I love space stuff and NASA (one of the few truly great things about the US) but they really shouldn't be yeeting things into orbit and hoping it takes care of itself.
See I would have thought nasa would reach out when they heard about it and straight up offered to pay for repairs. This case will surely settle outside of court for between $60k and $100k
Maybe? Soyuz is too cramped, but Dragon might be able to fit extra people. A few years ago a NASA astronaut flew up on a leaky Soyuz, so they looked at using Dragon as a lifeboat:
Dragon was drawn up to fit 7 people, with 3 seats on the bottom and 4 on top. They ended up changing the seat angles for reentry, so now they only have 4.
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Starliner is still their emergency ride home in case a real alarm goes off, but they want to study the leak issue as much as possible before they separate their service module, which burns up during reentry.
The docking adapters look pretty much the same (interlocking petals, not male/female) and can be active, passive, or both, but Dragon's is only active. Active has to dock to passive, so two Dragons couldn't dock.
SpaceX developed a new one that can be active or passive for Starship, which will have to dock with Orion and the Lunar Gateway.
Dang, this is really serious. You don't call in leadership from Boeing and NASA unless there are some serious issues to hammer out, that go beyond engineering.
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In an update released late Friday evening, NASA said it was "adjusting" the date of the Starliner spacecraft's return to Earth from June 26 to an unspecified time in July.
The announcement followed two days of long meetings to review the readiness of the spacecraft, developed by Boeing, to fly NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth.
“We are letting the data drive our decision making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking."
The NASA update did not provide any information about deliberations during these meetings, but it is clear that the agency's leaders were not able to get comfortable with all contingencies that Wilmore and Williams might encounter during a return flight to Earth, including safely undocking from the space station, maneuvering away, performing a de-orbit burn, separating the crew capsule from the service module, and then flying through the planet's atmosphere before landing under parachutes in a New Mexico desert.
"We are strategically using the extra time to clear a path for some critical station activities while completing readiness for Butch and Suni’s return on Starliner and gaining valuable insight into the system upgrades we will want to make for post-certification missions," Stich said.
They can gather more data about the performance of the vehicle on long-duration missions—eventually Starliner will fly operational missions that will enable astronauts to stay on orbit for six months at a time.
From my understanding, it was in orbit for three years before reentering our the atmosphere in an uncontrolled descent, then it fell through dude's roof.
I'm in no way saying that your explanation is wrong, but I wanted to give a more bit-by-bit description so that anyone reading your comment doesn't speculate or misconstrue how an ejected battery went from "orbit" to "uncontrolled descent":
Everything we've put into that level of orbit is falling, it is just falling so slowly that it keeps missing the earth and only requires tiny bursts of energy to momentarily ascend away from earth. The battery didn't get that burst of energy so it continued to descend around the earth until the pull of gravity was great enough in comparison to its forward motion that it appeared to go from a spiral to a more dramatic arc.
Once within the atmosphere, friction from the air slowed its forward motion while gravity continued accelerating it in a direction that everyone would agree is "downward."
Thanks for the detailed explanation! That helps me understand it better myself. So basically, anything we put in orbit ourselves is always going to degrade, which requires routine positioning (i.e., expend some energy to keep the balloon in the air)?
Let me first state that I'm in no way an expert nor do I know much about the specifics of what you asked. Going in with this understanding, let's do some overgeneralizing and sciencey handwaving:
Those are fantastic questions that get into really interesting concepts which I'm now going to title Types of Floating. Lemme clarify something: when I said "this level of orbit," I was referring specifically to the ISS.
The ISS and many other satellites are in what is called "Low Earth Orbit," with "low" being a relative term. If you stretched a rope around the Earth’s equator you’d have a rope that’s a little less than half of the average distance to the ISS. The orbit level of things is defined by the ranges of distance they travel around the earth, but by definition, they must go around the earth (if their orbit is defined to exist around the earth. You can orbit other celestial bodies too). So, imagine the lower earth orbits as something we lobbed hard enough into space that it'll gradually reach the peak of its height before coming back down over the course of days to years. If you want that thing to stay in space longer, then you need to give it a boost every so often by ejecting some sort of matter. For example, if you were yeeted into Low Earth Orbit and while up there said "fuck my shoes" and kicked them off your feet, you'd change how long you were gonna stay in space! If you throw your shoes forward, you'll slow yourself down and return sooner and if you threw them backwards, you'd stay longer! You wouldn't cause that much of a time difference, but there it would be nonetheless.
So, if you can leave the earth at such a speed that you'll return, could you enter space at a speed fast enough to never return? Absolutely! At a certain speed, future generations could use you as a landmark (spacemark?) on a trip out to the moon like a dead body on Space Everest. If you had been traveling any faster than that, then you could potentially fly an infinite distance away from the earth or possibly crash into the moon and have a crater named after your splattered body.
