Sad to see the failure of hundreds of insanely smart and talented engineers, pushing the limits of what's possible, be celebrated because of the colossal douchebag of a boss they have.
I'm sorry, no.
They obviously aren't 'insanely smart and talented engineers' if they keep building rockets that fail... catastrophically... with nothing learned other than 'oh gee, our quality control is garbage, and our design is fundamentally flawed, better keep "iterating!" '
This is all doubly stupid when the entire business model, financial end of SpaceX is just built on the idea that one day, one of these things will be reusable... but they're blowing up what, 200-300 million $ with each 'iterative test?'
(That cost figure is from Musk himself, btw)
We were supposed to have a demonstration of large scale, ship to ship, orbital fuel transfer... in Q4, 2022.
So far, none of these things have even achieved orbit, and the fuel transfer tech is... vaporware? Hastily drawn on a napkin somewhere? Only exists in CGI renders?
SpaceX is the very kind of MIC style bloated misuse of taxpayer funds that should have been greatly curtailed by some kind of... task force with the goal of cutting fraud and abuse out of government spending.
But instead no, we got Kathy Leuders to single handedly strong arm NASA into continuing funding for Starship by bullshitting the project proposal/review process, and then a couple months after that, she resigns from NASA and now works for... SpaceX!
Never mind that sending astronauts to the moon and back with the Starship + Heavy Booster would require somewhere between 12 to 16 total launches to fully refuel the lunar bound craft... never mind the fact that no Heavy Booster has ever been re-used after recovery... heck I don't even think any Starships have ever been re-used after recovery...
Nope, its all fine, these are very smart and talented people, just whatever you do, do not look at the failure rate for the Saturn V, do not take into account that that program was all literally ground breaking R&D that had never been done before, that inventing a huge chunk of what is now the basis of modern Computer Science was part of its development.
Saturn V Failure Rate
It is 1 out of 13, and this was a partial failure, which never recurred again after subsequent fixes were applied.
The engineers are likely well qualified. But when the boss vetoes your designs to cut costs, that's how you get these results.
They did just successfully reuse a booster on the last test. One of the most powerful boosters ever launched was precisely caught on a tower and relaunched a few months later. But nope, no talent by those engineers.
Saturn 5 was obviously amazing, but we can't use it as a benchmark today. We could do it again if we wanted, but we don't want to. Standards and goals have changed. Both politically and in aerospace generally.
Is it disappointing that the ship keeps having issues? Yes. Does that make the program a waste? No. It will progress even if its slow. I'd rather it be late than not done ever, which was the status quo before SpaceX arrived. How many times must these goal posts be moved?
We are watching a whole new round of groundbreaking R&D unfold before our eyes and people are sitting here worrying about money. And a pretty small amount of money in the grand scheme of the country.
It is truly a shame that Elon is the evil asshole that started all this. It makes it so incredibly difficult to be a fan. But try to find the nuance. SpaceX has become so much more than him.
One answer per paragraph, let's break it down.
They absolutely have learned a lot by flying the prototypes. They caught one of the largest 1st stages ever made with the freaking launch tower, twice!
The entire cost of the starship program so far is much less than the Saturn V, adjusted for inflation. They can keep blowing them up by the dozens and it'll still take years to get to the Saturn V budget.
They did transfer fuel between tanks in space a few flights back as a small scale demo, the hardware exists.
Corruption definitely exists within the government. However, let's not kid ourselves by believing the starship is being funded for the lunar or Martian missions. They're being funded because they can deliver hundreds of tons of military payload anywhere on the planet within minutes.
The last launch did reuse a booster that was caught 2 launches ago. Starship reuse will come once they can reliably send it, which will probably take a few more catastrophic failures.
If you want to talk about failure rates, how about the Falcon 9, the most successful platform ever made? Also the invention of modern computer science thing was mostly on DARPA at that point for military applications.
They caught one of the largest 1st stages ever made with the freaking launch tower, twice!
Neat. Is... there some kind of point to that?
vs designing a different kind of system, with legs of some kind?
Why not just make it into a 2 stage system, each system has legs, each can vector back to a location... I mean, you'd have to use a smaller number of more powerful and more reliable engines but - oh right maybe that's the problem, a lot of these more recent raptor engines don't have such great quality control...
Don't get me wrong, being able to fly a suborbital boost stage back to a landing zone for reuse is an accomplisment... but SpaceX already achieved that with Falcon, Blue Origin has also done it, and before either of them, DARPA did it in the late 80s / early 90s.
The entire cost of the starship program so far is much less than the Saturn V, adjusted for inflation.
