NASA gave SpaceX a bunch of money because they were developing Starship. It’s this super powerful super versatile do all launch system and platform to do a lot of stuff. With NASA being required to use and fund private companies for part of what they do, they put out the call for a bunch of missions. SpaceX said they could do it with Starship and do it for cheap, much cheaper than any other company. They also have an amazing track record with the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule. At the same time other companies are either startups with pretty much nothing but a good idea. Or the old garde which were used to getting a bunch of government money to do very basic shit for way too high of a price. ULA and Boeing seriously dropped the ball lately.
It’s easy to shit on Musk and his bullshit. But there are some really talented people working at SpaceX and a lot of the stuff they do has been impressive.
As far as Starship goes, for now it’s still a total pipe dream. Nowhere close to being what they promised it will be. But the same was said for Falcon and they pulled that one off (eventually) with the block 5 Falcon 9 being one of the most reliable rockets ever made.
I was very critical of the Starship booster. The whole we have a whole bunch of engines concept isn’t a good idea in my book. Sure if one of them fails, or even a couple, you can still do the mission. And each engine can be simpler, smaller and easier to build. And take advantage of scale to build them faster and cheaper. This is why the Soviets tried this concept with their Moon missions back in the day. However the issue is, you need to be able to detect issues and shut down engines fast enough. All the engines are close together and when things go wrong, so much energy is involved it usually leads to shit flying places it should not. This means a single engine going wrong has the potential of throwing pieces of itself at great speed into other engines, control systems or fuel tanks. And a whole lot of engines means a whole lot of points of failures. It also makes things like pipe and cable routing much more complex. Monitoring and controlling is much more complicated as well. So it isn’t all upsides, there are significant downsides also.
However their testflights have seem to have shown the engines to be reliable. The monitoring to shut down engines in time when issues are detected. And a whole lot less big booms than I was expecting. Before hand I thought the thing would just explode every time. So I have to admit, they might have figured it out. Now a couple of testflights doesn’t mean it’s reliable enough, but at least it works some of the time.
There is however also a lot of BS, as usual when Musk is involved. NASA has figured SpaceX isn’t going to deliver in time or withing budget. The booster might work, but Starship is still very much a dream at this point. Some other companies have since received money for missions which earlier were claimed by SpaceX. And I believe there are multiple lawsuits going on, claiming SpaceX just under bid to deny the contract to its competitors with no expectation of delivering.
Starship was an important part of the now canceled Moon missions. But before it was canceled a lot of folk didn’t thing what SpaceX promised was viable. Even if they had Starship working the way they said they would have, their plan was never going to work. It relied on launching a Starship to orbit and then have it be refueled by other Starships. But after calculating how much fuel the thing lost while waiting in orbit and how much a single Starship could provide after using most of the fuel to get itself to the other ship, it turned out best case scenario you’d need a dozen launches. And these would need to be back to back, so no refurbishment time. And this assumed the booster would be lost or at the very least land in the ocean, no returning to base. With more realistic scenarios there would need to be many more launches. And keep in mind the Starship to Starship fueling hasn’t been done before and is extremely difficult.
But as always people believed all of the BS Musk has been spouting. And to be fair SpaceX does have an impressive resume. So the NASA folk were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Deny SpaceX, even though they had the best papers and the best price? That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. Or grant them the contract, knowing there is a good chance SpaceX isn’t going to deliver. But the same can be said for all the other companies, many of which only had concepts and not the track record like SpaceX. And we’ve all seen how good Boeing is doing right now, that crew needed a ride home provided by either the Russians or SpaceX, total embarrassment.
I genuinely believe that NASA was dealt a death blow with Bridenstone and the “we want private businesses involved in space flight!” They’re shafting everything except SLS/Orion/Moon to Mars. Fuck the women who were working on Psyche. Fuck anything that doesn’t end with a Mars full of Elon spawn I guess.
