Starship goes up. Starship goes down. But is the program moving forward?

Re:Starship goes up. Starship goes down. But is the program ... by marcinzm on Thursday March 04, 2021 @09:42AM (#26343015)

Nothing is perfectly safe and space flight was never even close to perfectly safe.

State of the art right now is capsules that rely on parachutes that have no go-arounds, no ejection seats and no aerodynamic ability to correct.

edit: And the Space Shuttle which had go-around and aerodynamic ability to correct was even LESS safe than capsules.

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Re:Starship goes up. Starship goes down. But is the program ... by m4rtink on Thursday March 04, 2021 @09:53AM (#26343148)

Space Shuttle had no go around after the deorbit burn - you either land on the runway or ditch somewhere close to it (and ditching is kinda hard to do when landing not on the Cape but in the New Mexico desert).

Unlike the Soviet Buran Shuttle, there was no option to install an auxiliary jet engine and you had to be a very good pilot to compensate for the Shuttles brick like gliding qualities.

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Re:Starship goes up. Starship goes down. But is the program ... by Ajedi32 on Thursday March 04, 2021 @09:50AM (#26343111)

The space shuttle didn't have go-arounds; it was an unpowered landing, so they had to nail it the first try.

Starship actually _could_ have go-arounds, depending on how much fuel margin they have available.

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