Science SPACEX "Starship" explodes shortly after launch

SPACEX​

"Starship" explodes shortly after launch​

The unmanned "Starship" giant rocket of the US space company SpaceX has exploded during its first test flight. The largest and most powerful rocket ever built took off on Thursday from the SpaceX spaceport Starbase in Boca Chica in the US state of Texas. However, just over three minutes after launch, the rocket detonated, live footage showed.​

Online since today, 3:41 p.m. (Update: 3:57 p.m.)

At that point, the first booster stage called "Super Heavy" should have separated from the "Starship" space shuttle. SpaceX spoke on Twitter of a "rapid unplanned breakup prior to stage separation." "Teams will continue to evaluate data and work toward our next flight test," tech billionaire Elon Musk's company added. The launch was delayed by a few minutes: the countdown had been briefly interrupted to check some more details. Afterwards, the launch was released after all. Actually, the "Starship" of the private space company SpaceX of tech billionaire Elon Musk should have already taken off on Monday for a first short test flight. But that was postponed shortly before the planned launch because of a problem with a valve.

Enormous setback
The "Starship" rocket system - consisting of the roughly 70-meter-long "Super Heavy" booster and the roughly 50-meter-long upper stage, also called "Starship" - is intended to enable manned missions to the moon and Mars in the future. The "Starship" system is in itself designed so that the spacecraft and rocket can be reused after returning to Earth. The explosion, however, is an enormous setback for the initiative. The U.S. space agency NASA has selected "Starship" to fly humans to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years in the Artemis 3 mission at the end of 2025. Even flights to Mars should be possible with the rocket.

First attempt briefly halted
The launch of the 120-meter-high rocket from SpaceX's Starbase spaceport in Boca Chica was stopped on Monday less than ten minutes before the planned ignition. As a kind of dress rehearsal, however, the countdown continued until ten seconds before the originally planned launch time. The reason given for the abort was a technical problem with the pressure equalization on the most powerful space rocket ever built. Musk wrote on Twitter, apparently a valve had frozen. However, he said SpaceX had "learned a lot" from the launch attempt. It was only in February that almost all of the rocket's first stage engines had successfully ignited for the first time during a test in Boca Chica. Musk then declared that the 31 engines ignited in the test were "enough to reach orbit".

Explosion after first landing
Apart from the size and the associated possibility of transporting large loads, the reusability of all rocket components pursued by SpaceX is another central element of the "Starship" program. The declared goal is to significantly reduce the cost of operating spacecraft. SpaceX reported the first successful landing of a prototype in May 2021. Shortly thereafter, the explosion of the rocket made headlines. It was the third explosion within a few months - yet Musk remained convinced that the "Starship" rocket would soon be "safe enough" to transport people.

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Private moon orbit with billionaire and artists
Since last year, SpaceX has been trying to launch its spacecraft into orbit for the first time. At the beginning of the year, Musk had initially set a launch date of February or March - but at the same time made this dependent on the further course of testing. The schedule will be missed by at least a few weeks. A first private space mission is also planned for this year. The Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa recently announced his intention to circumnavigate the moon in a "starship" together with eight artists. The moon will then also be the destination of a mission pursued jointly with NASA.

Central role for NASA moon program
NASA is currently planning to use "Starship" as a landing module in its Artemis program in 2025 at the earliest. The rocket is significantly larger and more powerful than NASA's SLS rocket, which the space agency plans to use to put astronauts into orbit around the moon from 2024.​

After several weeks in space, the unmanned "Orion" capsule of NASA's Artemis 1 lunar mission returned to Earth in December​

According to NASA plans, the "Starship" mission is dependent on the progress of the Artemis-2 mission. After the Artemis-1 mission, which ended in December with the return of an unmanned Orion space capsule to Earth, a manned orbit of the moon is now on the agenda. The next step will be to bring astronauts to the moon again with the "Starship". NASA put the last humans on the moon in 1972 with the Apollo 17 mission. The USA was the only country to put twelve astronauts on the moon with the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972.

Space suits ready
Artemis 3 will be much more complex, according to NASA, combining the SLS "Orion" system with spacecraft built and flown by SpaceX. The NASA plan calls for a four-person "Orion" crew to dock in space with a SpaceX lander that will carry two astronauts to the lunar surface for nearly a week.

