General > General Technical Chat
Starship 12.5km launch
coppice:
When I think of NASA projects like the SLS, I always think of
tom66:
--- Quote from: rdl on December 13, 2020, 08:58:18 am ---The SLS has become a financial disaster. It survives mostly only because of politics. Using four of the very expensive RS-25 engines on an expendable booster is stupid beyond belief.
--- End quote ---
Pork barrel politics. Far better to waste billions developing a rocket system that will barely see use, than to put that money to useful things (boy, I bet that could buy a lot of wind farms, which would probably still employ plenty of people.)
wraper:
--- Quote from: tom66 on December 13, 2020, 10:42:21 pm ---
--- Quote from: rdl on December 13, 2020, 08:58:18 am ---The SLS has become a financial disaster. It survives mostly only because of politics. Using four of the very expensive RS-25 engines on an expendable booster is stupid beyond belief.
--- End quote ---
Pork barrel politics. Far better to waste billions developing a rocket system that will barely see use, than to put that money to useful things (boy, I bet that could buy a lot of wind farms, which would probably still employ plenty of people.)
--- End quote ---
Money can be wasted on anything, including wind farms. Problem is not that SLS is made as such, It's about HOW it's made.
raptor1956:
My initial impression of the Starship SN8 12.5km test was that it was a partial success and therefore a partial failure, but the more I learn about it the more I'm left to conclude that it was much more success than failure. Watching it realtime the loss of the first engine appeared unplanned ... ditto the second engine, but when they fired up two engines at the end it showed that the earlier engine shutdowns were planned -- at least one of them anyway. So, it we take the news from SpaceX that the crash was do to low pressure in a header tank it puts the failure down to that singular issue -- still, they've been failing with tanks a bit too much for my taste. The green exhaust seen in the final seconds was put down to the copper in the engines burning up, but when I saw it realtime I thought they were using TEA/TEB like they use with the Merlin engines. Since the Raptor isn't supposed to use TEA/TEB and instead uses a spark torch setup I thought they'd used TEA/TEB as an emergency engine restart, but, consuming copper fully explains the green color so no TEA/TEB.
Blue Origin, in operation two years longer than SpaceX, has yet to put anything into orbit!
Brian
Refrigerator:
--- Quote from: wraper on December 13, 2020, 11:57:37 pm ---Money can be wasted on anything, including wind farms.
--- End quote ---
And solar panels *cough* solar roadways *cough*.
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