the milestone of half private half government money was a good call by NASA, to make sure whatever company gets CTOS isn't solely relying on government money
Kistler couldn't raise the funds
Not be an nit-picker but it's COTS
There are obviously other issues outside this (Griffin and Musk being friends), but even then there might be classified documents which show other reasons why they are cancelled, we only get a quarter to half the story
Both fans of Zubrin's Mars Direct and members of the Mars Society. Griffin and Musk have said that it was Griffin's suggestion he develop his own launch company. This was outside NASA when Griffin was part of In-Q-Tell. He and Musk had just gone to Russia (2001) to try and buy a cheap ICBM ride to get Musk's greenhouse on Mars. Griffin gave Musk NASA money before he even had anything designed let alone built.
Again, it would cost EXTRA for little benefit, Falcon Heavy doesn't fly much and the DOD payloads aren't heavy enough to need it, SpaceX uses the same pad and facility for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, so both would need to be changed along with the launch pad infrastructure
Not to mention recertify Falcon 9 for Crew flights due to the change
The metholox upper stage adds more headaches
It gains significant payload and makes it possible to have a reusable second stage. This is pretty much a win/win IF SpaceX (Musk specifically) was at all interested in actually lowering the cost of launch and maybe building up Cis-Lunar space to allow a much better background for getting to Mars. Musk doesn't want to wait so he's going for Starship. (Toss up that he's trading "not dying on impact" for "dying during launch")
Falcon 9 was also regulated by the US government, Musk spoke on this. The US GOV maintains oversight of ALL rockets built under government contracts for obvious reasons.
Eh the "oversight" is literally ensuring that the company gives the government payloads a certain priority. It's not very close regulation and it respects a companies' "private" information. Your suggesting that it was the government "regulation" that allowed Falcon to be successful and why Starship is failing? That's not at all what's going on.
Starship is SELF FUNDED by SpaceX
No, Starship is fully and openly funded by public funding and private investment. Both of which are running out given the issues of the system. Musk hasn't spend a dime on it nor has SpaceX. (Though he's skimmed money from Tesla quite a number of times)
... so oversight is far less of a thing, so common practice doesn't apply, hardware testing is just as good if not better then computer testing. the US government is just having FAA oversee SpaceX flights and not much else
Yep it's why the DoD has no interest in Starship, (barring a couple million for the point-to-point study that Space Force has advanced to SpaceX, answer it still that P2P doesn't make a lot of sense and isn't cost effective) and why they won't be manifesting any payloads on Starship even if it does work as advertised. There is FAR more than just the FAA looking at SpaceX. So far SpaceX has managed to get on the bad side of the Army Corps of Engineers, State and Federal wildlife services and a ton of environmental groups by sticking to a very bad launch site and screwing up the surroundings. SpaceX is under investigation by the Labor department as well. It's only March and SpaceX has already almost run out of hours they are allowed to shut down the roads and beaches in the area. Something Texas takes VERY seriously. (aka it's actually enshrined in their Constitution)
Starship isn't exactly a conventional design for a rocket either, it would be like if a Aerospace Company building commercial jets built their concept ones (the recent O design).
It might work, it might not, there is ONE way to prove it. Like the wright brothers with a fixed wing and tail design over bird like designs
Oddly the fact that commercial companies DON'T start by crashing their design due to lack of foresight and planning is a major reason most of them are still in business. Note that the Wrights specifically did advanced design and testing BEFORE they every tried to build a flying glider let alone a powered aircraft. Exactly the opposite of what SpaceX did for Falcon 9. The Wright brothers couldn't afford a nonworking design, seems SpaceX can.
Starship burned up BY DESIGN, its the first flight which made it to stage sep, we are talking about this on a TL where N1 continues and gets the issues ironed out, a rocket which Starship is DIRECTLY compared to
Uhm no, exactly the opposite in fact. Starship lost all control shortly after engine shut down and disintegrated due to that same lack of control having in enter backwards and almost upside down. And Starship has made it to stage separation twice now, not once.
IN context to the thead, yes we are discussing a timeline where the N1 works but also in context at no point did the designers set "clearing the tower" as the goal. They designed it to make orbit and that was always the goal. So far we've had one "success" of clearing the tower but the overall flight failing, one reaching staging, (which itself was changed because the first method was stupid) and then failing and now one failing to either "soft land the booster" (first stated goal) and second reentering the upper stage (second stated goal) and a number of "sub-goals" that were skipped due to issues with the design.
