I mean, they were both for completely different purposes with mission profiles that aren’t even slightly comparable. I think they were both successes in their own ways.
You’re right, they are successful in different ways. Starship was successful in a 2024 type of way, while Boeing was successful in a late 60’s/1970’s sort of way.
Normally I wouldn’t compare them because you’re right, they’re very different in terms of mission, but they just happened to launch within a day of one another. Starliner still seems like an expensive POS when compared to falcon and dragon.
Totally agreed, Starliner has had an expensive disaster of a project timeline. But, it finally brought astronauts to the ISS, today’s mission was a success! Likewise, Starship made it through reentry mostly intact this time! It’s an exciting day for spaceflight!
Let’s remember that the first falcon launch didn’t get to the desired orbit because of a fuel leak. The first starship launch had a giant number of problems.
Years long delays and development hell for the Starliner; finally launches with significant but manageable propellant leaks. Meanwhile Starship is making cutting edge leaps and bounds in only its fourth test flight. Starship looks nearly ready to launch payloads.
True, Starship is taking longer than originally estimated… But these systems are not comparable at all, it’s comparing Apples and Oranges. Starship is a completely new category of launch platform with no direct comparison in history. Starliner is just a more modern capsule system.
The actual comparison to Starliner is Crew Dragon. The actual direct comparison, and funded from the same NASA contract set as Starliner. Crew Dragon has already made 13 successful crewed launches at nearly half the NASA contract budget.
It’s okay to hate SpaceX as much as you like but what gave you the impression that starship crashed? Both the booster and the ship itself softly touched down on the water at less than walking speed. They would have been fine on land and the only reason why they did it over water is that nobody had ever successfully landed something that big until today. Nobody had even reentered the atmosphere with something that big. The biggest so far was the Space Shuttle orbiter. The starship upper stage is 1.5 times the size and more than twice the mass of that.
Starship demonstrated a recoverable heavy-lift booster, aerodynamic reentry control, high-bandwidth reentry communications, and a successful test of flight software despite hardware failures, all while launching an incredibly heavy thing into space.
For comparison, the Starship can carry two dozen fully fueled V-2s into space.
I appreciate your pedantry. I was just going off a quick google for “weight of V-2 fully loaded” and “mass of Starship to orbit” because it’s been quite a busy day here.
You’re technically correct, and that’s the best kind. 🎖️
This is because of the fundamental structure of Boeing versus SpaceX.
Boeing has largely converted to corporate structure with lots of bean counters who look to commodify many of their projects when the industry in which they work in is absolutely not one that can be done as such. SpaceX is mostly engineers running the program who take each project as an engineering project and not an assembly line looking to be optimized.
This has lead to a lot of broken production communication. Because with Starliner, you might have Bob here that works specifically on getting some coolant line put in. But Bob has zero understanding of the grander picture here. Why is this coolant line being put in here? Then some module will go in over that line, again Sue only knows that she needs to install the module, not understanding anything before or after her step.
Then next thing you know, that coolant line’s vibration causes stress when up against the module that causes micro-cracks in the line causing leaks for helium gas. Because at no point did anyone see their part and how it worked with the whole. Nor was anyone along the way knowledgeable enough to know the ramifications of specific engineering designs.
Which might have you ask, what about the engineers? Again, it’s all compartments and budget constraints. Assumptions that are made about design that aren’t correct assumptions but no one knows they aren’t correct because some bean counter wants Mary the engineer to shave as much cost off her design for her module, not knowing how any of those redesigns will out with any other redesign that’s also being implemented.
Boeing from ground up is not built to handle the task they are being given. There’s too few engineers, too many corporate shills, and too many barriers between departments to facilitate the kind of communication that’s required to build the same thing SpaceX does for Dragon. And the thing is, Boeing will just deploy the bean counters to see if they can find the issue, when it’s the folks sending the corporate and the corporate themselves that’s the problem. They are never going to solve their issues.
At the same time, none of this goes unnoticed by Boeing employees. It’s pretty demoralizing watching hard work not work correctly. Then have the corporate pull everyone into a room and explain “what happened?” Then the finger pointing happens and nothing gets solved, rinse and repeat till your nerves are frayed beyond belief.
The employees and the engineers to get this kind of work done is there. There’s just this whole corporate layer that’s not needed that make everything 10,000% worse. Yes, there needs to be leadership, but the layers of operations that Boeing adds to the process is just people trying to enrich themselves.
Imo the contrast between Starship and SLS are even starker, but in the opposite direction. I hope I’m wrong (I want as much in space as possible) but SpaceX seems to be running pretty rough and roudy for manned missions rn. They’re popping off these experimental rockets like toys with very short turnaround. But to be fair they did the same with Falcon-IX and it’s a success now so again I could be wrong.
The alternative being you sit down, put in the time, and resources and have a 100% success rate like SLS. Ofc the catch being it costs like 10x but NASA doesn’t have the luxury of televisied launch failures. I’m just REALLY concerned something fails with humans to the moon in it and poof that’s that for a another 5 decades. There’s a reason extremely valuable launches like human life and the JWST are done on tested platforms like Soyuz and Aireon VI.
That being said yeah the Boeing craft looks even worse rn. I’m surprised they let it even dock with all the issues.
Destructive testing has always been part of every engineering development projects.
When developing new parts it’s common to make a lot of test parts and stress them to failure to see how they react.
For innovative design it can take several iterations before finding the right material/design. Each destructive testing is bringing valuable information.
Knowing exactly how a part will fail gives extremely valuable information on how to build a part that will NOT fail and everyone does that including NASA.
