| General > General Technical Chat |
| Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE |
| << < (11/22) > >> |
| coppice:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 03:50:08 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 01:58:49 am ---The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground. --- End quote --- What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4. Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM). The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs. --- End quote --- So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht? |
| Sal Ammoniac:
--- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 04:12:48 pm --- --- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 03:50:08 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 01:58:49 am ---The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground. --- End quote --- What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4. Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM). The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs. --- End quote --- So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht? --- End quote --- I'm not implying the Saturn/Apollo program was perfect, just that it had vastly more successes than failures. The Saturn boosters had a nearly perfect record. The Apollo spacecraft, with the exception of the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 abort, also had an excellent track record. In seven attempts to land on the moon, six were successful. Kennedy's goal was achieved with six months to spare. |
| coppice:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 05:02:41 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 04:12:48 pm --- --- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 03:50:08 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 01:58:49 am ---The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground. --- End quote --- What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4. Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM). The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs. --- End quote --- So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht? --- End quote --- I'm not implying the Saturn/Apollo program was perfect, just that it had vastly more successes than failures. The Saturn boosters had a nearly perfect record. The Apollo spacecraft, with the exception of the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 abort, also had an excellent track record. In seven attempts to land on the moon, six were successful. Kennedy's goal was achieved with six months to spare. --- End quote --- I'm not implying SpaceX is perfect, but after a few nasty incidents as they tested and refined Falcon 9, they've had more than 150 launches in a row without a major incident, and will put 80% of all payload into orbit this year. What makes you think the new ship will be any different? They do everything in the public gaze, with various YouTubers documenting every success and mishap. The reason the old NASA looked a lot better is it was working in the cold war, and revealing much less. To kids like me in the west Russia's efforts appeared cleaner, but that's only because we were even less aware of how many touch and go incidents the Russians had. At least we got to see the terror on various astronauts faces as they waited hours for lift off after it was stalled numerous times for incidents during countdown. A LOT of US rockets blew up in the late 50s and early 60s, and they'd only just started to settle down when the first men were sent up. |
| Sal Ammoniac:
--- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 05:19:03 pm --- --- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 05:02:41 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 04:12:48 pm --- --- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 03:50:08 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 01:58:49 am ---The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground. --- End quote --- What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4. Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM). The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs. --- End quote --- So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht? --- End quote --- I'm not implying the Saturn/Apollo program was perfect, just that it had vastly more successes than failures. The Saturn boosters had a nearly perfect record. The Apollo spacecraft, with the exception of the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 abort, also had an excellent track record. In seven attempts to land on the moon, six were successful. Kennedy's goal was achieved with six months to spare. --- End quote --- I'm not implying SpaceX is perfect, but after a few nasty incidents as they tested and refined Falcon 9, they've had more than 150 launches in a row without a major incident, and will put 80% of all payload into orbit this year. What makes you think the new ship will be any different? They do everything in the public gaze, with various YouTubers documenting every success and mishap. The reason the old NASA looked a lot better is it was working in the cold war, and revealing much less. To kids like me in the west Russia's efforts appeared cleaner, but that's only because we were even less aware of how many touch and go incidents the Russians had. At least we got to see the terror on various astronauts faces as they waited hours for lift off after it was stalled numerous times for incidents during countdown. A LOT of US rockets blew up in the late 50s and early 60s, and they'd only just started to settle down when the first men were sent up. --- End quote --- Yes, lots of U.S. rockets blew up in the 1950s and early 1960s. Not all of these were NASA projects (they were military projects to develop ICBMs to carry nukes). The reason Saturn/Apollo was so successful was the project management/quality assurance/testing processes that NASA instituted starting with the manned programs. I think SpaceX uses a looser process, which results in more test failures. Sure, they get there in the end, but the development process seems more chaotic and out of control. The Russians had a policy of only publicizing successful missions. Who knows how many failed and were swept under the rug? NASA (and SpaceX) do things completely out in the open, so the failures are there for all to see. |
| coppice:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 05:32:24 pm ---The Russians had a policy of only publicizing successful missions. Who knows how many failed and were swept under the rug? NASA (and SpaceX) do things completely out in the open, so the failures are there for all to see. --- End quote --- In the 60s NASA was only as open as it was pushed to be (i.e. not very open except for actual launches, which didn't occur deep in deserted areas, like Kazakhstan, so they were hard to hide), and things seemed to go quite well. Now its almost as open as SpaceX and its performance looks quite poor. Coincidence? I doubt it. Look under the surface of most development work and it looks pretty messy. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |