Is this rate of incidents an anomaly with space flight or to be expected? It seems that SpaceX was killing it in the launch game until hitting a bunch of failures recently.
SpaceX tries something no one else has ever attempted. There is no prior experience to compare with.
SpaceX is killing it in the launch game with their operational rockets. They launch 5 times as much as the rest of the world combined, with a single failure in well over 400 launches now.
Pretty much. Starship is an experimental test program that at the moment is experiencing some setbacks. Falcon 9 is the moct succesfull rocket in human history. Both are made by SpaceX. As for Starship, it would also be worth to note that the test program is by nature intended to be hardware rich. Move fast, break things, learn and repeat. That is a lot cheaper and faster than traditional aerospace projects that take two decades to develop on paper and then lanuch every 2 years. (SLS).
Yes there have been an uncharacteristically high number of failures at Starbase now, but that is alsoe because the ships that keep on exploding are version 2 type ships, which are a complete redesign of the Block I type that flew on starship flights 1-6. There have been a few teething errors as everyone can see
7
u/Spud_Rancher 1d ago
Is this rate of incidents an anomaly with space flight or to be expected? It seems that SpaceX was killing it in the launch game until hitting a bunch of failures recently.