- SpaceX’s eighth Starship launch ended in a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
- The company reportedly lost communication with the rocket before it began tumbling and eventually, blew up.
- The Super Heavy Rocket returned to Earth safely and was caught by Mechzilla.
Ah, yes, the SpaceX method of rapid development and iterative design by… testing in production and making debris rain over the Caribbean, disrupting air traffic in the region.
I’m done with fanboys calling this method genius. “Oh, it would make the production lines idle for months”. Bullshit. Just make it right. Compare it to the Saturn V, it only needed one test flight to orbit and never had a major failure, and the Saturn V had components welded and drilled by hand, with 60’s tech. Oh, and it launched once every two or three months in 1969, just like Starship today.
If SpaceX could do this shit in a way that’s more respectful to the environment and other humans then I think it’d make a lot of sense.
A lot of the early US space program used what is basically iteratively design. The military wanted big nukey rocket quick like what for to exploderate the Ruskis, and even NASA was honestly pretty cavalier until the Apollo 1 tragedy.
This doesn’t excuse SpaceX for their shit at all. Find a way to do this shit safely or don’t do iterative design.
I get the criticism but this method obviously works, spaceX is the most successful and profitable launch company because of this iterative design strategy on Falcon 9.
In the not too distant future starship will be successful as well and everyone will move on to reiterating the same complaints to whatever project they work on next that will also succeed. The engineers at SpaceX are modern day magicians, no matter how much you disagree with their method to achieve success