SpaceX resets 'Days Since Last Starship Explosion' counter to zero, again SpaceX's Starship has failed, again. Elon Musk’s private rocketry company staged the ninth launch of the craft on Tuesday and notched up one success by managing to leave the launchpad by re-using a Super Heavy booster for the first time. But multiple fails for Flight 9 followed. SpaceX paused the countdown for Tuesday's …
Seems like it's still shaking itself to bits. It's progres of a sort - it got further - but this is going on for rather a large number of flights. Intentionally stressing a vehicle in test is one thing, but at the moment they've not bracketed a mission design / load / profile that doesn't lead to failure.
Most iterative approaches start off gentle to see it the thing at least works, then harden-up testing thereafter. It feels like they're trying to claim they're doing the opposite. But to me that smacks of over confidence.
I think what's going on is that they're slowly discovering that vibration modes all over the craft are severe, complex and difficult to solve. Solving those through iteration is going to take either a lot of material to dampen down the vibrations in pipes, structures, etc, (which will add weight), or an awful lot of analysis (which is not something Musk likes apparently), or a very long time and luck.
Worse, with vibration being mostly due to turbulent flow in pipes, success on one day is not guaranteed to lead to success on another day with the same design. The flow's turbulence is hard to predict, and not assured to be consistent (because it's also subject to vibration of pipes). A craft like this is going find all manner of exciting and thrilling ways in which it can tear itself apart, and it could take a looooong time before it stops surprising them with new ways of falling to pieces.
A lot of the success of such a program relies on progress, and enthusiasm. Musk has pretty much destroyed any credibility he had, and his team knows that (regardless of whether they're fans or not). If there's any hint at all now that money is getting tight, people will start to leave the project. With Tesla seemingly getting into severe problems, and Musk's performance over Twitter, there's likely a lot of wise money choosing to not get involved in any Muskian enterprises right now. Raising seriously large amounts of new money could be difficult.
Agree. Even if they achieved MECO this time without fire or explosion, the underlying root cause of loss of control according to live stream commentary around 30 minutes into the flight again was a fuel leak. So the root cause "fuel leak" now has caused the last 3 losses in a row.
However they do not seem to really have tackled this root cause (ruptures from oscillating pipes), instead they added fire suppression and enlarged ventilation openings.
This might have indeed worked as designed, in a way, preventing Starship from exploding before MECO.
But it seems to have turned out, only implementing a workaround resulted in a different kind of failure, namely loss of attitude control.
So probably SpaceX will be forced to solve its oscillation/vibration problem, which, as you say, will probably add development time and weight.
"However they do not seem to really have tackled this root cause (ruptures from oscillating pipes), instead they added fire suppression and enlarged ventilation openings."
This is a wrong track to pursue. SpaceX has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA to provide a lunar lander. The architecture SX has requires loads of flights so they must have vehicles that can be reused as promised. Any sort of fire suppression use is a loss of vehicle in the context of their part of a lunar mission. If they do get the vehicle back afterwards, it will be up on the hoist for a long time if it's even worth repairing and not just harvesting for parts.
Turbulent flow in pipes is not exactly the problem; chances are flow rate is too high for the flow to remain laminar, and turbulent flow is not necessarily a problem on its own.
The problem is almost certainly a fluid / structure interaction - oscillations in the fluid flow occurring in a non-random pattern which matches a natural mode of vibration of the pipe. (A bit like "Water Hammer"). Possible solutions:-
1. Tie down the pipes at more positions
2. Change the length of the pipe slightly
3. Change the pipe diameter and/or wall thickness.
Even at very low pressure and fluid volumes, pipe flow is important. A domestic central heating pump has a performance curve that it uses to best move the fluid around. I learned this when we were having problems with hot water causing the pipes to oscillate and produce a rumble. Solution was to select a different pump curve on the Grundfos pump.
So if it matters in such a light duty, for a rocket motor with cryogenic fuel and zero atmosphere, I cannot comprehend the engineering challenges involved.
Trouble with securing the pipe at more positions is making sure that the thing one has tied it to is itself not vibrating!
