this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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FuckMusk

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This is a community designed to enjoy the extended downfall of Elon Musk.

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[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 44 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

I'm all for shitting on Musk but this is a very poor comparison. The Starship is very much still being developed and failures are expected. The Falcon 9 rocket is what is currently used to launch LEO satellites into orbit. From wikipedia:

As of 24 May 2025, rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 490 times, with 487 full mission successes, three failures, and one partial failure.

I'd say they're doing pretty damn well, especially since they're doing what nobody else has ever done and the first stage comes back and is reused. Also from wikipedia:

A total of 47 boosters have flown multiple missions, with a record of 28 missions by a booster. SpaceX has also reflown fairing halves more than 300 times, with some being reflown at least twenty times.

Still, fuck Elon.

[–] Prandom_returns@lemm.ee 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The Starship is very much still being developed and failures are expected.

Every failure is a success! We're learning! Every negative is a positive if we cheer loud enough to keep the investors happy and the nerds defending our insane waste of taxpayers' money!

Failures aren't expected, actually. What's "expected" was that crewed missions to Mars were done regularly by 2025.

Meanwhile, every orbital flight ends up in the ocean.

https://i.redd.it/e7ddqt0f5es31.png

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Failures aren't expected, actually

Every single engineer I've ever met is laughing at you

[–] Prandom_returns@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, tell that to the people who engineer lifts, bridges, or literally anything that might end up costing lives.

Aw this bridge collapsed? That's expected, we'll improve next time!

As aa mech engineer, I can tell you, that anything that's worth engineering has a safety factor of 2.5-3, has a carefully predicted lifespan and maintenance cycles, and is 100% not expected to fail. A failure is always a failure, unless its specific purpose is to fail.

Sending a rocket to space and seeing half of its rockets not fire is not an "expected failure".

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

Safety factor on something like a rocket is much smaller. More like 1.2-1.5. Weight is so important in any sort of flight that the safety factor is reduced.

Lower safety factors don't explain the rockets abysmal failure rate though. Its a total POS by any measure.

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Am mechE. This is an unacceptable failure rate. It means they are several years away from manned flights on these rockets. It's a complete failure of a project currently.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

considering the growing footprint spaceX represents to national launch priorities, they should be nationalized imho.

keep them independent enough to maintain development but get musk out of the decision tree entirely.