potayto - potahto

I didn't use enough words. :bow: -> your summary :D

Ha, just watched this, yeah, they started with *four* additional superheavy refuelling launches, then 6, 8, 12, now they are at "upper teens". He (I think) tongue-in-cheek says he did the math and came up with 28...

Anyway, at 30 minutes in: "So the question is, is this *smart*?".
No, this is *not* smart. This is f*cking stupid, and we're never going to land people on the moon again with this approach.

Regardless of the space stuff, I'm going to make everyone on my team watch this video. This guy gets it. It's not just NASA with these problems.

For real, NASA should have known better than to go down this route and he's right to call them out on it to their faces. No matter what ol' Musky promised them for price and performance, it was just a waste of time and money to proceed. The sooner they abandon this route the better.

The lost investment fallacy gets along quite well in bureaucracy. Lots of ass covering and asserting that everything is great and we are all doing great. Because bureaucracy is about protecting the top, and not accomplishing the mission.

I'm the annoying guy that can't NOT ask those questions. I refuse to gloss over an unfamiliar acronym no matter who's in the room.


Sunshine is the greatest disinfectant.

I think the outcry is for tax payer dollars to not go towards something that will fail, but that is the poor analysis of the general public, is it not? Hypothetically, if it takes NASA four times as long and twenty times the price to avoid failure, well, then that is not really a success. This is not NASA failing the American tax payer, so it is different too.

Success and failure are measured in different ways. If I took a team who drag raced Stock Cars, and we made a 5 second pass on our first time in the Top Fuel series with a new car/setup, and the only reason we didn't run a low 4 second pass was because a belt snapped on the supercharger then I would call that a success.

I think it is worth remembering that SpaceX has a history of crashing rockets before they perfected what they have. This year they have successfully launched 89 successful Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. These Starship tests are the first time they are building something so massive using new Raptor engines over the Falcon's Merlin engines, so we should expect some growing pains. Lots went right with these two launches, and I think that is what these commenters are highlighting along with the things that will be changed like moving from hydraulic to electric gimbal system and reinforcing the launch pad. I mean, having a launchpad failure is a failure, but it is like the racetrack having oil down the lane; you can't fail the design of a Top Fuel car for a track failure like you can't fail the Starship. The hot-staging was a success too. Technically, the booster not being recovered after the second stage was a failure, but a success from any other time in history when boosters weren't recovered.

In short, SpaceX is on the right path, and that is a success.

I thought both the booster and Starship exploded on the second launch from their automated self-destruct systems, which could have been triggered for many reasons. This isn't really a step back, IMO. They said something about losing communication with the Starship. If that was the reason for the auto-destruct then a failed communication circuit or antenna or whatever is not a significant step back on an entirely new rocket. Falcon 1 failed its first three launches, just saying.

The point is that even if this abomination performs *perfectly* every single time, it's going to take on the order of 15-20 launches of this rocket that is 2x a Saturn V just for *ONE* lunar landing. How does that make any kind of sense?

Also, while there is a place for just building and failing and rebuilding and refailing until you get it right, the scale of a project do deliver humans to the moon is too big for that. IMO NASA's approach here is better. Engineer, design, reengineer, redesign, some big delays but then you go to the moon on the first try.

I was considering Both Heavy and Starship to be Stage 1 and 2 respectively.

Or 8.
Then another 3 to land there.
And if were gonna start comparing what is obviously a test phase for something planed to get us to Mars since the moon is small potatoes to the God Elon (sarcasm).
May as well throw in all the failures of the Saturn program flights before Apollo.
It took NASA 17 flights to even put people up on the Saturn for Apollo 7.
People like to forget that NACA/NASA had just as many failures along the way.

Yes, they are moving forward, and they'll likely get it working, but ultimately I'm with @ZDan on this one, it's ultimately a complex mess as far as a moon landing program goes.

My main point was, and remains, that calling a launch that ultimately does not meet it's end goal a resounding success is a disingenuous at best and they aren't fooling anyone. Call it what it is, a failed mission where you gathered good information to move forward to the next attempt.

Ultimately its just my opinion.

Oh and by the way, this is taxpayer money, or at least is partially funded by taxpayer money. SpaceX has received contracts from NASA worth at least $13B.

The first time they *tried* to go to the moon, they went there, both with Apollo 8 (manned) and Artemis I (man-rated, but unmanned).
The first time they *tried* to land humans on the moon (Apollo 11), they did.

Starship is about the least efficient way of getting boots on the moon imaginable. It's like the Cybertruck of spacecraft.

Frankly it almost looks like it is designed to maximize launches rather than landings. Modern Astronaut Conspiracy theorists might say it is to increase revenue. 😎

Apollo 7 was not a Saturn V.
NASA sent people around the fricking moon on just the *third* Saturn V launch.