Another Musk rocket blows up

[Mysterian]

and again the talking heads call it "a success."

[dalton99a]

1. A success with an unscheduled unhappy ending

[The Unmitigated Gall]

4. Guess Musk gets a happy ending no matter what. nt

[Lovie777]

2. The media sucks..............................

[2naSalit]

3. I am becoming...

suspicious about this.

[dweller]

5. Another scheduled

Touchdown in the Gulf ?


✌🏻

[TwilightZone]

7. Made it to space; burned up on re-entry.

[TwilightZone]

6. It made it to space and spent about an hour there.

That's more of a success than the prior ones. The stories I've seen generally referred to it as the "most successful" flight, which would be accurate. Everything is relative.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

8. Who is surprised by this?

[EX500rider]

9. SpaceX's in service rocket is the most reliable currently

Falcon 9 Full Thrust (also known as Falcon 9 v1.2, with variants Block 1 to Block 5) is a partially reusable medium-lift launch vehicle, designed and manufactured by SpaceX. It was first designed in 2014–2015, with its first launch operations in December 2015. As of 29 February 2024, Falcon 9 Full Thrust had performed 284 launches without any failures. Based on the Laplace point estimate of reliability, this rocket is the most reliable orbital launch vehicle in operation.

[Traildogbob]

10. Would be more interesting if his ass was strapped to it.

[mike_c]

11. the challenges are difficult and successes are incremental

I think SpaceX is doing well. They're solving the engineering challenges of building the biggest vehicle ever flown. I think it's amazing that they and Musk are willing to take this path toward success-- building and flying them, solving the fatal problems incrementally, then doing it again for as long as it takes.

[Disaffected]

12. I know many here like pissing on Musk but,

denigrating the latest Star Ship launch results adds nothing of value to the conversation.

Fact is, they made considerable progress with launch 3 in that both stages functioned pretty much as planned until re-entry, a big improvement over the latter two launches. Also keep in mind that the SpaceX R&D approach of "make it and break it" or, "if you are not failing at something, you are not pushing hard enough", has been extremely successful in past eg. the Falcon rockets and transporting crew to the space station. I expect similar results with Star Ship.

[Johnny2X2X]

13. Musk has almost nothing to do with this

He's hands off on SpaceX except when there's a photo op or a chance to take some credit for something. He knows very little about the technology being applied.

[jmowreader]

14. In other words, a normal SpaceX development program

Musk's rocket company uses a "blow up three rockets and examine the telemetry" development system. Every rocket SpaceX has ever made, the first three he launched blew up.

The thing that amazes me about this company: In the early days of rocketry they blew up a lot of rockets. The rocket designers used that data to create rockets that DIDN'T blow up on their first flights; why does SpaceX feel the need to reinvent the wheel to the degree that they do?

Oh, you'll love this: Tom Mueller was the person who designed several of Musk's engines. (I think I knew him in high school, at least slightly; he was a senior when I was a sophomore.) A few weeks ago he gave a speech to a lot of high school kids up here. They opened the floor to questions, and one of them asked "Are you a space alien?" Tom replied, "no, but I think Elon Musk may be."

[Liberal In Texas]

15. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

[BannonsLiver]

16. Suns out, fans out

[UTUSN]

17. K&R

[Bonx]

18. It was a success.