SpaceX's Starship SN5 prototype soars on 1st test flight! 'Mars is looking real,' Elon Musk says

[Admin]

SpaceX just flew a full- prototype of its Starship Mars-colonizing spacecraft for the first time ever.

SpaceX's Starship SN5 prototype soars on 1st test flight! 'Mars is looking real,' Elon Musk says : Read more

 

[Ted A Campbell]

Cool. A little wobbly. I was kind of hoping that it would be more or less upright while flying. Maybe you have to pay extra for that?

 

[Curtis Quick]

My spirits soared with SN5!! It was a wonderful flight! A lot of us had been waiting for a long time for this. Good job SpaceX! Now, what about SN6? Will they stick a nose cone on it and send it up even higher?

 

[AsteroidAware]

Very nice - you can clearly see the application of Falcon development, into this prototype... with some R&D borrowed from the Leaning Tower of Pisa

 

[FredM]

This is great technology in action. But We (humanity) need thousands of these mega-flights and a shift in targeting from Mars to the Moon if we are to get huge investors and make huge profits from day one in space. First, change the long term goal from Mars to colonizing the MOON and making it habitable. It seems Elon could do this now and at continually decreasing costs with Moon tourism and mining.
Elon's end goal of colonizing Mars is NOT THERMODYNAMICALLY possible since the second law of Thermodynamics forbids it. Humans can only thrive in a tight ENTROPY CORRIDORS equivalent to that of Earth. Mars is so far below this corridor that living or visiting there will suck the energy out of humans and their machinery at such a rate that resupply will be fiscally impossible. This makes investors nervous. Even nuclear reactors would not surface. And Breeding programs on Mars would only ever evolve energy-poor specimens that could not find a place back on home planet Earth. A sad prospect. Mars is best left for Mining and as a Way station for extra solar system flights using Mars' Moons for a number of purposes.
Entropy is significant and you just can't ignore it or wish it away. However you can design future missions and objectives much better with ENTROPY in mind:
For Example, Mining Mars is possible especially for Uranic elements at the base of many cliff faces where radioactive detritus accumulates. This would be a useful industrial science mission for owning all-about the outer Solar System. Using mars mining, communications and warehousing operations is fiscally viable and won't require hordes of settlers to make a profit at this juncture.
In future if you want viable human settlements you must go to earth-like strata in the Venutian atmosphere or to the semi-shaded Polar regions of Mercury where Earth-like conditions can be found and tracked. The current option to consider is using bountiful solar energy to power Moon orbiting scoop-sats to gouge out deep caverns for housing and in the creation of 20Km maglev runways for maglev and retro rocket assisted Lunar Takeoff and landings. All these things will be possible and indeed far more profitable for investors. IF Elon has the REAL future of space colonization in front of his investors rather than just the next small step goal of putting hundreds of space settlers & tourists at great risk on Mars he will get those elusive investors he needs.

 

[bleechexplorer]

Cool. A little wobbly. I was kind of hoping that it would be more or less upright while flying. Maybe you have to pay extra for that?

Not really.
The finished starship will have 3 engines for atmosphere flights and right now the prototype has only one that is offset. This essentially requires the starship to be angled so it can balance itself by the engine.

This is great technology in action. But We (humanity) need thousands of these mega-flights and a shift in targeting from Mars to the Moon if we are to get huge investors and make huge profits from day one in space. First, change the long term goal from Mars to colonizing the MOON and making it habitable. It seems Elon could do this now and at continually decreasing costs with Moon tourism and mining.
Elon's end goal of colonizing Mars is NOT THERMODYNAMICALLY possible since the second law of Thermodynamics forbids it. Humans can only thrive in a tight ENTROPY CORRIDORS equivalent to that of Earth. Mars is so far below this corridor that living or visiting there will suck the energy out of humans and their machinery at such a rate that resupply will be fiscally impossible. This makes investors nervous. Even nuclear reactors would not surface. And Breeding programs on Mars would only ever evolve energy-poor specimens that could not find a place back on home planet Earth. A sad prospect. Mars is best left for Mining and as a Way station for extra solar system flights using Mars' Moons for a number of purposes.
Entropy is significant and you just can't ignore it or wish it away. However you can design future missions and objectives much better with ENTROPY in mind:
For Example, Mining Mars is possible especially for Uranic elements at the base of many cliff faces where radioactive detritus accumulates. This would be a useful industrial science mission for owning all-about the outer Solar System. Using mars mining, communications and warehousing operations is fiscally viable and won't require hordes of settlers to make a profit at this juncture.
In future if you want viable human settlements you must go to earth-like strata in the Venutian atmosphere or to the semi-shaded Polar regions of Mercury where Earth-like conditions can be found and tracked. The current option to consider is using bountiful solar energy to power Moon orbiting scoop-sats to gouge out deep caverns for housing and in the creation of 20Km maglev runways for maglev and retro rocket assisted Lunar Takeoff and landings. All these things will be possible and indeed far more profitable for investors. IF Elon has the REAL future of space colonization in front of his investors rather than just the next small step goal of putting hundreds of space settlers & tourists at great risk on Mars he will get those elusive investors he needs.

