SpaceX Starship Explodes On Test Stand (washingtonpost.com) 119
SpaceX's Starship exploded on its test stand in South Texas ahead of an engine test, marking the fourth loss of a Starship this year. "In three previous test flights, the vehicle came apart or detonated during its flight," notes the Washington Post. No injuries were reported but the incident highlights ongoing technical challenges as SpaceX races to prove Starship's readiness for deep-space travel. From the report: In a post on the social media site X, SpaceX said that the explosion on the test stand, which could be seen for miles, happened at about 11 p.m. Central time. For safety reasons, the company had cleared personnel from around the site, and "all personnel are safe and accounted for," it said. The company is "actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials," the post continued. "There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue."
Starship comprises two stages -- the Super Heavy booster, which has 33 engines, and the Starship spacecraft itself, which has six. Before Wednesday's explosion, the spacecraft was standing alone on the test stand, and not mounted on top of the booster, when it blew up. The engines are test-fired on the Starship before it's mounted on the booster. SpaceX had been hoping to launch within the coming weeks had the engine test been successful. [...] In a post on X, Musk said that preliminary data pointed to a pressure vessel that failed at the top of the rocket. You can watch a recording of the explosion on YouTube.
SpaceX called the incident a "rapid unscheduled disassembly," which caught the attention of Slashdot reader hambone142. In a story submitted to the Firehose, they commented: "I worked for a major computer company whose power supplies caught on fire. We were instructed to cease saying that and instead say the power supply underwent a 'thermal event.' Gotta love it."
Starship comprises two stages -- the Super Heavy booster, which has 33 engines, and the Starship spacecraft itself, which has six. Before Wednesday's explosion, the spacecraft was standing alone on the test stand, and not mounted on top of the booster, when it blew up. The engines are test-fired on the Starship before it's mounted on the booster. SpaceX had been hoping to launch within the coming weeks had the engine test been successful. [...] In a post on X, Musk said that preliminary data pointed to a pressure vessel that failed at the top of the rocket. You can watch a recording of the explosion on YouTube.
SpaceX called the incident a "rapid unscheduled disassembly," which caught the attention of Slashdot reader hambone142. In a story submitted to the Firehose, they commented: "I worked for a major computer company whose power supplies caught on fire. We were instructed to cease saying that and instead say the power supply underwent a 'thermal event.' Gotta love it."
I didn't realize that we'd literally repeat it (Score:2)
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Santayana, George (1905) Reason in Common Sense
Re: (Score:2)
As opposed to people who keep repeating “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”?
Re: (Score:2)
Found the idiot...
Re: (Score:2)
Durrr hurr hurr good "point"
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And given that most people do not remember the past ...
Re: (Score:2)
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Santayana, George (1905) Reason in Common Sense
History might not repeat, but it certainly fucking rhymes.
Re: Nazis and exploding rockets (Score:1)
This is efficiency! (Score:5, Funny)
SpaceX has gone from blowing them up during flight to blowing them up on the test stand before they're even fully assembled for flight! PROGRESS!
Re:This is efficiency! (Score:4, Funny)
Well, it's safer for the people under the flight path I guess...
Re:This is efficiency! (Score:4, Funny)
SpaceX has gone from blowing them up during flight to blowing them up on the test stand before they're even fully assembled for flight! PROGRESS!
Even more efficiently, Elon replied [x.com] on X to a clip of the explosion, "Just a scratch."
Re: (Score:2)
Is this where some dolt comes along trying to convince everyone that this is a "successful flight" because they got some data like the last three times they created rapidly expanding clouds of plasma, superheated gases, and bits of metal?
SpacEx Starship (Score:2)
Possible Weld Issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Being that the launch window to Mars is 7 months away, it's more unlikely that Musk is going to send his 5 rockets to crash into Mars.
Re:Possible Weld Issue (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Something in the upper section - NOT the "upper tank" and not the part of the upper section where there are small header tanks - exploded without igniting.
