Well said. On the other hand, the SLS — having a launch escape system and not requiring sophisticated acrobatics in order to reach land safely — is totally the ship I'd rather be on.
SpaceX approach when it comes to safety is to make sure everything that can go wrong goes wrong during testing and lesser value launches, so that when it is time to put people onboard, the issues will have been fixed.
NASA is about making doing right the first time though careful design.
For SpaceX approach to work, they need to test a lot, with a lot of explosions, so they need to make a lot of rockets, they also need repeatability. That's why they are using assembly lines and mass production techniques.
Which approach is the best, I don't know. The traditionally designed Delta IV never failed, but on the other hand, we lost two Space Shuttles and their crews. As for the Falcon 9, it had a couple of failed missions, but it has proven very reliable over time.
I disagree. SLS is hard-limited to a small total number of launches. Starship is going to get into the hundreds soon enough. By that point Starship will legitimately be safer and more reliable than SLS will ever be able to accomplish, so I'd pick it.
I suspect SpaceX will have to add something resembling an escape system before the thing gets "man-rated". That system could also be used to protect the passengers in case of a failed landing. It will add weight and thus lower the carrying capacity but they seem to have enough margin to allow for such an addition. They already have the header tanks in the top of Starship, adding a number of escape engines and some explosive bolts to separate the nose cone from the rest of the ship should be doable. Add some parachutes to make the thing land at a survivable speed and you're done - beer coaster calculation style that is.
> Unusually, the ejection system was tested with live bears and chimpanzees; it was qualified for use during 1963 and a bear became the first living being to survive a supersonic ejection.
I was thinking more in terms of the B-1 crew escape capsule [1] consisting of the whole cockpit equipped with rocket engines and parachutes to push it away from the plane and allowing it to land in one piece. The same could be done with the top of Starship, the part above the fuel tanks.
They want to carry 100 people. An escape system for those many people is the same scale of a commercial airliner escape system, which is designed to be operated on a stationary plane, on land or water. Astronauts will be well trained to use it but I think that there must be a lot of openings to let 100 people get out quickly in mid air. Maybe they'll agree that Starship is its own escape system.
Before the "Ejection escape systems" there are a few paragraphs about "inflight crew escape system"
> The vehicle was put in a stable glide on autopilot, the hatch was blown, and the crew slid out a pole to clear the orbiter's left wing. They would then parachute to earth or the sea
But 100 people is a different matter IMHO.
Ejections seats and capsule were not pursued, the Wikipedia page explains the reasons.
The big problem with the Space Shuttle was that the orbiter was located next to the fuel tank and between the solid boosters instead of on top of it. This made it impossible to perform the normal "accelerate away from the big boom" manoeuvre which normal rocket escape systems use. On Starship the passengers will be situated above the explosives instead of next to them/between them. As to whether it is possible to add escape engines of sufficient power to pull away the nose cone, push it up into a parabolic trajectory of sufficient height to give parachutes the chance to deploy I don't know but at least it could be done in theory where the design of the Space Shuttle and its "close cousin" Buran made this impossible.
We also went by "Human Interference Task Force" and "Angus MacHammer and the Ukrainian Glowplugs," renown in North Texas for our musical mediocrity. We were once introduced as "DJ Control Rat and MC 1000 Inch Buddha," which was interesting 'cause we were completely unrelated to MC 1000 Foot Jesus and played bluegrass.
Fun, little known fact: The Shuttle program's only successful post-launch abort was performed by Challenger in STS-51-F (not to be confused with Challenger's STS-51-L, which ended... suboptimally)
If you're counting the capsule itself, Starship qualifies too.
If you're talking about the launch escape tower, that's for during launch. It's gone by the time you reach orbit, leaving you in the same scenario of Lunar Starship in the event of a failure; in space, but no way to get down.
Maybe someone can explain to me why SpaceX lands their boosters?
I would think weight of fuel required to land booster + legs + steering fins would be much greater than a parachute or two and a water landing. That weight savings would be a cost savings as well as more payload that could be lifted (also a cost savings).
Would the booster be destroyed landing in the ocean by parachute?
Salt water is bad … evil stuff … they already try to avoid siting on the pad as much as possible to reduce salt spray corrosion from the sea air… even the barge trip back to land is less than ideal… salt water is the enemy of any complicated metal objects… so they are doing everything possible to avoid hitting the salt water and to keep the rocket as far away from it as practicable.
> On the other hand, the SLS — having a launch escape system and not requiring sophisticated acrobatics
> in order to reach land safely — is totally the ship I'd rather be on.
Have you ever flown on a Boeing 747, without a launch escape system?
That said, I do agree about the flip maneuver. I am very interested to see how that evolves.
SLS will never reach land, you'll be splashing down in the middle of the ocean, stuck inside a tin can getting battered by waves until NASA can scramble their limited resources to get you.
The booster presumably like you will have been thrown into the ocean. Very wasteful system.
This is pretty hyperbolic. In the shuttle era, these contingencies were thought of and planned for. The amount of preparation NASA would do before shuttle launches was incredible, including flying medical and rescue teams to the chosen launch abort sites.
