https://matlabmadness.ytmnd.com

4/17/2023 7:46:59 PM

That's a whoopsie?

4/20/2023 9:51:52 AM

The announcers really kept trying to say everything was fine as the thing was doing flips

4/20/2023 1:52:49 PM

so technically they are claiming that the flight was only to test the release from the launch pad. Which there are a thousand simpler/cheaper ways to do that instead of having a full scale launch to attempted orbit. Right off the bat at ignition they had three engine failures, with another one a few seconds after clearing the pad, then I think two more later in flight. Which is insane. They are yet to have a successful test even where all boosters fired at 100% and there wasn't a failure. Admittedly, you can have failures when you have a thousand engines, and that brings into play whether you want to focus more on redundancy vs. reliability, but there are clearly some serious quality assurance issues going on.

Even their ground systems are questionable, I heard that tons of chunks of concrete got blown off the pad, including one that hit some poor guy's car. Which is interesting, because you can't park anywhere near the pad, so it had to have been blown like miles away from the pad.

4/20/2023 2:01:41 PM

I've seen people on reddit say the concrete on the pad caused some of the engine failures

https://twitter.com/labpadre/status/1649062784167030785

It certainly does not look in great shape.

4/20/2023 2:04:47 PM

Wraith, watch the ocean in this video


https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1649097087248891904

4/21/2023 7:36:55 PM

Not sure if this pic will work, but the pad was absolutely destroyed. There is a reason that pads of this size have flame trenches to redirect all of that energy...



[Edited on April 24, 2023 at 2:44 PM. Reason : ]

4/24/2023 2:44:13 PM

That's way worse than the other pic i saw

I remember though the first dragon landing was really bad, but they fixed the problems and improved it very rapidly. The super heavy was designed to fly with multiple engines out, the problem happened on the roll, and it didn't seem intrinsic to the design (assuming it was a range abort that blew up the craft when it failed).

the destroyed launchpad is a bad sign though, if the rumors that Musk personally intervened to stop the building of the flame trenches are true.

4/24/2023 4:35:56 PM

Looks like Russia bombed the launchpad.

That's why you need a Sea Dragon.



Tears For Fears will get us to the moon and beyond every time!

4/24/2023 7:21:58 PM

Russia's Luna-25 crashed into the moon near the Shackleton Crater. Looks like Ed Baldwin was able to sabotage it. Nice job, fellas!

8/20/2023 8:11:24 AM

^You sure it wasn't Margot working from the inside?

8/21/2023 2:01:01 PM

Another tantalizing possibility. Tune in to Season 4 to find out!

8/21/2023 2:07:32 PM

Russia, let India show you how to do it.

8/24/2023 9:28:04 PM

The first thing I thought of were decepticons lol

[Edited on August 24, 2023 at 11:25 PM. Reason : -]

8/24/2023 11:25:50 PM

Nasa collected asteroid dust today

9/24/2023 10:59:57 PM

Good try Astrobotic

1/9/2024 12:38:50 AM

RIP Gene Roddenberry's Ashes



GNSP

1/9/2024 7:20:52 AM

On the plus side, the maiden voyage of the Vulcan was successful. Lots of ULA friends are super pumped about that.

1/9/2024 12:24:01 PM

In a move that should be surprising to no one, NASA has delayed the moon landing until 2026.

1/9/2024 6:03:52 PM

Watched the whole thing several weeks ago. Was worth the time for me, but interested in industry insider perspectives.

1/9/2024 6:11:49 PM

Man. I don't wanna watch an hour long video about work stuff when I'm not at work. What are the cliff notes?

1/12/2024 10:20:09 AM

Artemis approach is a boondoggle.

It's not overtly critical, but just asking probing questions and raising certain concerns. If the comments are any indication, and they may not be, it hits home for some. It's easy enough to watch, but I understand not wanting to watch work topics when off work. Pretend it's an episode of For All Mankind! Activate a good ad-blocker that works for YouTube and split it up into 3 or 4 sessions, maybe. Or not.

1/12/2024 5:20:02 PM

RIP Peregrine One. Burned up in atmosphere.

1/19/2024 11:18:31 PM

Seems like it's harder to land on the moon than on asteroids and Mars? Is this purely recency bias, or are there important technical drivers behind the difference?

2/26/2024 6:55:54 PM

I just thought of a big problem. If they want you to be deserted etc, do you at least get a few free moments to masturbate? Seems like if isolated on mars, would have to not be under cameras at least some of the time

2/26/2024 8:03:09 PM

^^There are some aspects. Mars having an atmosphere makes it easier to slow down via drag. The speed of light lag from Mars though is an issue. If you are purely unmanned, Mars is harder as getting there is a thing (there is a thing called the Great Galactic Ghoul that likes to eat spacecrafts between Earth and Mars), then you gotta go through the entirety of EDL without any communication or anything, entirely autonomously. Throw humans on though and they can land themselves with relative easy.

2/27/2024 1:39:00 PM

Thanks. Yeah, I saw Ed Baldwin do it with an MSAM, like no big deal.

2/27/2024 1:40:46 PM

No one mentioned Starship finally making it to space (and then failing).

3/17/2024 12:13:18 AM

Yawn

3/17/2024 2:53:03 AM

It's kind of important since this is still planned to be a vehicle of primary importance for manned moon missions. Eventually they need it to stop blowing up.

3/17/2024 8:59:53 AM

The plan to get HLS to the moon is certifiably insane.

Starship/HLS needs to be able to launch and make it to orbit

The refueler Starship needs to launch 10x times in rapid succession and refuel HLS.

SpaceX is not even close to being able to do this and the ability to refuel is still an unknown.

3/17/2024 9:59:21 AM

Great analysis. That is some of the concern espoused in the above posted YouTube video.

