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Boeing's Starliner successfully docks with space station after challenging rendezvous
(www.cbsnews.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Imo the contrast between Starship and SLS are even starker, but in the opposite direction. I hope I'm wrong (I want as much in space as possible) but SpaceX seems to be running pretty rough and roudy for manned missions rn. They're popping off these experimental rockets like toys with very short turnaround. But to be fair they did the same with Falcon-IX and it's a success now so again I could be wrong.
The alternative being you sit down, put in the time, and resources and have a 100% success rate like SLS. Ofc the catch being it costs like 10x but NASA doesn't have the luxury of televisied launch failures. I'm just REALLY concerned something fails with humans to the moon in it and poof that's that for a another 5 decades. There's a reason extremely valuable launches like human life and the JWST are done on tested platforms like Soyuz and Aireon VI.
That being said yeah the Boeing craft looks even worse rn. I'm surprised they let it even dock with all the issues.
I'm super curious what the public response will be if people die in a SpaceX launch. Will it get as much scrutiny as if it were the NASA shuttle?
I don't think so, I think it will be a blip in everyone's feeds. For NASA they built their program on the country's involvement, because that's how they got funding, and so there was an emotional attachment and involvement. SpaceX is background noise for the majority of people, they could have people dying left and right and it probably wouldn't be a big deal.
Destructive testing has always been part of every engineering development projects.
When developing new parts it's common to make a lot of test parts and stress them to failure to see how they react.
For innovative design it can take several iterations before finding the right material/design. Each destructive testing is bringing valuable information.
Knowing exactly how a part will fail gives extremely valuable information on how to build a part that will NOT fail and everyone does that including NASA.
SpaceX has just brought this philosophy to whole different level by doing destructive testing on the whole rocket. The best example is that on the last flight they purposefully removed heatshields on some area of the Starship and added sensors in the area to see how it would impact the ship.
The can afford to do that because they focused on building a rocket factory to mass produce starships rather than building a rocket. It means that even if they were not launching it the factory would still produce Starships.
PS: SLS is not 10x the cost of Starship. According to an independent report ( source ) Right now the estimated cost of a Starship launch is estimated around $90 million, one the program is operational the cost of a Starship launch is estimated to be around $10 millions.
A SLS launch is estimated to be around $4.1 billion
So a Starship launch is 40 to 400 time cheaper than a SLS launch
https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/when-to-use-agile-vs-waterfall/