1st stage turned around then exploded. Second stage is doing well so far.
Edit had the second sentence wrong
Edit had the second sentence wrong
Hotstaging didn't "work" until they can demonstrate the Starship vehicle survives orbital insertion, re-entry, and landing without damage or malfunction caused by the hotstaging.
They’ve lost as many Starships as NASA lost Space Shuttles so far, with no deaths. It’s a test program for now.
Ask the “rest of the industry” about how Boeing’s Starliner is going. That’s what failure looks like.
I understand a lot of it is politics and government spending but it would be nice if NASA could get a case of go fever every once in awhile. So long as humans aren't involved.
I understand if there were more failures there'd be less money for big projects -but I think we should take the chance to see if that money would end up being spent on more smaller quicker projects.
We've crashed production probes into Mars, we've burned astronauts alive, we've had the supposedly "safe" options like Boeing's Starliner have fundamental problems even making it to orbit. Space has always been this way.
Starship's more akin to taking the Bell X-1 up for a spin than flying a 787 around, for the time being. Problems are expected at this point in the program, or we'd be sending people on them already.
On one side we are talking about how the "space industry" is most moving slowly and how spacex is doing great things.
On the other side we are saying that this is good enough for nasa (who is the establishment when it comes to space) and yolo bro.
On one side we are defending nasa because priorities, but on the other side we're cheering on spacex who is ultimately sucking at the big fat government tit.
i'm not sure anyone is aiming at burning people alive and just because it happened does not make it a justification moving forward.
Shuttle was 1.6 billion a launch. This is gonna be 100 million a lunch even if you let the booster blow up every time.
This test is in line with how every new rocket is developed. You really need to Google the 50s and 60s of space flight and see how many rockets were lost in those days.
Yet they still got to the moon.
If you want to take the stance that any test is a success that's fine but remember this depends on what your definition of success is.
The other thing to keep in mind is that past success is not always a good predictor of future success.
Objectively, this test successfully demonstrated the water deluge system, an intact launch pad, all engines on the first and second stage igniting and staying lit, stage separation, hot staging, and a long burn nearly to orbital speeds. That's a pretty good list of ticked boxes.
They very openly stated they didn't necessarily expect it to get all the way to splashdown. You can argue that's PR, but their history has objectively been one of incremental progress (again, see Falcon 9's landing attempts) via repeat testing.
Personally, I'd consider a mission failed if a) it carries a real payload it's supposed to get somewhere and doesn't, b) it breaks due to a previously known issue, or c) it breaks sooner than the last test. I'd also consider it entirely fine to have "reach goals" in a test.
They went longer, faster, further, and more successfully than the first test. I'm happy calling that a win, and I suspect SpaceX will as well.
It does not matter you call it a win if you are not respecting other opinions that this is a fail.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/what-nasa-wants-to-see...
> "Tomorrow is a test and we’re going to learn a lot either way," Lisa Watson-Morgan, who manages NASA's Human Landing System program, told Ars in an interview this week. "We’d love to see it go off perfectly, but frankly, if it doesn’t, it’s still going to be a great learning event, and it still will give us progression on the schedule for the different flight tests, and then we’ll know the areas we need to more deeply penetrate.”
Every launch where more is nominal for longer is new territory and an achievement.
It was a resounding success.
And if you go look at NASA during the Space Race era of the 60s, they blew up plenty of ships.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/USAF_ICB...
Blowing up lots of rockets to figure out how not to blow up rockets is traditional rocket development. The "get everything perfect the first time so it never blows up even once" tactic is forced on NASA because Congress is dumb.
Or just take a look at "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster".
I thought everyone here knew about this. Every software bug is a failure. Going through and squashing every one is the path to success.
What an odd thing to say. Are you suggesting that Starship is next-level when compared to Saturn V?
Hehe. I guess people nowadays lack any sort of historical perspective.
Starship is more then 2x as powerful as Saturn V. Starship is also designed for reusable.
So even if you consider it non-reusable its still much more powerful then Saturn V.
If 2x the size and major new features isn't 'next level' then what is?
It seems you are missing current perspective and glorifying the past.
True. The rest of the industry also can’t seem to muster a reusable orbital class first stage. So far evidence is with spacex. Their RUDy development seems to have born fruit before.
A failure would have been scattering the pad all over again, and not getting to stage sep. Or worse.
Optimistic/Pessimistic does not really matter.
By this criteria, I would say failure/partial failure or partial sucess. There is no way this was a success.
Also, everyone can call this what they want. The thing that grinds my gears is not respecting that other people do have a different opinion.
Years before Covid, my neighbor had an "opinion" that vaccines were unnecessary/dangerous, so she wouldn't get vaccinated. Just like you, she said "you have your opinion, and I have mine." In today's woke culture, that makes me the bad guy for not respecting her opinion, mansplaining, etc.
But opinions don't trump facts. At least, they shouldn't
also, as cool as "facts" are it really bothers me when people take their opinion and present it as fact or as truth. you see: the truth is something abstract and usually, not always, but usually there is a matter of interpretation and a gradient of the truth. I'm not speaking of well researched things that have mountains of evidence behind them. I'm speaking about people having really strong opinions without understanding the evidence behind it and without understanding the nuances of what applies when. It's really fashionable to shit all over other people when they don't agree to a T with what you are saying but IMHO it's the wrong thing to do - being curious and actually unpacking what they are trying to say if they can have a civilized discussion and logic actually works with them is the way to go.
Pretty similar to how a lot of NASA's missions have requirements like lasting 90 days on Mars. If that is reached, the mission was a success, even though they obviously don't just stop having objectives after that.
Not only it is not success, it is a massive failure when compared to the magic technology from the 60's.
Space industry is the only industry that is moving backwards, it seems.
https://youtu.be/w9OsSN2kJrk?si=FZ30c9jmkMOmYo3n&t=180
Certainly doesn't sound like the folks who built the thing thought it was a failure.
You can call a duck an eagle all day long but that does not make it an eagle.
Even the Administrator of NASA is happy with the progress. [1]
Objectively, it was a success.
[1] https://twitter.com/SenBillNelson/status/1725875275769028836