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According to NASA, an orbital fuel depot and a space tanker are required in addition to the Starship. The new space suits developed for the mission in collaboration with Axiom Space were unveiled by NASA in mid-March. In the "Starship" program, the moon is only the first stopover on the first manned mission to Mars, which Musk has already announced for 2029.
red, ORF.at/Agencies​

Source (German)

 

[MadStan]

It's not that it blew up that is overly the concern, it is the fact that this is the second launch of the ship and it has blown up, twice specifically, and in this instance even after separation both units blew up which is very bad. This specific ship is supposed to be carrying the most valuable and important cargo probably in the history of mankind and the failure rate even on testing needs to be lower than this. It also is likely to hold nuclear reactors that will be turned on once in space, so failure is not really an option.

NASA isn't going to give it a thumbs up because it eventually flies once without blowing up, and they launched both rockets believing that they would both make it, and neither did, and it reveals a serious flaw in the design overall.

This reminds me of the N1 rocket and Saturn V - both rockets on-par with the Starship. Saturn V never blew up - ever, and the N1 always blew up.

The marvel is not in the size of the rocket, because a rocket can be scaled up fairly easily without much change in reliability, but Starship's design is to have a higher-than-normal Payload to fuel ratio as part of it's design and I fear the shortcuts to allow the fuel-to-weight ratio in the structural integrity are simply, too great.

It is reminding me of German engineering versus Chinese Engineering. The German's would take the calculation of a bolt, study the characteristics of the metal and give its final design a 2:1 failure ratio so the Bolt could take 200% of intended forces. Whereas the Chinese wanting to save metal, would built a bolt to fail and keep adding a little to it until they saw it not fail under normal conditions. The Chinese bolt is always smaller and cheaper, but is prone to stress and failure under varying loads. So...if you over tighten a German bolt it won't break, but the Chinese one will.

They are going to need to reevaluate this beast from the top down and accept they can not shortcut the structure for the sake of an extra 20-40 tons to escape velocity.

The problem is not the size of the rocket, it is the ratio aspect they are attempting to bend, and one success will not ear mark this ship as a safe option.

 

[teriyakiburns]

I just want working rockets and pissing billions of dollars up the wall for explosions isn't getting me that.

You have working rockets in falcon and falcon heavy, which suffered similar setbacks during their development. All these complaints don't seem to take into account how fundamentally the orbital launch space has changed, and just how cheap launches are now, thanks to spacex blowing up a few of those rockets.

 

[Not A Bunny]

I don't get what's so difficult. The richest man in the world, with all of the technology in the world available at his finger tips can't make rocket fly

Yet a bunch of old nerds in the 60's with little help from computers, using cobbled together war-time Nazi tech manager to get three men to the moon.

The fuck you doing Elon? Henry Ford is looking down from Heaven and laughing.

The less-nuanced take here is that science and engineering tend to work on the backs of failures and people tend to forget that the process isn't perfect and mistakes are made.

The more-nuanced take is that with electronics, manufacturing, and the simple, stupid politics behind building large-scale projects, you tend to introduce a lot more rot than people were willing to put up with back then. And Elon might be the big man in this situation, but he is one person among many people doing the work.

Engineers back then? They didn't have a fancy four-year degree. They grew up on their own curiosity and improvising the fuck out of shit, which is where innovation comes from.

These days, there's a system in place. Given Elon, I'm not sure how beholden he is to that system, but even then his pool of engineers comes from the same one everyone else comes from: most people spend four years getting a fancy-schmancy degree but never actually put their hands on anything where results are required and lives might be at stake. Kids these days get the degree because "science is cool, y'all", and you know this because of their NASA t-shirt they got from Target.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

The less-nuanced take here is that science and engineering tend to work on the backs of failures and people tend to forget that the process isn't perfect and mistakes are made.

The more-nuanced take is that with electronics, manufacturing, and the simple, stupid politics behind building large-scale projects, you tend to introduce a lot more rot than people were willing to put up with back then. And Elon might be the big man in this situation, but he is one person among many people doing the work.

Engineers back then? They didn't have a fancy four-year degree. They grew up on their own curiosity and improvising the fuck out of shit, which is where innovation comes from.

These days, there's a system in place. Given Elon, I'm not sure how beholden he is to that system, but even then his pool of engineers comes from the same one everyone else comes from: most people spend four years getting a fancy-schmancy degree but never actually put their hands on anything where results are required and lives might be at stake. Kids these days get the degree because "science is cool, y'all", and you know this because of their NASA t-shirt they got from Target.

