• Bimfred@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    11 days ago

    The Starship is in development. The Shuttle is retired. Assuming that SpaceX doesn’t decide to can Starship before operational flights begin, make this comparison again when it’s retired.

    • EisFrei@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      11 days ago

      Not a single space shuttle exploded during development.

      Two did during the 135 operations.

      So spaceship is already behind on development. Let’s see how operations works out.

      • Bimfred@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        11 days ago

        NASA is funded with tax money and failures mean they get called in front of Congress like a child who sharpied the brand new tv. They don’t have the luxury of failure, so they over-analyze and over-engineer everything, to the point that everything they build is reasonably expected to work on the first try.

        SpaceX doesn’t have that restriction and so they’re free to blow up as much stuff as they need to. How many Falcons failed along the way to building the safest, highest flight cadence launch vehicle in history?

      • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        11 days ago

        Having the kabooms before going into production is better than having them afterwards. Obviously the jury is very much out on Starship. Personally I’m not at all optimistic about it. But comparing the current development problems with the shuttle disasters isn’t really fair.