One possibility I've thought of is shock absorbers. Not the classic oil-filled ones for a car or a bike, but one using the same fluid as is in the tank.
For example, suppose the troublesome pipe is a methane pipe going through a lox tank, and the trouble sets in as the lox drains away leaving the methane pipe free to wobble. Have some shock absorbers filled with liquid oxygen between the pipe and the tank walls or some baffle structure. The shock absorbers would be fitted dry, and would fill up when the lox is loaded. The lox in the shock absorber wouldn't stay liquid for very long, but then it doesn't have to. The tank isn't going warm up whilst there's lox in it, and methane won't have to flow through the pipe when the lox is all gone. The shock absorbers might need some rudimentary lubricant or low friction surfaces (wasn't this what PTFE was developed for?), and could even be a wear-item to be replaced each launch. E.g. it could just depend on lox for some lubrication, and if it wears anywhere just make those parts from steel and have a magnet to catch the particles.
No, one of the fixes for POGO is bubbling helium through the lines. It makes the fluid a bit more compressible and changes the dynamics.
See Hanks/Stephens AIAA 19690047509
Unfortunately, that requires a good supply of helium and Yet Another Onboard System to bubble it. So it's a fix only for the desperate, such as the Saturn V designers.
There's also a gas accumulator, where you have a void full of compressible gas hung off the pipes. This is actually used in my washing machine lines to reduce the water hammer from the instant valve closures, as well as in liquid propellant rocket engines.
"Raising seriously large amounts of new money could be difficult."
Really? US equity markets are the least rational places in the world (including most lunatic asylums), Musk himself is a past master of "three cups and a pea" stock accounting (as demonstrated by his various corporate actions), he's besties with the Orange Turd, and Space X is essentially reliant upon generous government subsidies and promises.
You and I wouldn't lend a brass farthing to Musk, but there's plenty of clueless dupes who are WAYYYYY richer than we are who would happily punt their life saving on him. On a vaguely related side note, I see SCROTUS has signed an order permitting US pension investments to be "invested" in private equity deals, showing how little the new owner of the White House cares about the peasant classes who voted for him.
Yes, it is getting much harder to raise capital because capital costs have ridden both due to higher interest rates – Musk was really able to play the system in the years of free money – but, more importantly in the US, due to rising bond yields.
Other companies have to learn to work with greater financial discipline. Though I'm confident that SpaceX has engineers who will solve the problems over time, Musk's insistence on a rapid launch schedule could well prove counterproductive.
Depends how they want to raise capital, what investors believe it's for, and the promises attached. VCs are having a tough time raising money (hahahaaaa!), but US non-fin corporate investment grade bond issues are so far doing much the same as this time last year. AI robotics and the like still seems to be something that investors want to throw money at without any sanity checks. Uncertainty and portfolio rebalancing away from the US won't help, but there's always a bigger fool to be found in US markets. As evidence by Tesla's share price, up almost 105% in the past twelve months, even as US EV incentives get slashed, and European buyers shun new Swasticars. I walked past a Tesla the other day to which a sticker was attached "I bought my Tesla before Elon went weird". Not sure that can possibly be true, but it says something when a marque's customers are having to excuse their ownership.
Well, I guess there are the sovereign wealth funds… but normal capital markets are definitely a little more conservative now. An awful lot of AI funding in the US is coming directly from the cashflow of the main beneficiaries: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et el.
I think Musk would normally struggle a bit to get more cash without ceding control, but he's got the deals with NASA and the DoD as a sweetener and, no doubt, it's merely a matter of time until the FAA becomes part of the DOGE corporation and he launch as many explosions as he likes. Of course, this might encourage the smart money to move to the competition.
"Well, I guess there are the sovereign wealth funds"
I'm surprised more of those aren't looking at investments that will return some sort of product/process back to those countries. Since many of them are middle-eastern countries with lots of oil profits and the writing is on the wall for oil, they'd be looking to develop technology that they can parlay into the next profitable business that fits their strengths/raw materials.