I appreciate the reply and you raise some interesting questions.

My post was more of a tongue-in-cheek critique of how people in the 60's were technologically superior to where we are today, relative to the technology that we have at our disposal. In the same way that the Victorians invented some of the most forward-thinking designs, mechanisms and ideas since the Roman and Greek empires.

You raised a fantastic point about how all of the engineers come from the same background. Whereas they used to be experts in their field through autistic levels of dedication and super-human genius. It's possibly the greatest point I've read on this site in months, if not all year.

 

[Not A Bunny]

I appreciate the reply and you raise some interesting questions.

My post was more of a tongue-in-cheek critique of how people in the 60's were technologically superior to where we are today, relative to the technology that we have at our disposal. In the same way that the Victorians invented some of the most forward-thinking designs, mechanisms and ideas since the Roman and Greek empires.

You raised a fantastic point about how all of the engineers come from the same background. Whereas they used to be experts in their field through autistic levels of dedication and super-human genius. It's possibly the greatest point I've read on this site in months, if not all year.

Thanks, glad to hear that my cynical and near autistic ramblings about life in general make sense to someone.

Tangential to your point, identity politics surrounding hard science fields are simply bizarre to hear from the people who are actually engineers.

People say that "diversity means other points of view", well, if you have a black lesbian educated at MIT, she's probably going to have the same viewpoint as every Asian guy about engineering a thing. It's why we used to have focus groups: because engineers can talk to each other all day long about how a thing should work, that they more than often than not fail to consider how people who aren't engineers would make it work.

That and other countries that don't care about identity politics will be eating the lunch of the US in terms of innovation, if they aren't already.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Thanks, glad to hear that my cynical and near autistic ramblings about life in general make sense to someone.

Tangential to your point, identity politics surrounding hard science fields are simply bizarre to hear from the people who are actually engineers.

People say that "diversity means other points of view", well, if you have a black lesbian educated at MIT, she's probably going to have the same viewpoint as every Asian guy about engineering a thing. It's why we used to have focus groups: because engineers can talk to each other all day long about how a thing should work, that they more than often than not fail to consider how people who aren't engineers would make it work.

That and other countries that don't care about identity politics will be eating the lunch of the US in terms of innovation, if they aren't already.

The whole thing has my almonds jogging.

The west and the universities have courses written by a team of people, who create carbon-copies of said team by writing the course in a way that people have to learn how to think like the originators, funnelling all thought and experience down to a very, very small scale, rather than teaching students the fundamentals and then allowing them to figure out shit on their own.

As for the diversity shit, not one second of any STEM field should be spent worrying about society, politics or any of other crap. They're there to be human computers and problem solvers, to push our race forward in term of innovation, not to be a soap-box for social-psychology groups.

 

[Not A Bunny]

The whole thing has my almonds jogging.

The west and the universities have courses written by a team of people, who create carbon-copies of said team by writing the course in a way that people have to learn how to think like the originators, funnelling all thought and experience down to a very, very small scale, rather than teaching students the fundamentals and then allowing them to figure out shit on their own.

As for the diversity shit, not one second of any STEM field should be spent worrying about society, politics or any of other crap. They're there to be human computers and problem solvers, to push our race forward in term of innovation, not to be a soap-box for social-psychology groups.

This thing gets on my nerves as well, but I should really step back from it after saying this:

We - western society - turned engineering into a field of prestige and status for reasons too complicated to get into. Not a field of blue-collar grunts actually DOING things. It's why "learn to code" became a thing: because you could obtain status for doing little more than sitting in front of your computer and not doing things that are dirty and dangerous, at the very least time-consuming enough to destroy your social life.

No one does things for love anymore, they do it for status. Tie it into an unrelated system that will give you status based on your identity, and suddenly you have a world full of people that aren't competent engineers, but damn it, they're human compilers when it comes to the uncomplicated math surrounding status.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

Looks like Musk will have to actually do actual work if he wants to keep robbing the taxpayer for gibs.

 

[namelesstacotruck]

What a typically stupid response. If I was born with a silver spoon up my ass and sucked the right cock I too could have billions to incinerate in fruitless exercises. The fact is, Musk was born this way and he is blowing billions on bullshit and you are moronic in not seeing that so much value is being wasted for one nutjobs ego.

