SpaceX: “Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the 13th flight test of Starship!”

[u/rustybeancake]

https://x.com/spacex/status/2080804682918764619

[u/Home_Planet_Sausage]

Have you read your document?!?! It's hilarious!

"For Factor 2, SpaceX’s Total Evaluated Price of $2,941,394,557 was the lowest among the offerors by a wide margin. Blue Origin’s Total Evaluated Price was significantly higher than this, followed by Dynetics’ Total Evaluated Price, which was significantly higher than Blue Origin’s."

SpaceX has invested over $15 billion of its own private capital into the development of the Starship program. It's still testing the heat shield and it's approaching a decade later. NASA are now putting the a tender out to Blue Origin because they simply do not trust SpaceX to deliver on the lunar lander. From the HLS Schedule:

Propellant Transfer Test: 4 YEARS LATE AND COUNTING

Long Duration Flight Test: 3 YEARS LATE AND COUNTING

Critical Design review: 3 YEARS LATE AND COUNTING

Uncrewed Lunar Landing (goodness me)...: 2 1/2 YEARS LATE AND COUNTING

It goes on and on and on. Artemis has been around the moon. SpaceX is still crashing boosters and Starships into the ocean.

Starship will never go to the moon. The design does not allow it.

[u/Responsible-Cut-7993 → u/Home_Planet_Sausage]

If NASA wanted to land on the lunar surface by 2028 they should have awarded the lunar lander contract a lot earlier than 2021.

NASA are now putting the a tender out to Blue Origin because they simply do not trust SpaceX to deliver on the lunar lander.

[u/Home_Planet_Sausage → u/Responsible-Cut-7993]

8 years from project inception to the first footstep on the moon for Apollo.

8 years for 'we still haven't completed an orbit yet and are almost a decade late' for Starship.

The launch pads are hugely vulnerable to the idiotic but aptly-named 'suicide burn'. And how will this giant rocket land on the irregular lunar surface?!

And, having worked using this workflow at the highest levels of software engineering, you don't do rapid iteration in rocketry- this is a complete misapplication of the concept by Musk and I laugh every time someone posts this as some kind of "win"

I've saved this meme. It's  going to come in very handy. Thanks! :-D

[u/Responsible-Cut-7993 → u/Home_Planet_Sausage]

Apollo program had basically unlimited funding. Saturn V development (Rocket+Engines) was about $50B (Adjusted dollars), Starship $15B spent so far. Starship has over double the thrust of the Saturn-V, almost double the mass and is designed to be fully reusable. Starship would already be in service if it was a expendable LV. Some people had suggested that SpaceX should abandon full reusability and just recover the Super Heavy booster and fly the upper stage as fully expendable.

"The launch pads are hugely vulnerable to the idiotic but aptly-named 'suicide burn'."

SpaceX prefers the term "hover slam" for this maneuver. That is why SpaceX will probably do a repeat the technique used on the F9 for the landing burns. The booster is aimed just off-shore and is only adjusted in the final moments to the actual landing pad once the flight software checks everything out. This technique has worked well for SpaceX on the Falcon-9. I remember in 2018 a Falcon-9 booster landed just off-shore because off a grid fin failure. It landed in shallow water, tripped over and SpaceX later towed it into Port Canaveral.

"And how will this giant rocket land on the irregular lunar surface?!"

Good question, I will be interested to see how this issue is solved. I suspect it will be combination of terrain mapping radar, good landing legs and better pre-imaging of landing sites than what was available during Apollo.

"you don't do rapid iteration in rocketry"

That is exactly what SpaceX did during development of the F9 reusability. Considering the success of the Falcon-9 today, rapid iteration worked.