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SpaceX Says Destroyed Starship Wasn’t Going to Fly Anyway

By Doug Messier
Parabolic Arc
November 21, 2019
Filed under , , , , , ,

SpaceX said the Starship Mk1 vehicle that exploded at its Boca Chica Beach test facility on Wednesday wasn’t going to fly, despite what company Founder Elon Musk had promised during a webcast in September.

“The decision had already been made to not fly this test article and the team is focused on the Mk3 builds, which are designed for orbit,”  the company said in a statement.

The rocket, constructed out of stainless steel, literally blew its top while it was undergoing a pressurization test.

“The purpose of today’s test was to pressurize systems to the max, so the outcome was not completely unexpected,” SpaceX said. “There were no injuries, nor is this a serious setback.”

During a webcast from Boca Chica on Sept. 28, Musk stood in front of the vehicle and said it it would fly to 65,000 (19.8 km) within a month or two. He also said he hoped an upgraded variant of Starship would make an orbital flight within six months.

The SpaceX founder also talked about rapid iteration of the vehicle. Starships are being developed at Boca Chica and a site in Florida.

SpaceX is developing Starship for missions to Earth orbit, the moon and Mars. Musk has also pitched the spacecraft as a civilian transport for rapid point to point travel between distant locations on Earth.

For space missions, Starship will be teamed with a first-stage booster known as the Super Heavy.

131 responses to “SpaceX Says Destroyed Starship Wasn’t Going to Fly Anyway”

  1. Robert G. Oler says:
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    yeah they decided that just about the time the bulkhead of the rocket landed on the other side of route 4.

    the entire vehicle design lacks any real direction, any real maturity of thought, or “where we are going”…its endless configurations, Musk tweets and just babble

    they will be luck yto fly anything by June of 20 and there will be no version of the two stage wonder in orbit before 23 or 24…and it will be very “rough”

    they are one of the most unsafe companies flying rockets today

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Yes, SpaceX does have a track record of blowing things up, although its always without hurting anyone. Its hard to believe is was only 5 years ago folks were laughing at the idea of landing boosters vertical. One of SpaceX’s explosions from 2014 when it was experimenting with reusing the Falcon 9 boosters. Another “get a horse” moment by the professional critics of SpaceX…

      https://www.youtube.com/wat

      • Robert G. Oler says:
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        the only reason they have not killed people is because they have not flown any

        • duheagle says:
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          SpaceX’s vehicle, when it flies with people, will have been tested much harder than Starliner. And Boeing is also currently a virgin anent sending people into space. Be careful you don’t break your arm patting yourself – oops, I mean Boeing – on the back.

          • Robert G. Oler says:
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            Lol. Including blowing one up

            • windbourne says:
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              Yup. They blew up test cases. Im good with that.
              Far better than blowing up several shuttles or dropping aircrafts out of the sky.

              • Robert G. Oler says:
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                then you are stupid…as for the last sentence no clue what you are talking about. NASA is the one who made the decisions on the space shuttle …you are goofy

              • ThomasLMatula says:
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                But they were built by Rockwell which is part of Boeing now, as was the X-15 and Apollo 1. So the historical record stands at Boeing 18 dead, VG 4 dead and SpaceX 0 dead.

              • Robert G. Oler says:
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                Tom you apparantly have no idea of the importance of how a vehicle is operated is to its safety

                here is a simple example to prove how stupid your post is. Dodge builds lots of trucks, many are in accidents…thats not Dodges fault.

                you are like Trump …oblivious to reality

              • ThomasLMatula says:
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                The record speaks for itself, even if you don’t like what it says.

              • Robert G. Oler says:
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                yeah it does…how many vehicles operated by spaceX have blown up

                the cult of elon …save us elon

    • P.K. Sink says:
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      … Musk tweets and just babble…

      Musk ain’t the only one babbling around here.

    • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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      You just flubbed the analysis yesterday, now you are back for more.

    • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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      There is literally evidence all over the place now that decision was made prior to the tank coming apart. But Roberto will prevaricate here to make a bad point.

      • Terry Stetler says:
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        Roberto should read the new Atlantic article about how Boeing lost its bearings…

        https://www.theatlantic.com

        • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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          He thinks everything is great at Boeing. Meanwhile Boeing can’t even get a cargo door to pass ground testing, let alone anything to do with rockets.

          • Robert G. Oler says:
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            I have never said “everything is great” at least they are not blowing up vehicles

            • windbourne says:
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              2 shuttles.
              2 maxes.
              And Boeing has not launched anything since the shuttle.

              And we will see how many vehicles Boeing blows up/fails with once they start actually launching.

              • Robert G. Oler says:
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                Boeing had nothing to do withthe shuttle decision or the max pilot error

                you are goofy and dumb and ignorant

              • windbourne says:
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                If it was max pilot error, than max would not be grounded. Not would pilot’s like Sully and a number that I know at AA, demand that max be fixed.
                To try and blame others for your murdering ppl is typical of you.

              • Robert G. Oler says:
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                we have an idiot as President…it was pilot error

              • redneck says:
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                The US was one of the last countries in the world to ground the max. Your statement would have more validity if the US were the only, or even the first to ground the vehicle.

              • ThomasLMatula says:
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                There have also been a number of B737 NG crashes that now seem suspect given what has emerged on the B737 Max. But it was probably just the poor quality of the pilots (Pilot error) flying them…

    • Terry Stetler says:
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      There were signs of Mk1 and Mk2 being leapfrogged weeks ago, starting with work pretty much stopping on Mk2 in November. They may keep it for fit tests and such, with Mk3 and Mk4 being faster builds.

