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Space Exploration II: Always Looking up

My God do I yearn for the days of Boeing, North American Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, and Grumman, but all before bean counters took over.
 
My God do I yearn for the days of Boeing, North American Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, and Grumman, but all before bean counters took over.
While that is very, very true, had Boeing done the right thing, I may have lost my job 15 years before retiring. Boeing loss was literally my gain. Maybe Bill would have found someone like Alan, but he also chose Jac, so....

But it wasn't the bean counters as much as it was the pursuit of "shareholder value" thanks to execs getting paid in stocks and then long term capitol gains getting a massive tax break. Bill Clinton really fucked up US businesses by allowing the capitol gains taxes going so much lower than the earned income tax rate.

But it's also what is killing S-X, so there is that.
 
There was absolutely nothing successful on this besides reaching orbit. Which would normally be commendable, but going 0fer on nine consecutive for successes is fucking terrible for the largest private space firm on earth.

The reusable portion, while they expected it to get destroyed, didn’t even get to the testing portion they wanted before it slammed into the ocean.

The cargo hold blew a leak and had debris (probably one of the fuel components or RCS materials) floating. This should never happen with high value cargo.

The cargo doors failed
The cargo wasn’t launched

It started flipping again. FUCKING HOW DO YOU IDIOTS CONTINUOUSLY GET THIS WRONG??!!!?

they lost attitude control and it reentered over the Indian Ocean.

Just pure incompetence.
 
At this rate it could be a decade+ before they get a rating high enough to allow for human testing. (let alone actual use) SpaceX will die if Trump ever leaves office...
 
There was absolutely nothing successful on this besides reaching orbit. Which would normally be commendable, but going 0fer on nine consecutive for successes is fucking terrible for the largest private space firm on earth.

The reusable portion, while they expected it to get destroyed, didn’t even get to the testing portion they wanted before it slammed into the ocean.

The cargo hold blew a leak and had debris (probably one of the fuel components or RCS materials) floating. This should never happen with high value cargo.

The cargo doors failed
The cargo wasn’t launched

It started flipping again. FUCKING HOW DO YOU IDIOTS CONTINUOUSLY GET THIS WRONG??!!!?

they lost attitude control and it reentered over the Indian Ocean.

Just pure incompetence.
But, but, but... it reached orbit altitude- so they learned something. A billion dollar lesson they already knew how to do....

You can count on the celebration and yapping when they actually insert it into a stable orbit for it to then fail again. Touting how much better this is than Boeing Artemis that did go all the way to the moon and orbit. And when Artemis actually takes humans to the moon to orbit, they will proclaim that it's time to cancel the failed program to a system that has still not orbited the earth after over 10 times by then.

Beyond pathetic.
 
It's the new Engineering where you throw out everything that we as humans have ever learned about Engineering and start over again because it's faster, better, quicker, more profitable (especially when you can get the WHOLE THING paid for by the Government because this kind of stuff is what we need to safety net more than any other).
 
Starship exploded again.

How high was it while trying to achieve orbit this time?

0.0'

It exploded while on the launch pad for a static fire test.

**edit**
 
Last edited:
Just by the way it failed, it seems likely that the pressure vessel itself failed either at a nozzle or along a weld. None of which should ever, EVER happen.
But the certainly learned something, am I right? That's what people tell me when X keeps failing. This is fast and incredibly expensive learning that is taking way, way too long.
 
I've ranted this before, but how can people justify their claims of getting rid of Artemis, which has launched and put something into lunar orbit, for this piece of junk who hasn't even gotten into earth orbit?

Anyone who thinks that is the right thing to do is either an elmo cultist or know that it's just a money grift for elmo and wants that for some reason.

Based on the pace of things, Artemis 2 will put people into lunar orbit a year before X can get their crap into earth orbit.

I would feel bad for whoever decides to get on top of starship to go to the moon, but they decided to say yes with their eyes fully open and seeing all of the design decisions they have taken plus all of the hopeless development time they have squandered. Maybe it will work, but it sure seems like it's just a massive money pit.
 