"Preparations of TAL sites took four to five days and began one week before launch, with the majority of personnel from NASA, the Department of Defense and contractors arriving 48 hours before launch. Additionally, two C-130 aircraft from the space flight support office from the adjacent Patrick Space Force Base (then known as Patrick Air Force Base) would deliver eight crew members, nine pararescuers, two flight surgeons, a nurse and medical technician, and 2,500 pounds (1,100 kg) of medical equipment to Zaragoza, Istres, or both. One or more C-21S or C-12S aircraft would also be deployed to provide weather reconnaissance in the event of an abort with a TALCOM, or astronaut flight controller aboard for communications with the shuttle pilot and commander."
Do you think that is fundamentally different with, say, Boeing or SpaceX?
If you look through all the failures and close calls in aerospace they are often rooted in human psychological errors. The pressures that lead to them may change with different organizations, but they don't go away.
This almost sounds like the start of a joke.... 'so an engineer, a politician, and an accountant walk into a bar.' One's the head of SpaceX, one's the head of NASA, ones the head of Boeing. So yeah, I do think there's a fundamental difference there.
So how would you characterize that difference, both in terms of strengths and weaknesses? I have a few thoughts but would be curious to hear yours first.
While this is an interesting question I'm not going to give an especially interesting answer. I see things as you might imagine. And while it might seem unfair I'd also appeal to reality. It's now been more than half a century since a human left low earth orbit. NASA and Boeing (et al) had all this time to succeed. They failed, and there's no real excuse for their failures besides themselves, and their own motivations.
Keeping it brief SpaceX/engineer is genuinely trying to get people to Mars, largely driven by ideological reasons with extensive technical creativity/competence backing them up. Accountant/Boeing wants to make more money. Outsource our software development to guys in India bidding $9/hour? Awesome! That's another 0.037% profit, what could go wrong!? Something doesn't work? Who cares!? We're on a cost+ contract baby, what you call "failure to deliver", I call delivering value to my shareholders!
And then there's the politician. In this particular case, he's not only a life long politician but also 80 years old on top. The only 'bright side' is that, due to his political influence, he's gone to space before. On the other hand Charles Bolden was a genuine astronaut and absolutely everything one would think they would want from a NASA head, yet he was a miserable failure. It may simply be that political style leadership (even when not a politician) isn't really conducive to meaningful progress in modern times.
>They failed, and there's no real excuse for their failures besides themselves, and their own motivations.
I'd argue the incentive wasn't there until CCP. That was the fundamental difference in the last 20 years. Without CCP, I don't think SpaceX would be successful, either. But I will say they've done much more than the Boeing at executing on that incentive.
I do think you may be overly cynical in your characterization, though. It wasn't too many years ago that Boeing was listed as the most desirable company to work for by college students. The reason isn't that they thought it was because they couldn't wait to gouge the public coffers, it was because aerospace has always been considered a sexy engineering discipline. You'll almost never find a civil engineering firm on those lists because "roads and commodes" just aren't considered cool.
Back to the question, I'll weigh in with my perspective. They are all responding to incentives, albeit different ones. But we have to acknowledge the downsides of each. SpaceX is awesome, but they aren't without their own psychological pressures and biases. I've brought it up elsewhere in this thread, but they have wanted to rapidly iterate rather than fundamentally understand some of their design issues. I suspect this is partly cultural (where operational tempo matters more than scientific rigor...i.e., "we don't need to know why it works, as long as it works") and some of it is business (i.e., they have specific contractual deadlines to consider). Those are also some of the issues that lead to mishaps dating back to Apollo and Shuttle.
Considering you seem to think the legacy downsides are due to the business/shareholder side, do you see the same issues encroaching on SpaceX if they go public?
Absolutely, I do believe that SpaceX going public will largely be the death of that company. And, depending on when this happens, it could even herald the second death of space in America. The one thing that's good here is that Elon has stated that he will not be taking SpaceX public until transit between Earth and Mars is well established.
The point I'd make is that leadership really matters. Boeing, at its peak, almost certainly had orders of magnitude more talent than SpaceX did in its early years - in no small part because of what you mentioned. And they absolutely had many orders of magnitude more money and access to funding. But their leadership was just absolutely abysmal, and consequently the potential of that talent was left completely untapped.
But on the other hand, like you mentioned there are incentive problems. Even though Boeing failed to tap into their potential, their stock price has been constantly and steadily going up for decades. Even their planes literally falling out of the skies was but a brief stumble, the damage there largely repaired owing to the start of a profitable new war. So in this regard I doubt their leadership is particularly disappointed with their results. They achieved what they set out to do after all. And that's pretty disappointing.
>The point I'd make is that leadership really matters.
I wholeheartedly agree. You're probably aware, but there have been a number of good write-ups detailing an overall erosion of engineering leadership at Boeing [1].
>Elon has stated that he will not be taking SpaceX public until transit between Earth and Mars is well established.
I think maybe the difference between you and me is that I take many of Musk's promises with a boulder of salt. If I was a gambler, I'd bet that we see some wordsmithing about what the definition of a "well established Mars transit" when it comes time for an IPO.
A decade ago, the word was that SpaceX would go public "when we are reliably launching F9." Then Tesla went public and Elon decided he didn't want anything more to do with public companies. If anything, I think that statement should only be interpreted as it absolutely not happening before that condition is fulfilled, not that it will happen once it is.
... they have wanted to rapidly iterate rather than fundamentally understand some of their design issues.
You say this with seeming knowledge of the thoroughness of SpaceX's failure investigations. Care to elaborate how you can say this with such authority?