      • Robert G. Oler says:
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        What a waste this has been

        • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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          Nope, they exercised a lot of the people/equipment. Building up these tanks is cheap.

          • Lee says:
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            Still really bad optics, no matter how you cut it. Why? Musk stood in front of this very article and said it would fly in “a few months”. Then they blow it up. IF they had said ahead of time “we’re going to use this as a pressure test vehicle, we’ve decided not to fly it” you wouldn’t be seeing near the pushback here.

            As it happened, it looks like SX f’ed up and is now engaged in a CYA exercise. They could have handled this better all around. You do see that, right?

            • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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              Nobody cares about optics except a few people whining online. That is the beauty of the thing. They changed plans given how far along Mk3-4 prep was going; a few weeks before test work slowed on Mk2 in Florida. This is when he change occurred to push flight test to the later rev.

              They aren’t in the least bit concerned about optics, your hurt feelings or empty feelings you got inside. They also didn’t actually plan on blowing up the tank in this case, just was a possibility on immature systems.

              • Lee says:
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                Then why do things that make you look bad, when they are easily preventable? Your comment above makes no sense. By your logic, nothing matters.

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                Nothing except the end result. I get it, most people don’t see the sausage being made in the first place, and in most cases ppl spend a lot of time and money to make the sausage in the least “messy” way. But all that matters is end result.

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                Here are some examples:

                Blue had a RUD of the BE-4 turbo-machinery that required rebuilding the test stand in order to resume testing. All we get is a Tweet about it (and I think the only reason for that was ULA was partner on engine, so they had to say something). That is how you control image. Would have been pretty messy looking if the video were released. They lost the first New Shepard PM too, never showed the crash on the feed or afterward. Why? it was a first prototype to attempt landing, who cares? Late change to BE-3U vs BE-4U based upper stage on NG, why are they changing entire propellant of a stage so late after announcing? Must be lost engineering time in that change. At this very moment Blue is struggling with a series of pathfinder tanks quietly inside their factory, they will never fly these tanks and if the blew a tank up during pressure test in Van Horn, we would likely never hear about it (or at most get a Tweet).

                The vanity tax infuses the entire development cycle:

                “We might blow this thing up on the test stand (that is bad for image) so let’s spend oodles more time/money to see if we can get another marginal percentage risk reduction from happening.”

                Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt Blue will come through with NG but there is a reason it takes them longer to get stuff done, vanity is a tax.

                You can see this play out with OneWeb’s attack on Starlink. “We don’t
                fly until completely ready”. Go head have a blast, but that isn’t
                getting you data in the real-world environment. Mega-constellation sats are cattle not pets, if you treat them like pets you lose.

                Much worse is the case of NASA/Boeing. These guys are so risk averse on testing (looking bad) for SLS that the “vanity tax” is in the billions of dollars and years of delays. The entire way of developing the vehicle is baked with vanity tax (i.e. everything is so damn expensive they can’t even afford to risk loss of hardware). This is where the budget death spiral ends. Vanity in front of public/Congress circling with low rate production hardware means everyone is handcuffed.

              • duheagle says:
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                Friggin’ awesome comment, Dude!

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                Thanks man!

              • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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                Nothing matters, SpaceX is great. No matter what. Ever. These people are going to drive Cyber Trucks and throw stones, they’ll be shocked at the result every time.

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                Think the truck is ugly, not that it matters.

              • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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                It’s def a reversion to the faceted aerodynamics of the 70’s. It might catch on, it might not. One thing’s for sure, the stamping die for the body is dirt cheap.

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                Agreed, I love the aesthetic of F-117, don’t even mind the truck in a different context than my own driveway. This may grow on me over time but right now, nope. I half think he did this to exercise the truck frame development/production on something that will not ramp like Model 3 causing all sorts of front-end growing pains. I suspect they will circle back once the manufacturing is sorted out.

              • Terry Stetler says:
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                Almost 150,000 Cybertrucks sold so far, and given the type split about $8 billion worth.

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                Good news for Tesla but that is a pre-order deposit of 100 bucks, so actual conversion to sale maybe less.

              • duheagle says:
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                What die? Looks like the whole thing could be folded up on a brake.

              • duheagle says:
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                It has the non-pretty beauty of the utterly functional – like an M1 Abrams tank.

              • duheagle says:
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                Try to focus Andy. It’s not that nothing matters, it’s that Mk1 blowing up doesn’t matter crucially.

                I thought you lefties were supposed to be the reigning princes of subtle distinctions and nuanced understandings. But mostly, it seems, you’re just panicky chickens running amok at any sudden loud noise.

              • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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                You can call me Andy when you get the balls to post with your real name. Stop being a coward and post plain text. The crux of your point will play out and be proven right if BF(x) works as a concept. That’s within the patience and financial capabilities of SpaceX and Musk. I have my doubts, I have articulated them, and synthesized them into speculation on how they would effect the sequence of events. So far, those events have played out much more in parallel with my understanding of things than your understanding of things. In fact for 2019 you’ve been a complete failure. So say what you want, and hide behind your internet CB handle. I’ll be here plain text and I’ll just keep doling it out to you.

              • duheagle says:
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                I’ve explained here before – to our host Mr. Messier, who made the same chickenshit complaint – that my Disqus handle was a consequence of Disqus not allowing strings with embedded spaces as user names when I originally created my account. I don’t like the aesthetics of a name with an underscore or dash in place of the space, or one without a space so I went with a handle. Disqus seems to accept user name strings with embedded blanks now, but I’m not aware of any way to change mine at this late date. If you know of one, please advise. I grow weary of people who throw up irrelevancies to deflect from their inability to deal with actual argument.