Maybe a downcomer pipe.
That UNignited explosion breached the methane tank, and that did ignite and massively explode.
It will have been instrumented very well and the cause will be quickly found and then a solution quickly implemented.
No biggy.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
No. Something in the upper section - NOT the "upper tank" and not the part of the upper section where there are small header tanks - exploded without igniting.
If we're being pedantic, it deflagrated, not exploded.
Re: Possible Weld Issue (Score:4, Insightful)
No QC not that surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
No biggy.
Buddy left the party without saying goodbye? No biggy.
Roommate ate your last piece of chocolate? No biggy.
Multi-million dollar prototype explodes setting your project back months? Might need to upgrade this one to "ouch".
Re: Possible Weld Issue (Score:2)
Seriously, I think it means a setback of a couple of months. Frustrating but very far from the fatal problem some saddos would like it to be.
Re: (Score:2)
How many launch pads does he have ready?
Re: Possible Weld Issue (Score:2)
Pretty sure they must QC those before installation, so possibly overpressurised due to problem elsewhere.
Compared to all their other challenges, no biggy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Possible Weld Issue (Score:2)
He realised soon after that that steel was better.
Re: (Score:2)
Compare Starship to the Saturn V (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the 1960s, NASA got men to the moon by careful and clever engineering -- not just blowing a snotload of stuff up until they stumbled on something that worked. I suspect that if Mr Musk had been in charge of the Apollo program, we'd still be ducking bits of Saturn V boosters to this day and, at the very best, we might have dumped a lone banana on the lunar surface.
Starship is a bust for so many reasons but one of the primary reasons is that it's built of the wrong stuff -- stainless steel.
As a result of this poor material choice, Starship can't be built light enough to meet its original design objectives because stainless has inferior strength to weight ratio. This means the Starship is either going to be heavy or weak. If it's built weak then we see the type of fuel-line and tank leaks that have been so common because there is significant physical deformation occurring under load. If it's built heavy then the motors will have to be over-driven to get the necessary performance and that means poor reliability and vastly increased risk of catastrophic failure.
Another significant problem with stainless alloys is their COTE (coefficient of thermal expansion). Stainless expands far more than aluminum when heated and that means huge bending stresses are created during re-entry when one side of the craft gets a lot hotter than the other side (despite the thermal shielding). Think of a flying banana -- oh yes, that's right -- maybe that banana inside Starship was the engineers getting the final word -- despite Elon's insistence on stainless steel being used instead of more suitable materials.
Remember, the Space Shuttle (the world's most successful re-usable orbital spacecraft) was made largely of aluminum -- not stainless. Remember also that although stainless has a higher melting point than aluminum, it's not that much higher and still well below the temperatures encountered during orbital re-entry so SpaceX would be far better off focusing on a decent thermal barrier than trying to "brute force" their way through the heat of re-entry.
Nobody else in the rocket industry is using stainless steel and nobody else seems to be having the problems that SpaceX is having with the Starship. All of SpaceX's other craft are built with more conventional materials such as aluminum and composites -- they seem to fly just fine.
Unfortunately, Elon likes stainless "ooohh... shiny!" so I expect this is just another example (like the Cybertruck) where a non-engineer tells good engineers what to do and the outcome is a disaster.
Re:Compare Starship to the Saturn V (Score:5, Interesting)
You're off on this... Aluminum is largely unsuitable for spaceship construction due to its temperature sensitivity and the fact that it makes anything constructed of it unsuitable for thermal cycling. Aluminum, unlike stainless, becomes extremely brittle when it's thermally cycled. It's an almost 5-fold temperature difference (150C to 1500C). That's not a small difference.
It also has additional cost savings over any other forefront material (eg. CF or Ti5) - like 30x for similar capabilities. If cost was no object, inconel would be the clear winner in most regards, but since cost is a significant factor.. We've known (NASA has) since the 50s that SS would be the superior metal used for such things, and here we are.
