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Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

from the article "In one of many spins on the day's failures.."

I stopped reading there, the author has a clear bias against SpaceX. Expectations and what "success" meant for the test were set well in advanced from multiple sources.

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Honestly I think your bias is showing here. There were many failures. The self destruct should have worked, and they did not expect to basically blow up the launch pad.

I get that no one expected the rocket to work perfectly, and so the expectation is that it was going to go up and explode. That's reasonable, and I've watched other SpaceX flights with similar expectations (and occasional explosions) while considering those a success.

But there were multiple failures here, even inside of those parameters. Their safety systems, which were supposed to work, failed. They also failed to safely launch the rocket, in the sense that they scattered debris from the launch pad over hundreds of acres. Both of those can reasonably be considered massive issues that should not have happened.

They could have implemented an early warning system for wildlife.

Starship not separating, launch stand disintegrating, 5-6 raptors not working, HPUs exploding, all of those were failures. That doesn't mean the test as a whole was a failure, but you cannot say that everything worked fine.

it was from the very beginning meant to be a destructive test. the fact that it didn't blow up on the pad marks it as a success!

Every millisecond of lift it gave was telemetry that will refine the end product.

This. Was. Never. Meant. To. Succeed. As. An. End. Product.

the launch, short flight and destruction was a wonderful success. Mistakes were definitely made... but thats the fastest way to learn! (As I often tell my kids)

There's a wide spectrum of possible outcomes for a destructive test.

Blowing up on the launchpad during fueling would've been a destructive test. So would splashing down in the ocean off Hawaii. That doesn't make them the same; one went well, the other did not.

i am willing to admit being biased. On the other hand, every requirement of the test was met. The failures lie in the expectations of the viewers IMO.

Defining expected failure states is good, because it allows you to distinguish expected failures from unexpected ones. What it doesn’t allow you to do is re-cast failures as successes, which is the spin that the author identifies.

It's 2023, not 1953! Launching giant rockets with no plan for what happens 5 seconds after launch is not "meeting expectations".

technically, i think they wanted 10 seconds of telemetry data. Everything after that was bonus.

There's no way in heckfire that the FAA green-lighted the launch of an 11 million pound rocket to get 10 seconds of flight data.

This article summarizes some of the flight objectives:

https://spacenews.com/faa-issues-license-for-first-starship-...

There was a planned stage separation, 9+ minute total engine burn, and peak altitude of 235km.

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