                For what it’s worth, my name is Dick Eagleson. I’m a 68 year-old, white, male, Republican retiree and reside in a resolutely non-trendy part of the Greater L.A. metroplex about two miles from the SpaceX Hawthorne plant. I both write occasional articles and make comments over at Jeff Foust’s The Space Review website under that name because, while the comment system Jeff uses has a lot of other shortcomings, it does allow me to post under my actual name.

                So, no, the handle is not a “hide,” it’s an artifact of timing and wonky software.

              • duheagle says:
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                Failures in test only look bad to people who harbor the notion that any kind of failure is shameful and to be avoided at all costs. The legacy aerospace contractors, in their now long-fled youth, used to do pretty much what SpaceX is doing. As the lawyers and MBA’s took over, their corporate cultures degenerated to the sorry state in which we now find them.

              • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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                “just was a possibility on immature systems”,yes, on this we agree. But wasn’t this a flight article that was supposed to be flying now? I’ll bet you felt deeply in your heart of hearts that it was even two short weeks ago. If you consider yourself an analyst you should do some self reflection on that.

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                I don’t feel anything deeply in my heart w.r.t a specific vehicle hitting a benchmark. A week ago I posted this over on SpaceNews how the first hop (if it were to happen) could end not so cleanly.

                https://spacenews.com/space

                I’ve said from day one the reason for parallel builds along with rapid iteration cycle is they are going to lose a bunch of these things…this is ok with me.

                You are confusing things, as usual, I have zero problems with them flying a system held together with duct tape if they can get some data out of it to drive the next iteration. I literally don’t care. I also stated already that this Mk1 was half boiler plate to get some of the tooling exercised while lots of it had not been in place yet.

              • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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                Fair enough, I’ll retract that rhetorical statement then. Given what just happened do you think it’s smart to allow 2+ kT of fuel air munition to fully fuel up and fly? This was a flight article. It was made to fly, it was intended to fly. Look what happened. If I were a government official in the chain of regulation, I’d want some pretty serious proof these things won’t be flying apart, and releasing thousands of tons of methane and oxygen in close proximity.

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                Sorry, i have a libertarian streak in me that I just can’t shake. It is up to SpaceX to risk their pad and infra. Nothing irreversible happens if the thing blows up as long as they enforce a prudent safety perimeter and employ some sort of AFTS. They can be insured for a few broken windows.

              • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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                Yes and that streak blinds you to thinking things thru. Such as when that 2 kT of propellant is in the midst of going wrong, GNC may be lost. I also admire how you people minimize the importance of 3rd party schmucks who just happen to get in the way. They don’t matter. It’s a good thing people like you are in a minority, but then again, you do view your selves as the elite who are at the vanguard of humanity. That’s why the rest of us give more credence to what the FAA has to say than what you have to say on the matter.

              • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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                Those kT air-gas bomb warnings are overrated, assumes perfect mixture (which isn’t even close). Look at Challenger breakup for example. Also, AFTS is mature and completely out of band with test vehicle. This is largely whining.

              • duheagle says:
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                “Pretty serious proof” will not be difficult to arrange. Pressure tests, nitrogen cryo load tests, WDR’s and static fires should cover that and would be done in any case. Nobody has built any additional nearby structures or other assets that would be placed at risk so SpaceX will just take out another short-term $100 million liability policy and fly when it is ready.

              • duheagle says:
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                The decision not to fly Mk1 seems to have been made following the first leak checks done two days before the blowup. Once that was decided, and the leaks found were patched, it was decided the only use the lower half of Mk1 had was as a pressure/cryo loading test article.

          • Robert G. Oler says:
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            sure. the vehicle blew upon one of the first test but gee we learned a lot about people and equipment…thats what Elon really meant when he said it was going to fly soon…he really meant “we are learning alot about our people and equipment”

            problem is none of that worked out very good. the welds were horrible, the cutting of the skin was amateurish and none of this translates into a working vehicle. they wasted a year and a lot of money…and now its on to Mk3 whatever that is

            you really have drank the koolaide. this is the second vehicle they have blown up with a process problem (if that is true) and you were upset with a pin on parachutes

            How much you think this cost them?

            • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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              They’re the experts on truck windows now too.

            • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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              The year was not wasted, they had to build up the pad, the design change to steel was only a little over a year ago anyway, they blew a couple hundred thousand in steel and a few million in labor, which they needed to ramp anyway. It was a quick build race between both teams to get some stuff moving until later design and equipment could be procured. In any case it is all just a point in time, over the next 6 months we will be seeing Mk3-Mk4 with refined fabrication and moving on from there. And if they fail, onto the next.

            • duheagle says:
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              Since you ask, I think the part of Mk1 that blew up cost, at most $250K in materials and maybe twice that in touch labor to build. Well under $1 million all-up.

  2. TheBrett says:
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    Obviously it wasn’t going to fly if it blew its top during pressurization. 😉

    More seriously, they probably do need to make a ton of modifications anyways for the Mk3. The current prototypes have a dry mass of 200 metric tons, and the goal is to shave off 40% of that – get them down to 120 metric tons dry.

    I have no idea how they’re going to do that. The estimates I’ve seen for the hull thickness at that mass don’t seem viable – they’d be about the same as a stainless steel balloon tank, and those can’t maintain their shape without constant pressurization (big problem if it’s coming back down to the surface nearly dry).

