this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024

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SpaceX targets February for third Starship test flight - SpaceNews (spacenews.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/spacex

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"Jensen described an iterative process of flight and ground tests. “That will wind up determining how many missions we need,” she said.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson then stepped in. “The question was, how many fuel transfers?”

“I will say it will roughly be ten-ish,” Jensen responded. “It could be lower, depending on how well the first flight tests go, or it could be a little bit higher.”"

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[+] [email protected] -6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

So the Ship that apparently was supposed to have a condensed testing schedule is actually getting an extended testing schedule, and the speculated launch time of late Dec to mid Jan is now sometime in Feb, pending testing results.

And they now also do not expect the flight license in Jan, also now that is expected sometime in Feb.

SpaceX has not yet publicly said anything detailed about what went wrong with StarShip2 (despite their PR indicating that they would learn so much from the test data of StarShip 2), but much can be discerned from the video evidence:

Lower Stage:

Unreliable Rocket Engines

And/Or

Fuel Flow Plumbing / Pump Problems

In addition to

Lower Stage Superstructure Not Structurally Integrous Enough To Execute Belly Flop Maneuver Without Serious Damage

And also likely

Lower Stage Fuel Tank Construction Not Structurally Integrous Enough To Withstand Belly Flop Maneuver Without Serious Damage
Flight Termination System Appears To Not Function Properly

Upper Stage:

Not sure what went wrong exactly, but apparently:

SpaceX is not capable of determining their craft disintegrated until 3 minutes after it disintegrated, while also calling out that the craft had entered inertial guidance phase /after the craft had visibly exploded/.

So basically their Mission Control protocols and/or their Communications systems have serious flaws.

...

I am sure they will be able to complete their 3 Billion dollar contract from NASA and land StarShip on the Moon by the end of March this year, and I am sure they will be able to continue receiving massive funding grants from NASA after they definitely do not miss this deadline.

Its not like Artemis recently managed to successfully return from a TransLunar orbit or anything.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Artemis 2 is delayed for Orion heat shield reasons, so that alone would prevent Ar-3 from being this spring, according to that one crazy timeline.

Starship HLS is definitely behind schedule, but at least it's fixed price and milestone based.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Cool, is that going to put the entire Artemis program so laughably behind their contracted schedule that theyre at risk of having the entire program unfunded?

Let me know when StarShip manages to even successfully orbit the Earth a few times and have both the booster and orbiter section land and be reusable I dunno 10 or 20 times with 0 or 1 failures (standard rocket launch failure rate is approximately 5% across the board) both within budget and within the timeframe promised in funding proposals.

Spoiler: This will never occur because SpaceX will at best have to dramatically scale back its operational scope, or at worst, entirely go bankrupt sooner than you think after NASA and other investors stop giving them money and place their bets on far, far more advanced and reliable options.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Soooo what brings you to the SpaceX community? Lol.

I'm glad that NASA, who has much more information than the public, invested in such an ambitious program. I've enjoyed following the development and demo flights. I'm looking forward to upcoming tests and hopeful that they'll be successful. Sometimes it's fun to just be a spaceflight fan.

The Artemis program as a whole is pretty cursed with weird political motivations and slow contractors. SLS and Orion were Congressionally mandated to fly in 2016, but took until 2022. NASA didn't award the first HLS development contracts until 2020. I'm disappointed that Starship HLS is behind schedule, but it's more ambitious than everything else in the program, so I'm inclined to give it more leeway than the mobile launcher, EUS, spacesuits, etc.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Popped up on my general feed. Nothing special in particular.

Yep. Fun to be a spaceflight fan, especially when an ironically now Nazi free NASA is funding a company run by a fascist lunatic megalomaniac liar and conman who has underdelivered on basically everything he has promised to everyone in the past 5 years that it should be obvious to everyone right now and built a cult of personality around himself that is impervious to seeing the obvious.

Yep, Artemis has been fucked too.

But it like actually works and is following basically well understood general rocket and spacecraft design principles instead of spending a decade plus telling absolutely ludicrous impossible lies about what theyre going to do.

Also relatively important is that the Artemis program is not likely to be cancelled, whereas SpaceX is highly likely to go bankrupt.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

"SLS and Orion are boring, normal, and work" (and expensive) are actually a big reason why I could see Artemis getting cancelled. Nobody outside of huge nerds or people in the industry knows or cares about Artemis. "Didn't we already do that?" The program needs something exciting and new to get any public interest.

Could you give sources on SpaceX potential bankruptcy? People have been saying that for years, but the company seems stronger than ever. Even Starlink, one of their craziest projects, has been toying with cash flow positivity.

As far as the rest of the company, Falcon and Dragon are the darlings of the DoD and NASA. Falcon has helped change the game for commercial spaceflight.

I'm not going to get into the Musk stuff here. He's pretty awful. I wish he never got involved with Twitter or politics or anything. I look forward to Rocket Lab and Relativity getting their bigger rockets up and running to give them some competition.

[–] ViperActual 2 points 11 months ago

Are you unhappy SpaceX has yet to achieve with Starship what it's achieved with Falcon 9?

Or to put it in another way, are you unhappy with SpaceX for not accomplishing something no one else has been able to accomplish?

[–] timbro 2 points 11 months ago

Truly exciting!