Comment by benj111
3 hours ago
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"?
3 hours ago
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?
It’s the largest, heaviest rocket ever, with double the thrust of the last record holder, and it is the first one that is supposed to be reusable.
It’s a lot of records that just got broken.
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I think for a sense of scale if this works as the SpaceX team wants, they will be able to launch more mass to orbit in a single day than all payloads ever before 2022 (rough math). And at a cost roughly 1/100th the prior average.
36 full flow staged combustion engines all working is no easy feat
It’s big.
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.