Gotcha. So somebody who hasnt even shipped a funko pop much less a rocket ship is totally convinced you can build something nobody has done before without iterative proof of concepts. IOW you are an idiot who thinks its totes like following the lego instructions.

Geez he should have used his perfect ai simulation and he wouldnt have wasted all that cash. Tell me next how we should convert farms into living space because food comes from grocery stores so we can continue down the journey of where things come from and how things get made.

 

[teriyakiburns]

My post was more of a tongue-in-cheek critique of how people in the 60's were technologically superior to where we are today, relative to the technology that we have at our disposal.

Now, I don't think that's necessarily true. It only appears that way, because we mostly see the successes of a much more conservative, over-engineered, and incredibly lucky rocket programme. Every shuttle launch prior to Challenger was a disaster waiting to happen because of unidentified problems in the design of the solid boosters (in fact worse; identified, but ignored), which more than likely would have been very visibly uncovered by the sort of destructive testing spacex is performing. Or if not, then something else would have been.

On top of which, materials science and rocket engine designs are massively improved over then. While physics places strict limits on a lot of what you can do to improve the performance of an engine, there was still a lot of wiggle-room in terms of more refined designs and materials. Spacex's Raptor engines are much lighter than equivalent engines from earlier eras, due to improvements in the materials used to build them.

The fundamental difference is that spacex is applying iterative design to their rocketry. The alternative is the way SLS has been developed, with more money spent on it than spacex has spent on the entire falcon development, with only one fully successful launch (and one mostly successful, until the capsule decide its engine was on its nose and broke) of a design that is still essentially 1960s technology with some computers glued on the dashboard. Meanwhile, SpaceX is trying to make a small building pivot in mid air and land, while also running a regular cadence of launches with its smaller, tested, fully re-usable designs.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Now, I don't think that's necessarily true. It only appears that way, because we mostly see the successes of a much more conservative, over-engineered, and incredibly lucky rocket programme. Every shuttle launch prior to Challenger was a disaster waiting to happen because of unidentified problems in the design of the solid boosters (in fact worse; identified, but ignored), which more than likely would have been very visibly uncovered by the sort of destructive testing spacex is performing. Or if not, then something else would have been.

On top of which, materials science and rocket engine designs are massively improved over then. While physics places strict limits on a lot of what you can do to improve the performance of an engine, there was still a lot of wiggle-room in terms of more refined designs and materials. Spacex's Raptor engines are much lighter than equivalent engines from earlier eras, due to improvements in the materials used to build them.

I appreciate that, but the Soviets - apparently armed only with tinfoil, superglue, poverty and vodka, managed to get relatively more impressive and orders of magnitude more complex tech in to space, with fewer resources and zero past experience to go on.

Stalin-Era cosmonaut engineers are still, without any drama or over-exaggeration, the best the field has had to offer. Not to take away any accomplishments from other space agencies.

The fundamental difference is that spacex is applying iterative design to their rocketry. The alternative is the way SLS has been developed, with more money spent on it than spacex has spent on the entire falcon development, with only one fully successful launch (and one mostly successful, until the capsule decide its engine was on its nose and broke) of a design that is still essentially 1960s technology with some computers glued on the dashboard. Meanwhile, SpaceX is trying to make a small building pivot in mid air and land, while also running a regular cadence of launches with its smaller, tested, fully re-usable designs.

This is where I channel my inner-Karl Pilkington. "Do we need 'em?"

Do we need a rocket that can turn and land itself, when we have rockets that do the job they're designed to do; go up. I don't know why Musk is trying to take something already complex and make it more complex when we have something that works.

If he's trying to save rockets so he can re-use them, then he's already blown two up. He might as well have just sent them two into space and stopped faffing about. Sick of it.

 

[MadStan]

What SpaceX is aiming for is markedly different from other space programs. The Space Shuttle is technically a rocket but almost infinitely more complex than anything else ever done with a massive amount of failure point potentials. It was truly a spacecraft/station/rocket all in one. Terrible number of potential failure points.

The closest example is the Saturn V with the difference of reusable stages on Starship.

I admire the ideas of reusable stages but I have my sincere doubts that due to what Starship is supposed to carry one day, that they may not opt for multiple rockets to bring into LEO sections that are then amassed together and sent on their way to Mars.

