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0·21 days agoa decision to prioritize the transition of Starlink launches away from Falcon 9
Incidentally, I haven’t heard much talk about this, but it seems very plausible that 2026 (or even 2025) could be the peak year for Falcon 9, followed by a huge drop-off in launches, taking just a couple of years to get down to, say, 1 per month. Does anyone have any estimates/guesses along those lines?
Musk has recently claimed SpaceX will send its first uncrewed Starships to Mars next year, too.
I thought his most recent claim (maybe a month ago on Twitter?) was much more circumspect? Something like “if everything happens to go very well we can do that”.
And even on an occasion before that (a presentation he did in Starbase earlier this year), he might have remembered to include caveat words like “aspirational” at least some of the time?
I think if they really had to launch towards Mars in Dec 2026, they could, because they’ve shown they can get to orbit with a second stage that they can ‘mass produce’. So they could choose to focus on orbital refilling rather than reusability, for the next 16 months. And there’s an argument that they should do this, because Mars transfer opportunities are somewhat rare, and Mars EDL is a potential ‘criticial path’ item for their long term goals.
But I guess even for SpaceX, there comes a point at which you just have to accept that certain things have a natural sequence that determines the timeline.
They’ve got an ‘overhang’ of outstanding design changes, which are coming in Block 3, and this will just take a certain amount of time to implement. And once they’ve started testing Block 3, perhaps they’ll even decide there’s another set of ‘obvious’ design changes they’ll want to make; perhaps they’ll decide they need to move to a ‘Block 4’ before aggressively pushing on all the other goals. And the next big goal would probably be vehicle recovery, because that makes everything else more efficient in multiple ways. And maybe only then do they start testing orbital refilling. And maybe only once there’s sufficient progress on that can they start confidently working to finalize the design for the 1st Mars ship.
And maybe in amongst all this, there’s also a decision to prioritize the transition of Starlink launches away from Falcon 9, because even SpaceX doesn’t have infinite money, and it’s too much of a waste not to combine Starship testing with Starship doing useful work (launching an in-house payload).
So basically, I’m now at 15% on them being able to launch towards Mars during the next transfer opportunity. (And that’s not taking into account political considerations, NASA saying no due to planetary protection, things like that.)
Starship’s “lost year” also has serious implications for …
Even if you accept this framing, it turned out just to be a lost 7 months! (Although there may well turn out to be an extra “lost 5 months” while we’re waiting for Block 3.)
First Dragon launch without RTLS for quite a while? Presumably due to the extra mass of the boost kit?
So, is everyone excited for tomorrow’s SpaceX launch of the latest experimental version of their vehicle? Since its last flight they’ve made lots of changes involving propellant tanks, engines, etc…
Oh, you thought I meant Ship 37? That’s nothing! On CRS-33, Dragon will have essentially a whole extra propulsion system added to what was designed to be a cargo carrying area, which will be tested in space for the first time next month while attached to a $150 billion space station with 7 people on board! 😓
Dragon has boosted the ISS once before, during CRS-31, I believe. But that was just with its existing propulsion system. The new Frankenstein trunk has been tested on the ground, and that’s considered sufficient, apparently!
On the pre-launch teleconference, Sarah Walker said that we should see some imagery of the boost kit during the CRS-33 launch webcast.
Launch is in 8.5 hours.
Seems that this will be, in a sense, the 1st time a FH centre core has ever been recovered! (Back to dry land in one piece.)
Going by this, the stats for actual FH launches are:
- 11 launches total
- 2 with failed centre core barge landings
- 1 with successful barge landing of a centre core, which then fell over due to heavy seas
- 6 with expendable centre core (but with side booster RTLS)
- 2 fully expendable
If Musk was as committed to comedy and “fate loves irony” as he says, he should have proceeded with the launch the previous day, instead of postponing it “due to unfavorable recovery weather conditions”, and let nature take its course!
That said, maybe nature will yet find a way to intervene! Best keep an eye on Port Canaveral to see if B1091 does actually make it back to dry land!
also reducing risk as it will be flight proven
I’m slightly surprised they don’t always use Starlink sats as the payload on a booster’s 1st flight, these days.
And I’m slightly more surprised they didn’t do so in this case, as they were trying something new (using a FH centre core in a single-stick config).
Love the view of the ISS from Dragon at 1:33:34 (and 1:34:30, 1:35:31, etc.)
U-k_LyA1DQQ @27:54 = Cardman playing with her own deck of cards, man!
206O9S9GLbg @3:38:38 = Zena emerging from the Zena’ith Port.
