this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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The rocket that's supposed to go to Mars is Starship.
I'm no expert, but apparently the design is very controversial, with some saying it's an extremely risky design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship
Pennomi:
Please, no need for that:
No it can't, they've tried twice where it failed very shortly after takeoff. The last attempt was only a month ago, pretty much like some people expected pre launch, because that would be very hard to avoid the way it's designed. Also Musk himself acknowledged it was high risk, with a good chance it wouldn't make it. NASA would NEVER have launched with a high probability of failure, the way the Starship program has been going, it would be very unlikely to be allowed to continue. Musk justified the launch with the value of the telemetry in case of failure. Problem is that they lost contact 8 minutes before it visibly exploded in the sky. So they got no valuable telemetry either!!!
That's not what I see, it seems like Musk has become increasingly irate, and he is calling the shots. The engineers are AFAIK almost never blamed.
Funny how you claim I know little, when you just claimed Starship is basically ready, when all it can do is a few minutes before it blows up, it can't even leave the atmosphere yet.
One stupid comment more and I block you.
Yep, its widely used, and its mission profile can be replaced with other existing rockets for around the same cost, and you've always got Blue Origin you know, mastering the basics /before/ tackling more advanced problems.
Musk and Shotwell are still pretty far from delivering on the level of cost savings per launch that Musk has been touting for over a decade at this point.
Off by about a factor of ten.
Shotwell and her /brilliant/ engineers will never build a point to point rocket system, much less one that is economically viable.
Turns out refurbishing a rocket and reusing it is really time consuming and that process basically cannot be significantly sped up without cutting corners that will lead to losing rockets, or by some totally new rocket design philosophy that has yet to be designed.
SpaceX is the company that recently did not even realize that their orbiter module had disassembled itself until 3 minutes after this occurred, then claimed that they had intentionally triggered the abort system.
Shotwell is a joke, as is Starship. At their current rate of development, at best they are looking st something like a promised human rated moon landing capable craft in a decade plus, after some serious redesigns.
Problem is NASA will have picked a different contractor by then, and SpaceX's financials are so bad they will likely go bankrupt, or, at best, just stick with the Falcon 9 and maybe try to actually come somewhere close to the launch costs they originally targeted.