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   Thijs van der Vossen (tvdv@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 04:33:52 JST Thijs van der Vossen

   • Thomas 🔭🕹️

   @thomasfuchs are you aware of a nice blog post explaining all of this for people who know very little about rockets?

   • Embed this notice
     Thijs van der Vossen (tvdv@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 04:42:37 JST Thijs van der Vossen

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs i got that far but wondered about the burn ponds and the flame deflector.

   • Embed this notice
     unreasonable villain (calotriton@sauropods.win)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 05:41:15 JST unreasonable villain

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @tvdv @thomasfuchs so all the ideas about launching from mars are very funny then

   • Embed this notice
     Josef 'Jeff' Sipek (jeffpc@mastodon.radio)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 06:03:33 JST Josef 'Jeff' Sipek

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs Uh oh... what news did I miss?

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     Daniel Taylor (randomdamage@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 07:00:03 JST Daniel Taylor

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @thomasfuchs the launch facility that SpaceX uses in Florida was built to handle a less powerful rocket than Starship and has features that are completely missing from the Boca Chica pad

     And all of those features are so well documented that interested laypeople are familiar with them, let alone professional rocket engineers

     They thought they could get away with cutting corners on the launchpad, and the cut corners turned around and smacked them hard.

     If that facility isn't outright shut down, it won't be seeing any launches for a couple of years

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     Daniel Taylor (randomdamage@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 07:11:47 JST Daniel Taylor

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @thomasfuchs
     This was so predictable that at least one person predicted it before the launch.

     This wasn't unknown territory that needed to be tested, this was all tested 60-70 years ago and people took notes.

     And amazingly enough the physics involved hasn't changed.

     https://blog.esghound.com/p/spacexs-texas-rocket-is-going-to

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     Daniel Taylor (randomdamage@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 07:42:43 JST Daniel Taylor

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @thomasfuchs landing rockets was hard, but even there it had been previously tested out in the DC-X program.

     Just nobody cared enough to try to scale it up before SpaceX.

     Launchpad design had been done wrong before, and the lessons learned were incorporated into heavy launch facilities in the US, Europe, and even Russia.

     SpaceX got overconfident and built a pad that wasn't fit for purpose and that they should have known wasn't fit for purpose.

     Period.

     That wasn't "oooh, let's try something new!"
     It was "let's cheap out on stuff while the regulators have their backs turned"

   • Embed this notice
     Daniel Taylor (randomdamage@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 07:57:43 JST Daniel Taylor

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @thomasfuchs and maybe, just maybe, their recent successes have left them overconfident and inclined to cut corners

     Because building a Saturn V quality launch pad would have slowed them down, a *lot*, it isn't something that you just bang together over a couple of months.

     Sometimes "move fast and break things" actually, you know, *breaks things*

   • Embed this notice
     Patty Kimura (pattykimura@mastodon.lol)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 09:34:04 JST Patty Kimura

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • Max Pinton

     @max @thomasfuchs lol. But, uh, the launch took place on earth, where our gravity is, well, earth gravity, and not ideal conditions to test conditions of launch in Mars gravity, like on Mars. But, PR is everything to The Musk Mars Taxi Cab Company.

   • Embed this notice
     Max Pinton (max@mastodon.lwr.wtf)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 09:34:05 JST Max Pinton

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I've seen some people claim that Musk wanted to do without that infrastructure because it wouldn't be available on Mars (at least initially), but do you know if he ever actually expressed that?

   • Embed this notice
     Olav (olavf@spacey.space)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Apr-2023 13:13:44 JST Olav

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • Dave Rahardja

     @drahardja
     @thomasfuchs the "water-cooled steel plate" (he) has planned (and deferred for this launch) will likely be insufficient too.

   • Embed this notice
     Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Apr-2023 13:13:45 JST Dave Rahardja

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs But that would take too long and they’d miss launching on 4/20