[f-securus]

Holy cow. How are people downplaying something so revolutionary. Without those other tests SpaceX wouldn’t have done what it did today and they show progress each step. They are doing what nasa couldn’t (send stuff to space orders of magnitude cheaper) because they aren’t afraid to blow stuff up.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

They haven't gotten to the revolutionary part yet (fuel tankers in orbit, raptor relight, reusable first stage, reentry).

[f-securus]

Re-using rockets isn't revolutionary?

[jordanb]

I think it might have been back when the shuttle did it in 1981.

[f-securus]

The shuttle that cost 450 million per launch? (And disposable boosters)

[paledot]

The boosters parachuted to the ocean and were reused. Only the external fuel tank was not reusable. However, you're correct that the Shuttle failed utterly to realize the point of reusability, that being low cost and quick turnaround.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Moving the goalposts. I didn't say it wasn't revolutionary either, just that they haven't gotten to that part yet.

[pclmulqdq]

Nobody has done anything revolutionary and nobody has gotten to space an order of magnitude cheaper. The best estimates of SpaceX's cost advantage per kilo put it at 30-50% better than a Soyuz.

The Starship program so far has soaked up as much money as SLS, and hasn't even left orbit.

[jiggawatts]

They did several revolutionary things with starship:

Full-flow staged combustion metholox engines.

Stainless steel construction.

Biggest rocket to have ever flown.

Highest thrust at launch of any rocket by a factor of two or so.

Live streaming of reentry via a space Internet network.

Etc…

[pclmulqdq]

Those all sound like incremental technology advances to me that have yet to deliver any real advances in capabilities. Which is nice - don't get me wrong - but not exactly worth rolling out the aircraft carrier for.

[jiggawatts]

Someone else in this thread pointed out that Starship could get the ISS built in just 3 launches! It originally took dozens.

Quantity has a quality all of its own.

You should be familiar with this from IT: there’s nothing fundamentally different about the first computer that I’ve ever used to the one I have right now, other than the factor of a million difference in performance!

[pclmulqdq]

Starship today can't launch anything. Saying that it can launch the ISS in 3 launches is what Elon Musk says it can do. I don't trust Elon Musk's word for things until I see what someone does with those words. Generally, he is off by a factor of 10-100 on his promises.

[DarmokJalad1701]

> Starship today can't launch anything

Why not? With the capability demonstrated today, they can just as easily tweak the ascent profile to end up in a stable orbit outside the atmosphere. Their trajectory was suborbital on this flight on purpose.

[baq]

Full flow methalox is absolutely revolutionary.

[thinkcontext]

> The Starship program so far has soaked up as much money as SLS, and hasn't even left orbit

There's a bit of nuance to what you are claiming here.

SLS cost $11B to develop, which is estimated to be in the neighborhood of what Starship will cost when development is complete. We don't know how much has been spent so far.

A huge difference is that producing and launching an SLS rocket costs over $2B, while SpaceX is estimating $10M for Starship. Now, I don't trust that $10M number, that's what they aspire for it to cost. To do it they need to be able to reuse the stages dozens of times. It could take a long time to achieve that or they might not make it at all. However, $2B+ per launch is a whole 'nother level of expense.