You're doing the thing that is stupid to do, not accounting for all the other things the Saturn V program built and/or pioneered, ... which I tried to list some examples of, but heres another whole category:
Proper launch pad infrastructure, VABs, all that kinda stuff that is ... largely still in use today.
Its a lot easier to spend less money after a whole bunch of reliable engineering research has been done, and is now available for you to learn from.
Of course that doesn't stop SpaceX from ignoring much of it and then re-learning it the hard way.
They can keep blowing them up by the dozens and it'll still take years to get to the Saturn V budget.
Only if the government keeps subsidizing them to do so by taxing the hell out of us and giving money to 'rockets to nowhere', as Trump called them, before Elon bought him the Presidency.
Currently, it looks like Elon and Trump are crashing out hard, quite publically, go check the news... so yeah, maybe not a good bet that SpaceX will keep being so heavily subsidized?
They did transfer fuel between tanks in space a few flights back as a small scale demo, the hardware exists.
If you are talking about the March 14 2024 IFT3 flight... that involved a single, solitary Starship, moving some fuel from one set of tanks to another, within itself.
This is not ship to ship transfer. This is moving fuel around internally, something that basically most rockets can do?
Docking and mating with another ship is a whole other thing entirely, and then doing a controlled fuel transfer of huge masses of fuel without a seal rupturing or one or either of them tumbling out of control... thats another whole other, whole other thing entirely.
Has anyone seen what the design for the docking mechanisms are?
I would love to see this hardware that according to you, 'exists'.
Are they docking end to end, or belly to belly, or has it changed again?
The actual ship to ship transfer demo... you know, involving two actual ships?
That is currently scheduled for 'some time in 2026'... again, this was supposed to have been demo'd back in Q4 2022.
Corruption definitely exists within the government...
Kathy Leuders, thats her name, in a functioning society, she'd be in prison.
But anyway:
They're being funded because they can deliver hundreds of tons of military payload anywhere on the planet within minutes.
Hundreds of tons.
Within minutes.
Ok so how long is it gonna take to prep the launch pad, load everything up, and then unload it all?
Can you land anywhere that isn't basically flat, clear of obstructions?
We tend to make those areas into airstrips or helicopter LZs of some kind already, either temporary via a military engineering corp, or permanently via an established commercial airport or permanently military airbase.
A C5 galaxy can lift up to 135 tons of kit. It can do air drops. It can be refueled and reflown far more rapidly than any rocket ever will be. It can fit a fucking M1 Abrams in it.
... Existing logistics systems are astonishingly more cost effective at this, and in many cases, actualy faster.
It sure isn't gonna be the case that a rocket is going to be able to touch down into some kind of hot lz, a standard 7.62 machine gun at 300 meters would kill everyone inside... and thats assuming the rocket fuel doesn't explode.
Then theres the much more significant G Forces, that'll fuck up people and a lot of gear.
Oh and how is all this stuff gonna be unloaded anyway?
A gantry crane? 100+ feet off the ground? In a thing that'll tip over and crash to the ground (and then detonate) if it gets too off balance? Has that even been designed yet or tested?
The entire point to point suborbital rocket concept for personnel or logistics transport is an absolute non starter, it is horrendously inefficient and impractical in so many ways that it is literally laughably ludicrous.
What was it, Shotwell saying we'd be having point to point passenger rocket flights... 4 years ago now? Saying the trick is to get the turnaround time down to that of a commercial jet... which is on the order of hours, when the fastest turn around time for any SpaceX rocket, ever, is 9 days, and it typically takes more like 2 to 3 weeks?
However, let's not kid ourselves by believing the starship is being funded for the lunar or Martian mission...
I mean, basically the majority of Starship+HeavyBooster developmemt has been funded by NASA contracts to... go to the moon... but sure, who cares about contracts, just stupid pieces of paper.
EDIT: oh right, forgot this one: there still isn't even a design for a potentially human rateable Starship.
They haven't even started to attempt to design something with life support systems... or even... seats.
Only stuff that exists is concept art.
Only if the government keeps subsidizing them to do so by taxing the hell out of us
If Starship cost $3 billion over its lifetime and was entirely funded by US taxes, it would cost, on average $10 per citizen. Note that that is over the lifetime of the project and not by year. Is this the taxing to hell you're talking about? Not NASA's $25 billion this year alone (and that's one of the cheaper budget items)? Do you need to start a GoFundMe to help you out with that?
Now how am I supposed to take you seriously when the easiest statement for you to fact check is so hyperbolically incorrect?
He doesn't care if it keeps failing, so long as people are still paying him attention
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