How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster

Failure is part of the process and they're quite open about it and have a wonderful sense of humor: ▶ this video Every launch is a learning experience and leads toward success.

in “Starship Flight 9 booster explodes on impact [video]” · View on HN

This method has already been proven to be infinitely better than the old school approach. Falcon is the most reliable rocket in the world and capable of landing its booster back safely to earth, something which thought impossible by basically everyone in the industry. It took years of physical iteration to iron out all the problems though, see this video from SpaceX of all their years of failed attempts: ▶ this video Anyone who has ever built a physical product will tell you that theory and good engineering are important, but once you start to actually build something you enter "integration hell", which means you need to physically exercise your product end-to-end many MANY times, and iron out all of the edge cases that reality presents. It has nothing to do with "better engineering" and everything to do with complex systems interacting with physical reality. Stuff Made Here (YouTuber) made a video where he built a disc launcher, which is a great example of what the process is like. He put quite a lot of engineering and design work into the project, but eventually entered integration hell at some point and just had to iterate and problem solve by repeatedly firing test disks until all the kinks were worked out. [link]

in “Full explaination of Starship Flight 3 failures (SpaceX Official)” · View on HN

The rest of the industry is being wholly outcompeted by SpaceX so not sure if their assessment is anything to go by today. Or just take a look at "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster". ▶ this video

in “Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time” · View on HN

Seemed worth pointing out. See also, the explosions from the Falcon 9 landing days ("How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster "): ▶ this video

in “The evolution of SpaceX's Starship (with explosions)” · View on HN

SpaceX themselves made a failure montage for Falcon 9 ▶ this video It's easy to forget how many failures that had, but look how far it has come, at this point I don't think they've had any major failures in 5+ years. Maybe a couple sea drone ship booster landing issues but zero mission failures in a very long time.

in “SpaceX SN9 Explodes on Landing” · View on HN

Someone made a video how the flight might look like if everything goes well: [link] The model is pretty current (except for the tank strapped on the side that is downwind during the drop phase) and the flight phases look reasonable as well (phases: launch, horizontal drop with flaps correcting the position and a turn to land vertically again). If it does not... well, then this instead: [link] (refers to: ▶ this video )

in “Upcoming test: SpaceX Starship high-altitude flight” · View on HN

Kinda hoping that we get an updated "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster" video [0] covering Starship development eventually... [0] ▶ this video

in “Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test” · View on HN

If you look back at how they learned about landing Falcon 9 first stage - they failed many times before succeeding : ▶ this video

in “Starship / Super Heavy” · View on HN

>Use it in a manner that SpaceX disagrees with and you can expect lawyers. You wont see the failure footage from SpaceX ever used as nasa footage was used by countless scifi productions. SpaceX literally uploaded a video of all their crashes spliced together in a comedic montage. It's called How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster. ▶ this video Even crash footage is good PR for them. There are still millions of Americans who do not know what SpaceX is or what it does.

in “Crew Dragon launch escape demonstration” · View on HN

Reference 1 is nearly 20 years old, much has changed in those 20 years. Reference 2 is non sequitur; nobody is suggesting that there are zero errors/failures in agile, simply that Boeing may benefit from taking a more agile approach. Here's how iteration works: ▶ this video

in “Boeing Starliner updates: Spacecraft flies into wrong orbit, jeopardizing test” · View on HN

I mean, seems pretty hard to be honest. They got the trajectory down pretty close for the vast majority of these (otherwise would be too far away to see with cameras). But so much extremely expensive space hardware destroyed in the pursuit of this goal. They earned it: ▶ this video

in “Build Your Own Thrust Vectored Rockets for Vertical Landings Like SpaceX” · View on HN

Possibly booster landings were judged much less reliable than parachute landings when they originated the concept. Nobody had propulsively landed a booster that had been to space until Blue and SpaceX did it at around the same time. Before that things didn't always go so well: ▶ this video SpaceX were going to land Dragon 2 with rockets and it looks like NASA wasn't interested. Parachutes are still the safe, proven option. With orbital class boosters potentially being landed every couple of weeks and Blue having flown their vehicle multiple times I would guess future vehicle generations will benefit from that experience. SpaceX's BFS is going to combine a second stage and crew/cargo vehicle. If successful, competition might be pushed in the same direction.

in “New Shepard's 8th test flight [video]” · View on HN

Take a look at all of the failed landings[1], even after they land on the barge they still go boom(or RUD if you prefer that term) when the structural integrity is lost. [1] ▶ this video

in “Air Force Strike Takes Out SpaceX's Floating GovSat Booster” · View on HN

It's not like SpaceX didn't break things either: ▶ this video . The real trick is knowing when it's OK to break things in experimentation and the acquisition of knowledge, and when everything needs to run smoothly.

in “SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines” · View on HN