7 thoughts on “On The Starship Delays”

  1. That picture is wild, and bears no resemblance to SLS/Orion.
    No but it does bear a good resemblance to the most likely hardware to reach the lunar surface next, China’s Long March 7. Replete with China’s National Flag on the payload fairing.

  2. FAA criterion is a joke and who knows how they are getting their direction? This administration has zero interest in a return to the moon, other than a staged appearance of the VP talking nonsense to nerdy-looking child actors. That’s obvious.

  3. The original launch date was scheduled for 2016. So the (current) launch date is now ten years later? I don’t count the 2022 Artemis I launch since it was BS all the way around.

  4. Actually, just a few weeks ago SpaceX and AST were talking “friend-talk’ with the head of the latter saying he wanted to approve a “portfolio” of tests rather than one at a time, assuming the “danger” levels were all similar..Eg with the trajectory of flight 3, where whether or not the Ship engine had relit, they ended up in open water. If that had been a part of portfolio, they might have been able to do flight 4 by now. SpaceX is trying to come up with “safety boundaries” which will apply to several flights, thus it looked/looks like a negotiation was in progress. Yes of course it would be better if development flights incapable of injuring 3rd parties were treated like developing any new product. But that ain’t going to happen. Meanwhile SpaceX is clearly speeding up creation of a backlog of flyable vehicles so they could perform several test flights in short order, if that portfolio in some version or other ever reaches reality.

    1. I’d be curious to know how these Starship/SH flights are materially different in terms of risk compared to the ‘Grasshopper’ flights for booster return studies during Falcon 9 development. Esp. when one considers that Starship/SH testing is conducted, once the pad is cleared, nearly exclusively over water vs the up and down over land near McGregor. Some of the latter Grasshopper flights up to 2,440 ft and the successor F9R Dev 1 to 3,280 ft all over land at McGregor. A quick study of Google Maps shows the town of McGregor (pop. 5338) and Oglesby and Oglesby High School all within a 5 mi radius from the test site. And the city of Waco TX (pop. 304,865 in 2023) within about 18 miles from the test site.

      Sure size matters. But what is the safety criterion? Comparing the two, I just don’t get it.

  5. I don’t care that China actually makes it to the moon.

    I’ve twice visited China and I like the people and the food. The food I know to trust. I don’t trust the Chinese communists.

    The commies have always competed with us. Keeps us on our game.

    It’s moving into the solar system. It’ll motivate us to try harder, be better. Do stuff faster.

    Plant a seed in the ground and it might grow.

    Seed the solar system with commies and marxists keeps the airlocks busy.

    Oh my.

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