"Though I'm confident that SpaceX has engineers who will solve the problems over time, "
Really? I'm not.
Take a look at the group of engineers/techs they have. Very young and starry-eyed. Likely fresh out of uni. I know people that have been there and it's not a great place to work so there is a high turnover. There's a lot of sacrifices to be made to play with rockets. Rate of pay and hours required to be at SpaceX are a couple of them. Many years ago I looked at applying for an instrumentation job at the McGregor facility. 50hours/week was standard with mandatory OT for test cycles. The salary wasn't competitive for the hours worked. It's steadier work for a bit more pay to be an assistant manager at a big box hardware store. If you plan to remain single for the rest of your life, go ahead and work in a sparsely populated area for 60hours/week and not make much money doing it. Yes, it's a "cool job", but also realize that the company is getting away with abusing the staff in trade for that "coolness". An engineering degree from a good school with lots of varied work experience opens the door to a whole world of interesting, well-paying work. Ideally, if you want to work on rockets, you want to be headhunted for the job rather than applying at the company.
SpaceX behaviour seems odd to you because you have a false impression of the huge amount of work left to do.
The thing that flew today was nowhere near a functional product. A clearer name for it would be 'Heat shield concepts test machinery'. On that score, the previous generation would have proved more useful as that actually did a re-entry well enough to test the heat shield. Pogo killed flight 7 and that was fixed (well bodged) sufficiently that it did not kill flight 8. Flight 8 died because an exploding raptor took out the other two gimbled engines and one vacuum optimised engine. Flight 9 entered an unrecoverable spin. We may find out why later but pogo did not look like an obvious contributor.
Flight 9 used second generation engines that lack the thrust to get a useful payload to orbit. The third generation engines are currently exploding at McGregor. Those will require significant changes to the plumbing and could bring pogo back. I would also place a small bet on generation 3 causing sufficient issues that a fourth generation will be needed for a viable product.
The big change that gives Starship a chance of showing better progress is the change to the launch license. SpaceX were limited to 5 orbital launches (and landings) per year. The limit recently changed to 25. That will allow SpaceX to RUD their way through the stockpile of old ships and boosters. Feed back from launch N could be applied to the construction of the rockets for launch N+2 instead of the current "which assets can be modified so they won't RUD the same way as last time".
The new launch limit should exceed SpaceX's current hardware rich production capability so the RUDs will be more frequent with faster visible progress.
"The limit recently changed to 25. That will allow SpaceX to RUD their way through the stockpile of old ships and boosters. Feed back from launch N could be applied to the construction of the rockets for launch N+2 instead of the current "which assets can be modified so they won't RUD the same way as last time"."
There's a lot of assumptions in that. What government has given, government can take away. The Boca Chica site is 2km from the border with Mexico. A flight anomaly that causes a crash on Mexican soil/territorial waters will be a big issue and that could mean the US State Department enters the picture. Elon said in an interview that each BUG (blowed up gud) is $100MN. That's for a test article, not a complete spacecraft. The FAA is mainly concerned with accidents causing damage, injury or death to uninvolved parties. If something like that happens to any great extent, the requirements for the mishap report ratchet up exponentially. Lobbing incomplete designs to "see what happens" is going to eventually BK the company or something will happen that forces regulators to step in and put their foot down.
A lot of people have bought into the "this is the only way to build a rocket" narrative. I'm not sure they're going to give up easily..
That said, a lot of people bought into "this is the only way to build underground tunnels" narrative - with international teams competing to build sleds for a transport system that never appeared.
And a lot of people bought into "this is the only way to make solar affordable" narrative - with panels that proved impossible to manufacture.
And a lot of people bought into "this is the most advanced truck in the world" narrative.
Now you could argue that Musk's actual motive for doing these things was often not the same as the narrative that people got emotionally invested in.
It would be a funny thing then if the outcome of the billions NASA has thrown into the Artemis programme, and private individuals have put into the dream of life on Mars turned out to be a delivery system for Starlink paid for by other people's money. I've heard that Musk is already talking down Artemis in favour of a much further away goal...