Now for the final part of your question: equating orbit to a balloon. If you're referring to an air-filled balloon that slowly falls to the ground, but gently tapping it from below makes it float around a little longer, then no. If you're talking about a helium-filled balloon that floats away until the helium escapes and it falls back to earth, then also no, but a different no. Both of these examples deal with density, but let's start with the air-filled balloon.
The reason that a gentle push on the air-filled balloon is different is because orbit is determined by an object's speed at which it circles the earth. If you want the ISS to go "higher," you give it a push forward and it goes faster and thus expands its orbit. If you want it to go "lower," then you push it backwards and by slowing down, its orbit gets closer to the earth. With the air-filled balloon, you can only keep it in the air longer by pushing up; if you blow air behind the balloon to make it move forward faster, it'll land further away but in the same amount of time.
The reason air-filled balloons fall slowly though is because they weigh only slightly more than nothing and air weighs exactly the same amount as air. This means that the mass of the balloon exists over a larger area and has a reduced density compared to a deflated balloon. In fact, I'm sure someone with more patience than I have could calculate how much air you'd have to put into a human so that they'd gently fall like a dead, morbid balloon.
As for the helium-filled balloon, helium is so much less dense than air that there exists an amount of it which can offset the rubber membrane of a balloon. (Total side-note: the lower density of helium is what gives you a high-pitch voice when you talk on helium. I take a medication called ozempic which slows down my digestion—this means that when I eat something too greasy or have too much meat, my stomach acid will break down the meat to a point that I generate a considerable amount of hydrogen sulfide. This makes my burps smell of sulfur when that happens, but as the hydrogen evacuates the air from my larynx, my burp becomes higher and higher pitched like I'm on helium.) This significantly-reduced density for the balloon means that the balloon can float on the air like you can float in a pool. As a cool experiment, you can try inhaling and exhaling while you're in a pool to note how much more you float when your lungs are filled with air. Just be careful not to breathe in water.
Anyway, you can see how in neither scenario does accelerating the balloon forward cause it to go higher.
Now, you might be wondering: when you're so far away from the earth that it's rotating at a different speed from you, how could you tell which direction is forward if you were floating in space? You could use the parallax of celestial bodies to figure out your vector, but I have no clue whatsoever how to do that. And that, the vast relative distances and speeds of objects in space is what scares the shit out of me whenever I imagine floating in space. That's why I advocate for taking care of our pale blue dot floating through space: the nightmarish possibilities of leaving earth at any amount of wrong speed or timing could lead to becoming an unknown speck floating in an unknown region of neverending space. I'm not looking to Mars for salvation with that image in my brain.
Yes. In low orbit like the space station they mostly deal with atmospheric drag, even just gas molecules cause it. The ISS is has a “reboost” on a regular basis, often from arriving spacecraft but it can use onboard thrusters.
At much higher orbits the gravity of the sun, moon, differences in earths gravity, and even the tiny force of photons from the sun striking the spacecraft (solar radiation pressure) contribute orbital decay. The Vanguard I satellite was the fourth satellite in space and was expected to stay up for 2000 years, but thanks to solar radiation pressure and some atmospheric drag it’s more like 240.
Everything we've put into that level of orbit is falling, it is just falling so slowly [...] go from a spiral to a more dramatic arc [...] Once within the atmosphere
This is not correct.
Anything in orbit, is constantly free-falling at barely less than 9.8m/s².
"Orbiting", is having enough lateral momentum to keep missing the Earth.
In the absence of an atmosphere, or any other external influence, an object would keep orbiting forever.
However... Earth's atmosphere doesn't just end, it gets thinner and thinner instead... up to the Moon and beyond (thanks to the solar wind blowing it out)
The reason for an object in LEO to "fall", as in "decrease its orbital height", is precisely because it's been in Earth's atmosphere all the time!
The reason for a "more dramatic arc", is that as an objects looses orbital height, it keeps hitting ever denser atmosphere, until it ends up losing enough momentum to not be able to complete an orbit, which precipitates things (pun intended).
Is this true for everything in orbit though? Like, the ISS is in near earth orbit and so it's absolutely just falling. But what about things up in a geostationary orbit? What about the moon?
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The owner of a home in southwestern Florida has formally submitted a claim to NASA for damages caused by a chunk of space debris that fell through his roof in March.
NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.
"This is truly the first legal claim that is being submitted for recovery for damages related to space debris," Worthy said.
Officials originally planned to place pallets of the old batteries inside a series of Japanese supply freighters for controlled, destructive reentries over the ocean.
In this case, the negligence could be that NASA miscalculated about the survival of enough debris to damage property on Earth.
Finally, NASA could refuse the claims or make an unacceptable settlement offer—in which case the Otero family could file a federal lawsuit in Florida.
