Comment on Second SpaceX Starship launch ends with explosion. What happens next?

• drdabbles@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  They absolutely didn’t invent reusable rockets.

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  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They created reusable rockets. Lots and lots of concepts on the drawing board, but theirs was unique and the first one to get made.

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    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The rocket boosters on the space shuttle were absolutely reused. Here’s video of one being retrieved.

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      • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        We can argue about semantics, but they were moreso rebuilt from the same parts than reused as is. NASA found that it would have been much cheaper to build new SRBs after each launch than rebuild them.

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      • I_Has_A_Hat@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Retrieved, not reused.

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      • Strykker@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        SRB boosters are quite close to literally just a big steel tube, and they reused them by dropping them into the ocean under a parachute.

        They still had to clean out and refurb every booster launched. And that was without the complex rocket engines that would get destroyed by being submerged in the ocean.

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    • drdabbles@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Creating isn’t inventing, and there’s wasn’t the first to be flown. Man, the SpaceX fans don’t really know the history of the industry they make these claims about.

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      • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        You referring to the DC-X subscale tech demonstrator?

        I think inventing is a less well defined term, since anyone with a napkin can claim to invent something to a very low fidelity. The details are the hard part, not the idea itself. So that’s why I specified created, since that is inventing to a very high level of fidelity.

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      • interceder270@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Welcome to the Cult of Musk.

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  • MaggiWuerze@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Who outside of TinTin comics has done a reusable rockets other than SpaceX?

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    • drdabbles@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I mean, just basic research would answer this for you. But I’ll start you off with an easy one. The SRB on shuttle launches was reusable. Now go forth and look up rocket history.

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      • MaggiWuerze@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Sure, fishing a burning bucket out of the ocean is the same as an actual rocket that lands by itself and just needs to be refueled.

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      • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It depends how you define your terms. The parts were disassembled, cleaned, inspected, and reassembled. That’s not what most people think of as reusable, more like refurbishable. And anyway, they didn’t save any cost or time doing that vs building new ones, hence why SLS is using them as single use.

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      • noUsernamesLef7@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The shuttle SRB’s were really only reusable in the same sense that the engine from a wrecked car can be removed, stripped to a bare block, bored out, rebuilt, and placed into a new car is reusable. Hard to say exactly how long it took to turn around SRB segments, but just the rail transport between Utah and Florida was 12 days each way. SpaceX has turned around Falcon 9 boosters in under a month.

        And even with all of that, the most reused reusable segments barely flew a dozen times. There is one Falcon 9 first stage that has now flown 18 times.

        You’re not wrong about parts having been reused in the past but the scale of what has been done before really doesn’t compare to what SpaceX does now.

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• Neato@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Given that time and money I bet NASA could have that and made ones that don't blow up every test.

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  • ramenshaman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    LOL… NASA has existed for many more decades than Spacex has. The Spacex Falcon rocket is possibly the most reliable rocket available today, launches payloads more often than any other rocket and it’s much cheaper than its competitors. You’re comparing a brand new rocket design to other, thoroughly tested rockets that have had many iterations. This was literally the second flight of this rocket, they were expecting it to fail.

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  • MaggiWuerze@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Maybe if you weren’t so blinded by your need to be edgy, you would see the accomplishments SpaceX has made. Starship is not even close to being completed. It blowing up and failing are expected at this stage.

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  • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    NASA doesn’t build many rockets. They are almost all done under contract.

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  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Given time and money, I’m sure Bob Jones could make a reusable rocket in his back garage. It would just take a lot of both. SpaceX is good at making a lot of progress with little time and money.

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  • weew@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    How much are you betting? Because I could use some free money, lol.

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