NASA gave SpaceX a bunch of money because they were developing Starship. It’s this super powerful super versatile do all launch system and platform to do a lot of stuff. With NASA being required to use and fund private companies for part of what they do, they put out the call for a bunch of missions. SpaceX said they could do it with Starship and do it for cheap, much cheaper than any other company. They also have an amazing track record with the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule. At the same time other companies are either startups with pretty much nothing but a good idea. Or the old garde which were used to getting a bunch of government money to do very basic shit for way too high of a price. ULA and Boeing seriously dropped the ball lately.
It’s easy to shit on Musk and his bullshit. But there are some really talented people working at SpaceX and a lot of the stuff they do has been impressive.
As far as Starship goes, for now it’s still a total pipe dream. Nowhere close to being what they promised it will be. But the same was said for Falcon and they pulled that one off (eventually) with the block 5 Falcon 9 being one of the most reliable rockets ever made.
I was very critical of the Starship booster. The whole we have a whole bunch of engines concept isn’t a good idea in my book. Sure if one of them fails, or even a couple, you can still do the mission. And each engine can be simpler, smaller and easier to build. And take advantage of scale to build them faster and cheaper. This is why the Soviets tried this concept with their Moon missions back in the day. However the issue is, you need to be able to detect issues and shut down engines fast enough. All the engines are close together and when things go wrong, so much energy is involved it usually leads to shit flying places it should not. This means a single engine going wrong has the potential of throwing pieces of itself at great speed into other engines, control systems or fuel tanks. And a whole lot of engines means a whole lot of points of failures. It also makes things like pipe and cable routing much more complex. Monitoring and controlling is much more complicated as well. So it isn’t all upsides, there are significant downsides also.
However their testflights have seem to have shown the engines to be reliable. The monitoring to shut down engines in time when issues are detected. And a whole lot less big booms than I was expecting. Before hand I thought the thing would just explode every time. So I have to admit, they might have figured it out. Now a couple of testflights doesn’t mean it’s reliable enough, but at least it works some of the time.
There is however also a lot of BS, as usual when Musk is involved. NASA has figured SpaceX isn’t going to deliver in time or withing budget. The booster might work, but Starship is still very much a dream at this point. Some other companies have since received money for missions which earlier were claimed by SpaceX. And I believe there are multiple lawsuits going on, claiming SpaceX just under bid to deny the contract to its competitors with no expectation of delivering.
Starship was an important part of the now canceled Moon missions. But before it was canceled a lot of folk didn’t thing what SpaceX promised was viable. Even if they had Starship working the way they said they would have, their plan was never going to work. It relied on launching a Starship to orbit and then have it be refueled by other Starships. But after calculating how much fuel the thing lost while waiting in orbit and how much a single Starship could provide after using most of the fuel to get itself to the other ship, it turned out best case scenario you’d need a dozen launches. And these would need to be back to back, so no refurbishment time. And this assumed the booster would be lost or at the very least land in the ocean, no returning to base. With more realistic scenarios there would need to be many more launches. And keep in mind the Starship to Starship fueling hasn’t been done before and is extremely difficult.
But as always people believed all of the BS Musk has been spouting. And to be fair SpaceX does have an impressive resume. So the NASA folk were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Deny SpaceX, even though they had the best papers and the best price? That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. Or grant them the contract, knowing there is a good chance SpaceX isn’t going to deliver. But the same can be said for all the other companies, many of which only had concepts and not the track record like SpaceX. And we’ve all seen how good Boeing is doing right now, that crew needed a ride home provided by either the Russians or SpaceX, total embarrassment.
I definitely separate the art from the artist when it comes to SpaceX. I doubt everyone working there is an Elon evangelical.
I genuinely believe that NASA was dealt a death blow with Bridenstone and the “we want private businesses involved in space flight!” They’re shafting everything except SLS/Orion/Moon to Mars. Fuck the women who were working on Psyche. Fuck anything that doesn’t end with a Mars full of Elon spawn I guess.