I think the detractors are viewing the entire event from the very prevalent modern standard for risk aversion. Burt Rutan discusses that idea in one of his online talks and has the opinion that we are, to some degree, paralyzing progress by refusing to accept what once would have been considered acceptable risk. This is especially true in cutting edge technologies. I think Rutan and Musk might have a similar opinion on this.

I don't understand the vitriol of people who are fighting mad about the Starship "failure". First off, it was an obsolete machine according to Musk and its only purpose was to be expended in furtherance of data collection. In interviews before the launch, he almost seemed like he was happy for it to blow up if he could just get it out of his way so he could move on to the next version. It was obviously un-manned, so light that firecracker and let's see what happens!

Now we have people acting like it's the end of the world because the rocket launch got dust on them...really??? Give me a break! I'm glad the Wright brothers didn't have to contend with a bunch of Karens bitching about how they were disturbing the sea gulls and destroying the sand dunes.

Indeed


Think folks are far too obsessed with the false god of “safety”

[youtube]https://youtu.be/_WhXU07JJ0s[/youtube]

Yes, only the center group of nine engines gimbal.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/kOscxXiDx9A[/youtube]

The idea to go electric was to make the system less complex and to remove an otherwise unnecessary system. They already have a robust electric system on the booster to support the grid fins and other booster functions. Building it out a little to run the engine gimbaling isn't as complicated as adding a hydraulic system.

Comparing the Raptor engines to the Merlins is not a fair comparison for a few reasons. The Merlin is a simpler, open cycle engine and of course is much less powerful. I think though, that the starting issues stem from the full flow staged combustion cycle being finicky at startup. Has this been resolved? There's no telling without further testing.

One of the best suggestions I've heard is that NASA should provide test stand availability at Stennis to SpaceX. They can then test a superheavy booster on a stand with a real flame diverter, trench, and water deluge system. That would go a long way to demonstrating the reliability of the Raptor or lack thereof, while measuring the load they put on the infrastructure when they're all running.

I don’t see vitriol here, but we’re not all Elon’s fanboys either. And Elon is way, way past blowing up firecrackers in the back yard. Real humans are going to be riding those things soon.

NASA used to go fast and sometimes break things. Then they had Apollo 1 and Challenger.

I'm a fanboy. Not even ashamed.
And while I think they're concept of "its time to launch now" totally works for me and the way I think, some good arguments have been made that a bit more effort might have led to an even better outcome.

In other news:
There is a Falcon 9 launch in about an hour today.

And tonight another Falcon Heavy launch and I'm predicting the loss of all three boosters on this one.

This is beyond a "risk", this is deliberately dong something you know will very likely fail. So likely, in fact, that you are already building a replacement for the thing that will fail (the launch stand deflector), and you've never actually gotten all the engines to start at once.

My analogy is Boeing's very first 747 test flight and they decide to use only 3 engines because the 4th one won't start. No one here would call that an acceptable risk.


Instead, SpaceX might get paralyzed by political and regulatory oversight because they have lost people's trust that they are acting with sufficient care.

Risk is not just technical, but political. Musk has a big blind spot to that.


It shows a breakdown of culture and process inside SpaceX that challenges the previous notion that they are doing the right thing to push the boundaries. This test makes them look like amateurs.


The loss of the rocket is not an issue, that's fine. This isn't about the rocket itself, it is more about the way SpaceX is making decisions.


If the use case was that trivial, why do it at all? It now means the next launch will be months delayed due to both technical and political reasons.

Sometimes to go fast you have to go slow.

Mike C.

Stennis is an engine test stand. I've only seen it test one engine at a time.

Very unlikely to have the capacity for a Super Heavy 33 engine test. The booster wouldn't fit on the stand, for one thing. And how would you get the booster there?

SpaceX has their own Raptor test stand.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2022/01 ... se-update/

They have done many, many tests of Raptor there.

A test stand isn't exactly like the booster, though, so they need to get the booster to light all engines at once and go to full throttle on the stand.

Mike C.

The analogy of the 747 is not a good one. First off, the 747 had a human crew, Starship does not. Secondly, Boeing supposedly had so much invested in the prototype 747 that if it were lost, the entire business could have well folded. That is not the case with Starship. I think the choice with this rocket was to launch it and learn what they could from it or park it out in the rocket garden as a lawn ornament.

If the use case was that trivial, why do it at all? Because there was vast amounts of test data that could be gleaned by launching it. I would think that the case of “you don’t know what you don’t know” or unknown gaps in knowledge must be huge in such a ground breaking endeavor. There was never going to be an outcome that involved recovering anything from this mission except knowledge and I’m confident that they will have learned a massive amount once the event is fully understood.

It just seems so cool to think of them moving a Booster or Starship from TX to Florida by just flying it there...

I know I know the booster can't land without its chopsticks but anyway you get the idea.

Ummm... they blew up falcons. Then they blew them up landing them. Then they did satellite launches, then cargo missions to the space station, then crewed nasa missions. Now they carry civilians to the space station. Now they launch them every 4 or 5 days. Now they are so reliable they are boring.

They blew up starships spacecrafts, then they landed one. Now they've blown up their first super heavy booster with starship stack. They'll likely blow up another one. Then maybe another, then they won't.

I used to be a detractor too, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

This is all fine. The Starships blowing up on landing are fine. Not an issue. Those tests were attempts at doing something they thought would work but didn't. The scale of the risk was quite low, the Starship was only partially fueled, for example.

The OFT launch was a test where they knew it wouldn't work. The stakes are much higher due to the amount of energy in such a vehicle, perhaps 10 or 20 times what the Starship landing tests were. It's a bomb, a really big one.


Throwing concrete boulders 1/2 mile away from the launch is not acceptable. They crossed the line with that. They knew in advance this was likely, so much so they didn't try full throttles on the static test, and they were already building an upgrade to handle this case. It was just dumb luck a piece of concrete didn't smash into the side of the rocket and set off a pad explosion of huge proportion.

There is a difference between trying something you think might work and one where you are sure it won't, and it comes with very high risk.

My hope is that this episode changes the culture and behavior at SpaceX, not against taking risks, but taking the right risks, the ones that actually help the program make progress.

Mike C.

The next year or two will show if they are making good gambles. Blowing up rockets is fine, depending on how long it takes to have the next one ready

It's not fine to me. It's not how I would choose to spend the checks I wrote two weeks ago.

We know the destructive power of rocket engines and what they do to concrete and steel. We've had this data for more than 60 years!

Why are we learning this all over again???

What a waste.

My guess is it was more important to Musk/Tesla to fly the rocket than to protect the pad. Tesla owns both, so no harm, no foul.