I’m all for shitting on Musk but this is a very poor comparison. The Starship is very much still being developed and failures are expected. The Falcon 9 rocket is what is currently used to launch LEO satellites into orbit. From wikipedia:
As of 24 May 2025, rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 490 times, with 487 full mission successes, three failures, and one partial failure.
I’d say they’re doing pretty damn well, especially since they’re doing what nobody else has ever done and the first stage comes back and is reused. Also from wikipedia:
A total of 47 boosters have flown multiple missions, with a record of 28 missions by a booster. SpaceX has also reflown fairing halves more than 300 times, with some being reflown at least twenty times.
The design for the Saturn V wasn’t handed down by the rocket gods. Several of those Saturn V launches were test flights and there were 3 ground tests before them. Starship has been in development for about as long as the Saturn program took to develop and fly 3 different models of rocket.
The Starship is very much still being developed and failures are expected.
Every failure is a success! We’re learning! Every negative is a positive if we cheer loud enough to keep the investors happy and the nerds defending our insane waste of taxpayers’ money!
Failures aren’t expected, actually. What’s “expected” was that crewed missions to Mars were done regularly by 2025.
Meanwhile, every orbital flight ends up in the ocean.
Yeah, tell that to the people who engineer lifts, bridges, or literally anything that might end up costing lives.
Aw this bridge collapsed? That’s expected, we’ll improve next time!
As aa mech engineer, I can tell you, that anything that’s worth engineering has a safety factor of 2.5-3, has a carefully predicted lifespan and maintenance cycles, and is 100% not expected to fail. A failure is always a failure, unless its specific purpose is to fail.
Sending a rocket to space and seeing half of its rockets not fire is not an “expected failure”.
Safety factor on something like a rocket is much smaller. More like 1.2-1.5. Weight is so important in any sort of flight that the safety factor is reduced.
Lower safety factors don’t explain the rockets abysmal failure rate though. Its a total POS by any measure.
I hope they are trolling. They have a fundamental misunderstanding of acceptable failure in experimentation. If you’re building the final product and it’s failing constantly, you completely fucked up in design, testing, and QC. So instead of good engineering they are shoveling money into a fire pit by building full scale prototypes that are incapable of coming close to achieving design goals.
Keep on parroting that Muskian PR shit. Whatever it takes keep away from the facts they were talking about boots on Mars by 2024, and all that they have delivered is a cooked banana to the ocean.
Again: whatever makes your dumb ass feel better, you’re a fucking idiot for thinking I’m a musk fan and continuing to do so after being corrected just makes you look stupider
Am mechE. This is an unacceptable failure rate. It means they are several years away from manned flights on these rockets. It’s a complete failure of a project currently.
Eh. Using a weird goal to push engineering boundaries isn’t necessarily bad. Is going to mars sort of pointless? Yes, but it would help us continue to improve technology that otherwise not be funded.
Definitely shouldn’t be giving money to the nazi though. NASA should be given all the money fElon is getting IMO.
There are so many different, and better, reasons to get rockets out into our solar system aside from trying to forcibly terraform a dead rock.
Asteroids worth trillions in precious metals, diamonds, whatever the fuck — it’s out there waiting to be tapped.
Musk uses Mars as a ‘weird goal’ because it evokes feelings of a time when science fiction still represented ‘the future that could be’. He’s playing his base, nothing else. If he were actually trying to benefit humanity his focus would be the moon, then the belt.
I’m all for shitting on Musk but this is a very poor comparison. The Starship is very much still being developed and failures are expected. The Falcon 9 rocket is what is currently used to launch LEO satellites into orbit. From wikipedia:
I’d say they’re doing pretty damn well, especially since they’re doing what nobody else has ever done and the first stage comes back and is reused. Also from wikipedia:
Still, fuck Elon.
The design for the Saturn V wasn’t handed down by the rocket gods. Several of those Saturn V launches were test flights and there were 3 ground tests before them. Starship has been in development for about as long as the Saturn program took to develop and fly 3 different models of rocket.
Still, the whole reusing the same boosters bit is pretty significant.
No FEA is also very significant.
Every failure is a success! We’re learning! Every negative is a positive if we cheer loud enough to keep the investors happy and the nerds defending our insane waste of taxpayers’ money!
Failures aren’t expected, actually. What’s “expected” was that crewed missions to Mars were done regularly by 2025.
Meanwhile, every orbital flight ends up in the ocean.
https://i.redd.it/e7ddqt0f5es31.png
Every single engineer I’ve ever met is laughing at you
Yeah, tell that to the people who engineer lifts, bridges, or literally anything that might end up costing lives.
Aw this bridge collapsed? That’s expected, we’ll improve next time!
As aa mech engineer, I can tell you, that anything that’s worth engineering has a safety factor of 2.5-3, has a carefully predicted lifespan and maintenance cycles, and is 100% not expected to fail. A failure is always a failure, unless its specific purpose is to fail.
Sending a rocket to space and seeing half of its rockets not fire is not an “expected failure”.
Safety factor on something like a rocket is much smaller. More like 1.2-1.5. Weight is so important in any sort of flight that the safety factor is reduced.
Lower safety factors don’t explain the rockets abysmal failure rate though. Its a total POS by any measure.
Ah, so you think that bridges last forever and cannot fail?
Pretty shit one if you don’t expect failures in what you make, honestly
You are so fucking far from understanding how any of this works, and so deep up Musk’s exit, that it’s not worth my time replying to your trolling.
I hope they are trolling. They have a fundamental misunderstanding of acceptable failure in experimentation. If you’re building the final product and it’s failing constantly, you completely fucked up in design, testing, and QC. So instead of good engineering they are shoveling money into a fire pit by building full scale prototypes that are incapable of coming close to achieving design goals.
Lol, and the cap to truly show you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. Truly a master class in being a fucking dipshit you are
Keep on parroting that Muskian PR shit. Whatever it takes keep away from the facts they were talking about boots on Mars by 2024, and all that they have delivered is a cooked banana to the ocean.
Again: whatever makes your dumb ass feel better, you’re a fucking idiot for thinking I’m a musk fan and continuing to do so after being corrected just makes you look stupider
Am mechE. This is an unacceptable failure rate. It means they are several years away from manned flights on these rockets. It’s a complete failure of a project currently.
We were supposed to have regular ships back and forth Mars at this point and a thriving interplanetary society blah blah blah.
For what reason? what were they supposed to be ferrying? We never got that detailed out, I think we just weren’t ketamined enough to understand.
Instead we have motherfucking nazis making a comeback and he’s leading them. I want to speak to a manager.
Eh. Using a weird goal to push engineering boundaries isn’t necessarily bad. Is going to mars sort of pointless? Yes, but it would help us continue to improve technology that otherwise not be funded.
Definitely shouldn’t be giving money to the nazi though. NASA should be given all the money fElon is getting IMO.
There are so many different, and better, reasons to get rockets out into our solar system aside from trying to forcibly terraform a dead rock.
Asteroids worth trillions in precious metals, diamonds, whatever the fuck — it’s out there waiting to be tapped.
Musk uses Mars as a ‘weird goal’ because it evokes feelings of a time when science fiction still represented ‘the future that could be’. He’s playing his base, nothing else. If he were actually trying to benefit humanity his focus would be the moon, then the belt.
considering the growing footprint spaceX represents to national launch priorities, they should be nationalized imho.
keep them independent enough to maintain development but get musk out of the decision tree entirely.