I really dig the pressure-fed astronaut (aerospace(?)-engineer); hes like a young bill strausser (cant tell me otherwise). his short take on âstarshipâ IFT-2:
spoiler; no, not really.
edit/ please do him and yourself the favour and go digging trough his channel; this guy deserves more views.
Musica Universalis
Though this will be SpaceX-led, the FAA must approve both the probe and the final report. It must also sign off on corrective actions before a license to continue can be issued.
there are no more corrective actions that can be made, its over. this flight showed explicitly that the raptor-engine is not reliable, let alone reusable. mainfailure were in both crafts the engine-compartments, they cant be relit whitout blowing up, if they were running a certain time at full. they even blow up in ânormalâ operation (second stage). my opinion, starship is dead, every following âtestâ and launch is just to delay the inevitable. its like a hi-tech-cargo-cult for space-exploration.
The comment above describing Space-X as âSovietâ seems to be spot on. The N1/L2 made it farther (edit: not, ugh, 
needed) on the first launch than the Space-X offering did on its first run; I like the comparison because both use the âbig array of small enginesâ design that I hate. Letâs see if the new system (I canât bring myself to say the name) gets to 4 launches before they give up like the Soviets did⌠
in spacex case its even worse; they getting too hot (methane), they are too small for what they supposed to do, the turbopumps are designed at the absolut limit of what is possible and the array is too tightly packed (heating each other). and the plumbing must be a fucking nightmare.
To be fair they havenât actually killed everyone involved in them yet so itâs unfair to say they are worse than the Soviet system.
Yet.
Are you sure that the N1 did better in its first launch? Your Wikipedia link says that it exploded at about 12 km. The first Starship launch attempt made it to about 39 km. (Then it went out of control and the self-destruct system failed to work and it flailed around and fell to 29 km before finally exploding)
In many ways the Soviet system was far more ambitious because they didnât have the advantage of modern computer control systems to handle the insane complexity of 30 engines, but I wouldnât say they were more successful.
At any rate, I wouldnât bet against SpaceX eventually pulling this off. Theyâve already got quite a few new boosters and ships in various stages of construction and have a lot of opportunities to continue running test launches without having to scramble for funding. Basically they have the luxury to keep failing a number of times before getting it right, something that the Soviets and NASA did not have during the height of the Space Race.
Iâm definitely ambivalent about my feelings towards SpaceX because Musk is such an asshole (plus theyâre ruining the night sky with Starlink satellites and doing other environmental damage) but they do have a decent track record of reliable, affordable launches at this point and whatever successes they have had are definitely in spite of Musk, not because of him.
As for the overall design philosophy, Iâm not sure what better designs are out there for rockets of this size. The Saturn V was an awesome machine, but I wouldnât look to it as a model to follow for the future. Thereâs no way that it could have ever been made to be reusable. Plus, if weâre being honest with ourselves, the guy in charge of that program was also a friggin Nazi. 
And of course, Korolev didnât want to use so many engines in the N1 design. He was forced into a design that he knew to be sub-optimal, because Glushko refused to work with him, and wouldnât design the large, high-power engines that it would have needed for a Saturn-style engine configuration.
thats the whole point; the âstarshipâ-program is musks fever-dream, not spacexs. its his design. and its bad. very bad.
he had nothing to do with the falcon-development, but everything with starship.
its not gonna work.
jah, I said its even worse.
Ok, time will certainly tell on that one. Maybe youâll be proven right.
For the record, if I had to take a ride to the moon within the next few years I would definitely feel safer flying on NASAâs SLS. But if I had to make a financial bet on which launch system will be more sustainable long-term, I would go with Starship. Itâs certainly not there yet but it at least has the potential to eventually be an affordable, reusable system. And even if they never managed to make it reusable itâs still far less expensive than SLS.
oh no, you wouldnt /s
not in my opinion, no. its a bad design. its to heavy and it needs 14-20 (thats official) refueling-operations in orbit to get even to the moon, let alone mars. its stupid and insane.
all it can be is a super-heavy-lifter for starlink-satellites in LEO. max. and it wont be âreusableâ. ever.
(third part is actually enough; and Im pretty sure this guy knows what he is talking about)
If it does just make it to LEO and nothing else thereâs other potential uses beyond starlink. I was talking to a JPL guy a couple days ago. Having the capacity of launching space telescopes and whatnot that are 9 meters in diameter is game-changing for some of their designs. A heck of a lot less complex origami would be needed for telescope mirrors, for example.
But like I said, weâll all find out soon enough if they can make it work or not. Maybe the next launch attempt will destroy the tower and surrounding facilities and the whole experiment will come to an inglorious end.
yeah, we will need these, when the coming mega-constellations like fucking starlink are gonna plaster the nightsky. excuse my cynicism.
and hopefully no ones gonna die. really, really fucking not!
