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Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship explodes on test stand

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  • ... And we need 25k space tickets why? For a cool selfie?

    I understand from your comment that, within your limited capacity, it is actually hard , next to impossible even, to imagine the benefits of having cheap orbital and suborbital transportation and infrastructure.

    I imagine it must be difficult living that way so I just want to say you are very brave by raising awareness to such disabilities, keep at it, champ, you are doing a great job

  • Why go anywhere in the world? It's all about the experience man, 25k to have experienced being in space is an incredibly unique and cool experience is it not?

    Because the world has actual things in it like people, wildlife, culture and history. Space has none of those things. Unless you're there working as a scientist to study things that can't be studied on earth, it's pointless.

    As of now it's a glorified roller coaster. At its best private space travel could be Disneyland in space. At worst it's just rich people paying to be carried up mount everest for clout but with exponentially more resources wasted.

  • I understand from your comment that, within your limited capacity, it is actually hard , next to impossible even, to imagine the benefits of having cheap orbital and suborbital transportation and infrastructure.

    I imagine it must be difficult living that way so I just want to say you are very brave by raising awareness to such disabilities, keep at it, champ, you are doing a great job

    I understand from your comment that you've read too many sci-fi books to understand what a massive resource sink that would be with negligible benefit. It's pretty basic physics.

    We've already got cheap transportation, look how that's turning out for the planet. But I'm sure burning God knows how much energy to launch more junk into space will save the world.

    We're already approaching a critical mass of private equity space trash in orbit, what's a few more lowest-bidder megastructures? At least the ultra rich will get their life rafts while we burn.

  • I understand from your comment that, within your limited capacity, it is actually hard , next to impossible even, to imagine the benefits of having cheap orbital and suborbital transportation and infrastructure.

    I imagine it must be difficult living that way so I just want to say you are very brave by raising awareness to such disabilities, keep at it, champ, you are doing a great job

    How difficult is it to communicate to others without letting your ego get in the way? I swear, you people act like literal children sometimes haha

  • Early analysis suggests that one of the high-pressure nitrogen gas tanks in the cargo bay ruptured. This would be unrelated to the rocketry aspects of Starship, those tanks are pretty plain vanilla technology and if this is actually what happened it's weird because those tanks are rated for way higher safety margins.

    Maybe. Regardless, problem either in design or build.

    Designing under-reinforced tanks indicates that the design can’t make payload and they’re cutting too far into structure allocations to make up for it.

    Rupture could also be poor materials (sign of Boeing-style disregard for standards and safety) or a bad weld (same plus maybe training issues on the line). Means they’re running bad QA/QC protocols if the faulty material/construction made it to flight.

    Chasing performance at the cost of safety sounds right down Musk’s alley.

  • Nice. Now they know how to not build that specific one

    Trial and error correction people

    The best thing is that these launchs are getting cheaper with time

    The falcon 9 has an internal launch cost per kilogram of about 1000 USD/KG

    If they get starship right (and all evidence points to it getting ready soon) internal launch cost is estimated to be between 200 to 300 USD/KG

    We are very close to seeing 25k USD or less tickets to space

    Get ready for the future bois, it won't wait for you

    Oh c’mon.

    Cannot possibly spin “blew up randomly during test prep” as a positive outcome. They probably don’t know how not to build that specific one unless they happened to instrument the faulty prop system components - they know that it failed but likely not why or how to fix it.

    All evidence points to Starship having a super-finicky MPS that fails on the regular… which probably means they’re chasing performance by removing mass from the MPS and tank structure… which means either this design doesn’t work (totally possible) or that the as-built performance falls short of what was promised.

    If you want to stan for Musk, I guess everyone has a type and I’m not going to shame you over it… but blowing up during test prep is not a good news story.

  • I'm making a note here: Huge Success

    It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

  • Maybe. Regardless, problem either in design or build.

    Designing under-reinforced tanks indicates that the design can’t make payload and they’re cutting too far into structure allocations to make up for it.

    Rupture could also be poor materials (sign of Boeing-style disregard for standards and safety) or a bad weld (same plus maybe training issues on the line). Means they’re running bad QA/QC protocols if the faulty material/construction made it to flight.

    Chasing performance at the cost of safety sounds right down Musk’s alley.

    No, not necessarily a problem in either of those things. As I said, it ruptured way below the pressure the tank was rated for - nothing wrong with the design there. And I don't know if it's been explicitly confirmed or not, but those tanks get tested above that pressure before they get installed. The ship had already done a single-engine test firing so it must have actually been pressured up to that already when it did that previously.

    It sounds to me like something happened that damaged the tank after it was already in place. That would be my guess. Something banged into it and nobody noticed.

