Giggity:
And…
Said it before: this is some sci-fi stuff right here.
From one perspective, this was another failure. The booster failed at the end… it had difficulty with engine restart for the final landing burn and either kerploded just before hitting the water, or smacked into the water going *real* fast. Starship itself broke apart during entry. So both recoverable stages failed to demonstrate recoverability. But it *did* achieve the low orbit that was intended. It demonstrated the ability to serve as an expendable launch vehicle. An incredibly capable expendable launch vehicle, much more powerful than even the Saturn V. It could start throwing massive payloads into orbit even while attempting to perfect recovery. Large numbers of Starlinks, of course… but also large numbers of, say, Brilliant Pebbles, or tanks of water, or rolls of sheet aluminum and beam builders and PV arrays.
3 responses to “Starship launch 3 videos”
Don’t understand the haters. This is how development works.
Already this is usable as an expendable Heavy Lift vehicle. Remember the first stage on flights two and three did fine except for landing. Take that SLS. Also note the steady progress each flight solving the issues of the previous. So far this is progressing more or less as predicted by SpaceX. I am very impressed by both Falcon and Super Heavy. SLS is an expensive recreation of the Saturn and New Glenn is.. (cough) New Glenn has much to prove.
But it *did* achieve the low orbit that was intended. It demonstrated the ability to serve as an expendable launch vehicle. An incredibly capable expendable launch vehicle, much more powerful than even the Saturn V.
And far less expensive, even in expendable mode.
I’ve seen estimates that each Starship+Superheavy costs on the close order of $100 million to use once and throw away. (IIRC, that’s less than the cost of a single RS-25 SLS main engine!) Replace the crew/cargo section of Starship with a big-ass fairing for an Apollo-style third stage, an upgraded Dragon crew/return vehicle, and a lunar module (Dragon-based? Blue Origin?), and Artemis becomes *relatively* cheap and easy.
But that’s still the wrong approach. By the time that could be made to happen, the Starship stack will be reusable …
I find it awesome that spaceX launches have become so commonplace they do not make national news.