Another iteration and another test launch, duh
Oh, I know this one! The third explosion, right?
Comedy comes in threes. They’re practically obligated to explode the last one.
Shortly thereafter, MuskBoy blaming it on a particular religious sect
I guess it’s the good old ‘fail fast’ strategy.
It actually is, and it worked pretty well in this case. The first launch was pretty pre mature, they could have gotten more data out of if they had taken a little more time. But this one was pretty much the sweet spot of getting into the interesting parts of fight, but not waiting for diminishing returns.
Yes. Like, they literally corrected everything that went wrong in the first test. And it only took 7 months.
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launch pad blown to shreds -> fully intact water suppression system
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Engines exploding on takeoff -> all engines on both the booster and ship operational on first ignition
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stage separation failed -> HOT staging successful
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Self-destruct system didn’t destruct fast enough -> self destruct happened immediately
The next launch will probably focus on the fail points of this launch. That is, re-lighting the engines on the booster after turnaround. And whatever caused the starship to go off course (?) and activate the self-destruct.
meanwhile Boeing discovers some valves were stuck, takes half a year to fix it only to discover they’re still stuck, gonna need another half a year… oh wait, we took too long trying to fix it, we gotta completely replace them, that’ll be another year…
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He’s using the same strategy with the app formerly known as Twitter. Only there, he’s really testing every wrong path.
Rocketry is kinda different. Testing to failure can be very useful, and if you have the resources to throw at it repeatedly, can let you iterate much faster.
You can only pick two:
- speed
- quality
- cost
NASA usually picks quality… and nothing else. SpaceX picked speed and quality.
They should optimize for neat explosions.
- Not Michael Bay (I swear)
Kinda what rockets do
I would say the rocket is ready for billionaires who want to beta test it.
Fuck Musk, first and foremost, but this flight has been a success, they have successfully separated the booster which was very cool to see.
Paywall.
What happens next?
A rich asshole keeps raping the corpse of TRW in hopes of becoming a land baron of LEO activity. All while America’s gov lets him, cause capitalism and a fear of possible overreach (aka no real ethical guidance) means he’s too rich to be touched.
All while the internet gets flooded with hate speech, the skies ruined by satellite constellations, the soil polluted from rockets that can’t even reach orbit (despite nasa’s previous progress) and that’s not even counting the gemstone mining… etc.
In 30-40 more years maybe SpaceX will make progress that isn’t just upgrade existing rockets.
I mean… They invented reusable rockets.
Edit: they invented the first reusable liquid-fueled rockets and the first rockets that can autonomously land themselves. NASA used reusable solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle that would deploy parachutes and land in the ocean. Getting a solid rocket booster back into a reusable state seems like a lot of work to me.
Given that time and money I bet NASA could have that and made ones that don’t blow up every test.
Maybe if you weren’t so blinded by your need to be edgy, you would see the accomplishments SpaceX has made. Starship is not even close to being completed. It blowing up and failing are expected at this stage.
How much are you betting? Because I could use some free money, lol.
NASA doesn’t build many rockets. They are almost all done under contract.
Given time and money, I’m sure Bob Jones could make a reusable rocket in his back garage. It would just take a lot of both. SpaceX is good at making a lot of progress with little time and money.