I'm making a note here, "Huge success".
A lot of people do not go to the trouble of investigating the details so their opinion has far less value than that of people who do.
I am not an expert on tunnels but I did pick up some of the criticisms from people who are. Boring tunnels are often a narrower diameter than the competitor's product they are priced against and the competitor chose the wider diameter for good reasons. Boring tunnels are priced for a long hole with support. Competitors' offerings include lighting, ventilation, fire suppression, escape routes, ... Actually digging the tunnel is not the major cost. Surveying and permitting add a sizeable chunk. The bricks produced from the excavated soil are weak. Boring focussed on digging quickly but there is much more to the business than that.
Musk built a test track for hyperloop. The others companies that talk about vehicles to run on that track are far better at getting investment than actually solving any of the big problems that must be dealt with to make a functional system.
I do not know how Musk avoided getting convicted for securities fraud related to Tesla's bail out of Solar City. If we were looking for something Musk is actually good at, I would place evading legal consequences front and centre.
There were many people pre-ordering cyber truck, with the intention of scalping. When it became obvious the the world plus dog that cyber truck was a dud Musk changed the pre-order terms to prevent re-sale within a year. Resale of other Tesla vehicles can be problematic because the software is licensed and extra steps are required to move the license with the sale.
There is a huge difference to the way SpaceX and Tesla operate. Musk thinks he understands cars so he talks and the result is cyber truck. Musk thinks rockets are hard so he listens and the result was Falcon.
Musk's lawyers said that Twitter is a home to invective and hyperbole and no reasonable person would consider it to be a source of factual information. I do not see any point in listening to what Musk says. I look at the actions. Starbase is massively over-built for a Starlink launcher. I will not discount Mars as the intended (eventual) destination until someone can find a use for Starbase's production capacity. SapceX senior staff understand the value of the Starship/Artemis contract as a way to get tax payer funding for technology that will be useful for Mars. I think Starship HLS will happen eventually unless some clueless twit convinces the president to cut it.
Hardware rich used to be the way to make innovative rockets. The market shifted to optimising for (maximum) cost. As examples, take a look at Delta IV, SLS and Ariane V+VI. Hardware poor development has got us Vulcan (just about, and late) and New Glenn (probably, and even later). Blue Origin are making progress because of their transition towards hardware rich.
RocketLab got where the are today by being hardware rich. To be fair, several other companies tried hardware rich and were better at RUDs than profit. I think a hefty chunk of that is because they aimed at small launch and one Falcon 9 can launch over 100 small payloads at a time.
This has been a long rant so to some it up, please do not let Musk take credit for SpaceX achievements because SpaceX is better off when Musk is busy elsewhere. The only reason I would want Musk back at SpaceX is so he is too busy to cause trouble with DOGE.
Falcon 9 only became the reliable workhorse it is after a train wreck of a meeting between SpaceX and NASA concerning a crewed rating (pretty sure El Reg reported on it back in the day). Musk: "we're going to demonstrate safety by launching so many that we have a statistically sound basis to claim it's safe without the need for heavy weight QC/QA and boring paperwork". NASA: "that's not how crew rating works. Do the QC/QA and paperwork".
Funnily enough, it was only after then did Falcon 9 start becoming reliable.
"When it became obvious the the world plus dog that cyber truck was a dud Musk changed the pre-order terms to prevent re-sale within a year."
Terminology is very important. What people were putting $100 towards was a 'reservation', a place in line to be invited to place an order. The naming is important for legal reasons and also to keep the process straight so using reservation, pre-order, deposit and order interchangeably fogs what's going on. Once invited to configure a vehicle and place an order with Tesla, a non-refundable deposit (~$2,500) is required. You are mostly committed at that point, but still have some chance of an out sans the deposit money you gave them which becomes a "cancellation fee". There's also a raft of laws that come into play surrounding a legitimate order. Performance is a big one. With only reservations, Tesla could not be sued if they never came out with CT or made radical changes. "Thank you for the interest free loan, everybody".
