Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test

Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by adventured on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:27PM (#25367720)

> Even if another company decides to try to replicate what SpaceX is doing, they're now at least a decade behind.

There is one entity that can and will rapidly close that gap. In fact, they're the only one that can: China. Everyone else will continue on their slow path, more or less adopting everything SpaceX figures out a decade after the fact. The other competition operates permanently by hand-me-downs. China will invest huge sums of money and labor into doing the same thing and the difference between them and eg the Europeans, is the Chinese will and can move with ridiculous speed by comparison. The other competition won't adjust their speed, so they'll generally continue to lag SpaceX perpetually, whereas China can move at a far greater pace (aerospace, as with a few other big segments like semiconductors, is of course a core logical focus point for China, which means they will catch up no matter the cost; they'll borrow from SpaceX better than anyone else and faster than anyone else, right up to the point of copying everything). And to be clear, I don't fault China at all for that approach, it will work very well; they can leapfrog everyone not named SpaceX that way.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by nickik on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:34PM (#25367807)

Easy to claim. So far China human space program has been very slow. And they have not gone full power into even a Falcon 9 clone. China is in the same space as everybody else outside of the US, with a slow moving bureaucracy leading it, wanting to switch into more commercial companies.

China has not yet itself produced an engine anywhere close to a Raptor and they have been trying for quite a while.

China can not spend gigantic amounts of money on everything at once, and even if they do, it by far doesn't work all of the time.

When you are copying SpaceX you are always cooping something that is already outdated and SpaceX will not stop innovating.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by babesh on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @09:04PM (#25368665)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_spaceflight

In 2020, China has launched more rockets to space than any other nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_5

It has a mission to bring lunar rock back to earth for the first time since the 70s.

So I would say that China has put quite a bit of energy in this area and is moving faster than other nations but not as fast as SpaceX.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by valuearb on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @11:39PM (#25369787)

China launches a bunch of obsolete rockets with relatively small capacities. Long march 3 has half the capacity of a Falcon 9, Long March 2 is about one seventh the payload capacity.

They should be justly proud of their robotic lunar missions though.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by nickik on Thursday December 10, 2020 @01:03PM (#25376448)

Go look at how much payload by weight was launched by China. Or how many different payloads.

> It has a mission to bring lunar rock back to earth for the first time since the 70s.

Yes its a fine mission, but its a mission that is not outside of the capability of others. There are simply many space missions that could be done.

Yes, China is doing things and the are moving fast, but your prediction and text were still over the top.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by babesh on Saturday December 12, 2020 @01:42AM (#25396194)

That wasn’t my prediction. It was from another poster.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by babesh on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @09:33PM (#25368913)

Opps. US passed China with the last few flights. Counting SpaceX and Electron in the US stats.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by oska on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:17AM (#25370044)

And SpaceX has another 3 launches planned for December (SXM-7, NROL-108 & Turksat 5A). Although the last one is on Dec 31, so could easily slip into next year.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by NikolaeVarius on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @09:09PM (#25368718)

Why do the US numbers include electron?

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by skissane on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @09:20PM (#25368796)

Because the statistics are based on the nationality of company/agency that designs and builds the launch vehicle, not the launch site. So even though Soyuz launches from Kazakhstan and French Guiana, it is counted as a Russian launch since a Russian company (Energia) designed and built the rocket. Similarly, even though a lot of Electron launches are from New Zealand, the company that builds Electron is ultimately US-headquartered/US-controlled. (Rocket Lab was originally founded in New Zealand, but they moved their HQ and parent company to the US so are now considered a US company rather than a New Zealand one.)

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by aardvarkr on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @10:11PM (#25369177)

It’s pretty damn hard to copy something that you never get to see. China can clone tech because they force companies that build products in China to essentially give away their IP. Can’t do that if the rocket is built exclusively in Hawthorne, CA and Boca China, TX with no outside contractors. They’re decades behind even the Europeans and Japanese. Chang’e5 is cool and all but Europe and Japan landed their spacecraft this year and last year on ASTEROIDS which is actually pushing the boundaries of space accomplishments and science. Hyabusa2 flew literally billions of miles (5.4bn to be exact)[0] during its mission to collect and return asteroid samples. The Chinese mission was a repeat of the 50’s just to say that they did it too. They’re not leapfrogging ANYONE, at least not until they do something novel.

http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/enjoy/material/factsheet/Fac...