I am not sure where you are getting that from my friend, but i have not read so much nonsense for a long time.

 

[RRG]

I love space......I love rocket launches...technologies......telescopes and Earth. Life is hard but wonderful here. Why would anyone want to go to a place, the Moon, and live? Hostile and desolate and always in a spacesuit wondering if you have enough oxygen among many other things you have to worry about. And always looking down at Earth wondering why your not there. The great Thomas Sowell gets it right.......stage 1 thinking. Sounds great but no thanks. I'm in stage 2.

 

[swiggly]

OK - nice enough but a ways to go from a big flying water heater to Mars....

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

Cool. A little wobbly. I was kind of hoping that it would be more or less upright while flying. Maybe you have to pay extra for that?

It was not going to fly upright with an off center engine on a mount made for 3 symmetrically mounted. That's why it did a power slide start, and likely why it rotated so much despite the cold gas thrusters trying to prevent that.

But the 2 degree angle that some videos measured off the landed craft show that even a prepared surface will introduce landing tilts, so I'm eagerly waiting for the v2 version of legs that will level off the craft on (moderately) uneven surfaces.

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

My spirits soared with SN5!! It was a wonderful flight! A lot of us had been waiting for a long time for this. Good job SpaceX! Now, what about SN6? Will they stick a nose cone on it and send it up even higher?

Hard to tell which crafts they will use. Musk twittered that they want to improve the hops before the 20 km skydiver tests start. For one, a high pressure preburner was leaking propellant and was on fire during descent in their video.

They may want to install all 3 landing engines and the header tanks used then as well as autogenous pressurization systems, since the skydiver position needs pressurized headers (not upright position).

It is likely that the SN8 will be the first skydiver prototype, since it has the new, tougher alloy and wings were delivered this week so possibly of the same alloy. But no one knows what SpaceX is planning strategically and not even they know how the test series will act out tactically.

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

This is great technology in action. But We (humanity) need thousands of these mega-flights and a shift in targeting from Mars to the Moon if we are to get huge investors and make huge profits from day one in space.

The Marts colonization is intended to drive the economy of producing the fleet based on colonist tickets. But the colony will not pay back in cargo as much as future technology and know how - it is different from earlier colonization based on trade or war. It better pay back that way, since that is what the colonists can export besides having an internal economy.

I doubt Moon has something valuable to export besides science (geology, far side observatories). It is far cheaper to lift volatiles to LEO from Earth, say, and without an atmosphere and biosphere its minerals is mostly scattered by impacts and rarely sedimented into concentrated deposits (volcanism being the exception).

Elon's end goal of colonizing Mars is NOT THERMODYNAMICALLY possible since the second law of Thermodynamics forbids it. Humans can only thrive in a tight ENTROPY CORRIDORS equivalent to that of Earth.

What has entropy to do with anything - there is nothing in the second law of thermodynamics that says that? And an "entropy corridor" is not a thing. The classic formulation is that the total entropy of a closed system can never decrease. But planets are not closed systems - life depends on exporting entropy to space.

Sure, it is easier if we can rely on low entropy sources, such as the mineral concentration by life I noted earlier. But we can even do mining by filtration now, at least in principle - the latest generation lithium filtration membranes have a sporting chance of "spooning off" the battery metal from our oceans as cheaply as earlier mining. Entropy is not a limitation. (Nor is energy, since solar power suffice to drive technology out to Jupiter.)

