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There is a tiny part of me that is starting to think Yay! Are we becoming a spacefaring civilization? We are tentatively close.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
The real test is what happens after a ship explodes. Musk himself has said that you can't really improve the reliability that much. Cost is the only vector, and SpaceX is making spaceflight cheap. It's still risky. If it's true that reliability hasn't changed at all, then it's even more likely that we're going to see a string of failures rather than a single isolated incident. That will be the true test: can we take that in stride, or will others get the last word?
- mikeash 9y ago
  I expect reuse to result in much better reliability in the long term. The engineers will have a much better picture of which components fail and in what way if they can look at flown examples. So far, SpaceX's reliability is not great, but they keep going.
  - cpitman 9y ago
    That Space Shuttle was reusable, and it still had catastrophic failures.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      The Space Shuttle was incredibly unsafe design, and it evolved fairly little during it's life. Mixing unthrottable and unstoppable solid rockets with liquid rockets was never a good idea. The massive external fuel tank was vulnerable. The tile system was an achilles heel, and extending the wingspan to force air force payloads on the shuttle made reentry even more dangerous. Finally carrying a huge space plane every flight eliminated more than 80% of its payload capacity. Falcon 9s and Dragons are an evolution of tried and true rocket engineering principles, even capsules are much safer at reentry than the shuttle. Delta showed that type can be launched with a high degree of safety. SpaceX has the advantage of getting returned equipment back from space to learn from and improve.
      - sillysaurus3 9y ago
        Completely agreed, but let's be honest: we're going to see SpaceX shuttles explode, and people will probably die. I hope not, but the things you're saying now are exactly the same kinds of things people were saying the last time space travel was fashionable. It's just incredibly risky to try to ride an explosion into space, no matter how you do it. Going forward, it might be to our advantage to own it rather than hide it. Yeah, it's dangerous. So let's risk the danger! We courageously do our best and launch ourselves into orbit, and some of us die, but progress marches forward. I'm not sure if that type of message would have a better or worse impact than shielding everyone from the idea that disaster will strike till it happens. It could go either way.
        valuearb 9y ago
        Agreed, rockets are and will be dangerous for a while. Astronauts are brave to be willing to risk it. Let's hope the Draco escape system will get them out of the next emergency.
        jfoutz 9y ago
        Well, yeah. But they'll surely beat that 1.5% failure rate of the sts. They're at a 3% total failure rate right now, but they'll have (I hope) a long run of success, maybe hundreds, before they put people on the falcon.
        cfreeman 9y ago
        There's not going to be hundreds. The first crew flight is supposed to happen next year.
        nickik 9y ago
        SpaceX Dragon 2 will have a fail-safe and should easily escape any explosion, even during Max-Q. With the ITS this will be a much bigger problem, because the ITS will not have such a lunch escape.
        jballanc 9y ago
        Designed correctly, there is potentially a whole spectrum between "complete success, desired orbit" and "fire-y ball of death". As other commenters here have pointed out, one of the Space Shuttle's fatal flaws is that it severely narrowed that spectrum (even one of the supposed "abort modes" probably wouldn't have been survivable). So far, everything SpaceX has done is working to greatly expand the window of "survivable failure". Remember on one of the early Falcon 9 flights when one of the 9 first stage engines literally disintegrated and the rocket kept flying? How many other rockets flying today can do that? So, no, I don't expect we'll see people die in a SpaceX capsule. When was the last time someone died in a Soyuz?
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Both Shuttle accidents were preceded by numerous nonfatal failures which were completely ignored. Experience won't let you improve if you won't react to it.
- woodandsteel 9y ago
  We have airplane accidents every year, a great many if you include private planes, but people keep flying them.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

The real test is what happens after a ship explodes. Musk himself has said that you can't really improve the reliability that much. Cost is the only vector, and SpaceX is making spaceflight cheap. It's still risky. If it's true that reliability hasn't changed at all, then it's even more likely that we're going to see a string of failures rather than a single isolated incident. That will be the true test: can we take that in stride, or will others get the last word?

mikeash 9y ago
I expect reuse to result in much better reliability in the long term. The engineers will have a much better picture of which components fail and in what way if they can look at flown examples. So far, SpaceX's reliability is not great, but they keep going.
- cpitman 9y ago
  That Space Shuttle was reusable, and it still had catastrophic failures.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    The Space Shuttle was incredibly unsafe design, and it evolved fairly little during it's life. Mixing unthrottable and unstoppable solid rockets with liquid rockets was never a good idea. The massive external fuel tank was vulnerable. The tile system was an achilles heel, and extending the wingspan to force air force payloads on the shuttle made reentry even more dangerous. Finally carrying a huge space plane every flight eliminated more than 80% of its payload capacity. Falcon 9s and Dragons are an evolution of tried and true rocket engineering principles, even capsules are much safer at reentry than the shuttle. Delta showed that type can be launched with a high degree of safety. SpaceX has the advantage of getting returned equipment back from space to learn from and improve.
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      Completely agreed, but let's be honest: we're going to see SpaceX shuttles explode, and people will probably die. I hope not, but the things you're saying now are exactly the same kinds of things people were saying the last time space travel was fashionable. It's just incredibly risky to try to ride an explosion into space, no matter how you do it. Going forward, it might be to our advantage to own it rather than hide it. Yeah, it's dangerous. So let's risk the danger! We courageously do our best and launch ourselves into orbit, and some of us die, but progress marches forward. I'm not sure if that type of message would have a better or worse impact than shielding everyone from the idea that disaster will strike till it happens. It could go either way.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        Agreed, rockets are and will be dangerous for a while. Astronauts are brave to be willing to risk it. Let's hope the Draco escape system will get them out of the next emergency.
      - jfoutz 9y ago
        Well, yeah. But they'll surely beat that 1.5% failure rate of the sts. They're at a 3% total failure rate right now, but they'll have (I hope) a long run of success, maybe hundreds, before they put people on the falcon.
        cfreeman 9y ago
        There's not going to be hundreds. The first crew flight is supposed to happen next year.
      - nickik 9y ago
        SpaceX Dragon 2 will have a fail-safe and should easily escape any explosion, even during Max-Q. With the ITS this will be a much bigger problem, because the ITS will not have such a lunch escape.
      - jballanc 9y ago
        Designed correctly, there is potentially a whole spectrum between "complete success, desired orbit" and "fire-y ball of death". As other commenters here have pointed out, one of the Space Shuttle's fatal flaws is that it severely narrowed that spectrum (even one of the supposed "abort modes" probably wouldn't have been survivable). So far, everything SpaceX has done is working to greatly expand the window of "survivable failure". Remember on one of the early Falcon 9 flights when one of the 9 first stage engines literally disintegrated and the rocket kept flying? How many other rockets flying today can do that? So, no, I don't expect we'll see people die in a SpaceX capsule. When was the last time someone died in a Soyuz?
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Both Shuttle accidents were preceded by numerous nonfatal failures which were completely ignored. Experience won't let you improve if you won't react to it.
woodandsteel 9y ago
We have airplane accidents every year, a great many if you include private planes, but people keep flying them.