    I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes through another major re-design.

    • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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      They’ll do it by making it expensive like every other real space ship.

    • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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      On a more serious thread of thought. I think what you’re musing about is the reason Musk is thinking of graduating to 18m diameter tanks. It’s the ‘easiest’ way to improve your wet mass to dry mass ratio, and buy fast margin. So he’s musing going from heavy lift, to operatic lift. What he’s really doing is learning that spacecraft like this need nuclear power. As they refine their construction methods, if they can afford it, Space X will wind up with a steel working shop that will look and act more like a submarine yard.

      • duheagle says:
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        18-meter tanks all in good time.

        The cheapest way to buy fast margin is to put more Raptors on Super Heavy.

        Nuclear power is no solution for boost. Even for Starship, a nuke plant would bring a lot of extra non-payload mass along with the dramatically better Isp – and at the price of switching to troublesome LH2. Then there are the governmental/political difficulties of getting suitable fissionables.

        I think “submarine yard” may be a considerable exaggeration. Submarines require rolling hoops out of plate stock with thicknesses measured in inches. Starship, in contrast, is closer to being HVAC ducting than a pressure hull. It isn’t either of those things, of course, but it’s far closer to the former than the latter. The tools and machines required to turn out SHS are vastly less beefy, powerful and expensive than those needed to turn out a Virginia-class attack boat.

        • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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          I’ll stick with more in the direction of the sub yard. The rolling machines are exactly what I had in mind. And with them, milling, or etching, then stress relief techniques. I think this very early breach is our first insight into how wrong the belief is that this sort of thing can be done with early 20th cen industrial techniques. So are you now coming a bit more to my side of the argument that his is going to draw out far longer and be more complex than you thought?

          • duheagle says:
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            No.

            Especially in the absence, as yet, of any official explanation of what went wrong with Mk1 and why. You – and Oler for that matter – simply have an apparently unshakeable belief in two propositions that are demonstrably false:

            (1) that NASA and the legacy aerospace contractors fundamentally know what they’re doing and are the best at doing it, and

            (2) that SpaceX is a callow and reckless interloper which does not and cannot.

    • Mr Snarky Answer says:
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      What is your estimate of the hull thickness? And I wouldn’t assume it is all the same either.

    • Terry Stetler says:
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      They’ve moved to their new 30X alloy, same as used in Cybertruck.

  3. savuporo says:
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    True or not, but that statement sounds a lot like coming from a 5 year old trying to convince everyone that the dropped candy wasn’t good anyway because auntie is bringing lots of cake tomorrow

  4. duheagle says:
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    SpaceX blows something up in testing and the usual suspects say all the usual stuff about it never working or taking years. Lather, rinse, repeat. We’ve seen this show several times before and it never ends well for the naysayers.

    • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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      Yes that’s right rinse and repeat because SpaceX keeps proving us right every time a new mile post is declared and you cheerleaders insist they’re going to cross it ‘real soon now’. We’re not saying they’ll never cross it, just that it’s not nearly as easy or as cheap as people like you say it will be. Once folks like you stop falling for SpaceX propaganda we’ll stop washing, and rinsing you, and as long as you keep doing it, we’ll keep repeating the cycle.

      • windbourne says:
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        And yet, the old saying still applies:
        Elon is behind, but nobody can catch up to him ( or SpaceX or Tesla, etc).

        You can keep repeating it, but you will continue to be proven wrong.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          And meanwhile, in Boca Chica, they just picked up the pieces and then started work on Starship Mk 3…

          Yes, SpaceX is not NASA. NASA would probably have multiple committees spending a year or so going over it, over and over…

          • Robert G. Oler says:
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            nothing but Falcons will fly this year and next year into orbit…the MK 3 is a joke like MK 1…which I predicted would fail

            you know nothing of engineering. really neither does Musk…check the windows

            • duheagle says:
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              You predict everything SpaceX does will fail. Once in awhile something actually does fail. But these bumps in the road never stop SpaceX and only marginally slow it down.

              No one, including Elon, suggested a Starship prototype was going to orbit in 2019. About 2020, we’ll know soon enough. Personally, I think it will happen.

        • Andrew Tubbiolo says:
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          I actually won’t argue with that at a first order. If events play out well, your statement will be true. However the punchline does not come true if the BF(x) concept does not work out. Unlike you, I think the barriers to BF(x) are real, and might not be overcome for many reasons. In your and other’s imaginations those Starships are already flying. And by some measures, pieces of them have.

          • windbourne says:
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            sigh.
            Neither I, nor any of the others here, imagine that SX is flying this already. In fact, I suspect that they WILL have more issues and failures. BUT, the issues that they have in-store are fairly minor for them compared to what else they have accomplished.
            First off, they already have their engines running and tested. That is a huge part of issues.
            They have had up to 9 engines working in parallel, though to be fair, that was with a liquid and a gas. Now, it will be 2 gases and up to 43 engines. There COULD be issues scaling, but I doubt it.
            Secondly, they already have Avionics, landing, stage separation (though I suspect that it will be different), etc.
            Probably their single biggest issue will be re-entry. They chose to use Stainless which is interesting, and a smart choice. BUT, they will do a very different landing, by using atmosphere, unlike F9. That will be interesting.