3/17/2024 10:29:47 AM

I enjoyed how the last Starship launch had the stabilizer/wing burn off and spacex was cheering it as a good thing.

You're supposed to be able to rapidly reuse the thing and it doesn't appear possible to land it intact yet

6/29/2024 9:31:06 AM

Could be worse. Could be China. They just had what was supposed to be a static engine ground test. The hold down posts failed and the entire engine actually launched to what looked like a few thousand feet before falling back to earth and exploding at what looked to be about 1-2 miles from a populated city.

[Edited on July 1, 2024 at 12:46 PM. Reason : ]

7/1/2024 12:46:15 PM

All the SpaceX fan boys are gonna be insufferable

8/24/2024 6:05:44 PM

Boeing is failing at everything lately.

8/24/2024 7:59:41 PM

Which sucks cause I'm still not convinced Starship will ever work

8/24/2024 8:32:37 PM

We Baldwin would fly Starliner back to Earth regardless of condition (while smoking a fat ass splif) and land it right on top of the Kremlin. Then march on Star City!

8/26/2024 7:12:27 PM

We Ed Baldwin! Come on!

8/27/2024 6:33:53 AM

^^ which part? SpaceX is good at iterating

8/27/2024 11:30:54 AM

Assuming that was for me, I'm not convinced SpaceX will have the ability to rapidly refuel HLS 10-20x in orbit. HLS in general just seems like flawed idea.

8/27/2024 1:03:34 PM

I have... thoughts. I'm at work right now so I'll try to remember to post about it on personal time so as to not get in trouble talking about certain things on NASA IT assets.

8/28/2024 11:42:35 AM

I wish to hear your thoughts Wraith

8/28/2024 9:30:55 PM

^

And did anyone ITT ever watch the topical video I posted back on 1/9?

8/28/2024 9:51:34 PM

Wraith is a tease!

Consider yourself officially called out!

You think you're smart? Then come say the shit you promised to say on TWW to our faces!

Can't wait to see your bitch ass crying when you get taken out of low Earth orbit!

8/29/2024 10:24:17 PM

Now that it's the weekend, what is his excuse?

8/31/2024 7:53:33 AM

The government sent agents to handle him

8/31/2024 7:03:39 PM

Wraith abducted to Star City, CONFIRMED!?

9/1/2024 12:03:13 PM

I'm back online... but on my work computer. From Star City. Maybe.

Maybe I'll post more tonight. Maybe I won't. It will likely depend on A) If my wife is watching the finale of the Bachelorette with her friends tonight, and B) If my old man memory allows me to log in to TWW.

9/3/2024 10:47:09 AM

Alright.

For legal reasons, the opinions expressed here are entirely my own personal opinions and in no way represent those of NASA or the US Government in any way.


Boeing and SpaceX suck lately.

First of all, we'll start with Boeing. Specifically, Boeing Space -- I am not familiar enough with their aeronautics/commercial air flight stuff to comment on them. So what happened here is very clearly Boeing was feeling upstaged by SpaceX. For decades, Boeing (as well as LM) has been one of THE go-tos for government space travel contracts. They have lobbyists and all that stuff going back to the early days of space travel. They have their way of doing things, which is more closely aligned with NASA, but they have their own issues with it taking 10 million dollars to push a design review back by 6 months and stuff like that. Then SpaceX enters the scene in like 2008 and start doing things really fast. Musk has a big enough bank account where he can afford this, kind of like NASA did in the 1960s when we were trying to beat the Russians to the moon and had a blank check. Need to do some aero analysis but it will take too long (by 1960s technology), just do a test run. If it fails, you still learn something. SpaceX still kinda has this mantra. Boeing is too stuck in their ways to approach this kind of thing, and relies heavily on NASA funding so they can't throw that kind of money around. So SpaceX starts doing it and Boeing wants to TRY to be competitive and race their product to the market fast enough. Too fast for how we like to do things at NASA when it is a crewed mission. But they insist it works despite red flags all over the place and a number of people saying that they don't trust it. Somehow through political leanings they make it happen anyway, and now you end up with astronauts stuck on the ISS until 2025. They should have stuck to what they do well and not tried to rush things. Look at Artemis I for example, the entire thing was managed by NASA and there were a ton of delays, but ultimately when it did launch, it went off nominally. Do it right the first time, because if congress feels like you are wasting money, there won't be a second time.

So that is why Boeing space sucks.


Now on to why SpaceX sucks.

Musk is not an engineer. He is a businessman. I'm not saying he is dumb by any means (in fact I think he has a degree in physics), but if you don't have any formal education or background in engineering, you should listen to your experts. I have friends that work at SpaceX that have talked about this. He thinks he knows what the best approach is to everything and that drives things towards ambitious lofty goals that are outright unrealistic. On top of that, his treatment of his employees is insane. That is part of the reason they are able to get things out so fast -- they are working like 90 hour weeks. They have a saying at SpaceX -- "If you aren't coming to work on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday either". Very easy to miss something when you are that burnt out. "But they are successful! What about that?" you may say. Well -- with enough money, you can make most things work, to a degree. And the richest man in the world has a lot of money to make things work. It can only go so far though. I've read through SpaceX reports before and they read like something a freshman would submit for their first chemistry lab report. SpaceX prioritizes the things that they see as "important", but stuff like documentation and systems engineering seems to take a back seat. Which can work on less complex projects, but when extremely complex things like starship happen, that documentation and systems engineering is what proves that everything works the way it is meant to. The only way I see starship working properly is if they do tons of testing of actual flight-like hardware, which even Musk may not be rich enough to afford. As bbehe said, refueling like 20x in orbit is just asking for things to go wrong. But hey, it looks cool right?

9/3/2024 10:25:46 PM