5 thoughts on “The Latest Starship Mishap”

1. Are you kidding? These “mishaps” are great learning curve. These are like the boom times (literally) at the Cape in the late 50’s early 60’s. The data gathered in these tests are invaluable. And more importantly, the technology in use can lead to less costly and rapid cycling. Think what kind if setback this would have been if they were still winding composites. It’d be years not months between tests.

   If it’s long it’s wrong. If it’s tight it’s right.
   – E. Musk

2. I went to bed last night excited to see frost on the can, but was mildly disappointed to see a crumpled can this morning. I’m sure they’ll figure it out soon.

   The ignorant presstitute coverage is galling. I don’t have blinders on when it comes to Elon. He has his many faults, but the work he’s doing with Starship is bleeding edge, and thankfully Shotwell is leading the day to day operations at Space-Ex.

   Musk may wind up a long-haired hermit pissing in empty milk bottles, but he certainly has a similar kind of genius and drive that Howard Hughes had in his better days.

3. I was hoping for some good news on at least one front.

   You forgot to mention whether this counts as a setback. You know how confused I get in these matters.

4. In a way, what he’s doing is training his personnel, especially the many engineers, though repeated complex activities. The way you get good at building and flying rockets is to build and fly lots of rockets. As Rand has often pointed out, it’s dangerous to fly a rocket too infrequently because the launch crew forgets some of the little things they do to make sure a launch succeeds.

   This failure was multiple. On the assumption that it is what it looks like, not only was the test’s fill procedure incorrect, which is obvious, but the pressure in the lower tank wasn’t being monitored or they’d have noticed the problem and taken corrective actions during the upper tank fill. Well, from here on out you can bet that all pressure will be tightly monitored and controlled during all pre-launch and test activities.

   And the many other lessons and changes that went into SN4 over SN3, just due to further production and design experience, will make the actual test hop even more likely to succeed.

5. Well, we’ve now had burst failures at the top and bottom and now a buckling failure in the middle. Let’s hope that pretty much covers it.

   Let’s also hope we see SN4 up on that stand in two weeks or less.

   Never a dull moment at Boca Chica.

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