Starship - SpaceX
 

Starting this thread dedicated to the Starship program.

Starship launch 8 is scheduled for March 8, 2025 at 3:30pm PST.

SpaceX has had a couple successful booster catch recoveries, and should be testing the catch capability of the Starship itself soon.

For fun, lets make predictions about each flight. Last one had a successful booster catch, but a fuel leak caused a rupture in the Starship ultimately causing it to break up upon re-entry.

I predict Flight 8 won't end like Flight 7. Am I ahead so far?

VAST station and Moon landing by 2026.

edit: Three hours of Elon Musk on Joe Rogan podcast

Grok has a mode called Unlicensed Therapist.

Don't you worry about the soul of everyone using LLMs?

I worry [a little] for everyone's souls, but mostly people who use smart phones and got vaccinated.

Do you worry about a mode called Unlicensed Therapist?

3rd post in, and you've derailed it. We usually wait until post 25 or so.

This is relevant though, as I used Grok for the first time last night and ended up staying up until 1am because it was so useful.

"What are the most beautiful, low maintenance deciduous trees that thrive in the PNW?"

Grok delivered the goods in a tidy summary describing why people find the tree beautiful, what USDA zone it's best adapted to, water and drainage needs, and ease of maintenance.

Each question remembered proceeding questions in context of previous ones. "What USDA zone is Silverton Oregon?" Silverton, Oregon, is located in USDA Hardiness Zone 8b. "What are the most beautiful low maintenance bushes and shrubbery that thrive in the PNW"... All are suited to Zone 8b...

The more specific the criteria, and the more specific each criteria is weighted, the more specific the answers Grok delivers.

I asked if white interior paint looks good considering a white ceiling and white trim. Grok said yes, suggested the LRI spread (light reflectivity index) to provide necessary contrast, and then said it would make the cherry floors pop, info it assumed from a previous question, but not provided in this specific question. Questions about paint colors don't return vague "grey" as an answer, but names specific colors by various manufacturers.

Ask what third color goes with Mountbatten Pink and Nardo Gray.

How is it accessed? Web page or paid app? Social media?

Ontopic: I thought they were updating the hot staging ring, but I'm seeing the original design still.

https://grok.com/

Everything requires accounts, so you're out, despite the fact the account can be a burner email and you can utilize a proxy.

The government's already got more dirt on me than queries about what trees survive best in the PNW. As SA says, I assume everything I do in the digital world is open to everyone and conduct myself accordingly.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but the hot stage is only necessary because the 2nd stage can't light the engines unless the fuel is under constant acceleration forcing it all to the bottom of the tank. How do they expect to force the fuel where they need it in the tank upon reentry where they will have to relight again? I suppose drag and positioning the rocket would suffice. Long term, a robust design allows the engines to light in all conditions. There are plenty of scenarios where an initial burn needs to shut down, and then relight for a 2nd or 3rd burn. That problem needs to be solved, plus the hot stage is wasted payload.

I started self-censoring when I left dial-up for DSL (dial-up gets a fresh IP address every time, but the same MAC address). If I have medical questions I log in at the city library.

What I'd seen wasn't justifying the need for the hot staging ring. I'd said from it's beginning that the old Soviet design is superior. Triangulated struts rather than a solid ring with slots cut in it. But, apparently, no.

Since you understand the situation, would you mind posing the question? There're other questions I wouldn't ask for. :wink:

With my cash flow I need to have patience. My RP5 has provision for adding neural chip support, there is now a 16Gb model on market, soon it will come built into an RP500 keyboard.
duckduckgo.com/?q=local+LLM&ia=web

Isn't Deep Seek the hot new LLM?
I read that all kinds of billionaires lost money this month because DS is so good everyone is using it.

I asked something called Claude to help me write a TWX Proxy script.
I told it what I wanted to do and wrote as much as I could from memory, just wanting help with a specific part, but it drew the rest of the freaking owl.
I gave it two pages of feedback and needed to fix a number of additional things, but that was orders of magnitude more than I expected with a scripting language six people use.

