SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
What aspect of this “has never been done before”? Its a multi-stage rocket (NASA and the Soviets have been doing that for about seventy-ish years and the Nazi scientists we all recruited were doing it for even longer). The main innovations are material choice (which is debatable) and landing a rocket on a pad, which is mostly a function of having good computers.
Space flight is hard. That said, there is a very strong argument for being much less iterative. Especially when the quest for a reusable rocket involves constant spraying of wreckage across oceans and land.
In the respect that they’re trying to get the world’s largest rocket to separate and land itself. You know, be reusable.
Mentioned this in the other branch but:
The Space Shuttle was already a “reusable rocket”. And the Saturn Vs would be recovered and refurbished, where possible. The main issue is that, much like with the space shuttle (and the “Starship” rockets): A LOT of wear and tear occurs during takeoff and re-entry. Reuse involves a LOT of repair and maintenance that often gets short cutted to save money. Which… is what leads to tragedies like Challenger and Columbia.
And I addressed the landing rockets on a pad. It is primarily a function of having MUCH better computers these days. And I was going to talk about how that has already been done but, while checking if Blue Origin also do it, I came up on this
So… it wasn’t even “never been done before” a decade ago.
The big reason why we moved away from the Space Shuttle was… well, mostly Challenger and Columbia. It got that “This is bad technology” juju. But also, the costs of reuse are significant and drastically increase the cost per payload. I’ve read some good articles that argue we could make a MUCH cheaper and MUCH better space plane with modern tech but I am not qualified to assess that.
But… that also applies here. Having a rocket that lands itself is great and significantly reduces damage from recovery (whether it is thumping wrong in the ocean or getting damaged in transit). But that means you need a lot more fuel and a lot more weight for all the advanced maneuvering systems. And as you actually get out of the atmosphere, you now are increasing those costs considerably.
Whereas the old capsule system, while not sexy in the slightest, “works”. Get the payload into space and then, when ready, use a minimal amount of fuel to de-orbit in a controlled manner and deploy a parachute once you aren’t on fire anymore. But the main drawback to that is that the pod itself is incredibly limited in size and scope. With most modern missions expected to dock at a space station this matters a lot less. But I expect a return of a “space plane” design if we ever actually do a crewed mission to Mars.
The shuttle was hardly reusable. Yea, the airframe was, but after the first launches NASA discovered how fragile it really was.
Had they taken SpaxeX’s approach, they would’ve discovered those issues much sooner and been able to correct them instead of mitigate them.
What we’re seeing play out is an Agile project vs Waterfall project.
Agile, as the name implies, enables small, early course corrections so you don’t waste effort and get stuck with something you weren’t intending.
We’re also seeing the difference between private sector risk management vs government. (Risk isn’t just “exploding rocket”, but risk to the investment of time, resources, opportunity, etc).
The space shuttle was a bus on boosters we had to fish out of the ocean. It was expensive and had a very limited cargo capacity.