            You and RGO love to point to the recent pressure topper, as well as some of the past. Yet, they blew 1 LOX tank previously, as well as blown up a crew dragon(dramatically), a dragon v1, 1 F9 in testing and multiple F1s. Both of you two continue to ignore the fact that they have these failures and then continue on with re-engineering them and making things better. Even now, they remain the only ones to have gone to space and land vertically under power ( I suspect that BO will have no real issues on that). Probably the single most important strength that SX has gained since F1-1, is their QA and their ability to evaluate how things destroyed. Over and over, they find their failure, fix it, and move on.

            They are not flying yet, but I have no doubt that they WILL succeed.

          • duheagle says:
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            The only thing that will convince you that SHS will “work out” is the march of near-future events. The coming year should prove instructive.

            • Lee says:
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              Your record with statements along the lines of “The coming year should prove instructive” isn’t very good. Examples are D2 and fast turnaround of F9. Why should we think your prediction is any better this time? I’m thinking the coming year is going to prove very instructive. But not in the way you think. But whether you believe it or not, I really do hope I am 100% wrong.

              • duheagle says:
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                Tell me what I’ve gotten wrong. When D2 blew up and all you naysayer chickens were running about headless and heedless, screeching doom and gloom, I simply pointed out that the delay to Crew Dragon 2 this would cause would be limited and roughly on a par with previous SpaceX accident investigations. It was.

                About fast turnaround of F9 I said that SpaceX now seems less interested in doing that soon than in accumulating a wear and reliability database to guide future faster turnaround. I stand by that. Your explanation seems to be that faster turnaround is some sort of mirage – always on the horizon, but never reached – and that what we see now is the best we’re ever going to see.

                And, no, I don’t believe you hope you’re wrong. You are, as Heinlein put it in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, a “small-minded belittler.”

              • Lee says:
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                Before the D2 blowup, you were predicting people would be riding it to ISS by the end of this year. Wrong. About this time last year, you were predicting rapid F9 turnaround by year end or earlier. Wrong. Apparently you can’t remember the previous claims you have made. I’m not a belittler, I just base my judgements on what is actually happening, not on what I hope will happen. You like to claim people like me and Andrew move the goalposts, but from where I am sitting, you and Snarky are the masters at that particular skill.

              • duheagle says:
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                If the blowup hadn’t happened, people would have ridden D2 to ISS already. I didn’t anticipate the blowup but neither did anyone else – except, of course, for Capt. Bob Oler and probably Gary Church too, both of whom have a standing prediction of SpaceX blowups for everything. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.

                You are also correct about my previously supposing rapid F9 turnaround would happen this year – for certain values of “rapid.” I maintained, based on drone ship travel times and other matters such as minimum necessary pad turnaround, that 24-hour turnaround, if it ever occurred, would be a one-off stunt rather than a sustainable pace.

                Even that opinion was the product of insufficient allowance for other considerations. As noted, I have modified my opinion on that matter in the past two months as I think SpaceX is subjecting all returned boosters to comprehensive inspections in order to establish baselines that can later guide more rapid turnarounds.

                Such turnarounds will not occur until, and unless, necessary to meet SpaceX’s sustainable launch cadence needs. It seems pretty obvious by now that Elon has consigned 24-hour turnaround of F9’s to the same place he has also consigned carbon fiber composite Super Heavies and Starships. The man has been known to change his mind. But unlike the carbon fiber thing, he simply hasn’t said anything publicly about 24-hour turnaround being dumpstered.

                This having been a comparatively slow year for F9/H ops, nothing was lost by indulging 75-day minimum turnarounds. If SpaceX builds even a few new Block 5 S1’s, it could still meet its 2020 launch cadence goals without shortening average turnaround times below what we’ve seen to-date. What mix of new production and shortened turnaround we will actually see in 2020, I don’t know.

                If turnarounds do stay roughly the same for awhile, we probably won’t see any Block 5 booster make a 10th flight – or whatever the real number of flights between refits actually turns out to be, whether more or less than 10 – by the end of 2020. If that proves true, there may be no sub-75-day turnarounds until 2021 at the earliest. But there are credible scenarios that could make this prediction wrong and in either direction.

              • Lee says:
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                The problem is that you can’t have it both ways. If you truly believe in the “That’s why we test” philosophy, where you expect to blow things up along the way, you can’t then say your predictions were derailed by such.

                Your predictions were clearly based on everything going smoothly. When that didn’t happen, you (by your own admission above) were forced to adjust your timeline. However, the whole time you were simultaneously defending SX’s failures with the whole “that’s why we test” argument.

                You do see why those two things are at odds with each other, right?

              • duheagle says:
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                I’m not having it “both ways.” My nearer-term predictions are generally based on little or nothing going wrong in the interim. I think I generally remember to say so explicitly too. That was the case for the D2-will-fly-this-year thing prior to April 20. No, I didn’t anticipate the Apr. 20 blowup – I don’t pretend to be Mdme. Zara the Gypsy Fortuneteller.

                Longer-term, I tend to allow for more setbacks along the way. That’s why I figured Mk1 would likely fly by the end of Nov. but was skeptical that a first orbital Starship test would occur as soon as the Mar. 2020 timeframe spitballed by Elon on Sept. 28 – but also why I think it will still happen sometime in 2020. I don’t think the cumulative delays to the SHS program occasioned by the Mk1 blowup or even by one or two additional failures of Starship protoypes in interim tests is likely to have more than a cumulative six month’s effect on the date of the first SHS orbital test flight.

                The “that’s why we test” argument is not about schedules, except peripherally, but about a design and test philosophy radically at odds with the sloth, timidity and pathological risk-aversion that is normative in legacy aerospace. It is not a philosophy that – as some detractors accuse – seeks failure, just one that is undismayed by failure.