Preventing resale within a year doesn't sound legal. Of course, to challenge that will cost you >$500/hr in attorney's fees. The US used to have a Federal Trade Commission to investigate this sort of thing, but they are in K-town too and have been for years. If you can't sell it, is it yours? The software licensing angle is a good read. You might be able to sell the abomination, but the buyer would have to go to Tesla, hat in hand, and beg to be allowed to buy a software license so the thing will work. Embedded software is also something that should be transferable with physical hardware since it's required for the item to function.
"There is a huge difference to the way SpaceX and Tesla operate. Musk thinks he understands cars so he talks and the result is cyber truck. Musk thinks rockets are hard so he listens and the result was Falcon."
Then he thought he learned all there was to know about rockets and Starship, Tom Mueller leaves to form his own company and there's a stadium full of starry-eyed fresh-outs that have shaved two or three times in their life doing all of the "engineering".
"I've heard that Musk is already talking down Artemis in favour of a much further away goal..."
It's not working in his favor that Artemis has flown a successful first test and #2 is in construction (very slowly at great expense). Elon has to hope that Blue Origin doesn't get their lander done and tested faster than expected or it means SpaceX won't be getting anymore follow-on contracts and government might want to rescind the awarded contracts and send in the accountants for a full audit. Pushing the whole program down the road another 5-6 year or longer broadens the scope of getting more contracts for SpaceX so they can get their Starlink dispenser completed. Needing to replace 42,000 satellites every 5 years is only going to get more expensive as time goes on and the F9 can't keep pace with bigger sat designs. Remember that Starlink v1 sats were lofted 60 at a time. Now it's 23-28 per launch. The issue is size of the sats and what they can fit inside the fairing. If it were mass, they could use the F9H and be able to lift 60 again.
"Worse, with vibration being mostly due to turbulent flow in pipes, success on one day is not guaranteed to lead to success on another day with the same design."
POGO might be a more likely issue. It's akin to water hammer in pipes and many rockets have had to employ mitigations to keep it from happening or lessening the effects. If you have a long column of propellant flowing down a pipe, it will have a load of inertia. If the flow is changed quickly, there will be pressure transients which engine throttle valves have to adjust for which causes more issues, lather, rinse, repeat. Turbulence is more likely to limit flows making it hard to get all of the engines producing the same thrust so there isn't the need for the gimbaling engines to compensate very much.
Vibration issues are a good thing to look for and instead of worrying so much about having the worlds biggest Pez dispenser or seeing how many heat tiles can be removed, lobbing an easy pitch mission with a ton of instrumentation looking for those vibrations would be a good idea. Having something to inspect at the end would be useful as well. Even better is not having yet another mishap report to get through before the next launch.
There's no way that the FAA and any other entity with a say is going to allow an orbital flight so Starship can RTB to attempt a catch without a much better showing on sub-orbital tests. The Gulf of Mexico is a busy place along with the whole overland track Starship would need to traverse to get back to Texas. A shower of metal debris and the need to vacate all of that airspace of flights in a hurry would be a non-starter.
By my account this flight was a failure on nearly all points.
- Booster re-entry testing was only half successful as only the aerodynamic portion succeeded after which it promptly ceased to exit as soon as they attempted to light the engines
- the ship made it as far as "space" but lost control, the payload door couldn't open and re-entry was uncontrolled making any heating data not that useful as far as the aerodynamics and protection of the flaps goes. Control loss was already stated to be due to loss of fuel caused by leakage which to me signals they haven't solved their structural oscillation problems and their "reinforce everything" strategy isn't working. Not surprising since they still seem convinced they can find structural oscillations of a body in free-flight by doing static fire tests on a test stand.
Spin it all you want, this was a failure.
I think the only success was to push on beyond previous failures. I get the feeling, though, that they may have gone down an engineering dead end and everything done to make it work now is a compromise or kludge rather than a refinement and they cannot afford the time to do a rollback and address the design with this generation.
"It seems likely that, as with the Cybertruck, the Starship's basic design is what Musk sketched on the back of an envelope while high and not something that engineers came up with."
