Space and Science BS Thread

No SN9 flight today. Villagers allowed back to their home.

NSF reports its likely due to lack of FAA approval. Too bad because it looks like a beautiful day for a flight down there.

Interestingly, SN10 looks like it’s starting to roll out. Once again,

 

Yeah Monday at the earliest. Meh. Thanks FAA.

 

SN10 rolling out now.

There will be two Starships on the pad.

Reminiscent of:

 

Screen shots!

 

Just imagine when we've got hundreds of these.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/29/...xplosive-starship-faa-investigation-elon-musk

Looks like a pissing match between EM and the FAA. Might be awhile before we see any SN fly..

Edit: The Verge article references new launch rules not yet in effect. This is the link:
https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=25401

The rule pdf is only 785 pages...

 

Ugggggggg. So frustrating.

 

Good ol' gov't bureaucracy - they f* up everything.

Are the FAA folks engineers? Do they understand what "testing" is? Do they not realize that things can go boom - we are basically building flying bombs. Controlled explosion, but explosion non the less.

The US is so technologically advanced - and constrained by the gov't. SMH

 

I have my doubts with the Verge. "according to two people familiar with the incident" is the first warning sign. I think they are manipulating the facts for clicks. While it is true that the FAA did prevent them from launching, we don't have the actual reason. I doubt that it is because of the explosion however. Elon has also been very open about the possibility of the rocket exploding at any point throughout it's test flight. We can look back at Falcon9 landing explosions and see that they did not follow this course then. Explosions are a reality when it comes to rockets. They even place plastic explosives on the rocket so that they can manually blow it up if/when they want. As for the investigation after the explosion, this happens after EVERY rocket explosion. What most likely happened is that Spacex made significant changes to SN9, some new pencil pusher saw that and freaked out. They even had approval on thursday for up to a 2Km hop.

 

How do you contact the FAA?
Please call 866-TELL-FAA (866-835-5322) or, for TTY/TDD, use the Federal Relay Service

 

Reuters and Business Insider picked up the Verge story. There are also these that seem
independent:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/whats-really-going-on-with-elon-musk-the-faa-and-starship/

https://spacenews.com/faa-reviews-delay-spacex-starship-test/

Both of these articles adds to the plausibility of SN8 being the hair across the FAA’s ass.

Starship (Starship + SH) is a much heavier class of rocket SpX was originally licensed for at BC. SpX has a license amendment to expand operations pending but it has not been approved yet.

https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship/

The FAA doesn’t act in a vacuum. I think there’s many people who represent old tech in powerful positions that are not fans of SpX who are turning the screws.

There’s also the bad PR of SpX taking over the village with reports of pressured and possibly unethical efforts to have people sell.

Long winding way for me to say where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire..... from a crashed experimental rocket that didn’t conform to their existing license as determined by the licensing body.

As for SpX’s experience with the F9, it all depends on what their license allowed for.

Edit: The whole “evacuating the village, closing the road, closing the beach and restrictions on weekend launches” is an untenable situation that’ll come to a head sooner or later.

 

See the FAA link I posted above.

Although the date for public comments has expired, you can subscribe for updates.

 

https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal/status/1355507433783910403?s=20

 

That makes a little bit more sense. It's not so much the explosion, it's that they are operating in a different weight class than they had originally entered into. Now the gummit has to do their environmental reviews, their safety reviews, and their how much extra can we tax them reviews... That should only take 6-36 months.

 

No surprise here:

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/01/nasa-redo-sls-green-run-static-fire/

 

Surprises me a little. I still remember them talking about the possibility of not doing another test run of Starliner after their first failed run.

 

I deal in that situation with project managers all the time. They want to promote new code that they worked on after the current developmental install was approved, and I make them wait (I run an IT security department). Until that new code gets reviewed (scanned and tested) in the lower environments, it isn't promoted to the upper.

This SpaceX crap sounds a lot like that. They got approved for one thing, tried to add some more crap that wasn't in their approval, and NOW they're crying foul for getting called to task on it.

 

https://twitter.com/NASA_Nerd/status/1356222851846725632?s=20

 

Really racking up the crewed missions now.


https://www.spacex.com/updates/inspiration-4-mission/index.html