The plan is eventually to allow Nuclear Reactors to be taken into orbit, and then activated once safely away from Earth and made inert so that if they do blow up at launch or LEO, they don't show radioactive isotopes all over the planet. Once they are activated, they are then quite dangerous.

The overview is fairly straightforward on the sheer volume and weight of equipment needed to be sent to Mars and it is in the 1000 ton plus range for a manned trip on the surface, and really, only nuclear powered craft will do the task. They will likely have to ferry chemical propellants for a ship on the surface of Mars to take off (as nuclear rockets are only really good in space). So there is the weight of that chemical rocket. It is easier to ferry the chemical then to set up a factory on the surface of Mars to try and produce it - the weight of the equipment would be equal to the propellant (although he factory could keep producing which is its singular advantage).

You want nuclear to lower the travel time and limit the exposure of space radiation and galactic radiation not he crew - no point having sane people arrive with brain tumors acting like looney tunes on the surface (which is also terribly saturated in radiation).

Much is being entrusted to Starship.

The cost for a manned trip to orbit Mars is 300-500 Billion. The cost for a landing for 3 days is easily a Trillion. For anything grander than that, we are talking 2-5 Trillion.

I want Starship to succeed, but the logistics are mind blowing. The moon is easy. Mars is harder than hell. Elon is going to have to check his reality at the door and accept what he is really up for.

Starship has to start not blowing up because frankly, this shit they are doing now is actually the easy shit and the technology and requirements for inter-planetary travel will technologically dwarf just a mere "launch". Wait until they have to land on Mars or drop a rocket on Mars...its orders of magnitude more complex and difficult.

 

[TowinKarz]

Yet a bunch of old nerds in the 60's with little help from computers, using cobbled together war-time Nazi tech manager to get three men to the moon.

The internet is full of stock rocket-failure clips from the 50's and 60's ...... they did not bat 1.000 either. The Saturn V was built on 20 years of experience from watching ICBMs blow up on the pad or trying to make sudden U-turns at mach 5.

 

[teriyakiburns]

This is where I channel my inner-Karl Pilkington. "Do we need 'em?"

Yes.

The re-usability of Falcon and Falcon Heavy has reduced the cost per kilo to orbit by thousands of dollars. Adjusting for inflation, the cost of getting a payload to orbit used to typically fall somewhere around 12000 - 15000USD per kg. With falcon and falcon heavy, the cost is currently somewhere around 800USD/kg and still falling, entirely because the ships are re-usable with only superficial refurbishment. The only previous attempt at reusability was the shuttle, which still threw away most of its stack on launch and required extensive overhauls after every flight. It was also crippled by feature demands from the military, who partially funded its development.

If he's trying to save rockets so he can re-use them, then he's already blown two up. He might as well have just sent them two into space and stopped faffing about. Sick of it.

These are test articles; they're not expected to survive, though it would be nice if they did. Your complaint is exactly the same as the complaining about the early falcon 9s that were expended while testing re-usability features, when those losses were built in to the development programme.

 

[frozen_runner]

This thread, its subject matter, and all the people who have posted in it before me: extremely cool.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

As a result, they couldn't do a single launch of both service module and LEM direct-to-orbit like the US could. They'd have to put their capsule and lander up in pieces on smaller but proven rockets, assemble it in orbit, and THEN head for the Moon, a plan that would take longer and cost more money, and with the US already way ahead, they just kind of wound down the program and swept it under the rug to save face.

The Soviets could have gone to the moon and honestly were pretty close but after 1969 they decided the cost wasn't worth it.

The test is set up to fail and fail cheaply, both stages are loaded with extra sensors and act as guniea pigs, so they know how every part either worked or didn't work, if nothing fails, they still crash it back down to earth without trying to recover it.

This is literally how the falcon rockets developed and took over, beating out every other rocket at a fraction of the cost.

If you think spacex is over every time one of these blows up, then you either don't know how spacex works or you're coping. Them actually failing comes down to whether they can improve fast enough for their budget and timeline.

Its a crash test, not the Challenger.

Ehhh some of the comments after these failures seemed to have been walk backs of what they actually wanted.

This rocket is supposed to carry humans but has no crew escape system..... It needs to be 99.999% reliable.

They are going to need to reevaluate this beast from the top down and accept they can not shortcut the structure for the sake of an extra 20-40 tons to escape velocity.

