3 ms·
> What SpaceX has been doing with Starship is very novel It's not novel. It's just not NASA. It was the norm in the early days of ICBM-type rockets. The origin
by Animats 2y ago
> What SpaceX has been doing with Starship is very novel
It's not novel. It's just not NASA. It was the norm in the early days of ICBM-type rockets. The original V-2 had about 700 failures before they hit a target. The original Atlas booster failed about half the time. "Nearly every component in the Atlas managed to fail at some point during test flights, from the engine combustion chambers to the tank pressurization system to the flight control system, but Convair engineers noted with some pride that there had never been a repeat of the same failure more than three times."[1] The military was fine with a high rate of failure at first in exchange for faster development.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas
- skissane 2y ago> It's not novel. It's just not NASA. It was the norm in the early days of ICBM-type rockets. Relatively novel. But also, more than just not NASA – it is also not contemporary ULA or Arianespace. It is also not Falcon 9/Heavy-era SpaceX, given both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy completed their primary mission objectives flawlessly on their first flight.