What Billionaire's want to do is all that matters anymore. It used to be the United States Government by the people was in charge. No more. Now it's the money brokers and they want Elmo and his broken toys to get us to Mars.
 
I've ranted this before, but how can people justify their claims of getting rid of Artemis, which has launched and put something into lunar orbit, for this piece of junk who hasn't even gotten into earth orbit?

Anyone who thinks that is the right thing to do is either an elmo cultist or know that it's just a money grift for elmo and wants that for some reason.

Based on the pace of things, Artemis 2 will put people into lunar orbit a year before X can get their crap into earth orbit.

I would feel bad for whoever decides to get on top of starship to go to the moon, but they decided to say yes with their eyes fully open and seeing all of the design decisions they have taken plus all of the hopeless development time they have squandered. Maybe it will work, but it sure seems like it's just a massive money pit.
I would bet you that if you kept Captain Ketamine away from the project, there's a team of actual SpaceX engineers who could whip up a successful lunar lander to tuck into a stage behind Dragon and make a modern version of the Apollo program.

Why this fucking Buck Rogers spaceship was okayed as the official Lunar Lander for the Artemis has always bothered me and annoys me to this day.

A s much as I hate Bezos, I am glad NASA selected Blue Origin to develop a second lander. It will likely be developed, tested, and sent to the moon, before Starship gets to orbit.
 
I would bet you that if you kept Captain Ketamine away from the project, there's a team of actual SpaceX engineers who could whip up a successful lunar lander to tuck into a stage behind Dragon and make a modern version of the Apollo program.

Why this fucking Buck Rogers spaceship was okayed as the official Lunar Lander for the Artemis has always bothered me and annoys me to this day.

A s much as I hate Bezos, I am glad NASA selected Blue Origin to develop a second lander. It will likely be developed, tested, and sent to the moon, before Starship gets to orbit.
Maybe. Given the number of successful flights X has done, there certainly is some knowledgeable engineers there.

I do think that until someone comes up with some very efficient engines, doing a modern version of what Apollo did is required- where there are multiple parts and the whole ship does not land on the moon. It's a huge use of fuel to get back off the moon for such a large craft, so a lot of the fuel needed is to both land it and take off again fuel. Let alone the fuel needed to take the entire craft off the surface vs. a part of it.

To get a starship sized thing to land and take off again would probably need multiple launches and assembly in space.
 
I would bet you that if you kept Captain Ketamine away from the project, there's a team of actual SpaceX engineers who could whip up a successful lunar lander to tuck into a stage behind Dragon and make a modern version of the Apollo program.

Why this fucking Buck Rogers spaceship was okayed as the official Lunar Lander for the Artemis has always bothered me and annoys me to this day.

A s much as I hate Bezos, I am glad NASA selected Blue Origin to develop a second lander. It will likely be developed, tested, and sent to the moon, before Starship gets to orbit.
I honestly don’t believe that anymore. I just don’t.

I’ve heard anecdotes about the best engineers leaving the company over the last several years. Plus, that shitstain runs deep and no amount of bleach or oxyclean is going to remove it. It’s a terminal company.
 
I’ll also add, the engineering I do see is what I call cowboy engineering. It’s the kind of engineering that when I see it, I try to remove myself from the area as soon as possible.

There aren’t even glimmers of hope. Like, good engineers might have been able to figure out how to do this stuff. But they’re all so deeply inoculated with the boer virus that I don’t think any worth their salt are left.

Nothing I have seen out of that company - aside from the grab arm, which is objectively fantastic - is clever or shows any ingenuity. Even the launch pad looks like a shitty backyard shed construction.

From the small things like shitty launchpad design to the big things like pressure vessel failures, I don’t see any engineering being done by this company that is remarkable in the slightest.
 
I honestly don’t believe that anymore. I just don’t.

I’ve heard anecdotes about the best engineers leaving the company over the last several years. Plus, that shitstain runs deep and no amount of bleach or oxyclean is going to remove it. It’s a terminal company.
It's always interesting to see new rocket company start ups from former SX engineers.... There are a lot of them out there.

