Space X Went Boom

kneemos

Seriously how have they not figured this out yet? How long have they been manufacturing rockets?

I'm sure they're not even that complicated despite the rumours.

mod

this thread is not for discussing CT, including, but not limited to, whether there was astronauts on the moon etc etc.

Use the CT forum to discuss topics such as those, keep this one for Space X, thanks.

Raichu

silliussoddius

At least flights to Mars should be cheaper.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120500458#Comment_120500458

especially window seats....

I love those videos of the boffins and eggheads at the launch centre hugging, cheering and high-fiving only to go silent when the rocket explodes. Don’t know why.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120500520#Comment_120500520

...you re really dr. evil, arent you!

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058293225/space-x-went-boom

I know! I mean, its not exactly Rocket Science, is it?

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120500535#Comment_120500535

...just leave your jacket, and go!

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120500542#Comment_120500542

Someone was going to say it. It might as well be me.

PopePalpatine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120500520#Comment_120500520

Because they realise Space Karen's going to give them the hairdryer treatment.

whisky_galore

Good.

odyssey06

Space aliens interfering to suppress our development again.

FoxForce5

20 yrs ago the us space program was dead and outsourced to the Russians. Today the largest vehicle to ever leave the ground flew 20km up, a vehicle that can carry 8 double decker busses and will in 3 years return yanks to the moon, within the decade fly them to mars. Like Oppenheimer and van Braun , elon is not the smartest man in the room nor the most likable but he is the man who can get the smartest men in the room

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501592#Comment_120501592

You'll have to excuse me when I don't trust a man who promised a hyperloop in las Vegas and delivered slow moving Teslas in a tunnel to do anything productive in space.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501694#Comment_120501694

Luckily he's mostly just reporting what SpaceX does rather than driving it directly. He'd be better off if he stuck with that.

FoxForce5

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501694#Comment_120501694

Average cost per kg to LEO with space x is $2k , nearly 6 times cheaper than NASA . They have revolutionised the space industry.

cj maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120500458#Comment_120500458

Should we start a go fund me page for a few people here 😷?

deeperlearning

Space X went boom?

I think we will find that Space X just went bust.

StevenToast

I think putting men on the moon and bringing them home safely nearly 54 years ago is the greatest thing humans will ever do.....

An extraordinary achievement that is so unbelievable that alot of people dont actually believe it.....

dalyboy

In 2 months from now we celebrate the 54th anniversary of landing on the moon. Today we cannot manage to get a rocket into orbit without exploding.

Now please don’t shoot the messenger here but I’m calling a spade a spade. Space travel has actually regressed to remedial levels. The fact that there are space fanboys excited about todays launch is actually embarrassing.

Yeah there’s the odd sound-bite over the last 20 years or so about plans to go back to the moon or venture a human to Mars but it never actually comes to fruition. It’s pushed as a forward target in 5-8 years time in the hope we will forget about their last announcement 3-5 years earlier. It’s one giant waste of time even reading or watching anything to do with space travel as it’ll never happen.

kneemos

Is there anything on the bloody Moon?

They've had robots scurrying around the thing endlessly without any major or minor discovereries that I'm aware of.

dalyboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501911#Comment_120501911

I remember my father saying that we would have space stations and holidays to the moon within the decade. That was the early 1980’s. That was the narrative his generation was being sold. Our generation is being sold the “Mars trip” (and conveniently forgetting the moon)

The moon has never been visited / landed on by a human in my entire lifetime. We have been lied to about our progress in space travel for too long now. It is pathetic naivety to pay any attention to it anymore.

Strumms

If on Mars fûck all is found…..people will just give up.

32.35 billion was NASA’s funding for this year. Hundreds of billions a decade.

The only planet that has any proven life forms is Earth.

NASA has been around since 1958.

NASA, ROSCOSMOS or indeed any other agency worldwide have found nothing.

comes a time where it’s just not good value to be pumping an agency full of that sort of cash.

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502123#Comment_120502123

We've been to Mars more than once,same as the Moon only slightly redder.

Half suspect the Space X was expected to explode they were grinning and joking about at the launch centre, apparently a "great success".

castletownman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502106#Comment_120502106

Surely it'd be more prudent as a species to take the money we seem to be wasting on space travel and divert into coming up with a solution to global warming or hunger. I always thought that if enough scientists worked on it, a grain that could grow in any environment or climate could be created.

Oh but wait....we discovered something a billion miles away that is impossible to reach from earth. That's something right?

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120500520#Comment_120500520

Didn't the SpaceX team go nuts whooping and cheering when it went bang? They do tend to go a bit overboard on that score.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501694#Comment_120501694

With musk it's far more about his ability and luck to find the right people to head his projects. When he doesn't we get "hyperloop".

timmyntc

An explosion is still data - you learn more from your failures than you do your successes.

