News @lemmy.world HellsBelle @sh.itjust.works 3d ago

SpaceX’s Starship explodes in second failure for Musk’s Mars program

www.theguardian.com SpaceX’s Starship explodes in second failure for Musk’s Mars program

Back-to-back mishaps indicate big setbacks for program to launch satellites and send humans to the moon and Mars

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship’s breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX livestream of the mission showed.

The failure comes just more than a month after the company’s seventh Starship flight also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, indicating serious setbacks for a program Musk has sought to speed up this year.

137

You're viewing a single thread.

137 comments

It pisses me off that I'm rooting against Space X, a company with an unarguably cool mission and product. Fuck Musk.
- Going to space under capitalism makes no sense.
  
  Why should space exploration need or want a profit motive?
  
  Create an anarcho-communist society where we firstly house, feed, and educate everyone. Explore space for the pure purpose of exploration in conditions where we can all collaborate without the need of competition and destruction.
  
  I have a family member that works as an engineer building parts for various spacecraft. They get excited about the possibility of finding a renewable energy source and just in general what science can gain and learn from space that will make life better on earth.
  
  Do with that what you will, I'm neutral, I'm just providing a different perspective that I think is relevant.
  
  I think that a lot of rank-and-file professional scientists share that motivation. I know that deep down I am still a wide eyed child who got into science for those very reasons.
  
  I find that trait less common once you get to director/general manager type roles. There’s a selection process that favors less idealistic (aka sociopathic) mindsets.
  
  I personally think the innovation we need desperately is to figure out how to stop putting machiavelian monsters into positions of power.
  
  Enforcing anti-trust laws is low-hanging fruit. Then, Article 5 the Constitution to explicitly require civil law (law by legislation) over common law (law by precedent); it's slower, but France and Germany get by.
  
  I'd much rather mine resources in an asteroid ring than on Earth. Polluting a lifeless chunk of rock in vacuum makes a lot more sense to me.
  
  We've got a long way to go before we get there, but we won't get there by waiting until we've the rest of society perfect first.
- Fuck that fucker. I hope he drops dead and SpaceX lives on.
- There is NOTHING cool about SpaceX and there never was.
  Musk claimed it was "Plan B" but there is no fucking Plan B, if we destroy the earth that is it!!
  Musk and Trump are the idiots in Don't look up! And the movie nailed it!
  
  The coolest thing about Space X is that it knocked about 100 million dollars off the cost of putting a satellite in orbit. More, if you consider the possibility of multiple small satellites sharing a launch to a similar orbit.
  
  This enabled many, many small research companies to begin developing satellites for Earth and atmospheric imaging which is advancing our ability to collect precise data about things like greenhouse gas emissions.
  
  Fuck Musk, absolutely, but a lower barrier to entry to putting things in space absolutely has utility.
  
  Is that something Musk claims? Because you know Musk is full of shit right?
  I wouldn't be surprised if he compares to the space shuttle, which was always infamous for being extremely expensive.
  
  No that's what data claims, I wrote a paper about this last year and did a bunch of research for it.
  
  Fuck Musk, absolutely, but a lower barrier to entry to putting things in space absolutely has utility.
  
  Have you actually seen how many Starlink satellites surround Earth? There little room for more. Source
  
  That image is so incredibly silly.
  
  First, there are fewer than 20k starlink satellites, each about 3m long. If you put 20k 3m objects on the surface of the planet would you think that they were taking up all the room? Of course not. And the amount of free space available in LEO is even greater than at the surface.
  
  Second, if they had made the "satellites" on that image to scale, you wouldn't be able to see them at all. The approximate surface area of LEO where the satellites are is like 8x10^8 km^2. They aren't running out of space.
  
  tl;dr: the satellites aren't "running out of room"
  
  Do...do you think those dots are to scale?
- Whats cool about mining colonies on other planets? They will probably send ~~slaves~~ prisoners there.
  
  Elon Musk watched The Expanse, looked at the Belters, and thought to himself, "Yes, this is the ideal human living condition."
  
  the cool thing is that it will give these "christian" dictators in the US something to do, other than destroying earth, that will hopefully distract them from destroying earth in the first place. and conveniently, it would also send them very, very far away, with low chance of them ever returning, i hope.
- He will just make you a slave there, dont buy into this bullshit

137 comments