The problem is not the size of the rocket, it is the ratio aspect they are attempting to bend, and one success will not ear mark this ship as a safe option

Exactly, maybe this this should be cargo only. People can go up in a capsule or a lifting body (FYI everyone Dream Chaser is launching next year, finally)

NASA isn't going to give it a thumbs up because it eventually flies once without blowing up, and they launched both rockets believing that they would both make it, and neither did, and it reveals a serious flaw in the design overall.

This reminds me of the N1 rocket and Saturn V - both rockets on-par with the Starship. Saturn V never blew up - ever, and the N1 always blew up.

The marvel is not in the size of the rocket, because a rocket can be scaled up fairly easily without much change in reliability, but Starship's design is to have a higher-than-normal Payload to fuel ratio as part of it's design and I fear the shortcuts to allow the fuel-to-weight ratio in the structural integrity are simply, too great.

Don't forget the dozens of engines. One of those failing in the right way dooms the entire rocket. Or even just a few failing to fire ruins the mission.

This is where I channel my inner-Karl Pilkington. "Do we need 'em?"

Do we need a rocket that can turn and land itself, when we have rockets that do the job they're designed to do; go up. I don't know why Musk is trying to take something already complex and make it more complex when we have something that works.

If he's trying to save rockets so he can re-use them, then he's already blown two up.

What can Starship launch that 3-5 Falcon Heavy launches can't?

SpaceX can already land and recycle a significant % of the Falcon 9 and Heavy.

We know how to assemble things together in orbit.

Also, Starship is a key component of the NASA Artemis mission for some strange reason and if this thing doesn't work by then it FUCKS the retention the moon timetable.

Or worse, it "works" just long enough to kill everyone on board

 

[MadStan]

Starship can launch a big load of let's say a 90 - 100 ton module in a single hit. To Mars.

The advantage of this is significant if they can pull it off because it would allow larger housing modules and nuclear reactors to be sent up as whole units and essentially create "modular" stations etc. much like a modular house with rooms.

Currently the limits of rockets means sending to mars essentially walls, floors and ceilings requiring assembly (this is an example). whereas Starship could send entire prefabricated "rooms" that click together. The advantage is huge.

Imagine you are seriously going to Mars. You need a station in orbit. You need to drop a rocket to the surface. A housing unit. Fuel. 10-15 trips with Starship could deliver sufficient equipment to a Mars Orbit for decent to Mars of entire units (if you can resolve the braking problem).

Some things you'd want to and need to assemble and send as entire units into LEO or Mars orbit.

Imagine for a moment if you've an empty Starship rocket in LEO of Mars that needs to go to Earth and it requires 500 tons of fuel - that means you need to use 5 starships to get the fuel into Mars Orbit, so you use 1200 tons x 5 trips (6,000 tons) to get 500 tons of fuel into Mars LEO.

Let's say you've a smaller rocket on the surface of Mars to get Martians up into that said return rocket. Let's say you need 200 tons for that (as Mars has lower gravity, less resistance). So you need two Starships to carry that load to Mars Orbit, plus the trips for equipment to drop that fuel to the surface.

The logistics are fucking staggering for a Mars visit.

 

[TJBirish]

The retardation in this thread is giving me headaches. Mostly because I saw the exact same sniveling from the luddites around 2008-10 when they were getting the Faclon 9 to fly and the booster to land.

"YOU CAN'T RELIABLY LAND A ROCKET,\!"

" IT'S A WASTE OF TIME"

"THIS IS JUST ELON'S EGO TALKING"

Now the Falcon 9 is the most successful and reliable space delivery system ever.

BUT LOOK AT ALL THE FAILURES!!!!!!!

You idiots need to look at recent history a little.

 

[Sithis]

Still just blows my mind how many people let their personal feels about Musk lead them to clap their hands like retarded seals when a SpaceX rocket goes boom. Like Musk or not, SpaceX is at least doing something to try and continue innovation and solve a problem.

 

[TJBirish]

These are test articles; they're not expected to survive, though it would be nice if they did. Your complaint is exactly the same as the complaining about the early falcon 9s that were expended while testing re-usability features, when those losses were built in to the development programme.

Does this guy know that they were built to be destroyed??? Look at the flight profile, on a perfect flight both would have landed in the ocean.

JFC, has he looked at Starbase recently? There are so many Starships and booster they've had to make room for more. And most of those ain't comin' back.