SpaceX will attempt historic catch of returning Starship booster on Sunday

Luu Tuyen@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 113 points – SpaceX will attempt historic catch of returning Starship booster on Sunday | TechCrunch
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SpaceX will launch the mammoth Starship on Sunday in a launch window that opens at 5 AM PST (7 AM local time) from the company’s Starbase site in southeast Texas. This flight, which will be the fifth in the Starship development program, is coming a little sooner than expected: the Federal Aviation Administration had previously said that it did not anticipate issuing a modified launch license for this test before late November.

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extremely impressive - the atmospheric heating on the bottom as it came is was scary though!

(no engines lit here!)

The engines are lit there. They're just not operating at very high pressure, I think they do it to stop too much air getting into the engines.

They have no exhaust visible and where shown as off on the display.

Wasteful, useless, fix this planet, yadda yadda.

That's all a bit true, but this is still cool as fuck.

It's also an irrelevant.

Humanity can do two things at the same time, we always have been able to. So to say we shouldn't do thing X because thing Y is still a problem is fundamentally misunderstanding how progress works. If you genuinely think along those lines then we probably shouldn't be making video games either because climate change is still a problem.

I say we stop doing home cooking channels. There are enough recipes. That energy needs to go to fighting climate change.

Starship landing was a success too! They landed right on target this time. There was still a bit of burn-through at one of the aft fins (much less than before), and it exploded a little bit after it landed. Hopefully they'll be able to land Starship on the ground next!

Honestly amazing to watch. Fuck Elon though, space x can do better

Live stream available here. Apparently launch in 40 minutes or so from this comment:

Edit: that was some dirty link sorry

space should not be privatised

Cool, then get NASA to actually do something vs hamstringing itself with bureaucrats...the only reason people like you rage against SpaceX is because it's tied to that idiot musk.

everything spacex has done has been because of nasa.......

You're joking right? No they have not.... I love NASA, but acting like what spacex has done is only because of NASA is bullshit.

because everything spacex has done is because of nasa. all spacex does is toss unlimited money at exploding rockets and pollute the environment and ecosystem

SpaceX insisted on fixed price contracts. Unlike the other companies doing cost-plus contracts (aka unlimited money contracts), SpaceX sets a price on government services and then delivers for that price.

NASA is hamstringing itself? Tell me more. I don't know anything about NASA, but I would have guessed the bureaucrats were external.

The US government moreso than NASA as funding for them as been an easy punching bag for both political parties lately.

The other thing is optics. NASA isn't allowed to blow up 20 rockets on their designs. They only get one chance to get it right. That's why the SLS has only 1 launch and is 1/1 as opposed to the SpaceX Dragon and Starship can just throw money at them until they work.

Not saying one way is better than the other, just that NASA has to fight not to make the front page because 9/10 it means they made a mistake which costs them more funding. IMO all of this is going to come up to a very slow pace akin to NASA when we start with crewed missions (SpaceX Starship will be mission controlled by NASA as well). They super don't fuck around with crewed launches, especially after the botched Boeing Space launch. And a crew launch failure affects everyone SpaceX and NASA alike.

Absolutely if private entities want to go to space they should be able to. What grounds would you block them on? This is not a substitution or replacement of public space agencies

then they shouldn't get any federal money or contracts

Why? They're providing a service with that contract. NASA isn't capable or doesn't want to do everything in house. If they deem it beneficial to outsource some projects to contractors then what's wrong with that?

Defund this fascist bozo already who cares.

Get a grip, dude.

Nah, freaking out is totally the right call in the face of galloping fascism like we’re seeing in the U.S.

Doing it here won’t accomplish anything though.

Vote. Get others to vote.