Also to make it clear, it was never planned to even make it to LEO. SpaceX has made it very clear that they wanted to get close to the energy experienced during an actual reentry without actually making it to orbit.
Balex
joined 1 year ago
You do realize that most of the money NASA has given SpaceX has been in the form of contracts to launch missions for them? I'm pretty sure very minimal tax dollars are going to Starship development right now, especially compared to other launch providers (ULA, Blue Origin, ect.) It's because of SpaceX that America is able to launch Astronauts to space without using Russia since the Space Shuttle was retired.
The fastest turnaround time for a space shuttle was 54 days pre Challenger disaster and 88 days post Challenger disaster. It was very expensive and time consuming to reuse the space shuttle (they basically had to completely disassemble and reassemble the whole thing) which is one of the main reasons it has stopped flying. Falcon 9 on the other hand has a fastest turnaround time of 3 weeks. So not sure where you got your numbers from, but it seems to me that the Falcon 9 is a much better vehicle in terms of reuse.
Uh... Who has done this before?
If you understand gravity wells, think of L1/L2/L3 as the shape of a saddle. If you're right in the middle of the saddle it's a pretty stable orbit, but if you get too close to any of the edges you fall right out of it. L4 and L5 are like the peaks of a mountain.
Also worth pointing out that only L4 and L5 are stable, L1/L2/L3 are only metastable where they require a bit of maintenance to stay there.
Another fun fact about Legrange Points: There's a group of asteroids called the Trojan Asteroids. There's technically two groups of these since they're stuck in L4 and L5 in the Sun/Jupiter system.
This. There's 5 Legrange Points for every 2 body system. They're specific points around the 2 bodys where the gravity "cancels out". In this case the 2 body system is the Earth and the Sun. JWST is sitting a million miles from Earth at L2.
Maybe older models were a lot less efficient with always on display, but I just checked for my Pixel 8 Pro and the ambient display was <1% battery usage.
Huh? Are you saying that the white school/mall shooters weren't aware that killing people is illegal?
SpaceX created the first successful Full Flow Stage Combustion Cycle Engine, so they're also innovative in the propulsion department.
SpaceX has only had 2 mission failures out of 274 total missions. Since 2017 SpaceX has had a 100% success rate which is a vast majority of its total missions. The recent explosions have been test rockets and expected to blow up, it's how they learn and innovate so quickly. NASA takes billions of dollars and 10+ years to successfully launch a rocket on the first attempt. It's just 2 different approaches to design and innovation.
I would expect it to be higher if that's the case. The ones that wouldn't take it would probably be the ones not planning on going to college.
There's only 8 (or 9 depending on who you ask) planets in the solar system. So Musk would have 2 fingers to spare. And we haven't even "landed" on all of them (not sure how you'd land on a gas giant...)