I don't know how far I would have gotten in that time on my own, but that was more time than I felt I could spare, and finally finished the cursed report I had been writing for school!

It's more complicated than that. nVidia stock took a hit, but has recovered.

Elon Musk started OpenAI with Sam Altman and others. While he stepped back due to conflict of interest with Tesla's AI work, Sam Altman left yCombinator to focus on OpenAI, and they adopted a ‘capped-profit’ strategy.

So OpenAI was started as Open Source but devolved into a for profit; while Deep Seek promotes Open Source with a CCP filter.

Basically, Deep Seek is a proof of concept (lower resolution reduces computation cost) that will be adopted/coopted by all others going forward.

edit:
I found this article on The Register where IT is pushing back against the Deep Seek phenomenon. www.theregister.com: The hidden cost of compromise
--There's an old saying in software development that goes something like, "Fast, good or cheap — pick two."--

Possible launch day today.

From SpaceX website-

"Distinct vehicle and pad criteria must be met prior to the return and catch of the Super Heavy booster, requiring healthy systems on the booster and tower and a final manual command from the mission’s Flight Director. If this command is not sent prior to the completion of the boostback burn, or if automated health checks show unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower, the booster will default to a trajectory for a soft splashdown in the Gulf of America."

It looks like a repeat.

SpaceX lands Super Heavy booster, but loses Starship in 8th test flight -- Global News

I missed watching it in real time, but now I'm caught up. Yup, same failure mode it seems, which is good because consistent problems are easier to troubleshoot and correct.

The shame is that the engines only needed to survive another 20 seconds and the rest of the mission could have been flown. I wonder if the 1min static fire contributed to something wearing out? Perhaps if the static fire was not performed, it might have survived the mission?

Any time you light an engine you have limited possible outcomes: works up to commanded power (which may or may not be up to over 100% rated), works partially, doesn't work, spontaneously disassembles. You can't model it, and testing it on a pad is different than free testing under load. Sounds to me like they didn't get the actual fault fixed, must be counter intuitive or too much pressure to launch ( they drilled ventilation holes for chrissakes) I think too much gotta launch it, now!!! Is the failure, or at least as it looks from here. Daddy has too many fires going and lost focus and had a tantrum. Wouldn't be the first time*. Good thing he doesn't use solids because at those power levels, there would be no launch site available to find. Makes the dinosaur extinction event.

*Ask any long term giga factory employee

Putting it all on the moneybags guy disrespects (for better or worse) the person achually in charge, Gwynn Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX.

Lots of respect for the lady boss, know people at the bottom of the food chain that work at the local giga factory who tell me stories.

Figure my employment there would have been less than probation before I got fed up or fired for disrespect. Never tried, figured it was a lousy fit.

Manufacturing is among the most straightforward types of job. Once trained, you just follow the processes and meet production and quality metrics. It's so routine, that once something unusual occurs, it's a call to the help desk.

They're complainers in any large corporation. People complain in the European company I work for. Dissatisfied people have the option to find something more suitable.

I'd find it interesting to work under the design philosophy that seeks to eliminate too much in search of optimizing design.

Move fast and break things. – Mark Zuckerberg;

Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.. – John C Maxwell

You want failures to be small and informational. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Build back better....

Whelp, wasn't a grunt, was production management for hughes space and comm. Union wouldn't allow me to touch product in your lifetime. Early retired here, figured would be fun to do weird jobs. Tried prototype assembly, learned to drive schoolbus, buyer for job corps, carpenter........many others that sounded fun. Dont need the income, but hand me crap and I'm gone, go find some one else to put up with your BS.

I never liked International buses, the steering wheel hurt my hands.

Summers during high school* and college I drove an International COE truck, 14K GVW box van delivering dairy feed into the Oregon Coast Range.

With a half load on gravel roads, it was FASTER TO DRIFT THE CORNERS.

*During college anyway, during high school it was a hand truck with six foot tall oak handles (5-600lb GVW).