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Yeah, sure, huge success as always. I fully understand the iterative nature of this, but they honestly seem to be hitting some roadblocks on the design of this

Yeah, sure, huge success as always. I fully understand the iterative nature of this, but they honestly seem to be hitting some roadblocks on the design of this ship.

fallingknife 1y ago
They have succeeded in all parts of the flight plan on different missions. So the concept is proven out, but they just need to improve reliability to string it all together.
timschmidt 1y ago
Everything that's never been done before seems un-doable until it's been done. Then it seems obvious and as if it's always been happening.
- Retric 1y ago
  I don’t think people are questioning the feasibility of Starship’s core design. However the program has been in development for quite a while (well over a decade) and seems to have a lot of internal issues. Be that poor management, scope creep, or whatever the process looks flawed.
  - timschmidt 1y ago
    > However the program has been in development for quite a while No longer than other rocket programs. The speed of development is frankly mind blowing considering it's scale. Regulatory hurdles seem to be the biggest delaying factor. Which goes a long way toward explaining Musk's political activities AFAICT. > and seems to have a lot of internal issues. Be that poor management, scope creep, or whatever the process looks flawed. It seems like you're making the mistake of equating SpaceX's hardware-rich development philosophy (i.e. just fly it and see what happens) to NASA's check-it-ten-times-before-flight risk-averse methodology. Different approaches. Russia followed the former, much like SpaceX, and Soyuz is second only to Falcon 9 in number of launches. Arguably, more can be learned, more quickly, and for lower cost following the hardware-rich approach. You just have to deal with the optics and armchair rocket engineers declaring every launch a failure until they aren't.
    - jltsiren 1y ago
      Is it SpaceX philosophy or specifically Starship development philosophy? Because the development of the Falcon seemed to follow a pretty standard path. First they had three failures and two successes with the Falcon 1, and then they scaled up to Falcon 9, which worked on the first attempt. The work towards booster landing and reuse was more iterative, but it was a special case. They had to be careful with the changes, because they were testing in production. The first priority was always delivering the payload. But once the booster had done its job, it was available for experiments.
      - timschmidt 1y ago
        Elon's spoken at length about the choice between design philosophies since the early days of Falcon. I'd submit that trashing Falcon 1 after the first successful flight to build Falcon 9 is an example of exactly that. Part of Falcon's success so early on was due to the choice of intentionally simple systems - a single pintle injector in the Merlin engine, RP1 propellant which is well understood, lots of relatively safe choices. And lots of work with the grasshopper test vehicles. But on flight 1 of Falcon 9 they flew Dragon. Flight 6 used hardware revision 1.1 and was the first to attempt a propulsive return. Flight 9 added landing legs. They made changes to basically every flight until Block 5 with flight 54.
      - hoseja 1y ago
        >but it was a special case Starship is the biggest rocket ever attempted, with uncommon propellant, most advanced engine cycle and it is designed to be fully reusable. Falcon was safe retreading of known ground comparatively.
    - Retric 1y ago
      > The speed of development is frankly mind blowing considering it’s scale It’s been in some level of development for well over a decade. Back in 2018 they changed the idea from using carbon composites to stainless steel and renamed the project Starship but in no way can you call it a fast process. > hardware-rich development philosophy If it was actually working it’s a perfectly viable strategy, but it seems to be slowing things down.
hoseja 1y ago
They keep flying old spaceships they built before flaws became apparent in tests. Presumably it'll get better as they work through the backlog.

Yeah, sure, huge success as always. I fully understand the iterative nature of this, but they honestly seem to be hitting some roadblocks on the design of this ship.

fallingknife 1y ago

They have succeeded in all parts of the flight plan on different missions. So the concept is proven out, but they just need to improve reliability to string it all together.

timschmidt 1y ago

Everything that's never been done before seems un-doable until it's been done. Then it seems obvious and as if it's always been happening.

Retric 1y ago
I don’t think people are questioning the feasibility of Starship’s core design. However the program has been in development for quite a while (well over a decade) and seems to have a lot of internal issues. Be that poor management, scope creep, or whatever the process looks flawed.
- timschmidt 1y ago
  > However the program has been in development for quite a while No longer than other rocket programs. The speed of development is frankly mind blowing considering it's scale. Regulatory hurdles seem to be the biggest delaying factor. Which goes a long way toward explaining Musk's political activities AFAICT. > and seems to have a lot of internal issues. Be that poor management, scope creep, or whatever the process looks flawed. It seems like you're making the mistake of equating SpaceX's hardware-rich development philosophy (i.e. just fly it and see what happens) to NASA's check-it-ten-times-before-flight risk-averse methodology. Different approaches. Russia followed the former, much like SpaceX, and Soyuz is second only to Falcon 9 in number of launches. Arguably, more can be learned, more quickly, and for lower cost following the hardware-rich approach. You just have to deal with the optics and armchair rocket engineers declaring every launch a failure until they aren't.
  - jltsiren 1y ago
    Is it SpaceX philosophy or specifically Starship development philosophy? Because the development of the Falcon seemed to follow a pretty standard path. First they had three failures and two successes with the Falcon 1, and then they scaled up to Falcon 9, which worked on the first attempt. The work towards booster landing and reuse was more iterative, but it was a special case. They had to be careful with the changes, because they were testing in production. The first priority was always delivering the payload. But once the booster had done its job, it was available for experiments.
    - timschmidt 1y ago
      Elon's spoken at length about the choice between design philosophies since the early days of Falcon. I'd submit that trashing Falcon 1 after the first successful flight to build Falcon 9 is an example of exactly that. Part of Falcon's success so early on was due to the choice of intentionally simple systems - a single pintle injector in the Merlin engine, RP1 propellant which is well understood, lots of relatively safe choices. And lots of work with the grasshopper test vehicles. But on flight 1 of Falcon 9 they flew Dragon. Flight 6 used hardware revision 1.1 and was the first to attempt a propulsive return. Flight 9 added landing legs. They made changes to basically every flight until Block 5 with flight 54.
    - hoseja 1y ago
      >but it was a special case Starship is the biggest rocket ever attempted, with uncommon propellant, most advanced engine cycle and it is designed to be fully reusable. Falcon was safe retreading of known ground comparatively.
  - Retric 1y ago
    > The speed of development is frankly mind blowing considering it’s scale It’s been in some level of development for well over a decade. Back in 2018 they changed the idea from using carbon composites to stainless steel and renamed the project Starship but in no way can you call it a fast process. > hardware-rich development philosophy If it was actually working it’s a perfectly viable strategy, but it seems to be slowing things down.

hoseja 1y ago

They keep flying old spaceships they built before flaws became apparent in tests. Presumably it'll get better as they work through the backlog.