Makes you wonder whose sketch was used for Bezos' space toy: "I want it to look like a giant sex toy, then I'm going to fill it with women, and then spaff it off in a not-quite-space trip!".
Sounds like the plot for a remake of Flesh Gordon. Anybody unfamiliar with that reference, I suggest you don't search it on a work computer.
"Makes you wonder whose sketch was used for Bezos' space toy: "I want it to look like a giant sex toy, "
Oh please stop with that. Rockets are long skinny things due to aerodynamics. The New Sheppard design is very clever. Being able to shift the end with the most drag to be optimized for up AND down saves a tanker full of fuel and gives them much more cross-range capability.
If you see images of sex toys, that speaks more about you than Blue Origin.
"It seems likely that, as with the Cybertruck, the Starship's basic design is what Musk sketched on the back of an envelope while high and not something that engineers came up with."
In the case of Cybertruck, it was copied from a 1978 issue of Penthouse from a drawing made by Curtis Brubaker. I can't remember the month, but it's not hard to search for it and see the image.
"I get the feeling, though, that they may have gone down an engineering dead end and everything done to make it work now is a compromise or kludge rather than a refinement and they cannot afford the time to do a rollback and address the design with this generation."
Not only do they have hangers full of shells, they are building more and bigger hangers. That's a lot of money and time sunk into dead end hardware. I'll bet Elon is thinking they'll see what they can learn by tossing it up and maybe getting lucky. The problem with luck is if something works, they have to go back and figure out why it worked.
to fail where no man has failed before. ;)
I suppose with CAD/CAM there isn't a drawing board to go back to.
I think I read, possibly in el Rego, that the hard part of rocket science is keeping things cold and moving cryogenic fluids around.
My suspicion is liquid oxygen isn't exactly a Newtonian fluid and I imagine when it's flowing rather rapidly through longish pipes the fluid dynamics are pretty much anyone's guess. The space cadets aren't that lucky in their guesses so far.
A large "space gun" would be easier to analyse and more reliable if a tad hard on the payload.
"Spin it all you want, this was a failure."
Criticise all you like, this was a test.
Test fails are as much part of the scenery as test successes otherwise there's no point in testing..
In reality
They couldn't do a door test because the ship was already spinning too fast.
They couldn't do a relight test because the ship had no attitude control.
They couldn't do a heatshield test because they had no reentry attitude control.
Until they sort out why the hotstage damages the engine compartment of a block 2 (but not a block 1), nothing will advance ... but you can't hotstage on a test stand so be prepared for more "failures".
"Criticise all you like, this was a test."
It's a test of a patched design that wasn't complete to start with. At best, it's component testing far more than system testing and they are pushing for things that should come after getting the basics sorted. You could try to take a third year chemistry course in your first year, but that's not likely to end well. Even if you are close, you'd do much better to breeze through the first two years so passing in the third year has high probability.
"Spin it all you want, this was a failure."
Ehm... No. The purpose of perfoming a test is to see what works and what doesn't. This test serves that purpose.
Despise Musk all you want (and I'm right in there with you) but the fact remains that developing a new generation of launch and space vehicles (which, let's be honest, is what SpaceX is doing) is one of those fields where progress is made progressively. It's not a case of "If at first you don't succeed you have failed completely". That's not how it works.
But SCROTUS hasn't got any options though has he? Boeing are desperately hoping to quietly exit their space activities, so who else is there other than Elon?
I suppose the Orange Felon could ask his Russian handlers to lend him a few Angaras, or maybe some stockpiled Soyuz. Rename Omsk to "USA" for a week, and hairpiece boy can tell the faithful that Angara is made in the USA.
The alternatives you should be looking for are:
RocketLab Electron - small but launches about once per month.
Vulcan has actually launched. Twice!
Nova, Neutron, New Glenn, Atares 330, MLV, ... - will launch real soon now.
The closest NASA come to having their own rocket is Boeing's SLS. It has launched once. The launch price is a secret from the US government but the GAO has found $4.2B of costs and suspect there was more that was better hidden. A launch rate of one every two years was promised but is not being delivered. Congress worked hard to get Europa Clipper on SLS but the nail in the coffin was that clipper would not have survived the strong vibrations from SLS's SRBs.
