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Comment by Rapzid | Hacker News Reader

It dawned on me today that this is in SpaceX's best interest based on their development philosophy.

Think about all the bad publicity that Boeing got when Starliner was off course.

But here SpaceX is constantly blowing things up and everyone is just like "Ah shucks, they will get it next time though."

A lot of that has to do with how out in the open they have made a lot of these failures and tests. Everybody expects it now and views it in a positive light.

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Part of that is also based in reality - SpaceX follows a more Soviet-style, hardware-rich approach than Boeing or ULA, where tests (including failed ones) are much more frequent. In terms of PR, this has given them a record of public failures followed by later success, so the public is more primed to give them the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong. (Even if the thing that goes wrong isn't actually part of a test.)

Is that really Soviet style? Does that have a name or book or wikipedia article describing it?

I have a feeling that's also because rather than build a business around making things as expensive as possible and dragging contracts out as long as possible, they're trying to make significant advances in technology. While I know it's not necessarily true, it feels like the US Space Program has been a glorified corporate welfare scheme since Saturn V (prior to SpaceX shaking things up).

Well, yeah, it is. Or to put a very slightly more positive spin on it, they want to subsidize a company with a military program so that it has surplus capacity. A bit like the way we subsidize farmers: we want more production than we need so that if something happens (weather, somebody going out of business, bad harvest, etc) we've still got enough.

Whether we really need that much military capacity... well, I'll leave that up to you. But it's not really hidden that we're throwing more money at them than the market would call for. This corporate welfare scheme is very glorified.

It’s easy to dislike Boeing. They are a bloated and corrupt company that were unfairly awarded $2 billion more than SpaceX for the same project. Despite that advantage they still showed up to the party with a vastly inferior rocket system.

For me personally I can only wonder how much further along SpaceX might be if all the money we’ve given to Boeing had instead gone to SpaceX.

You say this as if they actually are actually having things go wrong on stream.

This test was exactly as planned. The one failure they did have unintentionally blow up (the dragon fueling explosion) was actually not on a live stream.

All that did kinda work for their attempts at landing the first stage a few years back though, however that was heavily wrapped in “experiment” and Was PR covered at every moment.

They’ve had two falcon 9 systems explode unintentionally. The CRS-7 system failed in flight, and AMOS-6 failed on the launch pad during fueling. They also unintentionally blew up a Crew Dragon capsule.

It is true that they do testing differently from Boeing. Boeing uses a NASA testing plan where hardware is verified on the ground through extensive part or subsystem-level testing. This method has a downside which is that many things end up needing a higher factor of safety than absolutely necessary due to uncertainty in the risk calculations.

SpaceX uses a different testing strategy where a lot more stuff is tested as a complete system. There is increased potential for full system failures, which we have seen, but the entire system can be vetted more quickly.

> SpaceX uses a different testing strategy where a lot more stuff is tested as a complete system.

I'm sure they are tested as integrated systems, but they are also exercised extensively ahead of that. The Super Dracos used for the launch escape system have been test-fired since well before the Crew Dragon got its name.

Just adding that AMOS-6 actually failed ruing fueling failed before a planned hot fire test, not during fueling before a planned launch. Due to that, it was not on an official live stream.

Though I think it was recorded by at least one unofficial one covering the hot fire.

Wait, Boeing does testing? Should've done that with MCAS then.

Now I know which spacecraft I would prefer to ride.

Just wait for the next generation Boeing Starliner MAX...

There was the 2016 explosion of a falcon 9 during a static fire. Also a falcon 9 explosion during flight in 2015.

Not all accidents have been on an official live stream but I’ve seen more accidents from Spacex than I’ve seen launches from Boeing and friends.

> But here SpaceX is constantly blowing things up and everyone is just like "Ah shucks, they will get it next time though."

SpaceX is basically Kerbal Space Program in real life

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