Thread

1. 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. trencedamp · 1790611117 · focus · HN ↗

      Is nobody concerned about putting things in a ship that explodes every other time they launch it

      1. testing22321 · 1790618113 · focus · HN ↗

         [dead]

         1. 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

            1. 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.

            2. 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

               1. 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 :)

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