Some are doing things in a very clever way- in an industry where it does take a lot of time to make stuff, some are advancing large scale 3D printing- which actually both speeds things up and makes some impossible to make items possible. Others are focusing on small/micro satellites.

If anything, all of these start ups are going to overtake SX, as I don't see any of them selling out to SX as they find traction (as so many other tech industries do to their larger rivals).
 
dx is right...much like Tesla and Twitter most of the talent and brains left SpaceX. Some of them removed by the Ketamine Konman because he is an egomaniac but some of them left because they know the company is a sham. If a Democrat is ever president again and their NASA deal is put in jeopardy in even the slightest way they will bankrupt themselves. The few things they have that actually work as planned have no real practical use to justify the cost and Spaceship is not going to be people ready for a decade if ever.

What boggles my mind is that people still think Elmo is a genius which is how he is able to con everyone into thinking things are better than they are. This is the guy who, when he was at Paypal, they cut him off from being able to change code because he was so bad at it. And when he forced access, they had real coders basically go in and change everything he did because he was too stupid to even notice. Zuck, for all of his fascist loving dbagness, actually was a genius coder in his time. (especially before college) Elmo is worthless and the only people he trusts to be able to work at his companies are either full blown cultists or people who are less intelligent than him.

The fact that he wasn't thrown off the board of Tesla the day he stole half their engineers and moved them to Twitter (none of whom knew/were trained in how to run or maintain a social media) while firing (and refusing to pay out the deals of) the actual people who ran and helped create Twitter proves that no one involved in any of his companies are smart enough to be allowed to be involved in any of this even in a funding capacity. The US has set itself back years because they basically outsourced NASA to clowns like Musk.
 
dx is right...much like Tesla and Twitter most of the talent and brains left SpaceX. Some of them removed by the Ketamine Konman because he is an egomaniac but some of them left because they know the company is a sham. If a Democrat is ever president again and their NASA deal is put in jeopardy in even the slightest way they will bankrupt themselves. The few things they have that actually work as planned have no real practical use to justify the cost and Spaceship is not going to be people ready for a decade if ever.

What boggles my mind is that people still think Elmo is a genius which is how he is able to con everyone into thinking things are better than they are. This is the guy who, when he was at Paypal, they cut him off from being able to change code because he was so bad at it. And when he forced access, they had real coders basically go in and change everything he did because he was too stupid to even notice. Zuck, for all of his fascist loving dbagness, actually was a genius coder in his time. (especially before college) Elmo is worthless and the only people he trusts to be able to work at his companies are either full blown cultists or people who are less intelligent than him.

The fact that he wasn't thrown off the board of Tesla the day he stole half their engineers and moved them to Twitter (none of whom knew/were trained in how to run or maintain a social media) while firing (and refusing to pay out the deals of) the actual people who ran and helped create Twitter proves that no one involved in any of his companies are smart enough to be allowed to be involved in any of this even in a funding capacity. The US has set itself back years because they basically outsourced NASA to clowns like Musk.
Yes, and.... it's strange to me that the Dragon contingent of SpaceX continues its remarkable run. 75 launches so far this year alone, with every payload making it to orbit and just one failed booster recovery. All told to date, 500 successful payload placements out of 503 attempts. Much as I hate Musk and everything he stands for, I do have to tip my hat to this crew.
 
Yes, and.... it's strange to me that the Dragon contingent of SpaceX continues its remarkable run. 75 launches so far this year alone, with every payload making it to orbit and just one failed booster recovery. All told to date, 500 successful payload placements out of 503 attempts. Much as I hate Musk and everything he stands for, I do have to tip my hat to this crew.
Because it's done. Just use the established procedure to refurbish, and use the right process to make. Where it will get bad is when they start cutting the wrong corners to make money. BUT, I don't see that being needed because SX is making mint since they are able to blow up so many starships. I'm sure SX hates the FAA, but they are the ones who force them to keep and document procedures to even be able to fly.

I guess I should not be surprised that SX is struggling with aspects that they totally solved with dragon- the people who they needed to keep the same solutions clearly left the company.
 
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