Security Writer
There’s a chance that perhaps SpaceX just isn’t that good at the whole ‘space’ thing.
Pretty sure Fail Fast isn’t a suitable framework for complex engineering works with millions of variables and lives at risk.
I caught the tail end of some post-disaster punditry and heard how the ESA didn’t have anything like this, and having worked closely with the ESA, I’m pretty happy about that.
Security Writer
Oh god people on TV with the “well nobody died”. It was unmanned, that’s kind of the baseline.
kensims
@SecurityWriter This was a *test* flight.
No one was injured. No property is known to be damaged except SpaceX's.
In 2023 so far, SpaceX has had 80 launches of their production Falcon 9 rocket and 4 launches of their Falcon Heavy rocket. That's more than many rocket have flown over their entire lifetime.
All missions were successful.
All first stage boosters, for which recovery was attempted, were successfully recovered.
Booster B1058 set a new fleet record, flying its 18th successful mission.
Without SpaceX, NASA would still buying rides to the International Space Station from Russia.
While Elon Musk is a major dick, and while SpaceX has some definite internal culture problems, SpaceX is in fact good at this space thing.
Meanwhile ESA is buying launches from SpaceX because ESA has no functional rockets to launch with.
Security Writer
@mark @WowSuchCyber I take your point, but it was nearly 70 years ago. For the first time.
My watch could manage all flight systems for those things, I have more computational power under my stairs than was available internationally, CFD software is *free*. I can machine titanium to 0.002mm tolerances in my garage, and form advanced composites in my living room for a few hundred pounds and some tuning.
The internet provides even us amateurs with just about every resource imaginable.
I don’t even have an engineering degree, but my amateur engineering efforts have resulted in autonomous drones surveying the sea floor in the harshest conditions and immense pressure, and high altitude radio arrays. Heck, I have my work literally IN space on one of the AmSat projects.
So when I think of the depth and breadth of resources and talent at SpaceX, yeah, I tend to be surprised how often they screw this up - given how many decades of lessons they’ve had to learn.
It’s not for lack of skill or expertise. We know this.
Mark T. Tomczak
@SecurityWriter @WowSuchCyber We're still talking Starship specifically, right?
The full stack is a vehicle nearly double the loaded weight of a Saturn V, two stage (my mistake; I forgot the plan is to boost it with a Super Heavy), reusable, with I believe 31 engines relative to S-V's 5 at the second stage.
They do have some of the best engineers in the ecosystem (I believe), but they're also trying to tackle the problem in a radically different way, using a remarkable departure from what worked in the past. This approach is, perhaps, open to criticism... It's possible the end-result of the Starship experiment will be "Well, it turns out we shouldn't build 'em that way for a reason." But I think we may be doing the whole enterprise a disservice if they're failing at inventing chess and we sideline critique that they suck at checkers.
Mark T. Tomczak
@WowSuchCyber @SecurityWriter At the cost of 2.5% of US GDP over a decade. And that was a multi-stage vehicle with no need for the structural integrity to land anything except the final return stage.
I should perhaps amend my comment to expand the thought. "If you have 2.5% of the GDP of one of the richest nations on the planet for 10 years and your problem constraints involve being able to discard about 95% of the vehicle in mission success, you stand decent odds of mission success with no catastrophic vehicle failures. If you're also lucky (If that pogoing problem had gotten much worse it would have ruined the vessel, and it would not even acceptable for crew).
Mark T. Tomczak
@SecurityWriter FWIW, If I understand correctly fail fast is exactly how they got the Dragon architecture operational, and that is now crew rated and a regular service carrier for the ISS. But I think the key difference is that they were using fail fast for the experimental recovery process and not the launch and orbit attainment process. Because those are solved problems and they couldn't afford to be losing other people's stuff when there were reliable alternatives out there.
There are no reliable alternatives for a single stage to orbit mega craft. I don't know that there's any potential way to do it other than trying to do it.
WowSuchCyber
@mark @SecurityWriter Saturn V was launched 13 times and was never lost even once. In the 60's. In a race to the moon that was extremely fast.
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