Also, using CRACKPOT FONT is not helping a dialog.

 

[diegotarses]

Amazing, Elon Musk will be named "Father of Space Exploration" soon.

 

[Rampager83]

Cool. A little wobbly. I was kind of hoping that it would be more or less upright while flying. Maybe you have to pay extra for that?

Well, the overall design is for a rocket with three engines. This only had one where normally all three would be in a cluster. This undoubtedly resulted in some off-axis thrust which impacted flight. Probably why the rocket plume is at an angle, too.

 

[AsteroidAware]

Did you see the fire on the engine towards the end of the flight? At about 40 secs in this video:
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-sn5-prototype-1st-test-flight.html

Didn't look quite intended...? Must be hot under there

 

[FredM]

Not really.
The finished starship will have 3 engines for atmosphere flights and right now the prototype has only one that is offset. This essentially requires the starship to be angled so it can balance itself by the engine.




I am not sure where you are getting that from my friend, but i have not read so much nonsense for a long time.

 

[bleechexplorer]

Hard to tell which crafts they will use. Musk twittered that they want to improve the hops before the 20 km skydiver tests start. For one, a high pressure preburner was leaking propellant and was on fire during descent in their video.

They may want to install all 3 landing engines and the header tanks used then as well as autogenous pressurization systems, since the skydiver position needs pressurized headers (not upright position).

It is likely that the SN8 will be the first skydiver prototype, since it has the new, tougher alloy and wings were delivered this week so possibly of the same alloy. But no one knows what SpaceX is planning strategically and not even they know how the test series will act out tactically.

If you take a closer look to the video you will see that by the end of the flight even though the engine was still running the fire at the high pressure side went away.
Even more - it didn't look like a propellant under pressure leaking and burning. My thoughts are that this was some residual either lubricants or cleaning agents that were on the surface that got fire and by the end of the flight burned all the way and stopped.
Hard to tell until we have an official statement from SpaceX, but does not look critical at all.

 

[FredM]

The Marts colonization is intended to drive the economy of producing the fleet based on colonist tickets. But the colony will not pay back in cargo as much as future technology and know how - it is different from earlier colonization based on trade or war. It better pay back that way, since that is what the colonists can export besides having an internal economy.

I doubt Moon has something valuable to export besides science (geology, far side observatories). It is far cheaper to lift volatiles to LEO from Earth, say, and without an atmosphere and biosphere its minerals is mostly scattered by impacts and rarely sedimented into concentrated deposits (volcanism being the exception).



What has entropy to do with anything - there is nothing in the second law of thermodynamics that says that? And an "entropy corridor" is not a thing. The classic formulation is that the total entropy of a closed system can never decrease. But planets are not closed systems - life depends on exporting entropy to space.

Sure, it is easier if we can rely on low entropy sources, such as the mineral concentration by life I noted earlier. But we can even do mining by filtration now, at least in principle - the latest generation lithium filtration membranes have a sporting chance of "spooning off" the battery metal from our oceans as cheaply as earlier mining. Entropy is not a limitation. (Nor is energy, since solar power suffice to drive technology out to Jupiter.)

Also, using CRACKPOT FONT is not helping a dialog.

1.There is nothing wrong with reinforcing key points with capital letters.
2. A single definition of Entropy does not make you proficient enough to apply its concepts to living and travelling in space and on other worlds.

Hopefully Elon Musk understands my posts and takes notice of the points I make. I am committed to ensuring human space travel is as safe as possible. Understanding how human entropy systems behave in space is the key to that.
Thank you very much for protracting the conversation.

 

[bleechexplorer]

1.There is nothing wrong with reinforcing key points with capital letters.
2. A single definition of Entropy does not make you proficient enough to apply its concepts to living and travelling in space and on other worlds.

Hopefully Elon Musk understands my posts and takes notice of the points I make. I am committed to ensuring human space travel is as safe as possible. Understanding how human entropy systems behave in space is the key to that.
Thank you very much for protracting the conversation.

Am i missing something here?
Elon probably does not read random forums.
If you are committed to ensure space travel is safe then you must be working in the space industry - are you?

And again - what is the commonality between entropy and living or going to space?