The schadenfreude is strong here but it’s hard to argue with results. By treating space launches as a process to refine through iteration (so the more the better) they’ve come to dominate the market. It’s also a process where others don’t gain the benefit of those iterations, there’s no new tech innovations to base your own launch vehicle on, just lots and lots of internal knowledge.
It’s worrying to have a capacity like this so concentrated in one company (whatever the leanings of the figurehead) but hard to see how that changes unless others start using the same methodology
> the company Xeeted
This is what upset me the most in this article
The issue, in my non-educated view, is that it's the same issue twice in a row. I'm all for innovation and have admired SpaceX since the Grasshopper prototype but they can't just keep having debris flying down the Bahamas every month. Maybe it does need a pause in the launches and re-think the whole upper stage.
What's the equivalent of Bioware for engineering companies? When the original talent leaves or existing talent can't put together a significantly more complex project than previous efforts. Not suggesting this is where SpaceX is at, too soon to tell, but curious of there's a term for that process.
I hear they are going to Mars real soon.
I started making videos about Starship because the project management approach to Starship is a crock of cheese.
Agile project management methods work well for software. When I teach how to use those methods I warn people that they are so attractive and so simple that it's tempting to use them everywhere. Agile can, and too often does, become a management fad. Which is a disaster.
So no surprise, when I heard all of the iterative development bullshit about Starship I thought this is a crock of cheese. I should talk about this being a huge blunder and warn all those people out there in the tech industry that knowledge of software development project management isn't going to translate to rockets, Or much else, besides software.
And so, it's no surprise that on the 9th test flight, it blew up again at roughly the same time and place as the 8th test flight. The iterative changes made between these two test flights didn't improve the outcome. This is a project where progress has stalled. If a software project was performing like this, it would be time to consider terminating the current project, and either starting over or abandoning the project goals on the basis that the technology and implementation choices that were made during the project aren't working.
Unlike most software projects, where you can "throw one away" and not take too bad a hit financially or schedule wise, Starship suffers both from sunk cost fallacies and a narcissistic project leader.
The current problems that have stalled Starship's progress are very likely not the most difficult problems that they will have to solve. They don't know in detail what those problems are going to be. Because of iterative development of a rocket. They can't see far ahead in their project. And that is going to lead to the failure of this project.
I remember watching the "Space Shuttle Challenger" disaster (I was a little child back then) and I thought "wow!!!" and then my mother told me "there were 7 people in there that are dead and their kids will never see them again". And then I went outside and played football with my friends.
Every time I am remembering those moments (well.. now I do understand 'more' about life/death/the universe) I am thinking "f...ing hell, those people were incinerated in 1ms, their families got back a handful of nothing to bury". (imagine losing someone and getting an empty casket)
Every time I see a "test launch" going 'boom' I am 'happy' because I know that we don't lose 1-5-10-20 finest-speciment-people in that incident.
How many boats are in the bottom of the seas carrying explorers, traders, fishermen, voyagers? Hundreds? Thousands?
How many men are in the bottom of the seas that were those explorers, traders, fishermen, voyagers? Hundreds? Thousands?
Space exploration is HARD. Shitposting or writing thoughtful and critically-correct articles on the internet is EASY (relative to the space exploration thingie).
I do believe that from every failure we learn and we become better. So yeah, dear TheRegister keep a counter on your desks, while sitting on your chairs, in a warm office with hot coffee and cool water, while others work to make us interplanetary species. Do keep an eye on this for the following two reasons: 1) we need to know what's up and 2) we need to see the progress (and a secret 3) we laugh with you hypocrisy/negativity)
And a side-note about 'feelings'.. the thing is called (apologies for the upcoming caps) "starship"... FFS we are developing "STARSHIPS"!!!!!!! Do people realize that we are developing "STAR-SHIPS"???? Not "cross-the-lake-ships", or "cross-the-ocean-ships". We are developing machines that can/will carry living human beings across the Cosmos and on to other planets far-far-away!!!
I am a Trekkie and knowing that we are developing these and there is actual progress makes my heart beat faster!!!
If we ignore the societal grudge held against its owner, this is not much out of the ordinary, right? SpaceX's usual experiments go along the lines of doing it once or twice in the right way, then pushing the limits as far as possible, to find what those are.
You might have a problem with this approach - the waste is large, the environmental impacts terrible. But they got to where they are exactly by this process. See articles such as SpaceX Launched Over 80% of All Orbital Payload Mass in Q1 2023 (https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/05/spacex-launched-over-8...)
Europe could stand to learn a thing or two. We still do our launches in secret, often not telling a public that there will be a launch until the satellites are already in space.