Literally the only thing that's "compared" between the N1 and Starship is the number of engines with the main point being that's not a good idea and so far it seems that's correct.
It's a bare bones shell currently, so it being torn up on reentry isn't unexpected, the flight achieved its goals besides landing the booster in the ocean, Starship burned up over the Indian Ocean as intended
Think about that for a second, it's an empty shell that barely made orbit with approximately 90% of a full propellant load that had several issues with its engines and flight controls all of which failed at some point. It has no mass simulators onboard for planned systems and even the door may not have worked as planned.
Let's NOT move the goal posts here shall we? Superheavy was to planned to make a hovering maneuver (long enough for the chopsticks to snatch it) before it splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. It failed. Starships goal was a successful reentry to a "splashdown" in the Indian Ocean NOT to burn up on reentry because it was out of control. It failed and the TPS is still an unknown, as is how the vehicle will be controlled because evidence says the current RCS is not working. (And top that with the ongoing plumbing and engine issues along with the control issues)
To list a few designs that had issues
STS-1 Columbia had spy satellites image the orbiter to ensure the heat shield was fine, and Young landed the thing with a broken Body Flap (said he would have ditched the Orbiter if he knew about it)
Yet it was a successful mission despite that due to the time and effort put into planning and building the Orbiter. Not helping your case here.
Shuttle also had tile damage on multiple flights, foam loss on every single flight and O-Ring damage on flights, it is still regarded as a good vehicle by the public
Because despite these issues it still worked, again because time and effort were taken to do the job correctly. Starship has literally failed out the gate from the start because this has NOT been done.
Saturn V flew Apollo 8 with all the issues Apollo 6 had to the moon, current NASA would have flew another unmanned mission and wouldn't dare send people to the moon
Apollo was designed around getting people to the Moon, NASA had very little use for automated mission at the time and prefered 'risking' a crew rather than trying to do things with automation. A lot of that was a need to convince Congress that the risks could be managed after the Apollo 1 fire. Similarly today mollify Congress over the ability to reach the Moon requires NASA do things different hence an automated flight followed up by a manned flight.
N1 blew up every time (likely second and third stages had issues as well but never got to show it) but is viewed as a rival to Saturn V
Closer to a Saturn 1B rival but yes it was seen as the Soviet Lunar booster as is envisioned here.
I get you don't like SpaceX, but give them a chance buddy
Not sure where you got that idea from, I actually love what SpaceX has done specifically with the Falcon. I'd like to see them succeed with Starship but frankly the fact that they keep failing and that failing is due to a clear lack of planning and development, again exactly opposite of what we saw with the Falcon development, and watching the time and public money being wasted on a badly planned and designed vehicle is pretty frustrating.
Starship is being developed with modifications in mind, they are in uncharted territory when it comes to designing a totally reusable rocket, spending 10 years designing it in a computer would still leave you with questions (will it really work?), SpaceX's model of flying a bunch of test models to prove concepts WORK is better
And they have failed to prove that this "process" is better than actually taking time and effort to carefully plan and build a working vehicle. This isn't "uncharted territory" it's a very well established and proven methodology to designing and building a working launch vehicle. SpaceX in fact used that exact methodology to design and build the Falcon 9. Instead we've got Musk suggesting that an expandable Starship makes a lot of sense. (It doesn't) What we have instead is a set of arbitrary "points" that Musk has invented that are driving the design and failing badly.
Musk wants "Mars Direct" on steroids', so he's building a super-heavy launch vehicle with public and private (but not his) money that requires a very careful and well planned development program that he essentially doesn't want to do. Instead we keep getting failure after failure. We COULD be sending flights to Mars today if Musk wasn't fixated on his personal "plan" which is unsupported by any evidence or work, (part of the reason Zubrin's been trying to talk him down) and have wasted a lot of time and a lot of money simply so Elon can put on a show rather than an actual development program.
Still better than the second test flight, major issues only popped up on relight
Eh no, there were problems right off the pad. The methalox engines were obviously not running nominally or there wouldn't have been the obvious smoke trail. Engines were showing signs of significant problems in flight with flares and outgassing (greenish exhaust showing they were falling apart) which followed with engines outright failing and looking like several exploded when trying to relight. Starship had engine issues too including an "event" as the engines shut down that was followed by a large uncontrolled leak of (likely) propellant that ended up driving the Starship totally out of control for most of the 'coast' phase and another shortly before atmospheric interface which blew a lot debris out of the engine bay and off the hull itself. This wasn't 'better' it was simply allowing more time for more failures to show up.