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by someperson on Thursday December 10, 2020 @09:03AM (#25373768)

I tend to agree with you that China's space technology is not that developed -- their manned rocket and capsule is a scaled up Russian Soyuz design -- and I have doubts about their ability to catchup without major technology transfer (whether through acquisition or theft). But we should still recognize that their previous moon mission (Chang'e-4) did do something no other nation has yet done: land on the far side of the moon. That is pushing the boundaries and just repeating the accomplishments of decades ago.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by aardvarkr on Thursday December 10, 2020 @08:11PM (#25381089)

Is that really so impressive? The technical challenges remain the same as a near side landing except you’re in a communication blackout so signals have to bounce off a satellite in orbit. Even then that’s not novel because the Americans and Russians did the same thing, using their orbiting spacecraft to relay messages back to earth.

The Chinese literally haven’t done anything novel in their space program. Even the words they said upon landing on that mission were a copy of the Americans. ‘"It's a small step for the rover, but one giant leap for the Chinese nation," Wu Weiren, the chief designer of the Lunar Exploration Project, told state broadcaster CCTV.’ The Chinese literally can’t do anything but copy and it’s embarrassing.

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-chinese-rover-exploring-dark-s...

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by someperson on Friday December 11, 2020 @01:26AM (#25382945)

Well I think landing a rover on the far side of the moon is impressive. It's definitely a first for humanity and the scientists and engineers behind that mission deserve praise for that, even if in the achievement isn't pushing forward space technology at all.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by Invictus0 on Thursday December 10, 2020 @08:58AM (#25373722)

All it takes is one cyber attack.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by valuearb on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @11:35PM (#25369761)

Chinas launchers improvements have been moving at a slow pace. Lots of obsolete solid rockets and dangerous propellant.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by ansible on Thursday December 10, 2020 @02:44AM (#25370971)

It would be nice for the environment and the Chinese people if they pursued reuse more. Landing the 1st stage is a lot better than dropping it on top of a village and exploding... as part of a normal and successful launch.

No, I'm not kidding.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping...

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by frakkingcylons on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:47PM (#25367927)

SpaceX has a huge lead, no doubt. But there's a handful of smaller companies which are very promising. Rocket Lab's Electron vehicle has had 13 successful launches (3 failures) to LEO. Firefly and Relativity (which are founded by former SpaceX/Blue Origin employees) are making a lot of progress as well.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by mabbo on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @09:13PM (#25368741)

While the Electron is cool, the comparison is pretty far off.

The Electron can put 600kg into low Earth orbit.

Falcon 9 can handle 15,000 kg. Starship is expected to handle 100,000 kg.

The Falcon 1 is a good comparison to the Electron. If it had been fully developed it was expected to lift 600kg to leo by 2010 or 2011. 10 years ago, basically.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by frakkingcylons on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @11:02PM (#25369538)

I didn't compare Electron to Falcon 9 or Starship.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by temporalparts on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:49AM (#25370259)

From the parent post:

> they're now at least a decade behind.

The original claim was that competitors are a decade behind spaceX and Electron's capabilities are comparable to the technology spaceX had a decade ago. The Falcon 9 comparisons are to highlight the decade delta.

edit: grammar

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by Thlom on Thursday December 10, 2020 @03:16PM (#25377998)

Really sad to see f.ex. Arianespace still launching with the nearly 30 year old Ariane 5. Soon EOL now, but I don't think the Ariane 6 is even close to what SpaceX is doing at the moment. And I think ESA have started muttering about both capabilities of the rocket, launch price and the slow development.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by texasbigdata on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:13PM (#25367551)

What’s the Bezos one doing though? Aren’t they comparably close give or take a few years.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by wongarsu on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:31PM (#25367771)

I don't think anybody knows how far Blue Origin really is. They are much more secretive and seem to do a lot less testing. New Glenn is somewhat comparable to a Falcon 9 scaled up to the size of Starship and is supposed to happen in 2021, but I don't think there's any good indication how far they are along and whether they will be able to deliver.

