T-minus 23 mins, propellant loading was successful

Range just went green, 5 minutes.

Orbit was successful!

nortex97 said:

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Hawaii almost never has bad weather and is basically on the equator. We need to build a launch complex there, obviously.

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I hope you're being sarcastic. If not, I can tell you've never been there.

I see they left the gate open just in case

TexAgs91 said:

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I see they left the gate open just in case

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I noticed that, they kept two open. Allegedly the last time was an accident, this time was for the internet!

I'm curious to see what their stock prices look like at opening tomorrow.... there's talks of a huge price swing near opening, several big players that had been waiting have apparently been moving. There's even a rumor Elon has taken some of the recent tesla sell off and bought a good chunk.

The launch went brilliantly, it apparently still had a decent bit of dV left at insertion, I think they have a working vehicle now.

How often are there launches at Boca Chica? I'll be back in the US with family around Fourth of July, would love to try and catch a launch for my kids (and myself). How much advance notice is there usually?

gomerschlep said:

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nortex97 said:

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Hawaii almost never has bad weather and is basically on the equator. We need to build a launch complex there, obviously.

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I hope you're being sarcastic. If not, I can tell you've never been there.

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Know how I know you are kind of an…well never mind. Not worth the ban.

Low level rain is not hurricanes/Atlantic storms. Weather at the coasts (particularly heading off west) would not be as much of a challenge as it is in South Florida/Atlantic for many months a year. Go look up how many hurricanes have hit HI in the past 50 years, and get back with me.

Or, actually, don't. Bless your heart.

moses1084ever said:

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How often are there launches at Boca Chica? I'll be back in the US with family around Fourth of July, would love to try and catch a launch for my kids (and myself). How much advance notice is there usually?

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Right now we're waiting for the FAA environmental approval which should happen by the end of the year with a launch in January. But after that I doubt it would be anymore predictable than it has been. You may get a notice within days of launch that it will occur within the next few days. Once their launch program becomes more stable I think their schedule will become more regular and published.

TexAgs91 said:

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moses1084ever said:

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How often are there launches at Boca Chica? I'll be back in the US with family around Fourth of July, would love to try and catch a launch for my kids (and myself). How much advance notice is there usually?

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Right now we're waiting for the FAA environmental approval which should happen by the end of the year with a launch in January. But after that I doubt it would be anymore predictable than it has been. You may get a notice within days of launch that it will occur within the next few days. Once their launch program becomes more stable I think their schedule will become more regular and published.

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I think it will be a couple years before we see anything approaching stability in a launch schedule, maybe more.

nortex97 said:

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gomerschlep said:

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nortex97 said:

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Hawaii almost never has bad weather and is basically on the equator. We need to build a launch complex there, obviously.

---

I hope you're being sarcastic. If not, I can tell you've never been there.

---

Know how I know you are kind of an…well never mind. Not worth the ban.

Low level rain is not hurricanes/Atlantic storms. Weather at the coasts (particularly heading off west) would not be as much of a challenge as it is in South Florida/Atlantic for many months a year. Go look up how many hurricanes have hit HI in the past 50 years, and get back with me.

Or, actually, don't. Bless your heart.

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Hawaii had a car ferry in operation for a while. Everyone loved it. Could drive your own car from island to island. Hawaiian Air got worried they'd lose business. Environmentalists said oh no. Palms weren't greased. The government shut it down. You think those high tax loving and high payola pols and granola eating hippies would let rockets blast off nearby?

techno-ag said:

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nortex97 said:

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gomerschlep said:

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nortex97 said:

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Hawaii almost never has bad weather and is basically on the equator. We need to build a launch complex there, obviously.

---

I hope you're being sarcastic. If not, I can tell you've never been there.

---

Know how I know you are kind of an…well never mind. Not worth the ban.

Low level rain is not hurricanes/Atlantic storms. Weather at the coasts (particularly heading off west) would not be as much of a challenge as it is in South Florida/Atlantic for many months a year. Go look up how many hurricanes have hit HI in the past 50 years, and get back with me.