Falcon 9 had the same issues, both with engines not firing and engines cutting to early.
And in most cases Falcon 9 had plenty of margin to handle these issues and a well planned and carried out program to fix them. Mostly without loss of mission.
To innovate one needs a person who believes fully in the new concept and wants to SEE it to completion, Von Braun did this with rockets.
So again nothing like we're seeing with Starship since they don't actually HAVE a good plan and are literally just winging it?
Kistler actually DID have a pretty innovative plan, pretty much coming up with most of what SpaceX is doing well before SpaceX even existed. Fully reusable from the start, (unlike Starship) boost back and landing (parachutes but that allowed them to carry more payload to orbit) back at base for rapid reuse.
As I put above, there are likely issues we don't know about in regards to Kistler, and that's outside of the Musk/Griffin stuff
It was a rather open "secret" that Kistler having ex-NASA people working there was the main reason they got a no-bid contract. Boeing and Lockheed were not happy about that and protested which killed that deal and forces Kistler to seek private funding.
Russia threatening to cut of Soyuz flights and engines were what caused the US to change, US lawmakers realized russian engines being cut would ground Atlas. Plus the optics of buying stuff from a hostile Russia would be bad for politicians
Ya the politicians had already cut funding efforts by NASA to build a new domestic engine to replace the Russian ones, and had to scramble to "fix" the optics.
What I mean is, without SpaceX the launch market would still be dominated by foreign and European launchers, majority of Delta 4 and Atlas v Payloads are government payloads
Possibly as the US wasn't without options and frankly NASA was wanting "something" as a program and Congress was getting to the point where they might have been willing to actually fund it.
New Glenn is still a decade away (I would be surprised at a launch before 2030), BE-4 had all kinds of delays, delaying Vulcan-Centaur by a year
Ya it's frustrating when a company takes the time and effort to ensure its engine works rather than wasting a lot of time and money on rushing it into service and it not working. I wouldn't count on New Glenn being that far out considering Bezos is actually putting his own money for it and it's aimed at an actual market.
I'll trust the rocket actually flying right now to fly better, New Glenn might be the same shitshow
You mean the Falcon 9? Because it's the only one "flying right now", so far Starship IS a shitshow. And New Glenn might or it might not but it's highly likely it will at least fly successfully unlike Starship.
NASA requested funding for two, Congress mandated two but funded enough for ONE LANDER
Actually Congress specifically didn't fund ANY lander as they purposefully didn't fund enough for even one of the bids. The finally reversed and gave funding for a second lander when it looked like they might actually get some pushback for publicly short-changing their own "mandate". (And people were already noting they'd done that consistently with SLS. Optics were turning bad for them.
NASA then did an audit of landers and found SpaceX to be the cheapest, most downmass and the only one with HARDWARE BUILT for a then expected landing in 2024-2025
Eh no, ONE person at NASA instigated an "audit" (while informing SpaceX of the new funding limit) and ONE person decided that SpaceX would be awarded the contract after SpaceX changed its bid to fall under the given funding limit. This person then retired from NASA and now works for SpaceX... Rather odd really. And to be clear SpaceX has essentially an empty shell as "hardware" which to this date STILL doesn't have a final design for the HLS nor was it going to be 'ready' for Artemis as NASA itself has pointed out because it also didn't have a booster designed for the mission.
Even if Starship can put down a fraction of the 100 tons (20 or 30) its still more then the other two, the dynetics lander had negative downmass and National Team was second choice
NASA did the responsible thing and funded one design fully over two half funded designs,
And oddly neither Dynetics nor the National Team were even given a chance to reconsider their bids with the actual funding available. As NASA was in fact both mandated and looking for TWO designs, being responsible would have actually been to fund two lander designs as required and go back to Congress for sufficient funding. Instead ONE PERSON decided to fund SpaceX's new bid which oddly was just under the amount Congress had authorized, (almost like they knew what that price was) and ignore the Congressional mandate. (And once a new Administrator had been installed HE went back to Congress and got additional funding for a second bid)
it would be like if NASA funded Saturn V and Saturn-8 side by side and didn't land until 1972 due to funding issues for both rockets
Apples and engine block comparison. NASA had a plan and was hard at work designing and building the Saturn V which was specifically designed to meet the needs of mission and also designed to have plenty of margin to work with. The entire situation let alone the details are not applicable to the current situation.
Randy