There is, arguably, nobody else in the space/rocket industry doing what SpaceX is doing, so I'm not sure how you could even have that criticism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lemMFXNXRIg
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't the Saturn 5 constructed of aluminum (and stainless steel in the engines)?
(I am not a rocket scientist, or even close to one.)
Re: (Score:2)
There is, arguably, nobody else in the space/rocket industry doing what SpaceX is doing, so I'm not sure how you could even have that criticism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lemMFXNXRIg
True dat! We haven't had such success since the Soviets were busy blowing up their N1 Moon Rocket. Good times and every bit as successful!
And good to know that the Falcons are made of stainless steel too.
Re:Compare Starship to the Saturn V (Score:4, Informative)
You're off on this... Aluminum is largely unsuitable for spaceship construction due to its temperature sensitivity and the fact that it makes anything constructed of it unsuitable for thermal cycling. Aluminum, unlike stainless, becomes extremely brittle when it's thermally cycled.
Yet, strangely enough, it worked *very* well for the Space Shuttle -- right? In fact, Space Shuttle Discovery flew almost 40 missions -- starship can barely manage one at the moment -- primarily due to structural issues.
Another problem with stainless steel is that it work-hardens *really* quickly when subjected to vibration and cyclic stress caused by physical or thermal forces. Once it hardens it then forms micro-cracks that ultimately result in structural failure. Rockets are very "vibratey" machines so this work-hardening is far more of an issue than any change in temper that might occur in aluminum as a result of thermal cycling.
As for cost... this is supposed to be a *reusable* spaceship right? The cost of its manufacture can be amortized over many, many uses. Others in the rocket industry are using more expensive materials and having great success -- so why is SpaceX cheaping out so badly with predictable results when, even if they used these more expensive alloys, the cost per flight and per Kg delivered would still be significantly lower than that competition?
They're cheaping out so Elon can make (Score:3)
Musk has a pattern of making insane promises the draw it insane amount of attention which generates a lot of hype that he can use to pump his publicly traded companies.
Recently it stopped working because he just kept not delivering on promises, with cybertruck being the final nail in that coffin. That's why he moved into politics so he could secure hundreds of billions of dollars of gove
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
He left the WH because he was hogging the limelight and Trump didn't like it. This is the Trump Show, not the Elon Show.
Elon already turned himself around to kiss ass, but Trump will not forget his lack of loyalty. This tells you two things, Elon is weak, and Trump will definitely try to punish him, because he only ever attacks weak opponents and friendlies.
Re: (Score:2)
Are other rockets using more expensive metals like inconel instead of plain old stainless?
Re: (Score:3)
Do you think Musk told his engineers to fuck off and build a stainless steel rocket anyway?
They have FEA software to simulate rocket stresses and heat flow. If it was wildly impossible it would have been caught in simulation. And btw, we've had stainless steel rockets before ..for example the Atlas rocket (which got around 600 launches under its belt) -- AND was good enough to take astronauts to space in the 60s. I think we advanced a bit since then.
Re: (Score:3)
Wildly impossible does not mean impractical, difficult and error prone.
Do you think Musk told his engineers to fuck off and build a stainless steel rocket anyway?
Oh absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt I believe that Musk tells engineers to fuck off and do as he says. He has a long history of firing people who disagree with him or present him bad news in every company he's ever touched. He did the same thing at Tesla, fired several engineers who told him that it was a bad idea to remove lidar / radar from his vehicles. Congrats, he's now got the only driver assistance system that doesn't wo
Re: (Score:3)
Do you think Musk told his engineers to fuck off and build a stainless steel rocket anyway?
They have FEA software to simulate rocket stresses and heat flow. If it was wildly impossible it would have been caught in simulation. And btw, we've had stainless steel rockets before ..for example the Atlas rocket (which got around 600 launches under its belt) -- AND was good enough to take astronauts to space in the 60s. I think we advanced a bit since then.