Or, actually, don't. Bless your heart.

---

Hawaii had a car ferry in operation for a while. Everyone loved it. Could drive your own car from island to island. Hawaiian Air got worried they'd lose business. Environmentalists said oh no. Palms weren't greased. The government shut it down. You think those high tax loving and high payola pols and granola eating hippies would let rockets blast off nearby?

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That's got nothing to do with the weather. If the feds want to take some land and launch rockets from the islands, they don't have to deal with the local communists. No, it's not likely to happen soon and yes cost of living yada yada plus transport of supplies but it could be a 'boom' industry for an island/state (which is very bigoted too) wholly dependent on tourism which hates tourists.

Heck, methane should be able to be sourced locally as well, I'd guess. What if a more down range recovery were then possible and the booster could be taken to California for a more northern launch, and then cycled back to HI? One would think Hawaiians would be excited about the possibilities.

But whatever, really, it's not likely to happen, again. I just didn't appreciate the dramatic condescension etc. in the post I replied to.

Oh nasa. The IG report (covered first in video) is interesting, but the mere possibility of paying for SLS for 30 years or more is mind numbing.

Isn't part of that development dependent on the SLS being made... exponentially cheaper? I mean it's never going to compete with starship, but I think that push is predicated in a rocket that cost 50% less or more

They have no idea. The first 5 missions are costing $4 billion per flight (not development costs). Check out the video (yes, sharp german accent), it's kind of hysterical if you can keep from getting pissed.

I watched it, I think AA was talking about the cost reduction demands.

I kind of agree with him, I think the whole thing is just a play for funding.

If James Webb is the project that ate Astronomy. The SLS will be the rocket that eats Exploration.

Elon could decide to fly a SpX pilot to the moon with Starship, making a mockery of SLS and Orion.

I'm waiting for that one to happen.... dear moon is going to wrankle a LOT of feathers, even if the just circumnavigate, and use dragons for the transfers to and from

Hell I ope he does and that he builds a better telescope to take with him. I'm super excited for Webb but I imagine he has to have thought…."I can do that better"

lb3 said:

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If James Webb is the project that ate Astronomy. The SLS will be the rocket that eats Exploration.

Elon could decide to fly a SpX pilot to the moon with Starship, making a mockery of SLS and Orion.

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Speaking of Webb (and it's 344 single point of failure deployment) it is apparently back to "game on."

Quote:

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WASHINGTON Launch preparations for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will resume after testing found no damage to the spacecraft from a payload processing incident earlier this month.

NASA announced late Nov. 24 that testing of JWST found no sign of damage to any of its components after a clamp band, which secures the spacecraft to its launch vehicle adapter, suddenly and unexpectedly released during payload processing work by Arianespace. The release of the clamp band imparted vibrations to the telescope that project officials worried could have damaged it.

NASA did not discuss the specific testing performed, or the components that were of concern, but said in the statement that an anomaly board concluded that no observatory components were damaged by the test. Fueling of JWST, the next major step in preparing the spacecraft for launch, is scheduled to begin Nov. 25 and take about 10 days.

The approval to move the spacecraft into fueling keeps the mission on track for a revised launch date of Dec. 22, four days later than previously planned. Liftoff of the Ariane 5 carrying JWST is scheduled for 7:20 a.m. Eastern that day from Kourou, French Guiana.

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(And btw, the Hubble net cost is probably over $10 billion, as well.) I still see these as relative bargains of scientific discovery. Given the size/scale of our federal expenditures...it's nice to see some neat stuff (literally, lol) happen as a function of our military budget in particular.

This was written a decade ago and more projects have been delayed or cancelled since then.

Quote:

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NASA's next-generation space observatory promises to open new windows on the Universe but its cost could close many more.

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https://www.nature.com/articles/4671028a

I get it, but realistically a lot of those programs eaten up would have wound up running into the billion dollar range anyway. We spend a fraction of what I'd consider optimal on scientific/space exploration, but to really expand on that, let alone analyze how 'we' could as a people/government do so more efficiently, would frankly derail the whole discussion/thread. Meanwhile, Hubble keeps managing to do amazing things.

