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404 points voxleone | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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reactordev ◴[] No.45655443[source]
Posture, no one can compete, not even NASA.
replies(2): >>45655530 #>>45655583 #
raverbashing ◴[] No.45655530[source]
Yeah who is going to deliver faster and more reliable than SpaceX? Boeing? LM?

Doubt

replies(2): >>45655624 #>>45655892 #
JohnFen ◴[] No.45655624[source]
I don't know who else can, but I do seriously doubt SpaceX is going to be able to deliver within the next decade or so either.
replies(3): >>45655721 #>>45655732 #>>45655895 #
peterfirefly ◴[] No.45655732[source]
They have a pretty good chance, actually. They are almost done with the hard parts of the Starship.
replies(2): >>45655873 #>>45656338 #
haspok ◴[] No.45656338[source]
> They are almost done with the hard parts of the Starship.

That's what Musk wants you to believe.

In reality, reusability was the Achilles heel of the space shuttle, due to the thermal insulator tiles that could be easily damaged during reentry, so they had to be rechecked rigorously before the next flight, and the damaged tiles replaced. We haven't seen any of that - so far only the booster was reused, somewhat, as in 2 were reused, with one failure and one success, but only much later.

And then there is the orbital refueling, but that is so far in the future that it's not even worth discussing.

replies(3): >>45657320 #>>45660744 #>>45663451 #
1. m4rtink ◴[] No.45660744[source]
Shuttle had the unfortunate combination of fragile indivudally unique (!) tiles glue to lightweight aluminum structure that would fail if heated to 175 C (!!) [0], even in a small area.

In comparison Starship is covered by mostly identical tiles attached to hull welded from milimeters thick (internet data indicates something between 4 and 2 mm thick & often multiplied in important places) steel plate.

The steel hull has demonstrated surviving missing tiles just fine - and during earlier flight even multiple burn throughs on the flaps with bits falling off and even back then Starship completed simulated landing to the ocean (including the flip manuever and landing burn!).

So even if SpaceX does not perfect rapid reusability of Starship immediately, they would still have hands down the best orbital launcher in the world, with the option of populating new Starship hulls with reused engines, acuators and avionics for the time being.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protecti...