                When failures occur under this paradigm, schedules can slip, but the projects still get to operational status far faster than would be the case under the status quo alternative. That’s why SpaceX has been landing orbital booster stages successfully for four years now, following some early miscues, and no one else has done it even once or – except for the Chinese – has made more than token efforts in the direction of doing so.

                Even after the Apr. 20 D2 blowup, there still seemed a modest probability of D2 flying with crew by year’s end. That probability has since fallen to zero, but the overall delay to the program has been about six months. That seems also to be the additional delay incurred by the Boeing Starliner program over the same interval and it doesn’t even have the unexpected blow-up of its vehicle to blame for the extra delay.

                So the choice really seems to boil down to accepting a certain amount of delay because of failures incurred by a fast-moving development process or accepting equal or greater delays from a process that is just intrinsically slow and delay-prone as a matter of course.

      • duheagle says:
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        There have been bumps along the way with everything SpaceX has ever done; and with everything other Musk enterprises have done for that matter. SpaceX takes a matter-of-fact approach to bumps as simply the inevitable price of plowing new ground, then gets past them and on with the larger job. That’s why multiple Starship prototypes were and are under construction – no one of them is essential. The effect of the Starship Mk1 blowup on the overall SHS schedule seems likely to be minor.

        The only organizations that never have bumps are also the ones that never do anything. That isn’t to say there aren’t entities like Boeing that hide and/or disown their bumps, but they still have them.

  5. Robert G. Oler says:
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    Lets review

    after a year of work, what they worked on has either blown up or is being sent to the scrap heap.

    In Sept or something Musk said it was going to fly…so either he was lying or something happened on the wayto the theater tomake it clear it wasnt…so an entire year gone

    how much money?

    Now we are up for a new design

    but dont worry dear moon will fly on time 🙂

    • duheagle says:
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      It isn’t going to take nearly as long to build Mk3 at Boca Chica as it did to build Mk1. So the overall delay to the program is going to be much less than a year.

      Musk wasn’t lying in Sept. Flying was the plan – then. It looks as though it ceased being the plan after initial leak tests two days before the pressure test explosion indicated there might be problems flying Mk1. The pressure test revealed a possibly related problem in far more spectacular fashion. Just what that problem was I will reserve judgement about pending some official autopsy report by SpaceX.

      Total money represented by the engineless lower half of Mk1 that exploded – ca. $1 million, I think. About a half mil in structure material and fitments and the rest in assembly crew wages and equipment rental. This was definitely not in a league with what, say, blowing up the Dash 80 or the 747 prototype would have been.

      The design of the Mk3 was already significantly different even before Mk1 blew up. By the time it is completed, it will be more different still.

  6. Robert G. Oler says:
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    Looks like I was correct about the welds…at least if you believe this…”this” is from a post on NASAspaceflight.com

    I can partially end this
    speculation about why SpaceX decided to scrap their plans to fly
    Starship Mk1 even before the explosion. I had the luck of managing to
    talk with an anonymous SpaceX employee or subcontractor who works at
    Boca Chica, here’s what he had to say about the situation:

    “the plan officially changed two days ago when Elon showed up and had a fit

    but, even when flying Mk1 was the plan, everyone knew it wouldn’t land in one piece, we figured we’d learn stuff

    E
    thought it would look bad, so instead we were gonna do a proof test,
    static fire, and then strip it for parts. Failed the proof test”

    And…

    “told
    you all last thread. we were planning on flying it, with no expectation
    of a successful landing. plan changed two days ago, told to descope
    mk1/2 and focus on mk3. still wanted to do a proof test (welp) and
    static fire (guess that isn’t happening), then take off any parts that
    made sense to take off (so uh nothing from that forward dome, that’s for
    sure, don’t think the IMU box is flightworthy after that)”

    Sorry for the poor formatting!

    He also spoke about the failure in detail and vaguely about it’s cause:

    “top
    dome blew off, causing inversion of common dome in the middle, causing
    it to yank the fuel transfer tube out of the bottom, causing it to sh*t
    lox all over the pad”

    “the problem wasn’t the wind, it was the welders. robots for Mk3”

    He implied the cause of failure was the poor quality of the welds.

    • windbourne says:
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      huh.
      So, as I said long time ago, Texas really does not have the manufacturing skills it needs.
      This should have been done in California, where you have a much higher skill set.

      Still, that sux.

      • duheagle says:
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        Texas is a major manufacturing state. There’s nothing wrong with its workforce. Houston generates more manufacturing revenue annually than any other metro area in the country. The aerospace employment base in California has been shrinking for three decades. A lot of those put out of a job in CA have moved to TX where work could be readily found even in the depths of the Obama Depression.

        As I recall, you’re also one who thinks the CA education system is better than that of TX too. At least you’re consistent in your mistaken beliefs.

        • windbourne says:
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          https://www.globaltrademag….

          California remains ahead of Texas. And based on the garbage I see coming out of there, I maintain that they are a HORRIBLE state to have doing manufacturing. Somebody had made the argument that oil welders would do a good job and I agreed with that at the time. Obviously, they and I were wrong. Basically, even the oil welders are horrible.