Another example of something that, to me, doesn’t warrant its own post: Interview with Jim Cantrell
Indeed.
I assumed the comment was satirising one common form of misguided critique of SpaceX’s “hardware-rich” approach to this development programme. But yes, now I’m not so sure.
Until now I’ve been too lazy to look into what rules/guidelines exist for this community. Am I now right in thinking there aren’t any? (If so, I’m not complaining!) Or am I just not finding them (as an inexperienced Lemmy user)?
The thing I was going to look into was any posting guidelines. How significant should something be to warrant its own post? For example, this tweet includes a video with an F9 barge landing perspective that I don’t remember seeing before.
FWIW, my own feeling is that I’d like a quarterly “General Discussion Thread” (as with the equivalent Subreddit), to gather up all the minor stuff.
Are posts automatically ‘published’ or do they go through moderation first? (If this is something I should be able to determine myself, if I knew more about Lemmy, LMK and I’ll go & do some reading!)
P.S. My thanks to you and all the team for all your efforts.
I’m a rocket ship on my way to Mars [in a sense]
I’m burnin’ through the sky, yeah [over Namibia, at about ~3:43:11 for about a minute]
LMK if you find anything interesting! My guess is that if there is any melting & re-solidifying going on, it will be nothing larger than a droplet.
Relevant spaceflightmemes post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/38958595
Make a good reef.
Hope so!
Though I believe that it was the Gulf of Mexico that received (large chunks of) B14.
Whereas the Indian Ocean has probably some small bits of S35 debris. (Unless it fully vapourised on re-entry? You’ve also got me wondering whether any of the materials merely melt, and then re-solidify as solid lumps, either in the lower atmosphere or after hitting the ocean.)
And while I’m being pedantic, @[email protected], the table above says “Soft water landing” for the booster, which isn’t how I’d describe the plan they had for it.
Where do you get the information from that he deleted videos?
Well here’s one example of the accusation (“deleted videos where he said spacex would never be able to re-fly a 1st stage”). Two replies seem to endorse it (e.g. “I recall him saying something like that”) and another seems to be fairly familiar with his output and to endorse the general point (“later tried to delete and cover up”). One of the replies links to a different video, which I haven’t looked at.
Note that the first ever booster re-use was around March 2017 so we’re probably talking about a deletion that happened no later than April 2017. And I’d expect he’d not be so stupid as to wait that long; he’d have probably deleted any such videos as soon as SpaceX announced that they’d found a willing customer (and insurance company), at the latest. So probably by late 2016 or early 2017.
Other stuff I just found …
Seems he had some argument with another unreliable You Tube ‘personality’ called Sargon who made a response video back in May 2017. That video is unavailable now but apparently it was still available in 2022 and convinced one person who had until then been unconvinced, that Thunder Foot “apparently just made up shit about someone which was completely false”.
I’ve just looked at one of his more recent “BUSTED!!” videos (July 2021, about Starlink) and I didn’t notice any outright falsehoods, so perhaps he’s being more circumspect these days. Also, he hasn’t deleted that one, even though it’s pretty embarrassing for him. So credit where it’s due.
That said, the simplest example I’ve come across of an apparently uncorrected falsehood from him is also from 2021: https://x.com/thunderf00t/status/1364020482572492801 It’s hardly a big deal, but he clearly knew that his followers believed the claim to be false, so it seems that at best he was lazy in not bothering to go back and read the 3 replies that proved they were correct.
Some general “debunkings” of more of his SpaceX claims:
https://old.reddit.com/r/thunderf00t/comments/lthowt/some_fundamental_errors_in_thunderf00ts_spacex/ and https://old.reddit.com/r/thunderf00t/comments/lu6evm/a_more_casual_fact_check_on_thunderf00ts_spacex/
If it’s true he deleted a video he’s obviously not going to reUpload.
You could at least find out what his response might be. If he outright lies, someone might come forward and ‘testify’ to that fact.
You made a claim, the burden of proof is on you
No, I asked a question.
I’m increasingly confident that Thunderfoot is indeed the guy about whom I’ve heard that allegation, but since I don’t have proof, it has to remain as a question
Flight 11 speculation …
Any chance they put some real Starlink satellites on board (and go all the way to orbit in order to deploy them)?
Any chance they try to land Stage 2 on land, on its skirt? So that they can properly inspect the heat shield (etc.)
Any chance they go orbital regardless? I can’t think of much reason why they would. I’m assuming they’re already very confident that Starship is capable of getting to orbit, but perhaps actually doing it would let them test a full deorbit burn?