But this 'easy mode' is still so incredibly hard that nobody else will even attempt it.
I'd love to see some serious competition emerge in the reusable rocket space, but SpaceX is far, far ahead with Falcon 9 being an incredible success, even if the Starship project may be headed for failure. Nobody reports on 100+ successful Falcon 9 launches/landings in a year, those are now mundane. But a small number of Starship failures - test flights of an experimental vehicle - become big news, mostly because they involve spectacular explosions.
It seems that Starship may be too big to 'fail fast', mostly because of the visual spectacle of those failures.
But yeah, I tend to agree that whether it ultimately succeeds or not, blowing Starship up is a "fail fast" strategy because they have the money (and the reputational capital from successful Falcon 9 launches) to learn from their mistakes that way, and not many others do. Much as the waterfall approach of big space projects gets derided, there's a reason entities that can't take the reputational hit of visibly blowing stuff up on a regular basis do it that way...
The program that was paused pending new NASA director, and has burned more money than SpaceX without a single (usable) launch?
I’m making things up out of memory here, but suffice to say SLS does not have my confidence.
Because its a dumb program that literally wouldn't happen if SLS was not involved. SLS is not needed if you re-architected the program. Its pure politics.
> So far it’s proved incapable of being launched, attaining orbit, and returning to earth as designed.
It has reached orbit in all but name.
Its the second rocket ever to have reused a booster. Literally in human history.
But I guess in your book building the biggest rocket in history and reusing part of it is no big deal.
> The problem is we aren’t moving fast at all.
Literally only if you compare it to Appollo. Compare to the last 30 years of the space industry its still lighting fast. Actually testing something real that can land on the moon, is something for example Constellation never even got to.
> Saturn V was better by an order of magnitude and likely cheaper
Except it wasn't and you are clueless about cost. You are just asserting things based on less then nothing.
> Starship is doing this on easy mode and it’s failing.
You are literally the only person on earth dumb enough to consider a full reusable rocket that can land on multiple bodies in the solar system 'easy'.
How are the astronauts supposed to get on lunar soil on SLS?
One year of Saturn V development cost the same as the entire Starship program so far. One launch cost 20-30x more than the projected cost of a Starship launch.
It is also said that it’s simply impossible to rebuild a Saturn rocket. Not only you can’t “buy components off the shelf” because they simply don’t exist anymore, even if you had all the component blueprints (which we don’t, they were lost to time), the manufacturing know-how is long gone.
Starship was developed from scratch. SpaceX developed their own engines, their flight control surfaces are novel, the rocket structure and materials are novel, the entire approach is different. Yes, our modern electronics industry makes it “easier” but this is like saying Porsche is playing in easy mode because of the Ford Model T.
I propose my own imaginary rocket. It costs $0 but it doesn't exist. Totally beats the Saturn V on cost!
I have much respect to this guys that works in here that really pushing the innovation beyond the limit
reusable rocket is the future if you want permanent present in space, there is no way you throw rocket for only 1 launch
Starship is “the program to build a permanent base in the moon”. It’s not even the only vehicle involved in the moon program. It’s a rocket designed to take astronauts from moon orbit to the moon’s surface. The astronauts will actually fly to the moon in SLS.
So far it’s proved incapable of being launched, attaining orbit, and returning to earth as designed. That’s without a payload.
It has no life support system built and is literally years behind schedule.
Rather than making progress it is being redesigned on the fly to mitigate fundamental problems with its capability which Musk laughs off as “moving fast and breaking things”.
The problem is we aren’t moving fast at all.
The rocket is a disaster. Saturn V was better by an order of magnitude and likely cheaper if you consider how much fundamental work went into creating it which is now easy to buy off the shelf.
Comparing the programs while ignoring the fact that hobbiest regularly reach the Karman line is deceitful.
Starship is doing this on easy mode and it’s failing.