          And thankfully, Manufacturing has been gaining in America since W was booted.
          https://fred.stlouisfed.org
          https://tradingeconomics.co

          Well, it was growing starting back in Obama’s time, but it is now slowing down:
          https://www.marketwatch.com
          https://www.cnbc.com/2019/0
          https://www.reuters.com/art

          As to education:
          I do not think that I have said how CA education was compared to Texas. I have said that Texas Education is HORRIBLE (for decades, they were below Mississippi). And it turns out that they have actually come up higher than what they were.
          And ti turns out that Texas and California are similarly ranked for primary education.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
          Sad.
          OTOH, California is far far better than Texas on secondary education. Of course, that is not that hard to do.

          And yes, you ARE consistent in your mistaken beliefs.
          And even with being shown the facts, you will continue to believe what Faux tells you.
          🙂

          • duheagle says:
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            The numbers in that Global Trade article are incomplete but what there are don’t support your thesis. The only two numbers given that seem to be directly comparable for CA vs. TX are for value of manufactured goods exported in 2018 – $155 billion and $247.6 billion, respectively. So TX, with 2/3 the CA population manages to export $100 billion more in manufactures per year than CA.

            Based on the total value of CA manufactures given for 2017 – $300 billion – it seems CA exports about half its manufacturing production. There is no basis upon which to project what the comparable proportion of exported TX manufactures is, but even if one assumes TX exports, say 75% of its manufactures, the total for 2018 would come to $330 billion. Assuming a 10% growth in the value of CA manufactures between 2017 and 2018, that would tie CA with TX.

            Bottom line? Unless TX exports a truly overwhelming percentage of its manufactures, TX, with 2/3 the CA population, is well ahead of CA in total value of manufactures produced annually and has been for some time.

            The numbers you link anent education simply show relative percentages of the two states’ populations in possession of particular levels of educational credential, not how good the schools currently are – or even how good those credentials are for that matter.

            That isn’t a particularly good story if you happen to be a CA booster. National Assessment of Educational Progress test results in Math and Reading for 2019 and Science for 2015 for 4th and 8th grades show TX with leads in Math, big leads in Science and a tie and a slight trail in Reading. Overall, TX rates above the national average in three areas, at the national average in one area and below the national average only in Reading. CA ranks below the national average in all six areas. That puts TX in the middle of the pack nationally and CA generally in the lowest quintile where it is often little if any better, and sometimes not even as good, as those Deep South states you like to make fun of. The low reading scores in both CA and TX are likely attributable to the large numbers of ESL students in both state school systems.

            “Faux,” as you so charmingly and brain-washedly refer to it, didn’t tell me any of this stuff. I looked it up myself. This is where I would normally say that search engines are your friends. But for a person of your obdurately refractory political worldview I’m not sure you would find that to be so.

    • duheagle says:
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      This is all rumor and hearsay at about three levels of indirection. Garbage in, gospel out. I’ll wait to hear what SpaceX chooses to say about Mk1.

  7. Robert G. Oler says:
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    It is interesting to see how Musk world has related to this latest setback…almost childishly lets review a few stock sayings

    “you cannot make progress without blowing things up” this is crap.

    first it is crap all around. alll blowing things up shows is that you badly do not understand something…and in this day of computer aided design and such, as well as prototyping and evaluation that means most of the time you just were going to fast to find what “you dont know”

    and in specific…what was learned here? well it all depends on who you believe. Bad welds…ok well you did not have to send parts flying to figure that out. anyway who knew anything about welding could see that. it doesnt strike me that this was totally the “water welders” fault. the paneling of this “vehicle” were so poorly cut its almost as though they were done by some guy in his back yard trying to cover his shed…

    or maybe the welds didnt fail except as a function of over pressure…and you wonder why that happen.

    what we did learn, and its not that hard. is that the SpaceX folks in BC had no idea what they were doing with this. They probably had no plan…the vehicle got heavy and well apparantly no one wanted to fly it

    then we see the genius “well Boeing killed people in the shuttle/Apollo/blah blah”
    Boeing or its predecessors built the shuttle and Apollo…but the people who lost the shuttles were the folks who were operating them…and while the Apollo capsule was a mess, that was a long time ago…and it clearly was a result of going to fast. Something Musk seems to be reinventing (see shoddy construction)

    the one of Love though from the Musketeers is “this doesnt really matter”

    this is their explanation (along with the cute “RUD” to avoid saying explode…wow they can talk like Elon) when somethinb blows up. No I guess it didnt matter that some process failure that they still dont seem to understand blew up a Dragon flight vehicle…a direct copy of which was scheduled to carry people.

    and of course the latest explosion wont matter either; except it killed a year, alot of money and well they are redesigning once again

    ON TO MARS

    (you folks need a serious lesson in reality)

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      More like a couple of months, that is why they have multiple test vehicles under construction at the same time. As for money, I expect Boeing spends more on its lobbying than what this test vehicle costs SpaceX.

      • Robert G. Oler says:
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        nothing will fly for six months and they wont go to orbit for oh a year or two…more “RUDS” coming

        • redneck says:
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          My prediction/guess is that something will fly within a couple of months and an orbital flight of some form in just under a year, before the election. And there will be 2-3 RUDs during that time causing more controversy.As long as they keep the public and their own people, good enough.

          What I can’t know is exactly how their development cycle matches my experience. That being so, I don’t know how the problems work with their operation.

          When I’m doing prototypes for the first time, It is often cut with demo saw and one pass weld leave the slag. Then we go break it. If by some odd chance the machine works right on this first try, then we can go back and grind the weld and add passes and prime it. More often, (much more often) I see something wrong and we rebuild. So we go for the cheapest possible way at first.

          When I have a machine that works properly, we build them strong and usually ugly.Several uses in the field on real jobs then tell us what needs to be done long term. Then we can go build something that will last years.

