The thing that bothers me about this rapid unplanned disassembly development methodology is all the environmental damage that this thing is doing. It was bad enough blowing up next to a wildlife preserve, but now they are (with some degree of certainty) blowing it higher up and scattering fragments across a huge area. The rockets are not getting any smaller.
> so the only way to test x is with a starship on top.
Why did they have to test "x" now? We don't have to go multi decades between launches, but couldn't they have delayed and tested when they had a more reasonable chance of success?
we do a magnitude more environmental damage every day, and it's not brought up, it's not about past environmental damage. People get up in arms about littering, and they liter the air out their tailpipe for hours every week.
It is brought up. People complain about the destruction of the earth due to mining, oil consumption, etc. Large numbers of people exclusively ride transit and use bicycles. Just because some people are hypocrites doesn’t mean we shouldn’t assess the environmental consequences of space travel.
> couldn't they have delayed and tested when they had a more reasonable chance of success
Probably not. These are new designs. Modelling only goes so far. The way you learn is testing, refining and repeating. I frankly didn’t expect it to clear the tower; max Q on the first shot is a testament to how far computational methods have come.
Keep in mind that the B7 and S24 were both obsolete designs. B7 had previous gen Raptor engines, with next gen being (presumably) simpler design and more reliable; it had hydraulics-driven mechanism to gimbal the engines (the next gen has electric motors); and the engines had less isolation/protection against RUD of neighboring engines than B9 and above. I'm less familiar with S24 but do know that its design is obsolete to a great degree as well. So realistically they both could have been sent to scraps, or launched just to get some initial testing done. The only thing I think SpaceX could have done better was the launch pad design (flame diverter and water deluge), and I think it was pretty clear after the static fire that it was completely necessary.
SpaceX took a risk, with the worst case scenario being launch pad and ground infrastructure being blown up to shreds, which did no happen. I agree that everything else was just icing on the cake. So I would put that to the W.
My understanding is that the engine on the B7 aren’t really powerful enough, so if a few go out, then the rest are just “fighting gravity” and not really accelerating the ship.
The new engines should have more net acceleration and should therefore tolerate a few engines failing.
Perhaps research should progress beyond combustion engines? Is blowing things up the only way? And my sense of wonder has been pretty much extinguished by the realization that space is a locus of human power dynamics and incorporation, not a utopian pursuit, but very selfish.
Much cheaper satellites. Used for things like predicting weather, monitoring climate change, allowing for communication that serve as an alternative for travel, advancing the frontiers of science, and so on.
Yes, advances in technology are used for wasteful things too, that doesn't mean they aren't still good for humanity.
> so the only way to test x is with a starship on top.
Why did they have to test "x" now? We don't have to go multi decades between launches, but couldn't they have delayed and tested when they had a more reasonable chance of success?
Maybe after building a flame trench/diverter too.