You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Broken before it got off the ground.
Oops.
The innovation and pace of development is incredible, and there will be accidents when doing trials.. Which is what all this is really.
OK.. Devil's advocate moment over, they need to boot Musk out, just as tesla should boot him out..
The tech is there but it needs to be done properly.. Otherwise this is just the next titanic submarine debacle waiting to happen, and possibly on a much larger scale in terms of human casualties.
SpaceXplode continue their high attrition rate.
MOVE FAST AND BREAK STUFF BRO!
The tech is there but it needs to be done properly.. Otherwise this is just the next titanic submarine debacle waiting to happen, and possibly on a much larger scale in terms of human casualties.
Virgin Galactic already did, didn't they?
SpaceXplode continue their high attrition rate.
MOVE FAST AND BREAK STUFF BRO!
The queue of astronauts wanting to sit on top of that thing must be getting shorter!
"Trip to Mars in 2029 ...aaah shucks, got a holiday booked that year and not taken cancelation cover. Soz!"
but Starship performance seems to be getting worse rather than better? Makes me wonder if they understand the behaviour of their own product
Luck of the draw maybe.
Loss of talent due to working conditions maybe.
Lack of funding to verify and validate maybe.
Who knows.
Just putting the best headline/strapline I've seen for this one:
Starship Explodes Into Massive Fireball During Tests; SpaceX Releases Statement
Launch this month unlikely.
this is your spaceship on ketamine
(nicked from bluesky)
That's a lot of CO2. 🙁
This is the same company supplying the Moon lander for Artemis. I don't like the look of that either.
OK.. Devil's advocate moment over, they need to boot Musk out, just as tesla should boot him out..
His involvement in anything should be a reason to treat it with extreme caution.
I'll try and find it later but I saw a very damning article about SpaceX a few a weeks ago, talked about the general rush to progress, the idea that big explody things could be marketed as some sort of "testing process" , and all being done at the whim of an egotistical megalomaniac who only wanted to hear the right answers.
The only other area where having a big explosion is considered a good test is actual bombs. Not spaceships, aircraft or cars.
Who knows.
This is version 2 of spaceship.... V11 did most of what was required and they've tried slimming it down for V2 but it's not really worked that well so far!
The only other area where having a big explosion is considered a good test is actual bombs. Not spaceships, aircraft or cars.
It's not ideal but the best way to test something is to use it.
It's not ideal but the best way to test something is to use it.
NASA somehow managed to do all this without multiple rocket explosions...
NASA somehow managed to do all this without multiple rocket explosions...
Challenger?
I suspect we'd do better at safely leaving the planet if it wasn't a race and we weren't all trying to get one up on each other.
NASA somehow managed to do all this without multiple rocket explosions...
By taking many years longer and spending billions of dollars more than they needed to - and still they (Boeing) can't get it right ..... See Starliner.
That's a lot of CO2
My first thoughts. What a waste of resources all round.
That's a lot of CO2
My first thoughts. What a waste of resources all round.
They’re changing too many things in each flight and too many of them are connected making it very difficult to determine causes when things go wrong.
This is why “move fast and break things” doesn’t always work. You still need to be rigorous in your scientific method and engineering.
NASA somehow managed to do all this without multiple rocket explosions...
That's if you ignore Apollo 1 and the two shuttle crashes, I guess.
I read somewhere that SpaceX has a massive churn of staff, 4 in 10 leave in the first year and over 1/3rd within 5 years and that's on top of the staff they lost to rivals when they relocated to Texas. That's got to have an effect on complex decade plus long projects.
That's if you ignore Apollo 1 and the two shuttle crashes, I guess.
30 years and 135 launches for the loss of two Shuttles. The first one, Challenger, caused a 2.5 year shutdown of the entire programme while they investigated, fixed and tested everything.
SpaceX seem to be losing a rocket a month at the moment. Maybe not as dramatically as the most recent one (which also took out the entire launchpad) but numerous failures.
The last major one (March this year) posed a danger to flights and people on the ground:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj92wgeyvzzo
Yeah, but I only mentioned the fatal crashes. Here are some more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_failed_Thor_and_Delta_launches
No idea if Starship is running into some kind of systematic failure caused by their company culture, or if this is simply a run of bad luck. But it's clear getting into space isn't easy, and just how brave astronauts are.
Not a Musk fan but I am interested in what SpaceX are doing.
As a company, they deserve some credit; the F9 is the most reliable rocket in history. They have more consecutive successful LANDINGS than any other rocket has achieved launches!
In this case, the preliminary suggestions are that it was caused by the failure of a CFRP at below its rated pressure. I imagine this is a component they buy in. If so, then this may not have a root cause within SpaceX.
Starship's workplace safety record is poor (the injury rate as the Brownsville plant was 6 x industry average in 2023) which suggests the "move fast and break things" culture seems to extend right through the business. The injury rate at Tesla was 31% above industry average in 2015, and Musk was allegedly doing crazy stuff like discouraging hi-viz because he doesn't like bright colours.
It's a bit different when you are moving fast and breaking people instead of rockets.