And - it sure looks like that rocket was approved for flight while it’s still under development.
4 Likes
no one, no one is ever going to fly in that thing. I cant see they getting ever approval for human-rated-flight. cant see it. its all delaying the inevitable, its just burning resources for shit, fucking the enviroment and the locals. for nothing than this billionaire-fuckers ego.
as someone at reddit put it;
Using trial and error on a project as costly and complex as launching the largest rocket ever built is an interesting approach.
exactly. because it will always be “under development”. for-ev-er.
9 Likes
The space shuttle was always a development vehicle. NASA made the mistake of treating it as a production configuration which was a contributing factor in the loss of Columbia
(This is not a defense of SpaceX)
2 Likes
also like the shuttle: no crew abort mechanism 
you know what I mean; the shuttle had at least a functional and working basic-design. “starships” basic-design is unfunctional shit. which wonders nobody; its his majestys design. like cybertruck. unfunctional shit.
e/ or let me put it this way: is some “work-in-progress” the same as “under development”? 
I dont know about that; what I know is; the shuttles engines never failed. never. the raptor seems to make anything but. its “under development” for eleven years! and it still doesnt work.
I understand the idea is that a launch abort could be done by separating Starship from the booster, spool up its own engines and either try to go for a low orbit or try to land.
Which has so, so many things that can go catastrophically wrong.
I don’t know whether they have even simulated this yet; Space-X is pretty tight-lipped on this.
(And I thought Gemini’s ejection seats were a suboptimal idea, given that bad timing could well have meant incineration by the rocket’s exhaust plume right after ejection.)
1 Like
you get the impression they simulating almost nothing beforehand.
SpaceX executive William Gerstenmaier said
Of course Gerst went straight to SpaceX after retiring from NASA. Gotta keep that public-to-private gravy train flowing.
Reference section 8.4 of the Columbia Accident Investigation board. Actually the whole report is a great read. The Shuttle concept was deeply flawed and operated in a culture that encouraged overlooking flaws. Defects found in flight were overlooked or worse, deemed acceptable.
The OMS engines may not have failed, but the Shuttle system was destroyed twice with the loss of 14 crew.
The raptor engines themselves may be okay. Hard to say without publicly available data. The system within which raptor is expected to operate doesnt seem to be up to snuff I agree.
6 Likes
I think (IIRC) they had one engine shut down during launch once when both temperature sensors on it failed and the flight computer interpreted this as the engine being a little hot and cut it off. Well, two out of three engines still running ain’t bad. Then the same thing started to happen another engine and they ignored it or overrode the computer or something.
Anyway, the pilot didn’t switch to one of the abort modes and they did make it into orbit.
2 Likes
yep. there was at least another one;
Lueders managed a NASA team working with SpaceX and Boeing teams concurrently over seven years. She was the CCP manager when SpaceX launched the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission on May 30, 2020, the first human launch from U.S. soil since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in July 2011…
On June 12, 2020, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Kathy Lueders to be the agency’s new associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate
In late March 2023 Leuders announced she would retire from NASA in April 2023
On May 15, 2023, a couple weeks after retiring from NASA, it was reported that Lueders would join SpaceX as a general manager working on the Starship program at Starbase. She reports directly to SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell
1 Like
a faulty sensor. but nothing was wrong with the engine itself. it didnt explode. (this thread goes seriously overboard now…)
Somehow though there is this idea that if you’re not blowing up rockets, you’re not innovating hard enough. Kind of like how OceanGate said submersibles were stagnating from being too preoccupied with safety…and hey, they had crewed missions eventually!
5 Likes
As part of a class on space medicine we had a guest lecturer who was an MD who worked on the CAIB. She revealed some pretty harrowing details of the last few minutes of the Columbia crew.
The managers of the shuttle program learned nothing from Challenger, and have the blood of seven people on their hands.
3 Likes
jah, I remember that now; thanx.
in my opinion its not; its way overpowered for its size. its a dead end.
August 17, 2020: Proof of 330 bar chamber pressure. For reference highest chamber pressure by an American engine is 206 bar by RS-25 (Space Shuttle) and historically Russians “beat” the Americans with an incredible 262 bar engine (RD family of engines). High chamber pressure is very difficult to achieve. US and the Soviets have been spending defense level of dollars and rubles and this is all they came up with: 206 and 262, just to be both humiliated by Elon
Tesla Model 3 Is the Car That Failed the Most in Germany’s Mandatory Vehicle Inspection
This is the first time the Model 3 shows up in the report, but not the first occasion in which a Tesla disappoints. In January 2022, TÜV disclosed that the Model S was also the worst battery electric vehicle (BEV) in the report. The American company’s flagship had a 10.7% rejection rate at the time. The average that year was 4.7%. It only failed to be the worst among the 128 vehicles with up to three years of use because of the Dacia Duster and the Dacia Logan, which beat it in inspection failures.
Starting price for a new Duster is 20 399€ and Logan’s is 5 900€.
5 Likes
That article is a disappointment to me. I used to work at a company that had a Dacia Duster as a company vehicle and I rather liked it.
4 Likes
Maybe this is more of your cup of tea:
In an unexpected turn of events, Tesla Model 3 surpassed Dacia to become the least malfunctioning model. For 3-5 year old vehicles, Volkswagen models like Golf Sportvan and T-Roc led the pack with the lowest negative reviews. However, the worst-performing models featured three BMWs and one Volkswagen, with the BMW Active and Gran Tourer ranking the lowest.
Huh?