Awesome, the continued success of the starship shows Musk is right. Never bet against Elon, he's never had a failure yet. A string of successes that put's mere mortals to shame.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think Musk told his engineers to fuck off and build a stainless steel rocket anyway?
Most definitely. He’s been saying Tesla will have fully autonomous driving for years now. He also said the cyber truck would be able to float but they need a special setting just for going through a car wash. https://www.tesla.com/ownersma... [tesla.com]
With the exception of Twitter (Score:2)
That said he was able to draw a bunch of engineers to SpaceX because he spent a lot of money building up an image of himself as a genius so I think it's possible that there's a bit of a breakdown and the staff that would normally be protecting SpaceX from his incompetence can't always do that. So it's possible the engineers did something stupid a
I believe a lot of engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
It's called a reality distortion field. Steve Jobs had it and for some reason Elon Musk has it and so does Donald trump. I don't understand it because I am more than a little autistic so the kind of charisma tricks those men use just don't work on me. Not because I'm any better of a person or smarter but because I don't relate to humans the way normal humans r
Re: (Score:2)
If it was wildly impossible it would have been caught in simulation.
If this was effective, there would have been no IRL explosions.
All models are wrong, but some are useful.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Back in the 1960s, NASA got men to the moon by careful and clever engineering -- not just blowing a snotload of stuff up until they stumbled on something that worked.
Are you stupid? Do you have any idea how many rockets NASA had explode before they managed to get one to space? DOZENS. You think Elon isn't hiring people who know what the fuck they're doing? No, you don't.. You're another clown with a metric ton of biases who is trying to rewrite history to support his moronic narrative.
Rocket scientists don't come up with success on the first iteration. They come up with a design and test it.. Having a rocket explode during testing isn't a failure, it's how you
Re: (Score:2)
The important distinction though is if this was a "preventable" failure that is due to something the engineering community already knows but was just omitted or done carelessly, or if the failure was indeed due to some new physics or unique application.
But just saying "hey we learned that this didn't work" is only useful if you learned a new thing that didn't work - if instead you had a structural failure because you didn't employ known best practices... that's wasteful.
I don't think we know enough at this
Re: (Score:2)
Are you stupid? Do you have any idea how many rockets NASA had explode before they managed to get one to space? DOZENS.
Do you know how many Saturn V rockets (you know, the one that was used to take men to the moon) failed in flight?
NONE
Not bad, considering there were 17 Apollo missions!
Rocket scientists don't come up with success on the first iteration. They come up with a design and test it.. Having a rocket explode during testing isn't a failure, it's how you learn. You learn what doesn't work. Hopefully you learn why it doesn't work and you try something else. Every rocket the US has ever designed has had multiple failures and explosions during the development phase. Every rocket we've ever developed has had multiple (sometimes dozens) of iterations.
*Some* failures are inevitable -- but what happened to Elon's promises of Starship reaching Mars in 2020 and manned missions landing by 2024? Instead all we've got are fireworks and skies over the Bahamas that look just like the skies over Israel right now -- raining hot metal.
Remember... Elon claims to be an "engineer" and has told us that
Re: (Score:1)
Do you know how many Saturn V rockets (you know, the one that was used to take men to the moon) failed in flight?
NONE
Not bad, considering there were 17 Apollo missions!
17 Apollo missions but only 13 Saturn Vs flew (including Skylab).
One of the earliest Saturn V launches (maybe it was the first?) lost several engines but was considered a success because it still made it to some kind of usable orbit. Apollo 13 came within about second of disintegrating during launch, but fortunately an engine shut down and reduced the hazardous vibrations that were going to tear it apart. Skylab's engines overheated because the interstage didn't separate, but that was due to a piece of Skyl
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I think Muskrat isn't hiring people who know wtf they are doing. Obvious enough by now. The talent left some time ago.
