Note that in September 2019 this flight was promised to be in October 2019.
At that time the flight was supposed to be to 18 km. This has been gradually whittled down, first to 15 km then 12.5 km.
This flight was no higher or faster than a commercial airliner.
While useful data and experience would have been gained, the flight ended with the destruction of a testbed and the loss of three reusable engines.
This is still very early days for "Starship". There is a long way to go before it is orbital capable.
Musk always overpromises on dates. That’s something that’s been known from early F9 days, to the point where I don’t pay attention to announced dates. They also had to take some time to figure out how to actually build the thing - the first few iterations were pretty rough.
"Over promising to this degree" is lying. Knowingly stating that a test article with poorly constructed mockup fins and nose cone will fly to 18 km in two months is lying. Saying that an orbital flight will happen with six months. And most people believe it.
My understanding is that they reduced altitude to avoid having to deal with high level winds, which seems a reasonable precaution. And for this test altitude only mattered to the degree they could test the belly flop.
Maybe. But was this announced at the time or is it after the event rationalisation? Musk does a lot of that, see the rationalisation that the failure of the Mk1 SS (the samed one that was going to flyto 18 km in two months) during an initial tanking test.
As for the engines, they’re chunking them out at a decent clip now. The next prototype is already built and will be rolled to the pad next week, and the next flight could happen by early January. There are at least six more prototypes in various stages of construction, so they have plenty of hardware to chew through as they start dialing this in.
At the rate they are destroying them, they need to. Eleven test articles have been made to date. Of these three have been retired, one never completed, one was subjected to destructive testing. The remainder were destroyed.accidently
Yes, they’re not orbit-capable yet and won’t be until the first booster is built, which is happening right now.
There are many steps to do before orbital capability. Alot more than have been done so far.
But, damn -
- New engine cycle, using
- A new fuel, and
- A new mode of flight
How does that justify continued lying and fatuity?
and came this close to pulling it off on the first try.
With a little less haste and a little more care it might have succeeded.
If this had been any other rocket from any other organisation, would people here be calling this a great success(as opposed to a partial one)?
