How many rockets have gone up and come down without blowing up? Have any of these been used to deliver payload?
Maybe at this point, it seems like maybe it would be the most pragmatic thing to do is just go back to the original single-use idea or make the single-use rockets better, cause it looks like they’re not advancing much anymore and there’s still a huge risk of them not working, so it’s not saving anything.
Starship has zero orbits under it's belt, and zero payload deployment. The Falcon 9's are great, but limited on their lift capacity. If you want to get bigger stuff into space, you need a bigger rocket. Abandoning this would mean abandoning Mars, at it is of utmost importance to get humans there, and I'm thinking of one human in particular.
How many rockets have gone up and come down without blowing up? Have any of these been used to deliver payload?
Maybe at this point, it seems like maybe it would be the most pragmatic thing to do is just go back to the original single-use idea or make the single-use rockets better, cause it looks like they’re not advancing much anymore and there’s still a huge risk of them not working, so it’s not saving anything.
I mean it is in development so stuff is expected to fail, the ultimate judge is if they can deliver something that works for a cost that makes sense regardless of how messy it looks.. they're trading fast messy testing for expensive slow engineering.
If they end up failing overall is that a result of that overall choice or a result of the company being unable to meet the challenges for whatever reasons (brain drain from ppl leaving from Musk being crazy, the engineering just too hard for the cost, etc) remains to be seen.
I think they've shown that the lower stage booster part of Starship is doing reasonably well.
The thing with Starship itself is it's a reusable 2nd stage.. something that is much harder to do than a reusable 1st stage.
SpaceX could eventually abandon the idea of a reusable 2nd stage but still use the booster they've created to get big things into orbit.. not as cheap as a reusable 2nd stage; no idea how much more expensive a Mars mission gets without a reusable 2nd stage.
But there probably is a "success" path that just involves putting a more traditional 2nd stage on the big booster. Or do that in the short term while continuing the reusable 2nd stage development.
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SpaceX Starship 36 exploded ahead of a test flight in southern Texas on Wednesday night, sending a huge fireball high into the sky, followed by thick clouds of smoke and large flames.
In a statement posted on X, SpaceX said the rocket experienced a “major anomaly” while on a test stand.
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Hot staging (lighting second stage engines before seperation) is incredibly challenging as well. It's super helpful to avoid velocity loss on seperation, which is significant, but there are many reasons it isn't usually done.
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I mean it is in development so stuff is expected to fail, the ultimate judge is if they can deliver something that works for a cost that makes sense regardless of how messy it looks.. they're trading fast messy testing for expensive slow engineering.
If they end up failing overall is that a result of that overall choice or a result of the company being unable to meet the challenges for whatever reasons (brain drain from ppl leaving from Musk being crazy, the engineering just too hard for the cost, etc) remains to be seen.
I think they've shown that the lower stage booster part of Starship is doing reasonably well.
The thing with Starship itself is it's a reusable 2nd stage.. something that is much harder to do than a reusable 1st stage.
SpaceX could eventually abandon the idea of a reusable 2nd stage but still use the booster they've created to get big things into orbit.. not as cheap as a reusable 2nd stage; no idea how much more expensive a Mars mission gets without a reusable 2nd stage.
But there probably is a "success" path that just involves putting a more traditional 2nd stage on the big booster. Or do that in the short term while continuing the reusable 2nd stage development.
Yeah, we usually preach the “minimum viable” philosophy. So, get one thing working and release it to the world, and then keep progressing incrementally. I feel like in this case, they’re perpetually going for broke and effort is all for naught.
I mean it is in development so stuff is expected to fail, the ultimate judge is if they can deliver something that works for a cost that makes sense regardless of how messy it looks.. they're trading fast messy testing for expensive slow engineering.
If they end up failing overall is that a result of that overall choice or a result of the company being unable to meet the challenges for whatever reasons (brain drain from ppl leaving from Musk being crazy, the engineering just too hard for the cost, etc) remains to be seen.
I think they've shown that the lower stage booster part of Starship is doing reasonably well.
The thing with Starship itself is it's a reusable 2nd stage.. something that is much harder to do than a reusable 1st stage.
SpaceX could eventually abandon the idea of a reusable 2nd stage but still use the booster they've created to get big things into orbit.. not as cheap as a reusable 2nd stage; no idea how much more expensive a Mars mission gets without a reusable 2nd stage.
But there probably is a "success" path that just involves putting a more traditional 2nd stage on the big booster. Or do that in the short term while continuing the reusable 2nd stage development.
Fast messy testing is fine to get a product over the line if you've done enough decent engineering. The corollary is that you can't test in quality if the design is fundamentally flawed. Hopefully that's not the case, and the success of Falcon 9 suggests it isn't, but I don't really know the history of either program well.
I was just reading the wiki for the Russian N1 rocket, and it's interesting the similarities to the Starship. Hot staging, large number of smaller engines, harmonic vibrations causing fuel line break, grid fins...
Quote:
One unforeseen flaw was that its operating frequency, 1000 Hz, happened to perfectly coincide with vibration generated by the propulsion system