It's frustrating, as the real monster under the bed are things like SLS/Artemis/Space Shuttle etc, which have long been sacred political cows. Any high-technology government program that takes multiple decades to build/deploy is going to wind up being at least somewhat of a boondoggle, whether it is the F-35, a new class of aircraft carriers, or a space telescope, imho, in short.

Spyderman, I really don't want to steer this into a discussion of UFO's/aliens, as it is just likely to be miserable for the regulars here, but I do find this office that was established recently a bit curious.

At least 50% of my tweets were made on a porcelain throne

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2021

That comes to more than 8,000 tweets over 12.5 years. If you do the math, it means you poop twice a day.

Did you really want to tell people that?

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) November 23, 2021

TexAgs91 said:

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At least 50% of my tweets were made on a porcelain throne

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2021

That comes to more than 8,000 tweets over 12.5 years. If you do the math, it means you poop twice a day.

Did you really want to tell people that?

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) November 23, 2021

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Seems healthy.

Or he tweets more than twice in a single poop or pees sitting down. Damn Neil, I thought you were a scientist...

There is someone on the main board saying they saw UFO type lights here in Texas tonight, another poster saying 6-8 other people on Twitter with same story?

Any info on this ? I have no clue if this could be true or not

fullback44 said:

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There is someone on the main board saying they saw UFO type lights here in Texas tonight, another poster saying 6-8 other people on Twitter with same story?

Any info on this ? I have no clue if this could be true or not

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Oh god... you've made me curious enough to look at the "Is UFO Secrecy Crumbling" thread for the first time. I didn't see anything from today though, and a forum-wide search for 'ufo' from the past day turns up nothing.

Link?

fullback44 said:

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There is someone on the main board saying they saw UFO type lights here in Texas tonight, another poster saying 6-8 other people on Twitter with same story?

Any info on this ? I have no clue if this could be true or not

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If someone on the main board posted it and another poster is saying 6-8 people on Twitter are saying the same thing you can take it to the bank.

I was just wondering if we were going to see Santa in the skies early this year… trying to figure out if I needed to run down to HEB and get some milk and cookies to leave out on the table tonight.. maybe some oats for Rudolph and gang

Still more credible space discussion than CNN or nat geo usually give you...

I will never forgive nat geo for playing the video of Challenger disintegrating in the minutes leading up to demo 2.

Letter from Elon to SpaceX employees link

Quote:

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In an email sent to SpaceX employees, obtained by Space Explored, Elon Musk addressed the 'crisis' of Starship Raptor engine production and said the company could face a 'genuine risk of bankruptcy' if the company is unable to achieve a Starship flight rate of once every two weeks next year.

"Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it had seemed a few weeks ago. As we have dug into the issues following the exiting of prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this.

I was going to take this weekend off, as my first weekend off in a long time, but instead, I will be on the Raptor line all night and through the weekend."

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Musk is asking for all hands on deck

Quote:

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Unless you have critical family matters or cannot physically return to Hawthorne, we will need all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster.

The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can't fly Starship, which means we then can't fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong.

In addition, we are spooling up terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume massive capital, assuming that satellite V2 will be on orbit to handle the bandwidth demand. These terminals will be useless otherwise.

What it comes down to, is that we face a genuine risk of bankruptcy if we can't achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.

Thanks,
Elon

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Given this from the FAA, this sounds really bad

Quote:

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The FAA noted that the environmental assessment assumes up to 20 Starship suborbital test flights a year during development, and up to five Starship and Super Heavy orbital launches annually.

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Easy solution is to spin off star link to a public ally traded company. This had been discussed initially then pulled back.

Wonder if it may happen now?

I think that last paragraph is kinda important for perspective:

Quote:

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Don't for a minute take Elon's mention of bankruptcy at face value. The fact that Musk is putting this level of importance on Starship rapidly progressing soon is actually a good indicator of what's to come in the next several months.