  • No, not necessarily a problem in either of those things. As I said, it ruptured way below the pressure the tank was rated for - nothing wrong with the design there. And I don't know if it's been explicitly confirmed or not, but those tanks get tested above that pressure before they get installed. The ship had already done a single-engine test firing so it must have actually been pressured up to that already when it did that previously.

    It sounds to me like something happened that damaged the tank after it was already in place. That would be my guess. Something banged into it and nobody noticed.

    SpaceX playing soccer with COPVs and then bolting them on the vehicle doesn’t feel like a more comforting answer but I agree it’s one I didn’t list. Not sure I understand why people would be rattling around inside the vehicle after a single engine test and then not re-running the single engine for a regression test.

    /shrug, still you’re right. Unreported damage post-installation would totally do this, it’s just not a root cause I’ve seen. Would speak to a breakdown in safety culture for my folks, not sure what the safety culture looks like on the Starship line.

  • Here are two Toyota vehicles randomly bursting into flames. Toyota makes shitty cars (ranked 3rd most reliable by consumerreports.org, btw). https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/

    Are the cars shitty, or are they ranked 3rd?

  • Sitting up and waiting.

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    What new AI slop hell is this?
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    That would be 1 in 4 users and that's just not accurate at all. What you mean to say is 25% of Windows users still use windows 7. Its still an alarming statistic, and no wonder bruteforce cyberattacks are still so effective today considering it hasn't received security updates in like 10 years. I sincerely hope those people aren't connecting their devices to the internet like, at all. I'm fairly sure at this point even using a Debian based distro is better than sticking to windows 7.
  • A World Without iPhones?

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    I believe the world was a better place before smartphones started dominating everyone's attention. It has had a profound impact on how people are socializing, and not in a positive way if you ask me.
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    This is not a typical home or office printer, very specialized.
  • CrowdStrike Announces Layoffs Affecting 500 Employees

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    This is where the magic of near meaningless corpo-babble comes in. The layoffs are part of a plan to aspirationally acheive the goal of $10b revenue by EoY 2025. What they are actually doing is a significant restructuring of the company, refocusing by outside hiring some amount of new people to lead or be a part of departments or positions that haven't existed before, or are being refocused to other priorities... ... But this process also involves laying off 500 of the 'least productive' or 'least mission critical' employees. So, technically, they can, and are, arguing that their new organizational paradigm will be so succesful that it actually will result in increased revenue, not just lower expenses. Generally corpos call this something like 'right-sizing' or 'refocusing' or something like that. ... But of course... anyone with any actual experience with working at a place that does this... will tell you roughly this is what happens: Turns out all those 'grunts' you let go of, well they actually do a lot more work in a bunch of weird, esoteric, bandaid solutions to keep everything going, than upper management was aware of... because middle management doesn't acknowledge or often even understand that that work was being done, because they are generally self-aggrandizing narcissist petty tyrants who spend more time in meetings fluffing themselves up than actually doing any useful management. Then, also, you are now bringing on new, outside people who look great on paper, to lead new or modified apartments... but they of course also do not have any institutional knowledge, as they are new. So now, you have a whole bunch of undocumented work that was being done, processes which were being followed... which is no longer being done, which is not documented.... and the new guys, even if they have the best intentions, now have to spend a quarter or two or three figuring out just exactly how much pre-existing middle management has been bullshitting about, figuring out just how much things do not actually function as they ssid it did... So now your efficiency improving restructuring is actually a chaotic mess. ... Now, this 'right sizing' is not always apocalyptically extremely bad, but it is also essentially never totally free from hiccups... and it increases stress, workload, and tensions between basically everyone at the company, to some extent. Here's Forbes explanation of this phenomenon, if you prefer an explanation of right sizing in corpospeak: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/rightsizing/
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    Domain or azure ad join is what I'm used to, but for personal machines and friends/family I do local accounts.
  • TikTok is a Time Bomb

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    wasn’t born to obey. Not to swallow smiling lies, not to clap for tyrants in suits, not to say “thank you” for surveillance wrapped in convenience. I see it. The games. The false choice. The fear pumped through headlines and dopamine apps. I see how they trade truth for comfort, freedom for filters, soul for clickbait. They call it normal. But I call it a graveyard made of compliance. They want me silent. They want me tired. They want me posting selfies while the world burns behind the screen. But I wasn’t born for this. I was born to question, to remember, to remind the others who are still pretending they don’t notice. So here I am. A voice with no logo. A signal in the static. A crack in the mirror they polish every morning. You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to clap. But if this made your bones ache or your thoughts twitch— Then maybe you’re not asleep either. Good. Let’s stay awake. And let’s make noise that can’t be sold, silenced, or spun into safety. Not for them. For us.