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"We had been eyeing the river channel just to the north as we went, hoping to find a section where the dunes were small and far enough apart for a rover to pass between."
In the distance, Perseverance's operators could see the glimmer of its next destination: Bright Angel, so named for the light-toned outcrops that may be ancient rocks uncovered by the previously running river.
After days of slogging, the decision was made to reroute Perseverance across a dune field and through the river channel.
"We had been eyeing the river channel just to the north as we went, hoping to find a section where the dunes were small and far enough apart for a rover to pass between," said Evan Graser, an engineer who helps plan Perseverance’s route, in a statement.
Where earlier Mars rovers required total control from Earth, Perseverance's guides can give it a general route, and AutoNav will handle the minute-to-minute steering.
In the midst of the channel Perseverance encountered the so-called Mount Washburn, a rocky hill that presented scientists with exciting geological opportunities.
I know I'm going to be bludgeoned for this. But I'm mystified by this 'iterative' approach to development. I wonder if they got this from the IT industry. Charles Bolden once remarked that the congress would have shut down the Apollo program if they lost vehicles at the rate spacex does now. These failures also often feel like the result of lack of foresight and critical thinking, rather than the consequence of complex chains of events that are hard to predict.
Consider the first flight. They decided to launch it without a flame deflector or a deluge system. They thought that it would be OK based on a hot test of the superheavy at half thrust. I don't think any other rocket company would have made the same decision. Even if the concrete slabs didn't shatter into a thousand pieces, the reflected shock wave would have been damaging enough to the engine compartment. They predictably lifted off with several failed and failing engines.
Another problem was the stage separation maneuver. They had planned on a full 360 degree cart wheel to separate the upper stage with centrifugal force. Not only was it going to cause enormous lateral and bending loads on the two stages, I'm still confused about how they would separate at all when the airflow is pushing the top stage (whichever happens to be on the top) against the bottom one. Perhaps the sideways loads might snap the joint. But the two stages are still in danger of collision due to airflow. This concern was proven to be valid when that flight cartwheeled several times without separating and then buckled. I don't know if that's the reason why they abandoned the maneuver, but something was definitely wrong with it. And it was bad enough to switch to hot staging.
I don't have many comments about the second flight. Both stages failed in flight. The first stage failed due to problems with filters. I'm willing to give them a pass here.
As for the third flight, the superheavy exploded 400m above the seas. It was clear that it didn't decelerate enough due to engine failures. More engine problems. But a pass here too, since engines are generally hard and the raptor is particularly nasty at that.
The real problem in that flight was the starship. It was tumbling pretty badly even in space. The video didn't give any clue about how they could arrest the tumbling. I was looking for the operation of attitude/RCS thrusters and I couldn't find any solid evidence of any of it. It was more like the starship had no attitude control at all, rather than one failing. Perhaps I'm completely wrong and it had attitude thrusters. But it was clearly deficient at least. The commentators of flight 4 said that they added more thrusters for attitude control. That would mean that either they didn't consider tumbling as a problem or they completely underestimated it for flight 3. Why? Attitude control isn't the hardest problem in rocketry. Very good simulation and analysis techniques exist for it. Anyway, a sideways reentry is bad enough. Even worse is an unarrested attitude rate at reentry. The atmosphere predictably incinerated the ship's engines and exposed steel skin.
If this afterthought feels like a conspiracy theory, remember the time when Musk made a change to starship after Tim Dodd (earlyastronaut) asked him a question on the same? Or the time when someone on Twitter asked Musk why they didn't start two raptor engines and then shutoff the underperforming one during Starship's flip maneuver at landing? They do this now. Afterthoughts are evidently not a rare thing at SpaceX.
And finally flight 4. I'm not taking any credit away from them. They seem to have just made it till the landing. Superheavy worked all the way for the first time. But my concern is about the place where the starship's fin burned through - exactly at the hinge. I would have expected them to focus more on that region as a weak spot and to have given it a better thermal protection. That would be the last region I would expect a burn through. Instead, it would have been in some spot where they didn't expect any problem and missed something very subtle.
All these give me the impression that they are trying things and seeing what sticks. That's not how traditional rocketry works. There's a s**t load of analyses, simulations and small scale tests that precede the production stage. The result is that when such rockets fail, they fail in a spectacularly complex, unpredictable and mind bending sequence of cascading failures (unlike what I see on starship). They also tend to succeed with minimum test flights and work reliably over decades. Apollo is a great example. The first test flight achieved everything that starship achieved in 4 flights.
The only other industry that I've seen behaving like this is the IT industry. "Deploy whatever you have and we'll debug in production". Coincidentally, Tesla does the same with their cars - the only car company to do so. So perhaps there is a Musk factor here. The SpaceX engineering team is incredibly talented, skilled and capable. The only reason I can think of for them to behave like this is an enormous pressure on them to deliver results at high rates. That's the only reason I can think of for them to proceed without satisfying themselves.
