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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Years long delays and development hell for the Starliner; finally launches with significant but manageable propellant leaks. Meanwhile Starship is making cutting edge leaps and bounds in only its fourth test flight. Starship looks nearly ready to launch payloads.
To be fair though, since we're comparing them, Starship is also not exactly on schedule and it's starting to result in canceled missions.
Musk also promised two Starships on Mars by 2023, they're more than a little behind.
True, Starship is taking longer than originally estimated... But these systems are not comparable at all, it's comparing Apples and Oranges. Starship is a completely new category of launch platform with no direct comparison in history. Starliner is just a more modern capsule system.
The actual comparison to Starliner is Crew Dragon. The actual direct comparison, and funded from the same NASA contract set as Starliner. Crew Dragon has already made 13 successful crewed launches at nearly half the NASA contract budget.
When has anything space ever been on schedule? SpaceX may be behind, but considering what they're trying to do with Starship, it's hardly unexpected.
Starliner successfully docked to a space station to deliver crew, a feat first achieved in 1971.
Starship flew into space and crashed, a feat first achieved in 1944.
Nobody broke any big milestones, both were just test flights, that are both horribly behind their promised time-frames.
I think that’s a reductive take of what starship just accomplished today but you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.
It’s okay to hate SpaceX as much as you like but what gave you the impression that starship crashed? Both the booster and the ship itself softly touched down on the water at less than walking speed. They would have been fine on land and the only reason why they did it over water is that nobody had ever successfully landed something that big until today. Nobody had even reentered the atmosphere with something that big. The biggest so far was the Space Shuttle orbiter. The starship upper stage is 1.5 times the size and more than twice the mass of that.
Starship demonstrated a recoverable heavy-lift booster, aerodynamic reentry control, high-bandwidth reentry communications, and a successful test of flight software despite hardware failures, all while launching an incredibly heavy thing into space.
For comparison, the Starship can carry two dozen fully fueled V-2s into space.
A bit pedantic, but unless I'm misinterpreting the Wikipedia page for the V2, I think it's only 4 to 6 fully fueled V-2s based on the listed payload capacity of 100-150 tons US.
V-2 dry: 27,600 lb
Warhead: 2,200 lb
Propellant: 8,400 lb 75% ethanol / 25% water, 10,820 lb liquid oxygen
Total weight: ~24.5 tons US
I appreciate your pedantry. I was just going off a quick google for "weight of V-2 fully loaded" and "mass of Starship to orbit" because it's been quite a busy day here.
You're technically correct, and that's the best kind. 🎖️