Next time they launch one of these starships and it succeeds it wont be a happy accident - it will be because of meticulous modelling and work based in no small part on the data they got from this launch.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501894#Comment_120501894

We get rockets to orbit all the time and with more regularlity than in the 1960's. Getting to orbit is fairly "easy". Going beyond with human rated kit is a lot harder, but NASA'a Artemis did it a few months ago and went around the Moon.

Strumms above mentioned NASA's huge budget, and it is big, but compared to at the peak of the space race with the Soviets?

That's how much it cost to develop Apollo and get guys on the Moon. After that race was won with an incredible vehicle, but one that was a dead end in many ways, the political will was lost and the worry that they'd lose men on missions which would have cut the will and their budget even more Apollo was over and became museum pieces, except for bits used for Skylab and for the Apollo-Soyuz earth orbit meetup in 75, to save cash(while throwing it away on Shuttle).

Think of the pyramids of ancient Egypt, built by a bronze age society. Tallest buildings on earth for millenia. They stopped building them. Why? Loss of technology? Nope. They stopped being practical(robbed nearly the day they were finished) and loss of will(and cash).

Space travel is mostly about heavy engineering. Controlling large bangs and pointing them in the right direction basically. This is what the moon landing hoax morons don't understand. "Oh how come I've got more computing power in my fridge and they were able to the moon in the 60's" stuff. The SR71 Blackbird spyplane was the 1960's, as was the X-15 rocket plane, as was Concorde. Flying above other airliners at Mach 2 while sipping champagne. It's amazing what we can do with sliderules, will, genius and money, lots and lots of money.

Space X has been able to do incredible things and at much lower costs in a remarkably short time. Before them we were using essentially 60's tech Russian kit, which is very solid and reliable, but much more expensive. Space X brought us rockets that can come back down and land themselves. And yesterday they launched the most powerful rocket humans have ever launched. If you look at NASA in the early 60's they had near constant failures. Until they didn't.

murpho999

People seen to be celebrating a failure yesterday, why I don't know but it wasn't a failure.

It was flagged that there was a chance of failure and now they will make a correction and try again.

That's why it was called a test launch.

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501911#Comment_120501911

It's actually made entirely of cheese, apparently.... but it's crusty old cheese with some dust on top!

That's why everyone is lactose intolerant, just blame the moon dust! 🤥

Baba Yaga

was one hell of a size bottle rocket!

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502310#Comment_120502310

What if the solution to global warming or hunger lies beyond this planet?

Space travel and off earth colonization/exploration is something we should be aspiring to as a species. We rely on this one planet for way too much.

tesla_newbie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501724#Comment_120501724

Yet so many believe the government should be the main builder of housing

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502850#Comment_120502850

Well that's a bizarre segue into a totally unrelated topic.

Is Space X moon housing the solution to our housing crisis?

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502850#Comment_120502850

NASA is a money pit. There had a Lunar vehicle on TopGear,that will never be used,but somehow cost a billion dollars plus or something on what is basically an electric van. Just an example.

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502123#Comment_120502123

Strangely enough, all this work to create renewables and more efficient energy sources might be our most important work with regards to space exploration. Especially if we manage to find some strange substance that we could use for energy on another planet.

Really, we need to develop very efficient and super fast space travel. Because the universe is unfathomably huge. Mars may be barren, but it's still a stepping stone out farther into the universe. Another vantage point, and more small lessons to learn. Sometimes there is no progress for decades, then there is decades worth of progress in a relatively short period. Progress is not linear.

Cordell

The survival of humankind depends on colonization of other planets. It's not something that needs to be done today, or in the near future, but it absolutely 100% needs to be done. From the space travel point of view, we are just sticking our noses out of the caves, but we will eventually emerge. It may take us 10.000 years, but we need to start and keep at it.

Also:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-wouldnt-have-without-space-travel

aero2k

I've no special knowledge in this field, but I did read "Think Like a Rocket Scientist" by Ozan Varol which is a cracking book with loads of general application. He has one chapter to the idea that during development instead of just trying to make things work, the scientists try to break things in order to get a better understanding of how they might fail.

Not to defend NASA totally, but knowledge from their research will trickle down to other areas in the same way that the military gave us GPS, and the statistical sampling methods used for quality control in every manufacturing industry.

taxAHcruel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501894#Comment_120501894

I wonder if that is comparing like with like though? Saying we could send a rocket up 54 years ago and now we can not even get it into orbit - is missing the point that we are talking about two very different rockets here - with very different specs and targets and goals - using very different technologies.

It would be a bit like comparing one of the first cars to modern attempts at self driving cars and merely say "Look - after all this time cars are still crashing".

