this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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I know we all like to hate on Elon around here, but as a space nerd and someone who’s been following SpaceX and the development of Starship pretty closely, I just wanted to give my 2 cents.
While this was a failure, it was certainly very successful in that it performed better than the 1st flight. All 33 engines on the booster performed flawlessly through to MECO, hot staging went well with the ship continuing on and nearly reaching the desired orbital energy. SpaceX’s stated goals are to iterate quickly and fail often. I have no doubt that they will nail this sooner or later.
One last note - SpaceX are still miles ahead of anyone else. The Falcon 9 is still the only orbital class rocket to have successfully landed - and they have done that nearly 250 time now. My point being, it’s easy to laugh and say “haha Elon’s rocket blew up again” but let’s not diminish the accomplishments. SpaceX continues to push the envelope and before long Starship will be carrying humans to the moon. Glory to the workers who are making it happen 🫡
Miles ahead of any other private companies. Decades behind any government funded space program. Turns out trying to turn space flight into a for-profit business is terrible for efficiency.
Which government space programs have landed and re-used rockets, let alone done it 250 times? That has brought down costs immensely. And Starship is literally the most powerful rocket ever built.
Now, it is important to note that most of the current success of SpaceX can be attributed to government funding (i.e. NASA contracts). But to say they are decades behind doesn’t even make sense.
Space shuttle and X-37s technically qualify as the government landing rockets and re-using them, also DC-X, the first upright landing rocket.
Space shuttles are also obscenely expensive