          From the outside it looks to me like SpaceX is in the first phase on Starship and RUDs are annoying but acceptable. If they consider themselves to be in the second or third phase, they’ve got problems.. But if it is first phase as I suspect, then blown prototypes are barely even a toe stump.

          It all depends on where they are in this development cycle, and where they think they are, but not where I think they are.

          • Robert G. Oler says:
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            well three points (and sorry for the late reply)

            1. I generally dont think blowing up things is a good idea…to me it shows “you dont know what you are doing” and thats OK in some thing. The Comet had a hard teething time, but they simply didnt know the technology that would have prevented that. I always thought we would lose a shuttle orbiter or an Apollo mission because 1) the technology was just to fragile and 2) they were flying in some hard realms. But we didnt lose an orbiter to “disturbed flow” as it was trying to make its transition from a brick to flying

            In Gemini they were always having thruster problems, in Apollo the really weak point was the LM’s computer…well it was the first of its kind..

            those losses would have been hard but thats the business. what I find somewhat alarming about SpaceX is that they blow things up…over well stuff they should already know. I dont care if it was a ground equipment fault or the welds, all those things were predictable…and they simply didnt care

            I expect them to lose vehicles to testing the TPS system or this novel way of reentering or …but bad welds?

            that is pretty 60’s stuff

            the biggest problem “I think” is that they dont have a design for the second stage…nor do they have a really good manufactoring process since they are doing it, on the cheap.

            but its fun to watch 🙂

            • duheagle says:
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              Geminis and Apollos had problems that could have been life-threatening because there was a pervasive sense of urgency to the program of which they were a part and human-in-the-loop wasn’t always optional in those days.

              The first is also true of SpaceX anent SHS today. The main difference is that contemporary computer technology allows SpaceX to suffer accidents without killing anyone as a possible consequence – as would most likely have happened on Gemini 8 and could well have happened also on Apollo 11 had anyone but Neil Armstrong been their pilot.

              Anent Mk1, I don’t share your breezy confidence the root problem was welds. Welds are certainly an obvious possibility, but the real story may lie elsewhere. I recall that when Virgin Galactic suffered its fatal Halloween accident, most of the early commentary assumed the engine was at fault.

              And SpaceX does have a design for Starship. It’s changing daily, I suspect, but it’s definitely there. I recall Elon saying after the Sept. 28 dog and pony show that Mk1 had a tank-inside-frame design for its header tanks but that future prototypes would have integral header tanks as part of the ongoing weight-paring process. Designing at SpaceX is like dancing the rumba – one is always in motion.

              Being raised, as you were, in the Church of the Critical Design Review, I can certainly see how alien all this must seem to your longstanding OldSpace mindset. An engineering and development reformation must certainly be as disconcerting to those of the ancien regime watching it unfold with horrified fascination as was the Protestant Reformation to the dutiful functionaries of the ossified Catholic Church.

        • duheagle says:
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          I think the first flight of a prototype will occur in less than six months. I’d say four – the end of March. But it would hardly constitute a world-shaking tragedy if you turn out be right.

          More RUD’s might well be coming. SpaceX incurred a few getting vertical powered landing to work for F9’s. Now, they’re a blooper reel.

          And you entirely misunderstand the use of “RUD” instead of explosion. It is cutesy-poo, to be sure, but not because of any desire on the part of SpaceX to avoid harsh reality. That’s just you projecting your Boeing “failure is shameful” corporate culture onto others on whom it doesn’t fit.

          Rather than a circumlocation, RUD is an inside joke that SpaceX let out into the outside world. It’s a bit of ironic humor that is actually poking fun at the evasions and even denials of firms like your own Boeing and Northrop Grumman with your “successful” tests that failed and your plane crashes that aren’t really your fault.

          SpaceX thinks failures are more funny than shameful. That’s why whomever at SpaceX uses the acronym RUD is smiling when they do so. Tom Mueller, in an audio interview some time ago, sounded positively gleeful as he recounted the major test stand carnage that accompanied development of Raptor. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, essentially boasting about all the hardware he’d ruined in the course of achieving a major advance in the state of his art.

          As for orbit, it’s good to see you converging with the rest of us. A year would be within spitting distance of Elon’s own predictions. Even two years would be a lot sooner than the mid-to-late-20’s notions you and Tubbiolo were slinging around not so long ago.

          It’s hard to blame you for exercising more caution anent intemperate remarks considering how all those dismissive assurances that SpaceX had no idea what caused the D2 RUD or how to fix it left you with so much Grade AAA Extra Fancy Jumbo egg all over your face.

    • duheagle says:
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      Boeing and the rest of the timid denizens of the OldSpace legacy world have developed a vast – or maybe a more accurate description would be half-vast – array of time-consuming and expensive spells and rituals designed to keep failures at bay. But these haven’t prevented either amusing things like Starliner’s service module abort motor incontinence and errant parachute pin installation or tragic things like the 737 MAX disasters. SpaceX uses models and computer-based tools too, but also builds and tests aggressively.

      The Mk1 explosion isn’t going to cost SpaceX a year. Nor is the monetary expense very large. The Starship prototypes, exclusive of engines, aren’t very expensive – $500K for structure material, no more than that in addition for all the non-structural fitments, plus a million or two in labor and equipment rentals. Even with a half-dozen Raptors installed, these things cost about the same as a Falcon 9.

      Oh yes. Even in the absence of accidents, SpaceX is always redesigning. That’s a feature, not a bug.

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