The dramatic explosion of SpaceX’s new Starship rocket minutes after it rocketed off its launch pad on its maiden flight test is the latest vivid evidence of Elon Musk’s company’s “successful failure” business philosophy, experts said on Thursday.
Rather than viewing Musk’s enormous, next-generation Starship system’s burning demise as a negative, experts claimed the spectacular loss of the rocket ship will assist expedite development of the vehicle.
Images of the Starship sliding out of control 20 miles in the sky while attached to its Super Heavy rocket booster before the combined vehicle exploded dominated media coverage of the highly anticipated launch.
SpaceX admitted that some of the Super Heavy’s 33 powerful Raport engines failed during ascent, and that the booster rocket and Starship failed to separate as planned before the launch was aborted.
However, SpaceX management, including Musk, the company’s founder, CEO, and chief engineer, praised the test flight for fulfilling the primary goal of getting the vehicle off the ground while also giving a plethora of data that would help Starship’s development.
Practice makes perfect
At least two aerospace engineering and planetary science experts who spoke to Reuters agreed that test flights would be helpful.
It’s a classic failure of SpaceX according to Garrett Reisman, a professor of space engineering at the University of Southern California who is also a former NASA astronaut and senior advisor to SpaceX. Reisman called the Starship test flights a sign of SpaceX’s strategy to differentiate Musk from traditional aerospace companies and even NASA by accepting failure when the consequences of failure are low.
There were no astronauts on board for the unmanned flight, and the rocket was launched over water from a starbase on the Gulf Coast of southern Texas to avoid ground injuries and property damage from falling debris.
Reisman said in an interview Thursday hours after the launch that these missiles cost a lot, but what really costs a lot is people’s salaries . Travelman Spacex requires time to get more risk and correct to get more risk and correct in exchange for a big team traveling to take a lot of money, years and years and years-
“I would say the timeline for transporting people (aboard Starship) is accelerated right now compared to what it was a couple of hours ago,” Reisman said.
Planetary scientist Tanya Harris, lovers of the British Colombia University Space Institute, the highest airline, called the highest aerodynamic pressure, called the highest aerodynamic pressure. In an interview he said that it’s part of the testing process. A lot of accidents happen when you’re trying to build a new rocket. Its release excited many people.
He says the risks of a single flight test are small compared to the ambitious benefits at stake.
This is the biggest rocket that mankind has ever attempted to build and it is designed to carry more cargo and more people into deeper space than any other spacecraft. While NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is on a mission to collect kilogram-scale samples of Martian soil and minerals, the craft will return numerous rocks and transport dozens of astronauts and entire laboratory facilities to the Moon and Mars as told by Harrison.
Musk hailed the craft as essential to SpaceX’s interplanetary exploration goals, as well as future commercial satellites, science telescope launches and space tourism, which are expected to eventually fly into space using fully reusable rocket systems “it wouldn’t surprise me if we had humans on Mars with Starship in the next decade.” Harrison said, referring to the rapid growth of SpaceX, which has flown dozens of commercial missions a year since its founding in 2002 with the Falcon 9, a manned rocket with low orbit. I will be with Starship for the next 10 years.
