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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.
    - timschmidt 1y ago
      > 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. How long did the last fully reusable superheavy lift rocket take to develop? There's never been one you say? Right. So you have no metric for measurement. The closest equivalent: SLS is flying hardware who's design originated in the 60s, and Blue Origin began development 24 years ago. Starship is developing at light speed by comparison to anything approaching it's size. Still think it's happening slowly? Feel free to build one yourself in less time. I'll wait.
      - Retric 1y ago
        They’ve taken longer to develop Starship than NASA did with the Space Shuttle.
        timschmidt 1y ago
        Space shuttle development can be traced to the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar ) which began in 1957, the MiG-105 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105 ) from 1965, and the Silbervogel project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel ) from 1941. The space shuttle didn't fly until 1981. Try again.
        1y ago
  - preisschild 1y ago
    > Russia followed the former, much like SpaceX, and Soyuz is second only to Falcon 9 in number of launches. Yeah, but it failed with more complex rockets (the soviet N1), where it just kept blowing up.
    - timschmidt 1y ago
      N1 would have worked eventually with enough effort. The larger problem is that Korolev died and his deputy was far less politically capable.
      - preisschild 1y ago
        Its questionable if it would have ever worked https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apollo-moon-khrushchev/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apollo-moon-khrus... > Korolev was not a scientist, not a designer: he was a brilliant manager. Korolev's problem was his mentality. His intent was to somehow use the launcher he had. [The launcher was called N1]. It was designed in 1958 for a different purpose and with a limited payload of about 70 tons.] His philosophy was, let's not work by stages [as is usual in spacecraft design], but let's assemble everything and then try it. And at last it will work. There were several attempts and failures with Lunnik [a series of unmanned Soviet moon probes]. Sending man to the moon is too complicated, too complex for such an approach. I think it was doomed from the very beginning.
  - verzali 1y ago
    Saturn V development started in January 1962. Starship development started sometime before 2018. Generously, we can say SpaceX has been developing it for at least 6 years at this point. By the same point, January 1968, the Saturn V had launched, orbited the Earth, and simulated a trans-lunar injection. In December 1968 the Saturn V launched astronauts onboard Apollo 8 to fly around the Moon. So it is getting tough to say that Starship development is proceeding fast compared to other projects.

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.
  - timschmidt 1y ago
    > 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. How long did the last fully reusable superheavy lift rocket take to develop? There's never been one you say? Right. So you have no metric for measurement. The closest equivalent: SLS is flying hardware who's design originated in the 60s, and Blue Origin began development 24 years ago. Starship is developing at light speed by comparison to anything approaching it's size. Still think it's happening slowly? Feel free to build one yourself in less time. I'll wait.
    - Retric 1y ago
      They’ve taken longer to develop Starship than NASA did with the Space Shuttle.
      - timschmidt 1y ago
        Space shuttle development can be traced to the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar ) which began in 1957, the MiG-105 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105 ) from 1965, and the Silbervogel project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel ) from 1941. The space shuttle didn't fly until 1981. Try again.
        1y ago
- preisschild 1y ago
  > Russia followed the former, much like SpaceX, and Soyuz is second only to Falcon 9 in number of launches. Yeah, but it failed with more complex rockets (the soviet N1), where it just kept blowing up.
  - timschmidt 1y ago
    N1 would have worked eventually with enough effort. The larger problem is that Korolev died and his deputy was far less politically capable.
    - preisschild 1y ago
      Its questionable if it would have ever worked https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apollo-moon-khrushchev/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apollo-moon-khrus... > Korolev was not a scientist, not a designer: he was a brilliant manager. Korolev's problem was his mentality. His intent was to somehow use the launcher he had. [The launcher was called N1]. It was designed in 1958 for a different purpose and with a limited payload of about 70 tons.] His philosophy was, let's not work by stages [as is usual in spacecraft design], but let's assemble everything and then try it. And at last it will work. There were several attempts and failures with Lunnik [a series of unmanned Soviet moon probes]. Sending man to the moon is too complicated, too complex for such an approach. I think it was doomed from the very beginning.
- verzali 1y ago
  Saturn V development started in January 1962. Starship development started sometime before 2018. Generously, we can say SpaceX has been developing it for at least 6 years at this point. By the same point, January 1968, the Saturn V had launched, orbited the Earth, and simulated a trans-lunar injection. In December 1968 the Saturn V launched astronauts onboard Apollo 8 to fly around the Moon. So it is getting tough to say that Starship development is proceeding fast compared to other projects.