this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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If they can actually make this design of spacecraft function where Spacex has crashed and burned for years, that will really be a massive engineering breakthrough.
After the consistent failures and redesigns of the Spacex craft, I was pretty strongly convinced that this type of vehicle must have been fundamentally flawed.
This looks good, but I'm not going to be convinced until one of these is able to get to orbit and back. Still think it's a bit far fetched.
I'm not sure that the technical concept is fundamentally flawed, it's just that "agile" project management philosophy was never meant to apply to rocketry.
I don't say this as a Musk/SpaceX fanboy in any way, I just don't think the failures of the Starship design are comparable to failures of a traditionally managed rocketry project like the Space Shuttle due to the differences in management philosophy.
We'll see, I'm sure. Best case scenario here is that the Chinese space program actually pulls it off, at worst they figure out why it may not be feasible and shelf the idea until they come up with solutions. None of this "crash it repeatedly until it works" nonsense.
Agile doesn't work that well ANYWHERE, especially in software. A lot of devs burn out purely because of that silicon valley nepokid bullshit