I dunno about the unplanned disassembly (possibly to save and retrieve the portion of the rocket that had the launch data in it?), but have you ever seen a rocket make it several miles up with a quarter of its engines not working? Thats a new level of redundancy that's gonna make space travel more reliable and more affordable. I don't suppose you recall how many previously successful models of rocket NASA blew up before they get them working... because I dunno exactly either, but its always been a lot.
When Starships are tossing 330,000 pound payloads into space I bet you won't change your tune, either.
I can't discuss the failure. SpaceX, a private company, called it a success. That is not poo or deflecting. It's in a link I provided and a statement from SpaceX.
Absolutely. Plus, it is in line with SpaceX process in the past. SpaceX has followed a process that has even included purposefully exceeding limits for the purpose of testing engineering and manufacturing.
And I am betting that when that never happens because they are no more likely to ever get that overly complex thing to work properly that many will still scream it is a success. Of course, people also praise cars driving slowly in a tunnel under Vegas to be "successful proof" that the Hyperloop is real also. Or the laughingly poor capabilities of the Tesla Semi. I am more than aware that there is a huge cult of personality around Elron Musk, and nothing will ever convince his true believers he does not excrete diamonds.
Sadly, it seems to be the only explanation why these guys are arguing that a relatively spectacular launch failure equals success.
Go almost anywhere and you hear his praises sung like he is the Second Coming. Even though most of what he has made had failed, or is nothing like what was promised. I simply recognize it for what it is, and do not buy into it at all. It is no different than Steve Jobs, or a great many others we have had. People with little critical thinking believing any hype about somebody or something, and never looking behind the curtain to see what is really there. But once again, if one wants to see a "Cult of Personality" for what it is, simply replace the object of that adoration with almost anything or anybody else, and see what they say about it. How many would be praising this so much as a "success" if this was not an Elron Musk launch, but one by NASA? Or the ESA? Or Boeing? If the same people would be screaming it was a success for one group but a failure for any other, then you know their critical thinking is compromised by the cult of personality.
Elon's companies have produced some cool stuff. Questionable to what extent Elon is the guy that made those rockets capable of landing on ships in the ocean after launch or giving the Plaid the ability to capture the title of the fastest production car on Earth. And the Tesla auto pilot s is pretty sick too. But, not to give him any credit would be a failure to account for how leadership and vision actually is capable of influencing outcomes. Jobs never really scored a hit imo until the ipod, and then really scored with the iphone, but a lot of his design guidance as I understand it has left a gap in the current offerings of the way the apps function. They attempted to replace him with designers that seem not to get it. Playlists on my iphone, "delete from library" is an absurdly un-useful menu option and I never expect to see Apple provide any type of native support for simple things like air gap deletions in playlists, much less any sort of fade in / out features. Seems like that NPR clip is associated with the launch we're debating here though, it was published the day of the launch.... what is going on here I wonder with the claim that the launch facilities were not damaged? What is the previously failed the multi engine platform you're referencing?
Like I said, when you lose that bet you'll be dishing Elon. We all know you're either completely ignorant of actually history or simply trolling, but for those that are in touch with reality:
The thing though is he did not really "invent" it. We had portable MP3 players since 1998, and in the same year I did a rundown of not only multiple sound formats available at that time (MID, WAV, MP3) for a TV show I used to do, but a review of the Diamond Rio, which was the first portable MP3 player widely available in the US. And there were a slew of them before the iPod came out in 2001. Rio was the first one commonly used though, and it was the RIAA suing them that brought them into the common knowledge. And the failure of that lawsuit that led to a ton of other companies entering the market, including Apple. Very little of what Apple did was ever really "original", no matter how much they like to claim it is. Just as we had "smart phones" over a decade before the iPhone. And even the Lisa and Mac were just cool looks laid over a Xerox design from the early 1970s. I always shook my head as Jobs would claim he invented something "new", when all he did was take something made by somebody else and just make it more "pretty". Hence during the Apple-Microsoft lawsuit, Bill Gates famously compared the claim he "stole" the Macintosh as being akin to Jobs going into his neighbor's (Xerox's) garage to steal his bicycle, only to learn that somebody else (Microsoft) had beaten him to it. Gates never tried to hide the fact Windows was inspired by the Altair, while Jobs constantly denied it and always tried to claim it was his idea. I shook my head in the same way when "OS X" came out and Jobs was saying how original it was. Yet in reality it was just another UNIX/Linux clone. Something that Microsoft had actually first sold back in 1980 with XENIX (now SCO UNIX). Jobs did have interesting ideas when it came to Industrial Design, but in reality very little was ever really "original". Just a repackage of something actually made first by somebody else. The Soviet N1 rocket. Powered by 30 NK-15 engines, it was the most powerful rocket ever built prior to this one. They built and launched 4 of them between 1969 and 1972, every single one was a failure and largely for the exact same reason this one failed. Having so many engines created a lot of failure points. And just like this one, on every launch several of the rockets would fail and result in it either crashing and exploding, or it being exploded in flight. And ultimately, most now tend to look at the fact that it had so many engines as the main failure point (in addition to using kerosene instead of liquid H and O2). But there is a reason why most successful engineering projects try to use the "KISS Principle". Keep things simple, as that lowers the numbers of points of failure in the final project. By having 30 engines as opposed to the 5 of SATURN, it was 6 times more likely that there would be a failure. And as the "recovery technique" was to shut down the rocket on the opposite side of the ring to keep it stable, that means that for every 1 that shut down, in reality they would lose 2 rockets. In this launch, we had between 6 and 8 engines fail (6 failed, 2 others failed but returned). That means to recover, they would in reality lose from 12 to 16 engines. Out of 36. And bringing up that we can do things "better" today is still a silly claim, as even in the 2020s we still have rockets fail. This is why I keep questioning the recovery techniques that SpaceX was intending to use in the event of engine failure. As I can not see any realistic way to recover short of what the soviets planned, and that is shutting down the opposite engine (which is the same thing that NASA did for the Saturn V when they had engine failures). And most importantly, could Starship actually reach orbit with between 12 and 16 engines shut off? That is close to half of the engines inoperable, and I have yet to be able to find any clarification as to how many engines they could lose and still reach orbit.
Oh yes, like his solar roofs. His home batteries. His Trucks that would be available in 2019. Self-driving robo taxis for $30k in 2020. Fully autonimous Hyperloop in Vegas. I'll take that bet, as he seems to have 10 failures for every "barely passing" product. In fact, Tesla has yet to really make a profit selling cars. The "profit" is entirely by selling the carbon credits they get from the government for making "green cars".
Wow, so that is your answer, watch a video. Here, watch this video. And ultimately, big deal. He was able to essentially recreate the simple rockets the US was launching 7 decades ago.
Yeah, watch all the "failures", lol. Except at a 10th the cost, lol. I think we're done here. Your type is impervious to reality.
Of small payloads. And they actually charge a premium to do it. Oh, and in fact the majority of the launches have actually been in support of Musk's own company. So not quite sure what that even has to do with things, as Musk's rockets are primarily throwing up Musk satellites. And I am not impervious to reality, I am actually highly grounded in it. I simply refuse to buy into a cult of personality as you apparently have been.
Utter Nonsense. Utter Nonsense. 47/77 launches 2010-2019 say otherwise. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches_(2010–2019) You can see the payload weights as well. Yep, Starlink has really taken off past few years. Payloads for other companies are still on the rise. Nope, you fabricate reality. See ya..you're a tedious bore.
What is the basis for your "small payload" and "charge a premium" comments??? Nobody is rating SpaceX performance based on personality.
