Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Orion

19 Comments

Six years after its maiden (and only) flight, Eric Berger has some thoughts.

[Update a few minutes later]

From a comment over there:

Probably the most salient points:

A mockup lacking many critical systems flew into space once, six years ago.

The next test flight is basically another mockup, lacking even life support systems.

The first full-up complete vehicle launch is supposed to be with crew trusting their lives to a vehicle which has never been flight tested with systems complete, and also a similarly never-flown service module. Because for all the expense and mass, Orion doesn’t have much duration without a service module.

NASA safety culture at work. Mountains of paperwork instead of actual testing on actual hardware.

Just getting this far on Orion has been 15 years and $24B.

Ridiculous pork capsule to match a ridiculous pork rocket in the SLS.

Yup. It’s a Potemkin space program.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

The First High-Altitude Starship Test

99 Comments

…coming this week.

Regardless of the outcome, it will be exciting.

[Wednesday-afternoon update]

It could be as soon as Friday.

[Bumped]

[Tuesday-morning update]

Today seems to be the day. It’s being covered by NASA Spaceflight.

[Bumped again]

[1440 PST update]

Raptor abort. They aren’t going partway to space today.

[Wednesday-afternoon update]

Fuel is loading, T-26 minutes to launch.

[Bumped]

[Post-flight update]

Well, that was kind of spectacular. As I said, guaranteed to be exciting. The exhaust looked a little weird toward the end. It was greenish, as though it was maybe running fuel rich. If so, Perhaps the thrust wasn’t up to spec, and insufficient to control the landing on final.

[Update a while later]

Elon said that the header tank pressure was low on landing. I’m guessing that this maybe resulted in bubbles in the cooling channels, overheating of the nozzle, and injecting copper into the flow, for that green effect. And reduced thrust, of course, which is why they came in too fast.

[Update Thursday afternoon]

Am I the only person who thinks it would be pretty unpleasant to be in the nose of that thing at final (even with a successful landing)?