Re: (Score:2)
The blame belongs with the ketamine addict.
Same reason Tesla can't get the self-driving right.
Elon overruled his engineers, stripped out LIDAR and insists it has to work on cameras only.
Re: (Score:2)
Elon overruled his engineers
Don't forget the second-order effects of overruling your engineers' better judgement: your best talent gets frustrated with their work being sabotaged, and quit your company to work for one of your competitors instead.... leaving you with the less-talented engineers who are still willing/forced to put up with your bad ideas. Now you have bad ideas, implemented badly.
Re: (Score:2)
"Back in the 1960s, NASA got men to the moon by careful and clever engineering -- not just blowing a snotload of stuff up until they stumbled on something that worked. "
ROFL
Go to YouTube and search on Early NASA Rocket Failures.
Here is the first one on the list.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Re: Compare Starship to the Saturn V (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
NASA got men to the moon by blowing a snotload of stuff up (see e.g. the combustion instability problems of the F-1 engine, which were solved by trial and error over a large number of iterations). The difference is that they did it all on test stands, before committing to a first flight.
SpaceX decided to go from test stands to flight testing early on, because the hard part of Starship (returning the two stages to land) cannot be tested well on a test stand. It's an approach that has worked for them before (
Re: (Score:2)
I feel bad for your mom... She must be lonely now.
Re: (Score:2)
Lol look at this retard building space ships with chatgpt
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah but stainless steel sounds cool. And if your main goal isn't to launch rockets but to pump stock, even if that stock is just your own personal brand, then using stainless steel is the way to go.
You take being a retard to a whole new level.
Are we talking about the Falcons here? Don't move the goalposts Cultist. We're talking about the Starship. How about regaling us with its record?
But if you wish to crank your yank about the Falcons - yes, they are really good rockets. Starship? Will you volunteer to ride the next launch? Everyone here thinks it is a great idea. Might even get off the launchpad. Musk is going to send one to Mars next year. Assuming it can get off the launchpad.
Re: (Score:2)
SpaceX has achieved approximately 506 successful launches with their Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets as of June 18, 2025. They have launched a total of 1,500 metric tonnes of mass to orbit.
Yeah... using craft that *aren't* made out of stainless steel!
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah... using craft that *aren't* made out of stainless steel!
ULA Atlas V: The Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V rocket, operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), is made of stainless steel.
The Russians/Soviets also utilized stainless steel for various parts of their rockets. It's not a new concept and there's plenty of good reasons to use it. But y'all just a bunch of backseat drivers... Accomplish nothing and criticize those doing something..
It's like y'all think Elon just decreed that he'd be using stainless steel despite his engineers wanting to use someth
Test exposes problem (Score:1)
Re:Test exposes problem (Score:5, Informative)
My taxes paid for his contracts and subsidies. I’m well within my rights to point and laugh.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Test exposes problem (Score:4, Insightful)
You are basically making the cost comparison of using a Gulfstream for a private jet, versus a 747-8LR. Yes, you can use a 747 as a private jet, but it's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars in fuel for each flight.
Nobody is looking to use SLS to put shit in LEO, so quoting costs to LEO is stupid and pointless.
SLS is built to do different stuff, so if you waste it on doing things it wasn't meant to do, it's going to cost more. Congratulations on proving something everyone already knew.
Re: (Score:1)
You are basically making the cost comparison of using a Gulfstream for a private jet, versus a 747-8LR. Yes, you can use a 747 as a private jet, but it's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars in fuel for each flight.
Nobody is looking to use SLS to put shit in LEO, so quoting costs to LEO is stupid and pointless.
SLS is built to do different stuff, so if you waste it on doing things it wasn't meant to do, it's going to cost more. Congratulations on proving something everyone already knew.
No I'm not. I'm making the point that SpaceX made space actually affordable. Prior to SpaceX you had the option of using NASA or the Russians and that was about it... ESO too I suppose, but they weren't much cheaper than NASA.
