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    SpaceX’s Expensive Starship Explosions Are Starting to Add Up
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    SpaceX’s Expensive Starship Explosions Are Starting to Add Up

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    3. bibliophile785 on

      What a shit title for a decent article that suggests exactly the opposite:

      > The misfires haven’t deterred investors. The 23-year-old company has continued to raise new capital at rates more befitting a keenly watched startup than a mature, capital-hungry business. Most recently, SpaceX has been planning a sale of stock that would value the company at about $400 billion.

      > Yet there are also signs that for SpaceX to achieve a substantially greater valuation, investors may need to see more progress on Starship. During its latest fundraising effort, in which new investors don’t participate, the company had discussed a $500 billion valuation, before lowering it after consultation with backers, people familiar with the matter said.

      The closest this article comes to suggesting the misfires have “added up” are vague pronouncements that money won’t continue to flow indefinitely if no progress is ever made on Starship.

    4. QP873 on

      “Its process is designed to learn from failures fast. Yet Starship’s recent struggles are revealing how rapidly updating rockets that cost hundreds of millions to make can lead to a cascade of expensive issues.”

      It’s frustrating how many people fail to understand that the entire reason they can do this is because their rockets ***DON’T*** cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.” With RnD factored in, Ship 37 costs approximately 30 million. The booster is capable of reuse; they are CHOOSING to crash it. They are so absurdly cheap people don’t even understand it.

    5. KidKilobyte on

      But they keep iterating and improving and moving forward. Seriously, they are making the rocket safer and more usable in the long run by getting stuff up quickly now with configurations they know are not optimal. See what breaks and keep moving towards more optimal configurations. They don’t get stuck in sunk cost fallacies. They see quickly what needs improvement. Just as importantly, they are getting tons of flight data to guide improvements even if the first rockets explode. They aren’t just fixing the boom booms, they are getting more flight data with modern sensors which each flight than NASA has accumulated with all their flights in over 60 years. You can really only improve so much without new better data coming in constantly. Once we start getting successful 2nd stage catches, a whole new wave of improvements will be possible by inspecting what may have survived, but was just luck.

    6. ehunke on

      Considering how well over half this country wants to pubilcally hang Musk, too much emotion gets involved in these stories. Well over half if not more of space x’s explosions were expected and were all parts of tests. Next year when they send the manned moon orbit, that rocket needs to work. Many of these launches were test launches with designed failures to test various things. I mean I don’t know what the answer is here at all, but the fact is all this is resulting in the first manned space flight since the 1970s. The ISS actually orbits inside lower earth orbit, I think one single shuttle mission went slightly outside low earth orbit…were too far behind. Failure in science is progress…

    7. Imhazmb on

      Can’t wait for the Reddit meltdown and cope when they inevitably successfully land one of these.

    8. Shdwrptr on

      It stands to reason they can’t do this forever. They’ll most likely figure it out before it matters but the choice to test this way gets expensive fast if you don’t figure it out quickly.

      From what I’ve seen they’re spending about $50m per rocket plus the cost of labor so each test adds up quickly when you’re blowing up close to $100m each time.

    9. Decronym on

      Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

      |Fewer Letters|More Letters|
      |——-|———|—|
      |[BFR](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9s1vc8 “Last usage”)|Big Falcon Rocket (2018 rebiggened edition)|
      | |Yes, the F stands for something else; no, you’re not the first to notice|
      |[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9scxkn “Last usage”)|US Department of Defense|
      |[Isp](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9sloxy “Last usage”)|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
      | |Internet Service Provider|
      |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9sloxy “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
      | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
      |[RFP](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9sl6c1 “Last usage”)|Request for Proposal|
      |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9ruyet “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|

      |Jargon|Definition|
      |——-|———|—|
      |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9rpoti “Last usage”)|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family)) under development by SpaceX|
      |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9smeg6 “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
      |[retropropulsion](/r/Space/comments/1mvj6wd/stub/n9su1i2 “Last usage”)|Thrust in the opposite direction to current motion, reducing speed|

      Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

      —————-
      ^(9 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1mvm02x)^( has 3 acronyms.)
      ^([Thread #11620 for this sub, first seen 20th Aug 2025, 19:56])
      ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)

    11. onlyasimpleton on

      People want Elon to fail so badly… overlooking that SpaceX’s achievements are achievements that will benefit all of mankind and be essential to going interplanetary.

      But, it’s obviously more important that Elon fails because he isn’t woke.

    12. deja_vu_1548 on

      They make a crap ton of money off Starlink. They can continue exploding money indefinitely. What they are losing is the time window for their Mars trip.