No matter how slippery the SpaceX fans get in their defenses ("you don't understand, we learned so much!") the fact is these tests are waaaaay past the "experiments sometimes fail" stage. These are tests of what's supposed to be a working design and build.
But it doesn't work. It blows up.
But it doesn't work. It blows up.
Reposted from
sarah jeong
ok I feel completely insane asking this but like
weren't we NOT blowing up rockets, like, 50 years ago. weren't we successfully sending rockets up that did not rattle apart. also weren't we like "ah yeah that was a fail" when the rocket fell apart instead of calling it a "partial success"
weren't we NOT blowing up rockets, like, 50 years ago. weren't we successfully sending rockets up that did not rattle apart. also weren't we like "ah yeah that was a fail" when the rocket fell apart instead of calling it a "partial success"
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Boom. 💥
https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-was-doomed-from-the-beginning
An overly ambitious development compromised by competing requirements and limited money.
In the end it worked pretty well but it strayed far from the original design intent.
Also, if Space X ever had their "Apollo 13" moment, they couldn't handle it, just by what we are seeing here. And that problem with 13 was during 1969.
On the bright side, conquest by Denmark will be awesome.
But you’ll still find something to complain about
failures. The launch rocket was designed to fail and they had it coming down in the gulf rather than a pad because of that. The actual starship was supposed to return and its failure is more surprising.
60 years ago ... not so much.
It is public knowledge that v3 is the first one that possibly is a working build.
No real cargo is planned to be flown on v2 ships.
As the leaks cannot be fixed in v2, I think they should go back to v1 that worked better. -> more delays before real cargo.
Shared
And NASA knows what it is doing.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-lawmakers-urge-scrutiny-spacex-worker-injuries-after-reuters-report-2023-11-18/
That's in addition to the three SpaceX Rockets that have exploded.
The SpaceX mentality of "just keep launching them and let them explode" leads to extremely high injury rates.
NASA works slowly and carefully for a damn reason.
It would be interesting to see whether they have to pay back the money if they fail to fulfil the contract...
Good times.
And Elysium is absolutely SpaceX's Torment Nexus.
https://bsky.app/profile/motorcityadam.com/post/3lq6ruawuws2v
https://bsky.app/profile/buffyblogs.bsky.social/post/3lq76mapogr2n
That's not my department 🎶
Shuttle ninth flight - Spacelab 1
That’s how mistakes happen.
It blowing up on the first one is fine.
But now a 3rd? Absolute and total failure of the entire company
I'd have to go back, but I think the cause of the first failure to the second failure were the same issue. So they knew what was wrong and didn't fix it.
This 3rd one is too early to tell what went wrong. But still. It's a failure
The only reusable orbital boosters prior to F9 were the Space Shuttle's SRBs. And those would more accurately be described as "refurbishable".
Just wanted to check that you were referring to DC-X and NS, that's all.
https://bsky.app/profile/rudell.bsky.social/post/3lifc5awyrk2i
They eventually got people to the moon and back, but this was with the resources of the entire Soviet Union, including those who erased the existence of all the people killed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_crewed_lunar_programs
I had a memory of a fly by but should have checked before casually assuming more success than they had.
But it's 2025, we've done the iteration, we know what works but a manchild oligarch thinks he needs to reinvent the wheel, so explosions away!!!
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/disappearing-pod/the-sex-cult-antichrist-who-rocketed-us-to-space-part-1/
That is (supposed to be) the starship.
(daughter begins sobbing in background)
He was born into money and entitlement, and used his silver spoon to purchase other peoples successes, which he’s masterfully destroyed.
@owillis.bsky.social if you missed this I think you would appreciate how it breaks down the utter failure that is SpaceX Starship.
We had less tech, but more trained professionals.
Or are they occurring despite painstakingly careful & precise assembly & buildup with everything double & triple checked by super highly skilled technicians?
If the latter, what does that imply?
*the fracking phase of extraction capitalism
Testing a massively complex product to ensure success is astronomically expensive. SpaceX has decided launch, fail, iterate is more cost-effective. 1/
1) Elon is at the helm on this one and he has no idea what he's doing (unlike Falcon 9 when Tom Mueller ran the show),
2) They built all the Starships at the same time, so all of them are full of the same...
3) The build quality is atrocious. Thermal tiles not affixed properly, rivet failures in the sheet metal. Just bad,
5) Other space companies learn from mistakes made over the last 80 years. SpaceX is determined to relearn those...
6) Elon really sucks to work for. Engineers describe getting a new job at companies like Blue Origin or Lockeed like they escaped...
"making a fully reusable rocket with even a barely usable payload to space is impossible. Musk knows this... iterative design telling him Starship was impossible over a decade ago...
"This is why Starship, in my opinion, is just one massive con."
The problem is that it's basically the build quality of a Yugo with the design sensibility of an early '80s GM.
I think New Glenn probably found the sweet spot at the moment.
This is much more in-depth and useful than the pointless "Starship blow up, SpaceX bad, Elon sucks" take that I see over and over.
Thanks again!
NASA is 25x more expensive than SpaceX! 2/
SuperHeavy is crashing the cost even further.
I calculate roughly USD200...400/kg to LEO.
(Elon calculates USD20/kg)
Exploding rockets are highly visible, and we all love to make fun of Elon. But SpaceX's approach is far more efficient than legacy contractors and NASA. 3/3
"You never achieve iterative design with a full-scale prototype.... We would always conduct scale model tests of every aspect of design, iteratively changing"
Good insights.
The "move fast and break things" mentality that so many people have in software development is actively harmful when it comes to the real world, where "breaking stuff" involves huge amounts of waste and pollution.
Quantitatively, the 25x cost savings is proof that SpaceX's approach can be vastly more efficient than NASA's.
Good thread here on what's different about Starship vs. Falcon 9:
If NASA ever tried such a trial and error approach to spaceflight it would be shut down immediately.