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Comment by stephc_int13 | Hacker News Reader

Seeing that much SpaceX employees cheering after the explosion was kind of strange.

OK this is not complete failure, but this is still a failure. Things did not go according to plans.

I understand the need for PR and damage control, but I am not comfortable with it, this is not a success, this is work in progress and so far this launcher is unproven.

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This is assuming a strategy that aligns with your values. SpaceX has been made successful with their strategy. Look at their entire history of explosions and see that every major issue like this has taught them well. They are eating EVERYONE's lunch

"How to not land an orbital rocket booster" - https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ

I love this video

I say this only half-jokingly: think of the satisfaction you feel when a challenging piece of code finally compiles. You know there is a lot of debugging ahead, but progress is progress.

This is an excellent analogy.

Not blowing up on the pad is a huge success. The rocket got past max-q, and they’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that 33 engines can work together on one booster. I remember a couple years ago when folks like you were confident that it was impossible to run that many engines simultaneously.

That's really not how engineering tests work - the objectives of the test were met, by definition that's a success. Not achieving stretch goals doesn't make it a failure.

Of course it's a work in progress and the launcher is unproven. But damn, that was an amazing first attempt. With more vehicles already in integration, I have little doubt they'll eventually nail this.

Having the culmination of your work for the past several years actually culminate in a test flight is definitely a thing to celebrate in my opinion. The test flight is a ... test ... of a hypothesis that this system will make it to space (technically not orbit this flight).

Even with the failure they undoubtedly gathered loads of metrics to address for their next attempt.

The promise of Starship will lower the financial and logistical barriers of getting to space significantly which has the potential to open our civilization to tons of new possibilities that we haven't even considered yet.

Launching rockets is very hard, clearly, and this one is quite big.

At this point, I don't believe Elon Musk words, I think the guy is not "fully there", unfortunately, I've heard too much bullshit.

I also think that some of the best rocket engineers on the planet are working at SpaceX and that they could achieve their mission, but I'll fully believe it when it is done.

I hope that Elon ego will not ruin this.

It is a success. They cleared the tower and able to collect data to do course correction.

Failure is not being able to finish development of starship within a reasonable time period. This is just an iteration.

It was a test, an experiment. The outcome gave them lots of valuable data. They all knew the likelihood of it failing was very high, so its nice to have it work better than expected.

> but I am not comfortable with it, this is not a success, this is work in progress and so far this launcher is unproven

we need a "middlebrow dismissal" link

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