2022 will surely be a pivotal year for SpaceX's next-generation rocket. Going back to its original Falcon 1 rocket project, SpaceX has historically reached major milestones when its fate depends on it.
Despite what the email says, if Starship isn't actually flying every 14 days by the end of next year SpaceX's won't literally go under. Rather, Elon Musk is sharing the pressure that the timeline is necessary to keep the company on its ambitious path without scaling back operations that aren't profitable yet.

Put another way, no one should leave with the takeaway that SpaceX's Commercial Crew and Commercial Cargo contracts are at risk, nor should one use this to make the case that the Human Landing System contract should not have been awarded to SpaceX.
Starship is an ambitious project with an aggressive timeline that SpaceX believes makes up for decades of lost time toward progressing in space exploration and more importantly to Musk, making life multi-planetary.

The last time this much pressure was put on SpaceX as a company happened shortly after they sent astronauts to the space station for the first time. Elon Musk told employees that Starship was now the 'top SpaceX priority' while asking anyone willing to move to Texas to work directly on the project … and look how much progress Starship has made since then.

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Probably the only thing really at risk here is Starlink. And if I'm honest, Elon's biggest problem isn't Raptor, it's the tiles that keep falling off every time they light the engines or vent S20. That dog ain't gonna hunt when it comes time to re-enter the atmosphere, and is probably the more serious of the issues they face. They have the ability to refurb Raptor V1 at a shockingly quick rate if they need to get by until V2 is ready.

That being said, I had posited on this thread a while back that I was curious how well SpaceX would be positioned in the long term when you can't get people with greater than 10 years of experience to stick around due to the God-awful work/life balance. Management structures need some of that stability to be effective. Wonder if that's contributing here.

Maximus_Meridius said:

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I think that last paragraph is kinda important for perspective:

Quote:

---

Don't for a minute take Elon's mention of bankruptcy at face value. The fact that Musk is putting this level of importance on Starship rapidly progressing soon is actually a good indicator of what's to come in the next several months.

2022 will surely be a pivotal year for SpaceX's next-generation rocket. Going back to its original Falcon 1 rocket project, SpaceX has historically reached major milestones when its fate depends on it.
Despite what the email says, if Starship isn't actually flying every 14 days by the end of next year SpaceX's won't literally go under. Rather, Elon Musk is sharing the pressure that the timeline is necessary to keep the company on its ambitious path without scaling back operations that aren't profitable yet.

Put another way, no one should leave with the takeaway that SpaceX's Commercial Crew and Commercial Cargo contracts are at risk, nor should one use this to make the case that the Human Landing System contract should not have been awarded to SpaceX.
Starship is an ambitious project with an aggressive timeline that SpaceX believes makes up for decades of lost time toward progressing in space exploration and more importantly to Musk, making life multi-planetary.

The last time this much pressure was put on SpaceX as a company happened shortly after they sent astronauts to the space station for the first time. Elon Musk told employees that Starship was now the 'top SpaceX priority' while asking anyone willing to move to Texas to work directly on the project … and look how much progress Starship has made since then.

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Probably the only thing really at risk here is Starlink. And if I'm honest, Elon's biggest problem isn't Raptor, it's the tiles that keep falling off every time they light the engines or vent S20. That dog ain't gonna hunt when it comes time to re-enter the atmosphere, and is probably the more serious of the issues they face. They have the ability to refurb Raptor V1 at a shockingly quick rate if they need to get by until V2 is ready.

That being said, I had posited on this thread a while back that I was curious how well SpaceX would be positioned in the long term when you can't get people with greater than 10 years of experience to stick around due to the God-awful work/life balance. Management structures need some of that stability to be effective. Wonder if that's contributing here.

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They have tons of Starlink V2 satellites they need to get into orbit which will be used by the millions of receivers they're producing. So if they're having heat shield issues, it only means they can't recover starships. But at least they can get their satellites into orbit.