Comment by bhouston
2 days ago
> They've blown up 11 Starships without any of them making it to orbit.
They purposely were not trying for orbit from my understanding. The last one did orbit the earth at suborbital heights and release satellites. It did seem to do what they wanted it to do, it wasn't a failure.
Not only were they not trying to reach orbit, they are specifically trying to do risky things that they can learn from. It's not exactly destructive testing because they hope to succeed, but it's close.
That just seems like a huge waste of money
Each Expendable Starship Super Heavy launched costs less than a single engine on the Artemis program.
Every time you see a Starship launch what you aren't seeing is manufacturing processes corrected, issues in launch protocols and field issues resolved. All the little things that build up to make your system reliable. Do you want the doctor who has done a hundred successful surgeries, or the one who has done one or two but spent a long time in school watching videos.
The big difference is in the end, Starship gets built faster, costs much less, and can do more. It's not even close.
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It wouldn't if you were scheduled to fly on it.
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Elon Musk's net worth now (sadly) near a trillion dollars... :/
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Easy not to fail when you are purposefully not trying to succeed
I doubt they set out to launch eleven times without reaching orbit.
They very explicitly were not setting out for orbit for most of them.
Yes, but if you asked someone at SpaceX before flight 1 where they would be by flight 11, I doubt they would have been happy about the reality.
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Not a single one of them had reaching stable orbit in the flight plan.