But you still need to do it for something like a rocket that is supposed to carry people in the future. In to long term, it's better to evaluate reliability of every component at the beginning, than do it after if fails.
You actually don’t. With a high launch cadence you can make statistical inferences about the reliability of the system as a whole. This isn’t the 80s where you launch one disposable rocket every 6 months. Starship is fully reusable and will likely fly multiple times a week carrying non human payloads.
Have you heard of instances where airplanes failed due to something as basic as a nut or a screw not meeting the required specifications? It's difficult to trust the reliability of a rocket, which is largely based on statistics, when you're putting hundreds of people on it. How can we be certain that NASA/FAA and other organizations will permit such a risk?
The crash of Partnair Flight 394 in 1989 resulted from the installation of counterfeit aircraft parts. Counterfeit bolts, attaching the vertical stabilizer of a Convair CV-580 to the fuselage, wore down excessively, allowing the tail to vibrate to the extent that it eventually broke off.
This happens to aircraft, and the only way to ensure it doesn't happen to rockets is to have extreme control of your supply chain.
You can’t verify the reliability of an aircraft by flying it 1000 times because you’d be putting the life of the pilots at risk. Autonomous rockets have no such constraint. You could launch starship an unlimited number of times without putting a single person at risk.
It's not even about putting the life of the pilots at risk - it's about cost.
It's starting to look like the lack of flame diverter was a huge mistake that will cost a lot of money and time, how do you think this will affect the whole project? What if after they fix the launchpad, it gets destroyed again, simply because some other preventable failure? How many more of these "tests" can they have without going bankrupt?
Pouring new concrete is cheap, they’ve already done it multiple times from damage due to test fires. Each time they reformulate the concrete and it needs less repair.
After they get to orbit they can start putting payloads on board, and the tests will pay for themselves. I’d say the risk of bankruptcy is very low.
Edit:
Just saw photos of the crater under stage zero. Looks like they do need a flame diverter lol.
Once they realized they needed a flame diverter, I think they traded off the cost and delay of putting one in vs the cost of just filling the hole each time.
It's totally feasible for them to keep testing and keep refilling that hole while in parallel they build a perfect launch pad with a flame diverter somewhere else. That way they don't have a gap in testing cadence.
If there are 5 more of these being built, how they will incorporate anything they learned during this failed attempt? Isn't that just a waste of money?
Considering that the failures don't appear to point to fundamental design flaws of the structure of the vehicle (if anything it kind of overperformed structurally with how long it just tumbled despite being a 100m tall, mostly hollow tube), they'll do it the same way you would fix/upgrade a car, by swapping out the bad parts.
The countdown process needs optimization. There are things missing and things which shouldn’t be there. We’re talking about speed of loading propellant, density of it, etc.
Then there’s software. So much software.
And a million other things. Rockets are complex, launching them doubly so.
Exactly. Falcon 9 took years and a couple dozen launches to optimize the countdown and flight profile to the current best in class general purpose medium weight launcher with the flight hardware remaining relatively constant (if for nothing else than certification reasons.)
Yeah, that's why you engineer, and test before trying to launch something like that.
There won't be any other attempt this year - I can bet my lunch money on this.
From watching the launch, my absolutely pulled from my butt guess is that something went wrong with the stage separation system, and that the explosion was deliberately triggered by the SpaceX team / triggered by automated guardrails when the mission didn't go according to parameters.
If that's true, then they can just fix whatever is wrong with the stage separation. And if it's something else, they can probably fix that too. Doesn't seem like it was anything unchangeably / structurally wrong with the entire craft.
There was a lot of wrong with the launch from the start - failed engines, destroyed pad, parts of the rocket flying off during the start. Yes, it's amazing that it went for as far as it did, but there is no way they can fix all of it quickly.
Everything you just listed is very probably all from a single root cause (the pad not being able to handle the force) and the fix could be as simple as using a bigger water deluge system / having a pad that isn't just a flat block of concrete / etc.
No only are there more being built, but this launch used engines that are already obsolete. They are learning stuff by building the rocket, by testing the components and by using them to do a test launch. They are trying to wring as much learning out of each step as possible.
I wonder how much of this attack on "AI" is directed by China. Slowing down AI development in the western world until they can catch up seems like a big win for China.
LED lights are unfortunately a big marketing scam. Remember when they promised that the will last up to 20 years? Well, when I renovated my house 5 years ago I installed LED lights over my kitchen island - they were so bright that you couldn't look directly at them and it was too hard to see somebody on the other side of the island.. This is no longer true - they are visibly dimmer. In a few more years they will probably have to be replaced.. The problem is that since they don't use bulbs, I will have to replace the whole fixture.. and the current lamps will end up in the trash. We're not going to save our environment this way.
I've trashed over 30 flush-mount LED lights in my house and its 2018 construction. It wouldn't be so offensive if we didn't buy into our own marketing bullshit so much. Pretending like 20 years is a realistic timeframe for a semiconductor to survive in that kind of environment is fantasy, but then you go about constructing homes and businesses like it's true.
This kind of scam is getting really old for me. LED lighting isn't the only one being pushed on us.
I think LED lights will lose some of their brightness in the short term, but maintain a useful plateau much longer. At least, that's how LED projectors work, vs lamp projectors, which steadily decline until they're unusable.
However, I would always buy standard socket LEDs unless you're really committed to that lighting style.
OTOH, my original Cree retrofit can lights from about 2014 are still going strong. They seem to have the electronics separate from the LED itself which keeps the heat under control. I've definitely noticed that some less expensive designs don't bother with that, and it really lowers the longevity of the fixture.
Despite the unfortunate presence of Apartheid Clyde, SpaceX has established a track record of actually building sustainable, reusable, reliable rockets at a reasonable cost and the traditional NASA contractor base represented by the other group has not.
