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FTA: "SpaceX suffered upper stage failures on three test flights of the massive Starship rocket last year. " SpaceX has also had numerous failures with the lar

FTA: "SpaceX suffered upper stage failures on three test flights of the massive Starship rocket last year. " SpaceX has also had numerous failures with the larger generation of second stages and currently doesn't have a lead there. Nobody does.

boznz 6mo ago
It's a hard problem, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin will probably have failures in the future too, I am encouraged that they both see failure as a way to do better and looking forward to both of them eventually succeeding. It's a good time to be a space nerd.
- WalterBright 6mo ago
  There's a saying in the racing business. If you're not walking back to the pit now and then carrying the steering wheel, you're not trying hard enough. If you're walking back to the pit too often, you're incompetent.
  - bombcar 6mo ago
    If you always fail, you aren’t trying. If you never fail, you aren’t trying.
    - mandeepj 6mo ago
      If you always fail, you aren’t learning Isn't that better?
      - bombcar 6mo ago
        True, but then you have to differentiate trying and failing vs not doing anything and failing by default.
  - WalterBright 6mo ago
    There's another aspect. If you're launching men in rockets, you cannot tolerate failures, so the development cost is way, way higher. The cost effective method is to launch unmanned ones, tolerating a lot of failures, and when the bugs are worked out then launch men.
decimalenough 6mo ago
Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if not more. Yes, Starship development has been slow and occasionally explodey, but they've successfully demonstrated all the fundamentals and it's "just" iteration from here. (They haven't gone into full orbit, but that's by choice, not lack of capability.)
- ActorNightly 6mo ago
  > If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, I really wonder about this psychological effect where non technical people champion people like Musk so hard without any basis for doing so. Is is some sort of wanting to belong to some ideology that makes you just make shit up in your head about how Starship is a success, despite many indicators of it clearly being a stupid idea born from Musks ketomine episodes? For the record, Starships engines are the equivalent of taking a Toyota Corolla and making it run on nitrous continously on the verge of self destructing. You may be able to do technology demonstrations here and there, but making it work reliably for actual missions is much much harder.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - junofan 6mo ago
    Bringing together the money and people to make this stuff happen is the basis. That’s the most impressive part. Debatably the only truly impressive part. There’s no ideology. You can watch a really big rocket take off every month or two and watch a smaller rocket take off every couple days. I’m sure there are better designs out there… on drawing boards.
    - ActorNightly 6mo ago
      Its not a video game where you put enough resources into "science" and stuff just works. There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand, and its ridiculous to think that he would be smart enough to account for them.

boznz 6mo ago

It's a hard problem, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin will probably have failures in the future too, I am encouraged that they both see failure as a way to do better and looking forward to both of them eventually succeeding. It's a good time to be a space nerd.

WalterBright 6mo ago
There's a saying in the racing business. If you're not walking back to the pit now and then carrying the steering wheel, you're not trying hard enough. If you're walking back to the pit too often, you're incompetent.
- bombcar 6mo ago
  If you always fail, you aren’t trying. If you never fail, you aren’t trying.
  - mandeepj 6mo ago
    If you always fail, you aren’t learning Isn't that better?
    - bombcar 6mo ago
      True, but then you have to differentiate trying and failing vs not doing anything and failing by default.
- WalterBright 6mo ago
  There's another aspect. If you're launching men in rockets, you cannot tolerate failures, so the development cost is way, way higher. The cost effective method is to launch unmanned ones, tolerating a lot of failures, and when the bugs are worked out then launch men.

decimalenough 6mo ago

Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if not more. Yes, Starship development has been slow and occasionally explodey, but they've successfully demonstrated all the fundamentals and it's "just" iteration from here. (They haven't gone into full orbit, but that's by choice, not lack of capability.)

ActorNightly 6mo ago
> If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, I really wonder about this psychological effect where non technical people champion people like Musk so hard without any basis for doing so. Is is some sort of wanting to belong to some ideology that makes you just make shit up in your head about how Starship is a success, despite many indicators of it clearly being a stupid idea born from Musks ketomine episodes? For the record, Starships engines are the equivalent of taking a Toyota Corolla and making it run on nitrous continously on the verge of self destructing. You may be able to do technology demonstrations here and there, but making it work reliably for actual missions is much much harder.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- junofan 6mo ago
  Bringing together the money and people to make this stuff happen is the basis. That’s the most impressive part. Debatably the only truly impressive part. There’s no ideology. You can watch a really big rocket take off every month or two and watch a smaller rocket take off every couple days. I’m sure there are better designs out there… on drawing boards.
  - ActorNightly 6mo ago
    Its not a video game where you put enough resources into "science" and stuff just works. There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand, and its ridiculous to think that he would be smart enough to account for them.