My gut says that if they don't test they can't deliver, and that Elon's rapid prototyping will keep SpaceX far in the lead for the foreseeable future. But only time will tell.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by Denvercoder9 on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:55PM (#25368004)

Payload-wise New Glenn is better comparable to Falcon Heavy than to Starship. New Glenn actually sits more or less in the middle between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by fastball on Thursday December 10, 2020 @04:03AM (#25371465)

If you ignore payload capacity, I'd say New Glenn is much closer to Starship than it is to Falcon 9 in terms of technical development, mostly because of its novel engine, the BE-4. Like the Starship's Raptors, they are powered by a fuel that can be produced in-situ at the intended destination. Though in the case of the Raptors it's Methalox from Martian atmosphere (via Sabatier), whereas BE-4 engines are Hydrolox that they hope to get from ice on the moon.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by philwelch on Thursday December 10, 2020 @05:11AM (#25371982)

BE-4 is methalox. BE-3 and BE-7 are hydrolox.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by fastball on Thursday December 10, 2020 @03:15PM (#25377995)

Thanks for the correction, you're right, I was thinking about their Blue Moon lander, which is slated to have BE-7 engines.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by sushibowl on Thursday December 10, 2020 @08:28AM (#25373453)

Is the BE-4 design really that new? The choice of fuel is of course novel. But apart from that, it seems to be an oxygen-rich staged combustion design, which was invented by the soviets... somewhere in the 60's?

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by jiofih on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:40PM (#25367858)

Not even close. SpaceX has been launching commercial payloads for nearly a decade now, is on track to a hundred reusable rocket flights, is on the 11th or so generation, and Starship is far beyond anything BO has in their roadmap - if they manage to launch commercially one day.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by someperson on Thursday December 10, 2020 @09:15AM (#25373879)

For what it's worth Blue Origin's New Armstrong rocket hasn't yet been revealed (John Sheppard -> John Glenn -> Neil Armstrong) but Jeff Bezos has mentioned it. It's widely assumed to be a Saturn V class Super Heavy Lift vehicle.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by jiofih on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:37PM (#25376165)

Yeah I can draw a 77 thousand ton interstellar transporter on a napkin and “announce” it too.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by valuearb on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @11:41PM (#25369803)

BO has never launched anything into orbit.

It has plans to someday build a competitor to the 13 year old Falcon 9.

Oh and Bezos started BO before SpaceX, and has given it substantially more funding.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by sq_ on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:56AM (#25370304)

It's tough to tell what they're doing, as they're way less open about things than SpaceX and some of the other new commercial launchers (e.g. Rocket Lab).

Seems to me that they may be trying to pivot away from having orbital rockets being their main product with the sale of BE-4 engines to ULA for Vulcan and all of their work on lunar projects. But that could also be them trying to get more friendly with NASA or get development of the BE-4 paid for or any number of other things. They certainly are lacking in terms of actual hardware being seen.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by Denvercoder9 on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:20PM (#25367642)

They haven't actually put anything in orbit yet. I'd say they're at least a decade behind.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by dmd on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:21PM (#25367651)

Remind me again how many times Blue Origin has put anything in orbit?

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by jaredmoon on Thursday December 10, 2020 @04:38AM (#25371728)

No, not even close.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by tuatoru on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:01PM (#25367415)

Expect Old Space (Boeing & co) to lobby for a law requiring SpaceX to share all their telemtry data in real time.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by TheBill on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @08:53PM (#25368568)

They might try, but they'll still be focused on looting the .gov & first try success. SpaceX will still be 2-3 decades ahead of them.

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