Remember also that while apollo 11 went to the moon - apollo 13 exploded. There was barely 10 months between these two events. So I am not sure "space travel has regressed" so much as "Pushing the frontiers of space travel technology is as risky and problematic as it ever was" therefore?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502310#Comment_120502310

The first knee jerk response I would have to your post is to point out that space exploration - and biological food science - are in no way mutually exclusive. Investing money into one does not mean we have to take it away from another. But note too that we send plants and animals into space and learn quite a lot from doing so.

So do not be under the impression that progress in one field is isolated either. If we want some kind of universal grain or or other break through in biology - there is no reason to assume that some data or discovery in space science will not help us achieve it. Just in terms of Space Programs for example - how much do you know about the history of hydroponics, aeroponics and advances in plant genetics and biotechnology, and how much of these were done by NASA engineers?

That said though: I think I heard a statistic once - though I did not go to verify it - that the US Bailout of the banks not so long ago managed to exceed the 50 year budget of Nasa. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is also keen to point out that the budget of Nasa in 2011 was 4 tenths of a penny per tax dollar. If you hold up a dollar and cut into it 4/10 of 1% of its width - you do not even cut far enough into it to reach the ink.

So just how much money are we "wasting" really?

I am not so sure that solving problems like a universal grain is merely a matter of throwing endless numbers of scientists at it. Scientific discovery it often about incentives and all kinds of nuance that goes deeper than merely the number of heads in any given laboratory.

But even if we assume that you are right - that increasing the number of scientists does have that effect - where are we getting those scientists and how are we motivating them to enter into that career path? Money is one incentive sure. But when you push the frontiers of science in exciting ways - especially in things that capture the publics imagination like space travel - it stimulates and inspires a new generation of scientists. And that new generation of scientists graduates into a field replete with new and deeper data to work with precisely because we push those frontiers. Think of Isaac Newton who developed the system we call "Calculus". He was inspired to do so due in part to contemplation of space and planetary bodies and their motions. And that Calculus led in part to ground breaking studies in optics and thermodynamics and a wide range of scientific and engineering applications

And all that is not to mention that many discoveries in many disciplines of science happen when we push the frontiers. Often discoveries that are made (think radiation in physics or penicillin in medicine to name two of many many examples) are even made when we were not expecting them and were doing something completely different with totally different intentions and goals. When we push the frontier of our knowledge we sometimes find what we were looking for - and sometimes we find things we never even knew we could/should be looking for. When we shake the universe - we are never entirely sure what will fall out.

On top of that - space exploration has the potential to develop into it's own industry and economy. Space Tourism for example. Stimulating new economies and industries brings jobs, tax money, education programs. It feeds back into society and generates societal wealth. Societal wealth that then allows us to further fund other science programs and research. Is that not what we should want? Would that not help fund research into your universal grain?

Finally - when we push the frontiers in this way we often come out with technologies that push back into society and stimulate economic growth and applications. Think of integrated circuits so common in almost everything we do - and how much of those owe their existence to how the Apollo program required lightweight and compact electronics for the spacecraft. Cordless tools and memory foam and water filtration systems are three more random examples that come to mind of technologies I have read were pushed forward due to the requirements of NASA. How much of our technologies like GPS today trace their existence back to our space programs? When those pushing the frontiers of science hit new requirements - whole advancements and industries and economics rise to meet those challenges.

Remember also that this "wasted money" was not from tax funded NASA. This was Space X - and associated with Elon Musk. So when taking the "Why waste money up there - what about our problems down here" approach to evaluating such space programs remember also Elon Musk's association with things like NeuraLink which seeks to alleviate human suffering in all kinds of ways such as allowing Quadriplegics to walk again - and who knows how many other aspects of human suffering?

Musk is a top grade spoofer. The very best.

I feel sorry for those who fall for his spiel.

castletownman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120503142#Comment_120503142

While I bow to your superior knowledge, and you clearly do know yourself, that "space tourism" is precisely the problem. It will be a play toy for the rich, while vast swathes of the global population will be struggling to survive.

Badly Drunk Boy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502868#Comment_120502868

Maybe the poster was confused with the comment "Average cost per kg to LEO with space x is $2k...", thinking it referred to Mr Varadkar. 😉

taxAHcruel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120503540#Comment_120503540

Many things important or even just plain normal to us today started off as the play things of the rich did they not? What about when Cars were first invented and rolled out? What about when computers were? What about the first Mobile phones? Televisions? The printed word? Our first forays into Aviation developing into the budget airlines we know today? What areas of medicine were once reserved at first only for those who could afford it but are common place today?

The list of things in our past that came into our world - were at first the purview of only the rich - but developed from there to be common or even indispensable parts of every day life - is probably much larger than I even guess at myself.

