SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
Which is an incremental improvement over the prior attempt. People mock these failures as though they have never built anything and have no concept that any step forward is a win when you are trying to do something that has never been done before. They got the smaller rockets working. It will just take time to get this giant one working.
What aspect of this “has never been done before”? Its a multi-stage rocket (NASA and the Soviets have been doing that for about seventy-ish years and the Nazi scientists we all recruited were doing it for even longer). The main innovations are material choice (which is debatable) and landing a rocket on a pad, which is mostly a function of having good computers.
Space flight is hard. That said, there is a very strong argument for being much less iterative. Especially when the quest for a reusable rocket involves constant spraying of wreckage across oceans and land.
In the respect that they’re trying to get the world’s largest rocket to separate and land itself. You know, be reusable.
Mentioned this in the other branch but:
The Space Shuttle was already a “reusable rocket”. And the Saturn Vs would be recovered and refurbished, where possible. The main issue is that, much like with the space shuttle (and the “Starship” rockets): A LOT of wear and tear occurs during takeoff and re-entry. Reuse involves a LOT of repair and maintenance that often gets short cutted to save money. Which… is what leads to tragedies like Challenger and Columbia.
And I addressed the landing rockets on a pad. It is primarily a function of having MUCH better computers these days. And I was going to talk about how that has already been done but, while checking if Blue Origin also do it, I came up on this
So… it wasn’t even “never been done before” a decade ago.
The big reason why we moved away from the Space Shuttle was… well, mostly Challenger and Columbia. It got that “This is bad technology” juju. But also, the costs of reuse are significant and drastically increase the cost per payload. I’ve read some good articles that argue we could make a MUCH cheaper and MUCH better space plane with modern tech but I am not qualified to assess that.
But… that also applies here. Having a rocket that lands itself is great and significantly reduces damage from recovery (whether it is thumping wrong in the ocean or getting damaged in transit). But that means you need a lot more fuel and a lot more weight for all the advanced maneuvering systems. And as you actually get out of the atmosphere, you now are increasing those costs considerably.
Whereas the old capsule system, while not sexy in the slightest, “works”. Get the payload into space and then, when ready, use a minimal amount of fuel to de-orbit in a controlled manner and deploy a parachute once you aren’t on fire anymore. But the main drawback to that is that the pod itself is incredibly limited in size and scope. With most modern missions expected to dock at a space station this matters a lot less. But I expect a return of a “space plane” design if we ever actually do a crewed mission to Mars.
Yeah but to get from here to a 99.99% reliability is a very very long way
Look at the Falcon rocket history. They started out at a very similar point, though at a smaller scale. And yet now they are comfortably human rated. They have landed the last 171 times in a row without fail, with another one coming this evening to add to that incredible number.
The guy at the helm is a terrible person, but this does not discredit the absolutely insane progress they have made.
Nah, I mock this and I’ve built shit. The fact that musk is failing at stuff we’ve done before is hilarious.
Musk is a twat but the people working at Spacex have shown themselves to be quite competent at what they do.
What do you mean, never been done before?
We had satellites in space 70 years ago.
Delta clipper was pioneering reusable boosters in the 90’s.
SpaceX themselves have been recovering boosters for almost ten years now. They learned nothing from that?
I’m not saying it should work every time out of the gate, but they haven’t even reached orbit yet. And musk himself has said that starship being operational is critical to SpaceX and starlink if they don’t want the companies in serious financial trouble. So, it’s not like they’re taking their sweet time with these as incremental tests.
Fully reusable super-heavy rockets with multiple full stage combustion engines running on Methane have been done before? You mind sharing sources because I can’t find any.
Closest thing I can think of is the Soviet N1 rocket (about 2/3 the thrust of Starship) which the Soviets really struggled with and ended up abandoning, and it wasn’t even close to being reusable.
Didn’t the N1 have a massive launch pad failure that we still don’t know how many people it killed?
You’re comparing the world’s first fully reusable rocket that also happens to be the world’s most powerful operational rocket to old technology? The payload capacity of this vehicle is immense. There is not a single aspect of it that isn’t brand new, from its proportions, engine power cycle, engine amount, construction materials, you can go on almost endlessly.
These incremental tests are what allow them to move at this incredible speed. Traditional rocket development doesn’t take years, it takes decades. You have to consider that this isn’t a government trying to outcompete another one, it’s a private company. They are pushing the envelope with everything they’re doing.