SLS is the only rocket NASA uses that was built by them, as of now at least. Every other launch method is contracted out. And prior to SpaceX your only real choice for "cheap but reliable" was Russia.
NASA basically existed as a monopoly.. Zero reason for them to constrain cost
Re: (Score:2)
There were other launch providers previous to SpaceX, and they were not NASA. NASA hasn't launched their own satellites in decades, except for very special cases that were carried up by Shuttle.
ULA, and their component companies have been very happy to sell a rocket to anybody that can afford one for quite a bit of time longer than SpaceX has existed.
What the fuck are you even talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps NASA would be more competitive if their budget was on par with SpaceX.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's all make it into a bigger thing than it actually is.
That would be a very insightful post, ... if they were testing the ability for Starship to stand on the platform. This test was an abject failure as it didn't get close to even testing what they wanted to test. The test hadn't actually started.
Re: (Score:3)
Usually you want your test articles to actually make it to the test you really want data from.
That involves them not exploding on the ground during a routine pre-flight static-fire of the engines.
Let's stop making excuses for problems that are clearly problems.
Re: (Score:1)
Well, from what they said, the tank simply didn't hold the pressure.
Filling one with N2 and seeing what happens is the obvious cheap way to do this.
SpaceX chose the very expensive way of blowing everything up after filling the lot with O2 and CH4.
Re: (Score:1)
SpaceX chose the very expensive way of blowing everything up after filling the lot with O2 and CH4.
And Apollo 13 cost NASA billions of dollars and came close to killing the crew because they screwed up the oxygen tank tests.
If SpaceX didn't test the tanks before filling them that's probably retarded. But the Apollo 13 oxygen tanks were fine until someone damaged them with improper testing. It's not inconceivable that someone damaged these tanks after testing and either didn't realize or decided the damage wasn't serious enough to matter.
Reminds me of Robocop 2 (Score:2)
The Starship fun reminds me of that scene in Robocop 2 where they unveiled two failed attempts at a Robocop 2.
Jake Busey unavailable for comment (Score:3)
You just know there are plenty of people who wanted this to happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I want Warner Von Boer out of the picture.
It blew up like Elon did ... (Score:2)
Here's a theory (Score:2)
The good engineers left SpaceX because they don't like the boss anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only a theory at this time. Good for them, who wants to work for a known NAZI...
Space is hard (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
As others have pointed out many times before, stop trying to normalize this nonsense. You don't need catastrophic failures to be able to get to where you need to be, as evidenced by every other vehicle manufacturer.
It is the height of hypocrisy to whale on others for "wasteful government subsidies" while you've literally wasted 100s of millions on launches that should not have gone ahead.
So please, all you
I can't wait to buy a ticket (Score:2)
I'm thinking I can save a lot of money if I only get a one way ticket.
well... (Score:3)
At least it didn't explode on the drawing board
Re: (Score:2)
Does spilling coffee all over the blueprints count?
thermal event (Score:2)
SpaceX rapid prototyping & iterative developme (Score:2)
Sounds like Musk got involved... (Score:2)
As long as he kept out of it, things worked reasonably well. Since he has been firing experts he does not like, not so much anymore. Idiot with money is still an idiot.
Re: Sounds like Musk got involved... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, he got his share of people that would like to suck his dick. Like you, for example.
Exploding ego (Score:2)
Nuff said.
Structural Karma Failure (Score:2)
Re:They will get it to work (Score:4, Insightful)
From there on out it's easy because we more or less shut down NASA. So you can have as many failures as you want because you're the only game in town. We will keep shoveling taxpayer money your way. And any rocket engineer that wants a job has exactly one option unless it's a startup that's never going to get anything off the ground.
Re: (Score:2)
The hardest part is scamming your way to an election with 250 million dollars so that you don't lose your contracts after meddling in a war on the side of the country you're staying in's direct immediate geopolitical opponent.
