlink issues and "succesfully" sells shares to SpaceX, and counts that as income (as a positive amount)
    So you see what's happening here: these are two positive numbers, but ... obviously have to sum to zero! After all if I buy an ice cream from you for 5$ the change in my assets and the change in your assets has to sum to zero (-5$ for me, +5$ for you = 0$ for both of us together). Not for SpaceX and Starlink. SpaceX gives rocket launches to Starlink and the sum of both their assets is billions!
    If you look at actual cash flow, Starlink's last quarter was 4.4B operating income, minus 2.4B depreciation and amortization, minus 4.17B capital expenditures. How do you calculate the company worth? Easy capital expenditures are zero (because they "convert" capital to goods, which can be resold, except of course they can't really).
    So for "total assets" on the financial statements that's 4.4B - 2.4B PLUS 4.17B per year.
    For actual cash or resources, it's obviously 4.4B - 2.4B - 4.17B or MINUS 2 billion per year.
    Which one is true depends on whether SpaceX can succesfully sell Starlink's shares at the internal valuation they're using. Obviously the safe accounting value is the one with the minus sign. Or to put it differently: Starlink has "increased in value" by 2 billion, so investors (for now SpaceX) need to give it 2 billion to continue operating.
    jltsiren · 1790635510 · focus · HN ↗
    Falcon 1 had a few failures, but Falcon 9 was successful from the beginning. Early SpaceX played it safe, because they couldn't afford to lose big expensive rockets. The only explosion after launch happened on flight 19.
    There were many explosions when SpaceX was trying to figure out how to land the booster safely. But those were after the booster had already completed the actual paid mission.
  5. testing22321 · 1790618113 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    oska · 1790652772 · focus · HN ↗
    Just as a FYI I would have upvoted yr comment (from grey) if it hadn't had the second line in it
    (The first and third lines were fine)
    trencedamp · 1790688116 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't own any stock and I don't care about stock prices.
    You've pointed out 4 of 14 starship flights experienced explosions, and this was to argue AGAINST my comment that every other one explodes. Internet actually says 5 failures out of 14 but let's say 4. Thats one in every 3.5 launches explodes, so far. Would you put on a spacesuit and get in one? I just find it harder and harder to buy that this thing is going to bring people to the moon in one piece, whatever about a million new starlink satellites or server farms in space or whatever
    There are a lot of angry comments here talking about how I don't understand the company and they're super successful, and it's true that falcon 9 has a very low failure rate. But starship has a very high one and I don't think Im out of line to say that.
    I'm sure people who raised concerns about the cybertruck were also yelled at about how great the other Tesla vehicles are, and damn if this thing doesn't feel like the cybertruck of space
    testing22321 · 1790693363 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s a test campaign to find the limits. They tested to failure on purpose.
    Give it time, just like Falcon 9.
    s08148692 · 1790697954 · focus · HN ↗
    It's literally made from the same steel so yeah cybertruck in space vibes
    Cybertruck seems like a pretty good electric truck though if you're into that kind of styling, if you can find the signal in the noise of biased reviewers one way or another (I'm european so I have no real personal experience or care)
    But I digress.
    Lets wait until its no a prototype before declaring it a failure. I for one hope its a great success, as I hope all new technology is successful - but I'm an optimist
    trencedamp · 1790713592 · focus · HN ↗
    Also European, also an optimist.
    I just am surprised by how often this thing blows up and how much success is claimed.
    I can't think of another field where the thing you're building exploding 25% of the time is considered progress. Even missiles :)
  6. rlt · 1790650398 · focus · HN ↗
    No, and if you are you’re not familiar with how SpaceX operates.
  7. dwaltrip · 1790659620 · focus · HN ↗
    The exploding rockets were all test launches. SpaceX is pretty good at launching rockets successfully:
    > Rockets from the Falcon 9 family have a success rate of 99.57% and have been launched 703 times over 16 years, resulting in 700 full successes, two in-flight failures [...], one pre-flight failure [...], and one partial failure [...]. The active version of the rocket, the Falcon 9 Block 5, has flown 633 times successfully and failed once [...], resulting in a 99.84% success rate.
    Source: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches#Launch_statistics" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
  8. trencedamp · 1790753566 · focus · HN ↗
    When I made this comment I was unaware that this most recent launch had in fact also ended in an explosion.
    I guess the next defense will be it only exploded after safely delivering payload
4. geokon · 1790656075 · focus · HN ↗
  The issue is that there is ultimately a limited market for having access to space. SpaceX's business model is premised that if you make access cheap enough that there will be a market for multiple launches a day. But to me demand seems very finite? You can make it 10x cheaper or 50x and it sort of doesn't matter.
  There just isn't much to do in space. You have:
  - Telecommunications.. Can scale only so much. Starlink is cool. Compared to Iridium it's way way cheaper. But demand is .. modest? It seems to only beats fiber on the ground in special situations
  - Telescopes looking up. This is limited by science budgets that aren't going to change much.
  - Telescopes looking down. Those people have infinite budgets and already have all the satellites they'd want. If you're not in NATO then can't depend on SpaceX anyway - so they're not capturing that market.
  - Tourism. Vomiting for several hours in zero-G will be a thrill for some for a bit, but I don't see this being a huge industry. Maybe on par with basejumping or something.
  - Mining.. seems impractical scifi.. premised on wanting to build huge structures in space - but again, for what goal ultimately?
  It's sort of like if you made access to Antarctica 100x cheaper. It'd be great, but it's hard to imagine it's going to suddenly open up a ton of demand.
  But I'd love to hear counter arguments :)
  1. testing22321 · 1790659196 · focus · HN ↗
    > Telecommunications.. Can scale only so much. Starlink is cool. Compared to Iridium it's way way cheaper. But demand is .. modest? It seems to only beats fiber on the ground in special situations
    It is not designed to compete with finer. Go somewhere truly remote and see how it’s changing the world very quickly. I’ve seen it first hand in Arctic Canada, Australia and North Africa. Before starlink the best they had was dialup. Now they video chat family and doctors, do school online and so much more. Easily a few billion people will use it.
    You also forgot about AI data centres in orbit, on which SpaceX have pegged virtually all their valuation in.
  2. paulus_magnus2 · 1790661042 · focus · HN ↗
    Indeed SpaceX is boiling multiple oceans at the same time and betting the timing will align.
    -- SpaceX is building a starship factory, not just starship. The market won't deliver enough demand, they need to create their own
    -- V3 Starlink constellation targets 100k sats. With 50 sats per flight (100t to orbit) you need 2000 flights to build constellation and then 400 flights per year to replace sats after 5y lifespan.
    -- There was that idea of ballistic human travel but this is unlikely to materialize
    -- There also was solarsat/powersat where solar power is beamed from space and if you massaged your math the right way the numbers were ~promising
    -- AI saves the day. We "need" 1mln AI sats. That solves the demand and justifies the spending. for now
  3. librasteve · 1790668341 · focus · HN ↗
    the demand for bandwidth is infinite… this used to mean copper -> fibre, but it’s that squared for orbital bandwidth, as they lower and close up the sat formation, the antenna gets smaller and the data rate gets faster … I think Musk killing all terrestrial telcos is quite likely
    perilunar · 1790669767 · focus · HN ↗
    > the demand for bandwidth is infinite
    Is it really? Our brains have a limited bandwidth, and there's no need of more than a small multiple of that per person.
    librasteve · 1790769865 · focus · HN ↗
    human brains are soon to be overtaken

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