“Halfway to Success by Thomas Kendall”

https://accordingtohoyt.com/2023/04/22/halfway-to-success-by-thomas-kendall/

“I think what’s dead clear at this point is that half the takes about
the Starship launch indicate that people don’t know what Starship is
for, or how the program around it within SpaceX operates. In 2021,
Everyday Astronaut did a tour of Starbase guided by Elon Musk, and
interviewed him the whole time. Even if you’re not a fan of Musk, the
whole interview should be required listening for people who are serious
about understanding Starship. The second part especially is the juiciest
in terms of understanding some key points that I will condense down
here. The below quotes by Musk are pull-quotes from the video. I have in
some cases used ellipses to condense down some beating around the bush,
and used bold to emphasize what I feel are critical statements, but you
are welcome to hear the un-retouched statements and form your own opinions.”

“First, Starship is designed to be a rapid prototyping program that
throws things at the wall as quickly as possible. Musk sees it as
explicitly a program designed around aggressive iteration to the
exclusion of all else, describing it as the “polar opposite” of Dragon.
He says:”

"“We have just a fundamentally different optimization for Starship
versus say the polar extreme would be Dragon. Like Dragon there can be
no failures ever, everything’s gotta be tested, to, you know, six ways
to Sunday. (…) That’s like extreme conservatism. Then Falcon is a little less conservative, it is possible for us to have say a failure of the
booster on landing, that’s not the end of the world. And then for
Starship … is like the polar opposite of Dragon. We’re iterating rapidly
to create the first ever fully reusable rocket… Orbital rocket. And
fully and rapidly reusable, reusable in a way that is like an aircraft.” (5:34)"

Cool. Musk wants SpaceX to be the Boeing of space.

Lynn

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