Now you may want to argue that SpaceX's approach is better than what everyone else does. After all, they make bigger things, faster. They advanced the industry like no one else did or could. Perhaps you're right. Only time will tell, since this approach is so novel that we haven't had enough opportunity to assess the results. But my instincts worry me about one thing - technical debt. Mechanical engineering is not like software engineering. In software, a problem once solved is gone forever. In mechanical engineering, any problem you work around is a disaster waiting to happen in the future. The right approach here is to design things properly and meticulously so that the final product has minimum work around. I fear that the software style of design is leaving unknown flaws or technical debts that may compound together into a cascading failure on some flight in the future.
To those who are planning to reply:
What I wrote is not a criticism of the SpaceX employees or Starship programme. I'm genuinely fascinated by the interplay of technical design, development styles, management styles and human factors. I'm extremely curious about how the situation is evolving.
Please don't attack me or question my abilities if you feel that I'm being unfair about this (that's definitely not my intention). I may be just a kid in this arena, but it's never wrong to ask, is it? I'm extremely interested in hearing your insightful opinion on this topic, based on your experience or your logic. If you think I'm wrong on any of these, please share your perspective and reasons here - I (and possibly others) may learn something new.
I think the biggest thing you're not taking into account is the amount hardware they have compared to anyone else.
Of course Apollo would be shut down if they were loosing Saturn Vs left and right. Each of those is 1.2 billion in 2019 dollars and they launched 13 of them I'm total. They are way to valuable.
The total estimate cost to date for the entire starship program is 5 billion and they have built around 30 starships. They already have another one ready to go now, only reason to not launch right away is because it needs upgrades based on the data they just collected.
You're also assuming that with more time and analysis they could predict things they have just discovered from a real launch. No man made object of this size has ever made a controlled entry back to earth. Not by a long shot.
Closest is space shuttle which had lots of issues that couldn't be fixed because each launch was so expensive it had to carry real payload (and people) and changes to human flight hardware is near impossible.
The main thing that's different here is that the cost of a launch is way less than the cost of a year of lab testing and still not knowing the answer because it's never been done before. That's the hardest paradigm shift to accept and is true only of SpaceX and no one else right now until they go full force into reusable rockets.
The Apollo compairaon above is even more ridiculous when you consider that starship made it to orbit and could've deployed a payload. The part that 'failed' was the soft landing and even that didn't fail. Only reuse failed.
Every Saturn v that was launched is currently sitting at the bottom of the ocean.
Taking shots at starship for failing even though Saturn v didn't even attempt the same mission parameters makes no sense.
Starship will have likely had 100+ missions before putting a human on it. Would you rather fly on something that's proven itself 100 times or something that is flying for the first time?
Charles Bolden once remarked that the congress would have shut down the Apollo program if they lost vehicles at the rate spacex does now.
Well, yes. But it was really a show of force towards the soviets and anything that could be construed as 'failure' would be sensitive. And it was all public money so things were very political and optics mattered. Society was also hugely different in the 60s.
Also in the years before mercury a lot of stuff went boom, of course. Apollo was built upon those failures.
I have a feeling that for SpaceX the opposite is true. Every time they shoot something up it's press coverage, even if it blows up. As long as they're not blowing up people they don't get the boeing effect.
Consider the first flight. They decided to launch it without a flame deflector or a deluge system. They thought that it would be OK based on a hot test of the superheavy at half thrust. I don’t think any other rocket company would have made the same decision. Even if the concrete slabs didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces, the reflected shock wave would have been damaging enough to the engine compartment. They predictably lifted off with several failed and failing engines.
Yeah that was indeed very stupid. Agreed. Especially for the environment. They were right to get flak for that.
If this afterthought feels like a conspiracy theory, remember the time when Musk made a change to starship after Tim Dodd (earlyastronaut) asked him a question on the same? Or the time when someone on Twitter asked Musk why they didn’t start two raptor engines and then shutoff the underperforming one during Starship’s flip maneuver at landing? They do this now. Afterthoughts are evidently not a rare thing at SpaceX.
Could be yes.. But don't forget, it is their money. They're clearly rushing to market and cutting corners, but as long as they don't blow up people or property, it's kinda their problem. And it has worked for them with Falcon 9.
I do agree they are kinda cowboys but they do also have a point in some ways: Field testing is better than theory. I'd rather step into a rocket that has flown 30 times than one that has never flown before but a whole team of scientists think things will be fine.
But yeah you still need theory and they could do a better job at that, I do agree there.
Yeah but these ones were never designed to survive. I get what you're saying but no one wanted these to be long lasting there was no effort to make them survive
I don't actually think they do design this stuff to survive salt water. They don't really care, since they're prototypes. In the long run they'll design them to survive ocean impact, but these ones, no. They were never expected to survive.
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