this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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One of these things is not like the others. Falcon 9 is the most successful and impressive rocket ever built.
Replace Falcon with Starliner. Boeing is big enough to fuck up twice.
Did you mean Starship? That thing has like a 50% chance of exploding on landing last I knew
Pretty sure they meant Boeing Starliner, which is currently docked to the ISS but whose return to earth is delayed because of several hydrogen leaks and faulty manoeuvring thrusters. They've tested the thrusters since docking and only 4 of the 5 worked.
SpaceX Starship on the other hand is a test vehicle. It's not meant to explode of course but these things are expected from time to time. SpaceX go for more of a "throw things at the wall and see what sticks" approach. It looks like they don't know what they're doing but they really do, Falcon9 is the most successful rocket ever built after all
Starship’s last launch had two soft landings, they were just over the water which leads to exploding. That’s as good as can be expected.
The return is delayed because they decided to run a lot of extra experiments on their experimental capsule.
I'm not saying it's not fucked-up. The extra experiments are all because there's a lot of stuff that must be fixed or else they'll get a really pissed-off customer. But it's not just stuck there because it can't return.
They lose the ability to claim experimental when it has passengers (and in my opinion also since it is not doing anything particularly innovative... It is "just" a capsule). We dont risk astronauts like that. Spaceflight is risky enough as is.
And the traditional space companies (like boeing) spend so long on design and engineering and testing specifically so that things go mostly right the first time. This is now the third launch and its still having issues despite now risking crew. And that is with several years between launches. Its not a good look for boeing here if they cant get this capsule absolutely rock solid.
Wait, what?
No, sorry, I wasn't talking about this one, that apparently I completely missed on the news.
Tbf, starship isn't finished yet, if it were pretending to be a product ready for public use and was blowing up customer's payloads, that'd be a fair point, but if you're developing something by just flying it knowing it will probably fail, and then fixing whatever causes the failures so that it gets farther next time, until it eventually goes all the way, then being criticized for the test flights failing isn't really fair unless you aren't making any progress with them, which starship seems to have been making.
The last 2 launches have gotten to (near) orbit just fine, although I think the payload door failed on one of them iirc. If they were carrying payloads they probably would have been able to deliver them (I don’t think they have made payload fairings for things other than starlink yet though)
It's still in testing though, there are people literally stranded in space right now thanks to starliner. What do you consider a bigger fuck up?
On the last test flight a few weeks ago both the booster and ship did powered soft landings in the ocean (even with the ship’s flap melting a bit)
The last launch really was incredible. It managed to land relatively softly and pull off all of the flips while it’s fins were literally falling apart. Obviously the fins weren’t supposed to be falling apart, but it’s crazy that it still landed.
Starship is in testing. Where other space companies spend years to decades testing their designs in simulations, wind- and plasma tunnels with gigantic costs (Blue Origin is developing New Glenn since at least 2013), SpaceX is building test articles and just fly them. Those test articles are not the final version of the rocket and they are not meant to complete an entire flight flawlessly. They are akin to alpha builds in software development, designed to test features, not to be a finished product.
Jfc You're dumb.
Put Google’s AI projects in the 4th box
Related, but I'd say Falcon Heavy is. Especially if you add in the dual booster landings.
One of these things is not like the others. Falcon 9 have liked anyone yet.