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. timschmidt · 1790601790 · focus · HN ↗
  They've reached orbit, and at the time of this comment are preparing to deploy Starlink sats. Which means they've successfully closed the economic development loop for the Starship program. Falcon 9 can't launch Starlink v3, only Starship can. They've already demonstrated successful booster catch. Even if they discard Ship in the ocean after every launch they're no worse off than with Falcon 9 (which also discards it's upper stage).
  They'll ramp falcon flights down quickly. Ramp up Starship launches just as quickly. And in a couple years time we'll have a blooper reel like this one but larger by 10x: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
  Edit: Starlink deployed.
  1. estearum · 1790602589 · focus · HN ↗
    Now the goalposts for Starship is just whether it can put Starlink into orbit?
    You seem to be suggesting that Starship just needs to self-fund its own development, and then the question of whether that development leads somewhere desirable/valuable is de facto answered or irrelevant. Why would that be the case?
    chasd00 · 1790623222 · focus · HN ↗
    If Starship can self-fund its own development then there's no reason for it to be cancelled, it's making money and an asset to SpaceX. The only way to absolutely guarantee no desirable/valuable outcome of the program is to cancel it. So i would say the question of whether that development leads somewhere desirable/valuable is now irrelevant (from a financial survival perspective). The only direction for the value of Starship to go now is up.
    Don't forget, there are no politicians involved here. No election cycle for teams to switch and cancel the other side's work out of spite. SpaceX is only beholden to its shareholders.
    estearum · 1790629751 · focus · HN ↗
    I am jealous of your world of no opportunity cost! Simpler place, it seems.
    DarmokJalad1701 · 1790652549 · focus · HN ↗
    Indeed, it is simpler when the beancounters who can't see past the next quarter are not in charge.
    estearum · 1790680699 · focus · HN ↗
    Opportunity cost is not exclusively a financial concept. For example, the opportunity cost of smart people working on Facebook Ads is immense, despite probably actually being one of the best-remunerated things they could do.
    It's still not really clear where any of this SpaceX stuff goes besides "rockets cool and scifi planetary settlement cool". Planetary settlement is an absolutely dogshit idea that doesn't survive first contact with any reality.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.