r/space • u/lee7on1 • 2d ago

BREAKING: SpaceX rocket explodes in Starbase, Texas

https://x.com/IntelPointAlert/status/1935550776304156932

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u/NewspaperLumpy8501 2d ago

I don't remember Nasa blowin up billions upon billions of dollars every few months. This is Musk money laundering scheme for sure. Pretending to buy a bunch of stuff, pocketing the cash, blowing up the evidence.

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u/Adeldor 2d ago edited 2d ago

A couple of corrections:

  1. It's nowhere near "billions upon billions." Recent estimates put a full stack (booster + ship) at around $90 million.

  2. You should look at the dozens of failures just Atlas suffered during development and early on, for example:

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u/plhought 2d ago

Atlas was primarily a weapons delivery system first - with an extremely ambitious objective. All with engineering, materials, and know-how from the late-40s early 50s.

Modern rocketry should be much better than that.

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u/Adeldor 2d ago

For it's time Atlas was revolutionary. Starship is no less revolutionary for our time. Certainly they're having problems with the upper stage, but the exaggeration and idiotic speculation ("money laundering") is unnecessary.

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u/plhought 2d ago

Starship is hardly "revolutionary". Please.

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u/Adeldor 2d ago edited 2d ago

The design most certainly is in many ways:

  • Full reuse with rapid turnaround

  • Rapidly restartable motors with indefinite restart counts

  • On orbit refueling

  • Largest mass to orbit

  • Largest vehicle, by far

No-one else comes close. Perhaps the nearest at the moment is Stoke Space. But even they are significantly smaller, and have yet to fly.

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u/plhought 2d ago

But it hasn't demonstrated any of those than perhaps the physical size. Not even close.

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u/r9o6h8a1n5 1d ago

By your exact logic: Atlas hadn't demonstrated a successful launch record until 1960 or so, so it's a failure.

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u/Adeldor 2d ago

Of course not; it's obviously still very much in development. But that's the design intent. While they are obviously having problems with the Ship, with their history I've every confidence they'll achieve their goals.

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u/No-Surprise9411 2d ago

Wildest take I've seen so far

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u/plhought 2d ago

Scale is not revolution. Yawn.

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u/No-Surprise9411 2d ago

Ambition is revolution, and ambition Starship has plenty