With a second-term president looking on, SpaceX's sixth Starship test flight met the company's metrics for success. Instead of returning to the launch pad, the booster diverted to an ocean ditching but the stripped down first stage survived an aggressive re-entry that was calculated to potentially destroy it. Donald Trump was on hand with Elon Musk for the launch at Boca Chica, Texas, which accomplished its mission of dropping a trove of data, including live video of the re-entry.
A quote attributed to Elon Musk was very insightful, “We built the Egyptian Pyramids, and then we forgot how. We built the Roman Aqueducts, and then we forgot how. We went to the moon, and now we are at risk of forgetting how.”
The time is now to develop new space technology with a new generation, before we forget how. We are fortunate to be living at a time where someone with the means to experiment with new ideas and push on new envelopes is willing to make it happen. Elon is a modern day Benjamin Franklin, or Albert Einstein. Remember what it was like living in his time, because the history books will speak of it long after this age has come to an end.
Elon is more akin to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates who are mostly shrewd managers who know their field, rather than someone who is directly involved with day-to-day engineering. He’s certainly no Albert Einstein or even VonBraun.
So far, SpaceX has not really pushed any space boundaries that haven’t already been reached. This doesn’t mean their accomplishments are insignificant, but the human spaceflight boundary is still at the moon. The next human spaceflight boundary will be to establish a permanent human presence on the moon as a stepping stone to leaving earth’s orbit and going to mars. Until SpaceX (or anyone else, for that matter) establishes a permanent presence on the moon, we haven’t really pushed any true boundaries.
To be clear, I do like seeing SpaceX succeed, along with any other companies that are also trying to compete. I just feel it’s important to recognize that these accomplishments have been, and will be, possible only because of many bright people working together. A single person does not make a company (though a single person can weaken or destroy a company, as we’ve seen with Boeing recently).
Interestingly, SpaceX said the landing attempt was canceled due to a problem with the tower, not the booster. It seems the tower may have been damaged during launch.
gmbfly98 makes a great point—SpaceX’s success comes from its teams, not just Elon Musk. Their testing is exciting, but big steps like a moon base will require teamwork with NASA. The ongoing Artemis program, aiming to return humans to the moon and establish a sustainable presence there as a stepping stone to Mars, feels as thrilling as Apollo 11 in 1969, when Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins made history landing on the moon and safely returning to Earth.
Do they succeed in spite of him?
(Is that ‘mean’? True, I find TheMouthX erratic.)
Leadership is very important, he has in the past directed people to fix a problem properly instead of half measures (in my words).
A friend advised software interns to fix the root cause of a problem instead of just patching.
It’s commendable that SpaceX tested the rocket with degraded heat tiles, for worst case.
Egypt’s problem was a static society, one focussed on an afterlife. Look at their art which started well but stagnated compared to Greek art. (Egypt did innovate to move blocks to build the pyramids.)
I don’t get the point about Roman aqueducts, the concept is simple, but surveying land to plan for needed slope then monitoring construction iis very important.
Keith, you’re not wrong about Musk being erratic at times. A good example is when he tweeted about taking Tesla private in 2018 with ‘funding secured,’ which caused market chaos, an SEC investigation, and fines. It showed his unpredictable side. But that kind of boldness reminds me a bit of General Patton. Patton was known for being brash and controversial, but his relentless drive and ability to inspire his teams led to remarkable achievements during World War II. Similarly, Musk’s bold, sometimes chaotic leadership style can stir things up, but it’s also what pushes the boundaries of innovation, like reusable rockets and the vision of making life multiplanetary. Sometimes, the big visionaries don’t play it safe.
Patton I don’t know about, inspiring teams is a good attribute.
Delegating is good, the Canadian Army did well with that in WWII, persuasive ability is good in theory - the Canadian Army even managed to persuade Nationalsozialistiche commanders to allow drops of food to starving Dutch people in areas not year cleared out by the Canadian Army.
Ukraine’s military did well in defending against Russia whose military was a bureaucracy.
Bill Gates has had to reverse his tack in philanthropic projects a few times, at least he had the sense to see he had been completely wrong.
But a sucker sometimes, as with Jeffrey Epstein who was a blowhard after PR points whereas Gates thought he had money to donate. Melinda French (Gates) was more discerning.
I did manned space for 32 years, a little over half that time on Space Shuttle. One of my jobs was called flight design.
Re-entry is what happens when the vehicle returns from orbital velocity. The SpaceX Starship (or Ship) so far has only attained sub-orbital velocity on its test flights. Not quite enough speed to orbit. But for this discussion - re-entry - Starship is high enough and going fast enough for its return to be classified as re-entry.
Some numbers:
At staging, after about 2:45 (m:s) of powered flight time, the booster is about 70 km in altitude with a velocity of about 5200 km/hr. Yep, that is up there, but no where close to orbital velocity. Note that the booster has no thermal tiles on it, just bare metal. No re-entry, it is just falling back through the atmosphere.
During the hot staging process, Starship starts its 6 engines for a powered ascent of about another 6 minutes. When Starship has engine cutoff, it is at an altitude of about 150 km and has a velocity of around 26500 km/h. The vehicle continues to coast up to an altitude of about 190 km before it starts coming back down. It is on a sub-orbital trajectory - not going fast enough to stay in orbit. During re-entry, the atmosphere slows Starship down from 26000+ km/h to less than 1000 km/h through drag and friction. That is why parts of Starship are covered in protective thermal tile. Parts of Starship get HOT. I don’t recall the temperature of the plasma field, but it is in the 1000s of degrees. This last flight looked pretty good. One of the forward flaps had some thermal damage, but everything else (from looking at the videos) looked pretty good.
Bummer that they waived off the catch of the booster, but it would appear that SpaceX collected a lot of valuable data from both stages on the last test flight.