So I’ve heard and seen the newest launch, and I thought for a private firm it seemed cool they were able to do it on their own, but I’m scratching my head that people are gushing about this as some hail mary.
I get the engineering required is staggering when it comes to these rocket tests, but NASA and other big space agencies have already done rocket tests and exploring bits of the moon which still astounds me to this day.
Is it because it’s not a multi billion government institution? When I tell colleagues about NASA doing stuff like this yeaaaars ago they’re like “Yea yea but this is different it’s crazy bro”
Can anyone help me understand? Any SpaceX or Tesla fans here?
No, NASA has the budget. They already spent $50 billion on the development of SLS and Orion, Starship development cost is estimated to be around $10 billion.
So in theory with the money they spent on SLS they could have built 5 starship program.
The problem is that NASA has to follow political interests, sometimes the political interests align with technical interest and we get great things like the Apollo program.
They also have a very tight tolerance of failure. Every failure made in the engineering process brings more and more scrutiny by those holding the purse strings in Washington.
Specially this. How space x handles failures is a very hard nono in my book. “But we test in the field” is what space x says, and as a software developer its like saying “we test in production”.
Yes youll get something use able faster, but its way way more costly in the long run and is nasty in between.
My arse they cant test this stuff on earth. We have simulations, models, calculations, test, everything. Yes, things can and will sometimes still fail when going in production ( in flight ) but you want to lower the risk of it failing cause its costly as fuck.
They dont seem to care though.
Also, im not saying what they are building towards is bad, it really really isnt, but their methods is… Bad
Iterative development like that isn’t uncommon in engineering as a whole. Simulation can get you a long way but there’s a hard limit to that. You don’t think spacex designed a starship to use without running extensive simulations to try and figure it out before hand right?
Sometimes you need to test in the field just to find out what bits you missed. Structural engineers will simulate and calculate extensively but they’ll still build scale models and test pieces because it’s the most reliable and effective way to ensure you’re covering as many bases as possible.
Its not an either/or situation here. They’re doing the testing and simulation and applying it IRL to find out where things break.
As a software developer i know what iterative development means, its in our blood and brains ( or at least it should be ). Simulations can indeed only get you so far, and i agree sometimes you have to make things and take a plunge. However, and i would like to be really wrong here so correct me if im wrong, but other companies like nasa, do not just shoot shit up in space and hope for the best. They arent allowed to do so for a reason. They test and calculate everything very rigoursly to make sure itll hold up as expected. From thruster power, resistance to continues extreme heat from reentry, …
All of that they do here, on earth, before shooting anything up into space. Otherwise things like the rover on mars would have needed like 20 tries instead of 2.
These are things that looks like spacex is just throwing out the window.
To take it back to software development, they are doing an iterative development ( which is very good for what they are doing! ) but their testing before production/release of software is so basic theyll just see how it responds out there. Thats a huge nono to me if youre going to end up crashing all those rockets in the sea killing a shit ton of nature in the process. Sometimes the means dont justify the costs to me, and this is one of them. Yes, the booster catching was nice to see ( eventhough it nearly ended badly ) and its idea is very good and needed, but the way to get there is…messy.
That’s a good point.