SLS has launched an Orion (heat shield problem) and some small satellites ride sharing with the Orion. Most of the small satellites died when their batteries went flat during launch delays. Some did actually make it, but being small and distant took Deep Space Tracking Network time away from more valuable things like JWST.
Boeing knew SLS's days were numbered long before DOGE and were lobbying hard to stay in existence. Boeing's lobbyists are outstanding. SLS is one of the few available rockets without a contract to launch Kuiper. That more than anything demonstrates its commercial value.
"The closest NASA come to having their own rocket is Boeing's SLS. "
NASA doesn't build rockets, they build missions. SLS (Senate Launch System) was originated in Congress to feed high ranking members states with jobs programs. Welcome to politics. NASA got lumbered with spending the money for it out of their budget and had no choice in the matter.
NASA uses mostly commercial launchers for missions if there is anything that fits. A manned lunar mission is beyond anything in the catalogs so they are forced to take the lead in a design and supervise construction of something that will work. It appears they are in the rocket business, but it's only a necessary means to do the mission. If they had also been leading the lander component rather than farming it out, there may have already been hardware tested. Very expensive hardware years late, but not years late and more years ahead with no cost total known. Did Kathy Leuders box NASA into a corner with Starship HLS? Will NASA have to keep giving SpaceX money as there isn't any way out that doesn't push the mission another decade out if Blue Origin has any issues?
Artemis could be done much cheaper, but everybody has heaped on their missions requirements far beyond just getting humans back on lunar soil and doing something useful. Congress has seen it as a way to get jobs programs into their states so they can point as them for the next election cycle.
That doesn't matter and there is a long history demonstrating successive administrations belief in their ability to pick winners and the sunk cost fallacy (though also a worrying numbers of promising projects pulled for differen reasons), meaning that SpaceX is moving towards the Gold standard of US military industrial problems: cost plus development.
"With Musk's friend in the top American job, I can't see FAA approval being an issue for Elmo."
Perhaps not.... until somebody loses an eye.
A crash in a foreign country would be problematic beyond the FAA. An explosion on the pad with that much fuel present would be difficult to gloss over. Airlines are already not happy with the fuel money they have to spend to get out of the way. Their campaign contributions might start going to candidates with an strong anti-Trump bias. Congress could instruct the FAA to make different conclusions as the agency is overseen by Congress and not the President.
Yes, but surely in 2025 we should have a better approach than throwing something up and seeing what breaks, trying to fix that, and then throwing up a new one, seeing what breaks?
I'm all in favour of the scientific method and empiricism, but at circa $100m a launch it's an expensive way of learning. Space X have a lot of rocket experience, I would have thought they should be a little further on than unforeseen plumbing issues even with a new product. It's almost as though Musk thinks that blowing up rockets is simply part of the corporate marketing.
There's lots of modelling being done at SpaceX, but they are doing stuff in areas that no one else has done.
E.g. no one else had attempted to retrieve a booster. They tried using parachutes and gave up, so now they use boost back. No one else had done boost back either.
So they're the ones gathering the data which will go into the models.
In a different area, in biology there's lots more modelling done than before, but sooner or later you still have to go to human trials.
A successful test returns data. This did return data but not the data SpaceX needed most: heat shield performance.
Compare to a successful validation. A validation flight is supposed to show that it is safe to put crew on the next launch. It is perfectly acceptable to take two years to work out why the heat shield almost failed. It is also fine to not validate the new flight profile with another uncrewed mission.
"A validation flight is supposed to show that it is safe to put crew on the next launch. It is perfectly acceptable to take two years to work out why the heat shield almost failed. It is also fine to not validate the new flight profile with another uncrewed mission."
For the HLS mission, there's no need for the crewed ship to have a heat shield. It's only needed so the books will balance after needing 20 tanker flights to fill up the orbital fuel depot that will still need to be worked out. The crew are going to the moon and coming back on a different ship.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
