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Both the booster and ship have been destroyed. SpaceX can keep claiming these RUDs are 'fine' and 'we're getting data', but the rest of the industry does not consider it normal or a "success." 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.
The industry laughed it up as Falcon 9 failed landing repeatedly. ( https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ ) Then they shifted to “ok but do it 10x”. They aren’t laughing now. 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.
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> I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo Careful what you wish for. The Saturn test program peaked at 3 tests / year (unless you want to count the separately tested launch escape system for the crew capsule), and the fully stacked Saturn V was only tested twice (in 1967 and 1968) before crewed missions. For all its speed, Apollo was not a SpaceX-style rapid iteration program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apo…
Tortoise and hare, perhaps. Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit. Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in 1969 - with 60's tech.
- Starship got just below orbit - Booster destroyed during hot staging - SpaceX reporting that destruct system fired on upper stage towards end of burn all in all a pretty good result: clean launch and separation, good performance on the booster during ascent (no engine mishaps this time)
Below orbit is a strange way to put it. Orbit is more speed then height. Google says it was going 1,400 mph when it was lost. Orbital speed is around 17,600 miles per hour. The goal was something just under orbital speed. Not that this wasn't totally amazing. Hopefully the launch pad wasn't damaged and they can crunch the data and have another test that gets further soon.
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> I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo Careful what you wish for. The Saturn test program peaked at 3 tests / year (unless you want to count the separately tested launch escape system for the crew capsule), and the fully stacked Saturn V was only tested twice (in 1967 and 1968) before crewed missions. For all its speed, Apollo was not a SpaceX-style rapid iteration program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apo…
Tortoise and hare, perhaps. Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit. Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in 1969 - with 60's tech.
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Of course there is. You need to collect a certain amount of information before you get it working. If the test collects a good amount of information, it's a success, even if the rocket explodes. It would have been a failure if they didn't get any further than their last launch.
It’s not hard to collect information. And you really think they wouldn’t spin this as a success, if they didn’t get further than the last launch? The problem is, there’s a lack of humility, and no one knows what it’s like to be humble anymore.
Also in my experience the least humble people are the ones lecturing others about their lack of humility.
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It was probably self destructed by the range safety officer if things were going south.
Just want to add another comment in here that there is no manual termination, they are using a fully automatic flight termination system.
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Small correction, I think. The booster appeared to survive hot staging fine. It went through quite a bit of it's flip back maneuver. It was awesome to watch. There were some interesting activations of engines in the booster engine ring at that point. It's unclear to me if that was anticipated as an offset subset was what was desired for the off axis maneuver, or things were degrading at that point. And then it blowed…
It was probably self destructed by the range safety officer if things were going south.
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Tortoise and hare, perhaps. Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit. Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in 1969 - with 60's tech.
To be fair, Apollo also had government funding to the tune of approximately 2.5% of GDP. Starship would probably go a bit faster too with an annual budget of half a trillion.
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Tortoise and hare, perhaps. Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit. Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in 1969 - with 60's tech.
To be fair, Apollo also had government funding to the tune of approximately 2.5% of GDP. Starship would probably go a bit faster too with an annual budget of half a trillion.
NASA's slow but meticulous approach has had a few failures, but also incredible successes such as the sky crane martian rover landing - got to get it right first time, tough to move fast and break things when the test environment is 100 million miles away!
Edit: Same goes for 1969's lunar lander - had to work first time.