- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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.
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 why I’m nervous for when they decide to start doing manned flights.
Falcon 9 is the most reliable rocket in the world and it used to explode like this too. It’ll be 5-10 years of successful unmanned flights before anyone rides on this rocket.
And what of worker safety at Space X?
Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk’s rocket company: crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds and one death.
It’s not the rocket or the engineering I’m concerned about, it’s the push to meet deadlines at the expense of safety.
You literally said you were concerned for manned flight in your last comment. So originally it was the rocket and engineering you were concerned about.
I said I was concerned because of the corner cutting, which isn’t an engineering problem
That might’ve been what you intended but it is not what you said. You didn’t bring that up until your 2nd comment.
You’re oh so slightly twisting the dude’s words. What he said was:
This could be expressing concern about the flights themselves, or about something that happens around the time the decision to start doing manned flights is taken - like cutting corners that leads to employees getting injured.
Dude even clarified what he meant, and you’re like “nope, I won’t accept that”?
Was NASA exploding rockets this frequently when they pioneered all of this decades ago? It only took NASA 8 years to go from first entering space to landing on the moon. SpaceX is nowhere close to that and they’ve been launching rockets for 17 years.
Damn you clearly know nothing about space flight history. Tell me, what agency has the most spaceflight deaths? I’ll give you a hint: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents
Damn you clearly know nothing about technological development. Elon stands on the shoulders of all those who gave their lives in the past. He benefits from all the safety regulations.
And still with all of that. The tens of billions of dollars the government hands out to him. And more than twice the time of the Space Race he had accomplished so little. How many successful rockets did NASA develop in that time? A lot more than SpaceX.
Rocket go up Rocket blow up Stonk go up
Different design processes and NASA has to appease Congress who likes to cut funding if a rocket blows up.
But the Design-build-test-break-redesign-etc process that SpaceX uses is cheaper, quicker, and gives more data.
And blows up real good
Look how long it took to develop SLS and how much money was spent, and then how much each launch costs. And the moment Starship is complete SLS will be obsolete.
It took 8 Years AND $25 billions ($248 billions adjusted to today’s dollar value).
For comparison NASA awarded a contract for spacex to develop the Human Landing System, the value of the contract is $2.89 billions.
Exploding rockets is totally common in rocket science. In fact, their mission objective wasn’t even for the rocket to succeed at making it to space. When you put millions of pounds of fuel into a tube and heat it up, there is a lot to take into account. No one has ever launched anything this big, so they are going to have to iterate quite a few times. Even the computer models can’t catch everything. Sometimes it is as stupid as a bad part manufacturer.