Really? Seems pretty easy to me, he nailed it on the first go.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The one that sticks out in my mind is when a chunk of the launch pad blew up the rocket because he cut corners on the launch pad.
Musk keeps making promises his brain can't cash and for some reason guys like you keep accepting the bouncing checks over and over and over again. Like somebody else pointed out
Re: They will get it to work (Score:1, Troll)
As usual, you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. The new, more resilient design was already under construction, it just wasn't ready in time for that flight.
Also, NASA didn't have any hand in the design of falcon. At best, they may have provided consultation, which SpaceX would have paid for like everybody else NASA consults for, and is in fact profitable to NASA.
And SpaceX isn't being subsidized. If you really believe they are, then go tell that to the governments of Canada, Australia, all of
Re: They will get it to work (Score:4, Informative)
SpaceX isn't being subsidized.
Yes, it is.
SpaceX bills NASA fat less than NASA has ever even paid for its own in-house launches.
Subsidies do bring your costs down and maybe even the price you charge if that pencils out for you. Of course tech companies always insist on making an immediate profit on each sale. Building market share is never part of the business model.
Re: They will get it to work (Score:2)
If that's true, you should be able to name the dates these subsidies were supposedly issued, and how much was given. So put up or shut up.
This ladies and gentlemen is called sea lioning (Score:3, Informative)
Learn to spot it and he disingenuous pieces of horseshit that use it. You will find they are always always always on the right wing because the right wing doesn't have any good ideas so they have to have bad arguments instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Falcon 1 was privately developed but had it's first 2 launched paid for by DARPA to evaluate new vehicles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
SpaceX spent its own capital to develop and fly its previous launcher, Falcon 1, with no pre-arranged sales of launch services. SpaceX developed Falcon 9 with private capital as well, but did have pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights once specific capabilities were demonstrated. Milestone-specific payments were provided under the Comme
Re: They will get it to work (Score:2)
To be clear, that is deliberate.
If big defense companies hit problems, contracts will head there way to keep them alive.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
The rocket engine is the hardest part and that is now proven and works fine. The second hardest is the re-entry heat shield, and that will get solved. The tank explosion BS is solvable even if it means slightly reducing the payload capacity.
The closest competitor is Stoke Space based in Washington. And LandSpace, based in China. But both of those are 3 to 5 years behind.
We've been doing rocketry for over a hundred years now. The starship is every bit as successful as the Communist N1 Rocket, its many engined predecessor.
You are one of the true faithful, there is apparently no limit to the excuses you'll come up with.
This dog don't hunt. This fruit is a lemon. At least Artemis, the favorite hate target of the cult - made it to to and from space without going kaboom. Your ship can't even make orbit/ . The starship is rapidly disassembling on the ground now, even befo
Re:They will get it to work (Score:5, Insightful)
The engine has a lot of special demands on it. It's a great engine, and it's made big improvements recently, but it's got a way to go before it relights reliably enough. Especially if they want to put humans on it for landing.
If anything, reusable heat shields have proven to be harder than engines, as nobody has designed one that really works well yet, possibly with the exception of the small unmanned X-37.
And that's why these accidents are bad. They're preventing progress on the parts that actually require the most innovation.
Re: They will get it to work (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Who in the "rest of the space industry" has operational reusable rockets like SpaceX Falcon?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"Reusable" might get a red flag in any review by the current American government - and be grounds for a summary rejection.
Re: (Score:2)
Who in the "rest of the space industry" has operational reusable rockets like SpaceX Falcon?
What's that got to do with super heavy lift launch vehicles? You know ... the thing they are trying to build? Put the whataboutism aside and focus on the topic at hand which is who in the "rest of the space industry" has operational super heavy launch vehicles. Answer: Everyone. NASA is on its second already, China has one, the Soviets had one too.
But sure, focus on the small toys being reusable if it makes you feel better about your favourite company