But as I said in the longer post above - even if it was the plaything of the rich - when industries and economies build up around such things that too feeds back into our society in terms of tax, jobs, education paths, research paths and more too. But even then "Space Tourism" is only one tiny part of the post I just wrote. Focusing in on it and it alone I think is to risk missing many other relevant points in any "Is Space Flight a waste of Money?" discussion.

The point is that every time we push the frontiers of space flight - the results in our world are palpable.

Hydroponics, aeroponics, hydroponics, Microbial detection, air filtration and purification systems, Medical imaging, Freeze-dried food, Telemedicine, Artificial limbs and prosthetics, aluminum foil, bubble wrap and Styrofoam, High-strength adhesives and sealants used in construction and manufacturing, Cordless appliances, water filters, Scratch-resistant lenses, memory foam bedding, LED Lighting, Protective coatings, Self-healing materials, Advanced alloys, Heat-resistant materials, Lightweight materials, Infrared thermometers, Digital image processing, Satellite communication, GPS, Earth observation and mapping, integrated circuits. And thats just what my memory churns out - but they all owe their existence or improvements in whole or in part to Space programs.

MadYaker

Did they destroy the launchpad? it looked like chunks of concrete flew everywhere and knocked out a few of the thrusters. The engineers will be delighted with that. Id bet on their next launch being a lot more successful.

Mefistofelino

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120501592#Comment_120501592

"Like Oppenheimer and van Braun , elon is not the smartest man in the room nor the most likable"

Admittedly, von Braun "only" had a diploma in engineering and a doctorate in physics but the only rooms where Oppenheimer wasn't the smartest were the ones he was sharing with the likes of Fermi, Teller or Feynman. He had three Nobel prize nominations and may even have won if he'd lived long enough.

Musk might be more akin to General Leslie Groves. Not the smartest man in the room but smart enough to know that he needed some really smart people to make it happen. But while Groves was a bit of a bollox, he wasn't a weapons-grade douche-canoe like Musk.

Cordell

But while Groves was a bit of a bollox, he wasn't a weapons-grade douche-canoe like Musk.

He supervised the creation of the deadliest weapon known to man, knowing that it will be used against civilians. But sure.

dontmindme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502310#Comment_120502310

We can't not do what we're genetically programmed to do, to make our way back to our own planet. We will get there eventually.

GreeBo

I dont think its was a failure as a mission, the goal was to get the thing off the ground and clear of the tower. It did that and started the maneuver to separate but got a stuck in a spin. The clapping and celebrations were due to achieving the primary mission goals.

Count Dracula

I am pretty confident at this point that NASA are trolling Musk.

They don't like South Africans coming over to their house and playing with their toys.

Capt'n Midnight

It's looking like FOD (Foreign Object Damage) may be what took out some of the engines. The ground used to be level. The building on the right was shielded but undermined.

And on their iterative testing...there's always this gem (Uploaded by SpaceX themselves )

https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ

NASA can use the SLS to put 70 tonnes into LEO for $2.2Bn which is 10% more than SpaceX's Falcon Heavy's 63 tonnes at nearly 15 times it's retail price of $150m.

The SLS cost $35Bn to develop. And that's using fight proven hardware from the Space Shuttle. As in literally from the Space Shuttle. It would have been so much cheaper to go with the "Shuttle-C" concept and add a third SRB if necessary rather than re-invent the wheel.

In contrast ESA aren't including reusability in Ariane 6 as they won't have enough flights per annum to justify the development costs.

Before SpaceX the main launcher for commercial satellites were European Ariane 4 or 5's.

Musky reckons Starship will eventually drop down to $10m per flight. That's less than 1% of current launch prices.

And thanks to their interweb satellites they have a market for the rockets which is the tricky part. There's at least two more Starships ready to go and lots more in production so it's not a biggie. SLS taking out the pad would have saved the US taxpayer about $50bn if they had to use Starship instead for the moon project.

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120502868#Comment_120502868

For some people on Boards every thread is a "free houses" thread.

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120503142#Comment_120503142

Where do I even start with this, so much disinformation in one post 😫

All these things we've learned from sending plants and animals to space. Could you enlighten us with even just one thing we have learned from doing this?

To say that Newton developed Calculus in contemplation of space and planetary bodies is a great historical injustice. Newton wrote Principia, a collection of very eloquently written chapters describing ideas and mathematical principles that were known for years before: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". A lot of his ideas were plagiarised from Robert Hook, Edmund Halley and concepts that were known since ancient times

To these mathematical volumes he appended his theories on gravititation and planetary motion. They had nothing to do with calculus and were considered fringe science at the time with no greater critic than Newton himself who had huge reservations about gravitation in particular (something that NASA, SpaceX and any other space company repeatedly fail to shed any light on):

"That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it"