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.

  • higgs@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Then why didn’t NASA invented reusable rockets? And why Russia doesn’t have reusable rockets? That’s just dumb. I get the hate of Musk but declining what he did is just hate and not objective.

    You guys are doing exactly the same thing you hate Musk for.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      The Space Shuttle was a "reusable rocket". And we generally tried to recover most of the boosters, where feasible.

      And the Space Shuttle very much highlighted the issue with "reusable rockets". When your maintenance and safety requirements are comparable to building the thing in the first place, you tend to cut corners. And then people die.

      But, again, Musk did nothing other than sign checks. The actual scientists and engineers are the ones who have done all of this and "puzzled" everything together.

      • Player2@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        The space shuttle was never meant to be 'reusable' but rather 'refurbishable.' The big difference is that Starship is designed from the ground up for rapid reusability, without manually checking each of the 24000 unique tiles of the STS orbiter.

        With the stainless steel construction, SpaceX is aiming to use their new upper stage up to 3 times a day with only refueling and a basic check in between. It is a complete paradigm shift from traditional rockets.