Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket explodes in second test flight | CNN

Just for anyone wondering what blew up correctly means. The flight termination system didn't work properly on the 1st launch. Starship and the booster didn't separate and it tumbled in the air for too long. That puts people at risk as it might go out of the safe area.

This time, when whatever went wrong went wrong, the system triggered properly and both vehicles blew up.

But isn't the key aspect here "orbit"? I get that the FTS would lengthen the trajectory of some of the debris, but would it be enough to create a stable orbit? The original trajectory was going to splashdown near Hawaii.

I certainly agree that there are lots of environmental downsides to space exploration that are increasingly overlooked, I'm just not sure that there's anything extra egregious about this flight.

It's about velocity, not altitude. The pieces from the explosion would need to get a fairly dramatic dv addition prograde to end up near orbital. The explosion seems pretty undirected, so the force will be spread in all directions, so most of the force won't be prograde. Even still, it can't be orbital. It'd need some other force added later on its trajectory or it eventually had to pass through the same altitude that the explosion happened, which is in-atmosphere and will cause fairly quick decay. There is no risk of Kessler syndrome. It could potentially have posed a risk to some very low satellites, but we'd already have seen that happen by now if it were going to.

Didn't the N1 have a massive launch pad failure that we still don't know how many people it killed?

We've been to the moon already.

With an eight times higher injury rate? That's not competence.

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

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/dc-x-the-nasa-rocket-that-inspired-spacex-and-blue-origin

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.