SpaceX's ninth Starship test flight ended abruptly on Tuesday when the rocket experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" — the company's favourite euphemism for "exploded." It's the third Starship test flight in a row to end in fiery failure, Elon Musk's space company having had a poor run as of late.
Nine flights, nine failures. The Muskian fanbois claim that SpaceX is making "incremental progress" and they claim that this is more efficient and cost-effective than the way that NASA does it.
Maybe so. But consider the opposite view: By the ninth flight of the Saturn V rocket, Alan Shepard was hitting golf balls on the Moon.
Mia culpa: I long (before we ever even heard of musk) complained NASA and the government were just too slow, we would never get to the stars at that rate and we should let private industry take the reins. I was wrong
ReplyDeleteAt this point its not all elon, its spacex a lot of people trying to
ReplyDeletefigure it all out.
While Saturn5 made it and did well, the lead up was a lot of test
stand Booms getting the F1 engine to work. Getting the engine
right was a challenge and there was much tweaking along
the way. A big battle was pogo a form of engine surging
resulting from irregular combustion causing varied acceleration
causing a feedback loop.
And the prior systems for Redstone, Atlas ,and titan-II were
early booms from things to be yet learned.
Then again NASA went from zero to the moon in less than 10 years.
My biggest beef with NASA was the amount of information learned
and then 11 years after the program finished it was all destroyed
as in consigned to memory hole.
Eck!
It's OK, he has plenty of money he grifted from the government to build another one and blow that one up also...
ReplyDelete-Doug in Sugar Pine
SpaceX halved launch costs and launch about 80% of the tonnage these days
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/01/spacex-roundup-2024/
ReplyDeleteSpaceX’s Falcon rockets have already slashed the cost of space flight, partly thanks to the fact that their lower stages, unlike those of almost any other rocket, can be recovered and flown again. According to an estimate by Citigroup, a bank, the Falcons can send a tonne into space at about a tenth of the cost that prevailed a decade ago.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/10/17/the-rockets-are-nifty-but-it-is-satellites-that-make-spacex-valuable?giftId=5d05b930-4ffd-4bbb-8785-79121593e2f1&utm_campaign=gifted_article
The launch was remarkable: a booster rocket with twice the power of the Apollo programme’s Saturn V lancing into the early-morning sky on a tight, bright column of blue-tinged flame. But that wonder has been seen four times before. It was the landing of the booster stage of SpaceX’s fifth Starship test flight which was truly extraordinary.