Especially when you take into consideration the fact that the booster landed (and subsequently fell over) on a floating platform out at sea.
Comment on FAA grounds SpaceX after rocket falls over in flames.
Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Seems a little bit unfair to me that a reusable launch system can be grounded for issues on the way back, when discarding launch systems do not have to content with that.
Beryl@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I mean. Traditional systems go through a LOT of very rigorous and documented-ish processes to be reused (not quite Rocket of Theseus but…). They are expected to be unusable after a launch and being able to reuse them is kind of an added bonus.
Reusable systems are specifically designed to be… reused. So if they aren’t reusable after a launch, something went horribly wrong and we need to understand why. Because maybe we got lucky and the proverbial door fell off after landing this time. Maybe next time it falls off mid-flight.
Krzd@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The problem is that something unexpected happend, so now we gotta understand it.
Was it caused by something during ascent? Now that’s a problem.
If it’s something that was caused during decent we “only” need to understand how to spot it, but it won’t be a critical flight safety problem.
PassingThrough@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s not really because it fell over. It’s because it wasn’t supposed to fall over. Consumable launch materials don’t contend with this because failure to return is a success. This is a failure. This must be learned from and fought against/prevented going forward.
SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Seems reasonable. This is exactly what the FAA should be doing and is why flying is so safe since every crash and accident becomes an opportunity to learn and adjust procedures to minimize the risks.
Let’s find out why it failed and then identify metrics for when a module can be reused.