Their methodology is different from other space companies. Rather than making it perfect the first time, they make gradual improvements, testing in between to see if it works. The explosions are, well, not intended, but a byproduct of this method.

[–] frog 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I am aware. But it still seems a little dishonest to claim at this stage that the rockets are "fully reusable", when explosions are not only highly likely, but an inherent part of the process. The end product is going to have to be reused a lot to balance out how wasteful the development process is.

I kind of suspect that Musk just thinks explosions are cool, and is using this "we'll slap something together and see how far it gets into the process before it explodes" approach as an excuse to have lots of explosions. Spaceships that work as intended and don't explode are too boring for someone with the emotional depth of a 13 year old edgelord.

[–] zhunk 5 points 1 year ago

The Falcon 9 might be the safest rocket ever. It's at 200+ consecutive successful launches.

Their groundbreakingly (heh) ambitious dev rocket just made a huge stride compared to the previous flight. If they can figure out what happened with the 2nd stage at the end, they can start launching Starlinks on these while trying to figure out recovery and reuse.

[–] sonori 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s worth noting that waste wise reusable rockets are very rare. You have falcon 9, which doesn’t reuse its second stage, and electron, which I don’t believe has caught a second stage yet. Maybe the space shuttle by technicality, though that was more of a refurbishment that proper reflight, or buran, by an even more generous margin.

There are other reusable rockets planed such as new glen and vulcan, but nither of those have made it as far as starship has. Of the dosen or so currently active orbital rockets, there are only two that can be reused in any meaningful capacity, and they both don’t recover the second stage.

What your seeing is a design strategy known as “fail faster”, and is hardly unique to Musk. While it is worrying to see this silicon valley “brilliance” slowly seep into the real world instead of just entertainment software, given that starship is not only unmanned but likely to stay that way for some time it’s not that worrying in general.

Well mostly, part of the reason that the first test flight was surprising is that the seemed to have miscalculated the speed of the flight termination system, which does effect people on the ground, but this launch did show that it’s been fixed. Tasking several flights to make orbit is also pretty common for non maned space flight.

[–] zhunk 3 points 1 year ago

Adding on to the planned reuse from other companies:

Electron has reused 1st stage parts (engines, avionics?) but not a full 1st stage.

Vulcan will only reuse the engine section, but won't debut with that functionality.

New Glenn and Terran R will have Falcon 9 style 1st stage reuse.

Neutron will have 1st stage + fairing reuse.

The Stoke Nova is planned to be a fully reusable 2 stage rocket.