wanttaja
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Ullage motors. Always thought they were a nifty, low-tech way of handling it. They apply enough G to put the propellant and oxidizer at the pump-end of the tank.
Ron Wanttaja
Starship successfully launches.....
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Ron Wanttaja
Pinecone
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Amazing the number of people that do not understand the iterative engineering process.
And RUD after the desired achievement is not really a set back. You design it to do X and it does X. So the test is successful. The data from the failure points to the next steps to the design to text to Y.
This process is MUCH faster and actually cheaper than trying to make the first test perfect from end to end. And when try to fix everything in design, without testing, you over design.
Look at the Wright brothers. You are saying they should have designed and designed so the first time they flew, it was a powered aircraft that flew until they had to land due to fuel. No, they designed and crashed many gliders, to getting to powered flight. And the first powered flight was only 120 feet.
Pinecone
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How many production launches of Space X have failed?
A BIG difference between test flying and production. And Space X launched 61 orbital missions. IN ONE YEAR (2022). More than one per week. Falcon 9 was developed for $300 million in 2011 dollars. $67 million for a launch in 2022.
Saturn 5 was 13 launches. Over 7 years. Or 2 per year. Program cost in 2022 dollars was about $50 billion. With a cost of $1.23 billion in 2022 dollars per launch
So Falcon 9 development was about the cost of 6 launches. Saturn 5 development cost about the price of 40 launches.
WDD
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Vintage Snazzy (so my adult children say)
Traditionally small ullage rockets / thrusters have been used.
Larry in TN
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They launch so often that it's difficult to keep up with the counts.
Their webpage today is saying they've had 285 launches, 248 landings, and 220 reflights.
Today's Starlink launch was the 15th flight for the booster. They have one booster which has flown 18 times.
A third party site shows 88 operational launches so far this year with a goal of 100. Landing success rate has been 100% this year.
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Velocity173
Not sure how you got that from my post. As I stated, Mercury lost several rockets in the development process. They used the same iterative engineering process as Space X so it’s nothing new. But, when the goal for a vehicle was to go into orbit and it didn’t meet the intent? That’s not a success. It didn’t work as planned, it was “unscheduled.” I’d also rather have a vehicle that’s recoverable to study the effects of the flight vs losing both stages.
Also, let’s not forget, back when Space X was blowing up Falcon 1s, they were about to lose NASA funding. Elon said himself, if it weren’t for the forth one being a success, Space X wouldn’t have survived. So while iterative engineering is the cheapest way to get into space, having successful launches is far cheaper than blowing up rockets left and right.
I have no doubt that Space X will eventually work the bugs out with Starship. They are on a tight schedule though and it’s still gonna take several successful flights before they put humans in it.
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Velocity173
Bunch of heat tiles came off during the launch. Gotta be an incredible amount of vibration.
PaulS
Touchdown! Greaser!
Probably glue from China.
Pinecone
En-Route
It wasn't just your comment. It was a combination of several. Yours was the one I just replied to.
They reported that while orbital or suborbital was desired, they got to the minimum goal.
And WRT NASA pulling funding, that is NASA, they don't think outside the box. They are still launching one-shot Atlas boosters. Atlas was a 50s ICBM. Yes, they did some of that in the beginning, but that is not the NASA of later years.