- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
Sounds like a proper test. But annoying that Musk’s name has to be plastered over every headline related to Xitter, Tesla Motors, Starlink and SpaceX.
It’s interesting. When a spacex launch goes well, you don’t see his name attached in the headline. But on this explosion, his name comes first.
I mean, It’s all business. Disaster and Elon musk are going hand in hand since his turn into a pretty decent, hateable villain a couple years ago. So putting his name on an explosion gets the “Awfuckyeah give me musk hate porn” crowd. Even though he had almost as little to do with this failure as he did with the Hindenburg. But this gets clicks.
It’s pretty annoying, because we can see right through it and their motives are shitty. Don’t get me wrong, Elon musk is a douchebag, but CNN’s motives for attaching his name to this article directly in the headline aren’t a mystery. And they’re selfish. So we can hate both CNN and musk at the same time. Convenient.
CNN writer here puts Musk in the first line of the article where it was considered a success.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/09/tech/spacex-starship-40000-foot-test-flight-scn/index.html
In this article Musk’s name isn’t there… which is the kind of article I would rather see:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/18/world/starship-launch-science-newsletter-wt-scn/index.html
Hate the game, not the player.
But one is from 2020, before he turned into a villain. So that’s still tracks. And the second one is from this year. And they’re talking about a feat. I still think my theory is right.
Plus, it’s CNN. I…didn’t think people were really able to defend CNN as anything more than a moneymaking venture. Just because trump hated them, it’s like we all forgot everything they’ve ever done.
Interestingly, they actually took Musk’s name out of this headline (after I posted it, ugh), but managed to replace it with a very BuzzFeed-y one.
Yeah it’s kind of annoying…
Guess CNN is keeping a close eye on what us on Lemmy think of their work. We’re tastemakers.
Well done to Musk and team for what most people would deem a huge success. Great to see. Really fun to watch and follow space x huge successes over the years.
Sorry it goes against the narrative and people can’t enjoy how great this is.
I’m frankly impressed they got 30 methane burning rocket engines to run flawlessly like that. mind boggling how quickly it leapt off the stand. fuck musk 8 ways from sunday, but I dig spaceX, shotwell has figured out how to manage musk’s bullshit apparently and is doing great work.
The 33 engines burning all together was really impressive to watch. The burn looked so clean and compared to the previous launch where engines where just failing on after another is was nice to see the huge progress.
I have to be able to separate the Space Baby’s idiotic antics from SpaceX. I’m simply to excited about what SpaceX is doing. My whole bloody life I’ve dreamed that we would return to space in a real fashion. This is the first time I have a glimmer of hope.
It is quite the accomplishment to get to the Karman Line though so credit to SpaceX’s engineers.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
SpaceX’s gargantuan deep-space rocket system, Starship, safely lifted off Saturday morning, but ended prematurely with an explosion and a loss of signal.
About two and a half minutes after roaring to life and vaulting off the launchpad, the Super Heavy booster expended most of its fuel, and the Starship spacecraft fired its own engines and broke away.
“The automated flight termination system on second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn as we were headed down rage out over the Gulf of Mexico,” aerospace engineer John Insprucker said.
NASA is investing up to $4 billion in the rocket system with the goal of using the Starship capsule to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface for its Artemis III mission, currently slated to take off as soon as 2025.
The endeavor is aiming to return humans to the moon for the first time in five decades, and the successful completion of this test flight would bring the US space agency and SpaceX one step closer to that goal.
During that test flight, several of the Super Heavy’s engines unexpectedly powered off and the rocket began spiraling out of control just minutes after liftoff.
The original article contains 540 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So the booster worked in that it achieved lift off and properly separated. Did the other stages complete their jobs? Because this looking like it’s only a failure in the sense that the booster didn’t do the cool we-live-in-the-future part of flipping itself over and landing.
The main focus of this test was stage separation. In that sense it was a roaring success. Also, looks like they managed not to trash the landing pad this time. So that will make it easier to get the next flight approved. But clearly there’s still a long way to go.
Also demonstrated the flight termination systems, for both stages, it seems.
It appears they got their engine development under control too. Every one lit and burned effectively full duration, on both stages.
So basically they’ve fixed every issue displayed in the first flight I’d say.
Still some work to do in the not-blow-up department, though.
While this test was much more successful than the last one, it shows it will be at least a couple years before starship is fully operational at this rate if development and who knows when they’ll be able to get it crew rated.
So I’m already willing to bet artemis 3 gets delayed by at least a year while starship gets developed, which is a big shame.
But at least they’ll get there eventually. NASA so far has been entirely incapable of creating their own lander or even contract anyone who could.
Here’s a pre-launch article in case anyone wants to compare pre-launch expectations to reality.
Booster: deleted
Spaceship: deleted
Earth: polluted
Resources: deleted
“Manned Mars mission in 2024 if we’re lucky”: not even a hint of it.
“Manned Mars mission in 2026”: lolYou can pretend the “test” is a huge success, just like I pretend that my programs crash because they’re still in “beta”.
Full self driving next year™