SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.

  • Neato@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Was NASA exploding rockets this frequently when they pioneered all of this decades ago? It only took NASA 8 years to go from first entering space to landing on the moon. SpaceX is nowhere close to that and they've been launching rockets for 17 years.

      • Neato@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Damn you clearly know nothing about technological development. Elon stands on the shoulders of all those who gave their lives in the past. He benefits from all the safety regulations.

        And still with all of that. The tens of billions of dollars the government hands out to him. And more than twice the time of the Space Race he had accomplished so little. How many successful rockets did NASA develop in that time? A lot more than SpaceX.

    • QuinceDaPence@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Different design processes and NASA has to appease Congress who likes to cut funding if a rocket blows up.

      But the Design-build-test-break-redesign-etc process that SpaceX uses is cheaper, quicker, and gives more data.

    • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      It took 8 Years AND $25 billions ($248 billions adjusted to today's dollar value).

      For comparison NASA awarded a contract for spacex to develop the Human Landing System, the value of the contract is $2.89 billions.

    • porkins@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Exploding rockets is totally common in rocket science. In fact, their mission objective wasn’t even for the rocket to succeed at making it to space. When you put millions of pounds of fuel into a tube and heat it up, there is a lot to take into account. No one has ever launched anything this big, so they are going to have to iterate quite a few times. Even the computer models can’t catch everything. Sometimes it is as stupid as a bad part manufacturer.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, but the resources given and the requirements set are different. The Saturn V did not have to be reusable and was awarded two orders of magnitude more funding. Which is ultimately why it stopped being made.