• BasketKees@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    They cut off the engines a couple of seconds before reaching orbital speed for safety. Until they prove they can control the ship on orbit they can’t risk having a 16 floor tall 125 ton steel tower coming down in a random location. This is unrelated to any of Elon’s shenanigans.

    There is nobody who knows even the slightest bit about space flight that doubts Starship can reach orbit.

    SpaceX has many things to get done to make Starship the fully reusable rocket they want it to be, but picking orbital speed is just about the weakest argument against it.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Ah OK, I just heard they didn’t, and thought it was because they couldn’t.

      Still considering he claimed they’d be to Mars 2 years ago, and have manned flights to Mars this year, it’s obvious he hasn’t got a very solid plan for how or when to actually do it.

      • BasketKees@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        The how is pretty solid, SpaceX has a very strong track record. The uncertainty is mostly in the when.

        It is unfortunate that Elon’s state of mind has become more questionable. But SpaceX is a whole lot more than Elon and they have achieved remarkable things. Just take the Elon presentations with a boat load of salt (mostly concerning the timing) and enjoy the spectacle that SpaceX delivers. It is just ridiculous what they are aiming for and so far they seem to be able to deliver … eventually.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          so far they seem to be able to deliver

          Not as far as I know, what was it? SpaceX would make space travel 1000 times cheaper! Some ridiculous shit like that, and we’d soon have tourism on Mars. You have to be on freaking mushrooms to take anything about SpaceX seriously. Somehow they got a NASA contract, and I think they are beginning to regret that.

          • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            I mean they are doing missions to the ISS for the US and private corpos and just recently the bandwagon mission where they flew 9 satellites which they advertise a price for at $300,000 per. The axiom missions are $55,000,000 per seat. That’s not unreasonable for launches considering Artemis is $4,200,000,000 per launch ($1,050,000,000 per seat)

            I guess it’s just 19 times cheaper.