Comment by holt62
2 hours ago
What an incredible feat of engineering, even if it doesn't make orbit. Just getting that much mass off the pad is mind-boggling.
2 hours ago
What an incredible feat of engineering, even if it doesn't make orbit. Just getting that much mass off the pad is mind-boggling.
It certainly is, but my mind is more boggled by the Saturn V that did it 60 years ago. Space launch technology feels like it had a 30 year gap, as in, nothing significant happened between the Space Shuttle and the Falcon 9. And now, we are just catching up. Not just SpaceX, there is also Blue Origin, Rocketlab,... and everything that's happening in China.
An by the way, the whole point of Starship is not just doing it, it is doing it cheaply (by space standards). The whole reusability thing is part of it, and so is the "assembly line" approach that lets SpaceX treat their experimental rockets like fireworks. If the goal was just to lift a lot of mass off the ground, it is not even a great design, reusability in particular is costly in terms of payload capacity.
It's incredible to witness what humanity is capable of when pushed to our limits and appropriately motivated. The space race was in many ways a civilizational and existential fight for the U.S. The innovations this spurred in a relatively short span of time (and the risks the astronauts took) are numerous and impressive. I sometimes wonder that if in the absence of adversity, humans tend towards comfort and security and stability. Maybe that's obvious. Maybe most people with full bellies, warm homes, and physical security just aren't motivated to work 16 hour days for years on end and risk lives.
I suppose we should be grateful that SpaceX has found and collected enough of these crazy people in one place on this mission.
Well considering the point of it is the make orbit, it would be a bit useless if it didn't.
Would HN describe a huge program that didn't do the thing it was designed to do a "feat of engineering"?
Yes. The Starship program is pushing the limits of engineering, if it fails today it doesn't make it unimpressive
I'd also consider the attempts at fusion energy to be very impressive engineering projects even though none have them have yielded a stable source of fusion energy
Could someone give me a eli5 of what makes that launch impressive compared to other rocket launches?
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Blowing something up so hard it almost gets into space is a feat of engineering, even if all it does is rain debris from ahigh.