SpaceX has just brought this philosophy to whole different level by doing destructive testing on the whole rocket. The best example is that on the last flight they purposefully removed heatshields on some area of the Starship and added sensors in the area to see how it would impact the ship.
The can afford to do that because they focused on building a rocket factory to mass produce starships rather than building a rocket. It means that even if they were not launching it the factory would still produce Starships.
PS: SLS is not 10x the cost of Starship. According to an independent report ( source ) Right now the estimated cost of a Starship launch is estimated around $90 million, one the program is operational the cost of a Starship launch is estimated to be around $10 millions.
A SLS launch is estimated to be around $4.1 billion
So a Starship launch is 40 to 400 time cheaper than a SLS launch
I don’t think so, I think it will be a blip in everyone’s feeds. For NASA they built their program on the country’s involvement, because that’s how they got funding, and so there was an emotional attachment and involvement. SpaceX is background noise for the majority of people, they could have people dying left and right and it probably wouldn’t be a big deal.
The contrast of this launch versus the starship launch is pretty stark
I mean, they were both for completely different purposes with mission profiles that aren’t even slightly comparable. I think they were both successes in their own ways.
You’re right, they are successful in different ways. Starship was successful in a 2024 type of way, while Boeing was successful in a late 60’s/1970’s sort of way.
I’m just saying they both did what they set out to do. They both clearly have their own issues to deal with still, but it was a good day!
“We cut corners and nothing bad happened yet, so let’s carry on” is how a bunch of planes crashed, so let’s not give Boeing a full pass here.
Normally I wouldn’t compare them because you’re right, they’re very different in terms of mission, but they just happened to launch within a day of one another. Starliner still seems like an expensive POS when compared to falcon and dragon.
Totally agreed, Starliner has had an expensive disaster of a project timeline. But, it finally brought astronauts to the ISS, today’s mission was a success! Likewise, Starship made it through reentry mostly intact this time! It’s an exciting day for spaceflight!
Let’s remember that the first falcon launch didn’t get to the desired orbit because of a fuel leak. The first starship launch had a giant number of problems.
For real - you can see the plasma literally eating away at one of the fins on the reentry video… and it still worked pretty much fine.
It’s absolutely wild. Go watch it if you haven’t seen it.
Please explain.
Years long delays and development hell for the Starliner; finally launches with significant but manageable propellant leaks. Meanwhile Starship is making cutting edge leaps and bounds in only its fourth test flight. Starship looks nearly ready to launch payloads.
To be fair though, since we’re comparing them, Starship is also not exactly on schedule and it’s starting to result in canceled missions.
Musk also promised two Starships on Mars by 2023, they’re more than a little behind.
True, Starship is taking longer than originally estimated… But these systems are not comparable at all, it’s comparing Apples and Oranges. Starship is a completely new category of launch platform with no direct comparison in history. Starliner is just a more modern capsule system.
The actual comparison to Starliner is Crew Dragon. The actual direct comparison, and funded from the same NASA contract set as Starliner. Crew Dragon has already made 13 successful crewed launches at nearly half the NASA contract budget.
When has anything space ever been on schedule? SpaceX may be behind, but considering what they’re trying to do with Starship, it’s hardly unexpected.
Starliner successfully docked to a space station to deliver crew, a feat first achieved in 1971.
Starship flew into space and crashed, a feat first achieved in 1944.
Nobody broke any big milestones, both were just test flights, that are both horribly behind their promised time-frames.
I think that’s a reductive take of what starship just accomplished today but you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.
It’s okay to hate SpaceX as much as you like but what gave you the impression that starship crashed? Both the booster and the ship itself softly touched down on the water at less than walking speed. They would have been fine on land and the only reason why they did it over water is that nobody had ever successfully landed something that big until today. Nobody had even reentered the atmosphere with something that big. The biggest so far was the Space Shuttle orbiter. The starship upper stage is 1.5 times the size and more than twice the mass of that.
Starship demonstrated a recoverable heavy-lift booster, aerodynamic reentry control, high-bandwidth reentry communications, and a successful test of flight software despite hardware failures, all while launching an incredibly heavy thing into space.
For comparison, the Starship can carry two dozen fully fueled V-2s into space.
A bit pedantic, but unless I’m misinterpreting the Wikipedia page for the V2, I think it’s only 4 to 6 fully fueled V-2s based on the listed payload capacity of 100-150 tons US.
V-2 dry: 27,600 lb
Warhead: 2,200 lb
Propellant: 8,400 lb 75% ethanol / 25% water, 10,820 lb liquid oxygen
Total weight: ~24.5 tons US
I appreciate your pedantry. I was just going off a quick google for “weight of V-2 fully loaded” and “mass of Starship to orbit” because it’s been quite a busy day here.
You’re technically correct, and that’s the best kind. 🎖️
boeing cant get themselves off the strugglebus. they can barely accomplish what spacex is now considering day to day operations.
This is because of the fundamental structure of Boeing versus SpaceX.
Boeing has largely converted to corporate structure with lots of bean counters who look to commodify many of their projects when the industry in which they work in is absolutely not one that can be done as such. SpaceX is mostly engineers running the program who take each project as an engineering project and not an assembly line looking to be optimized.
This has lead to a lot of broken production communication. Because with Starliner, you might have Bob here that works specifically on getting some coolant line put in. But Bob has zero understanding of the grander picture here. Why is this coolant line being put in here? Then some module will go in over that line, again Sue only knows that she needs to install the module, not understanding anything before or after her step.
Then next thing you know, that coolant line’s vibration causes stress when up against the module that causes micro-cracks in the line causing leaks for helium gas. Because at no point did anyone see their part and how it worked with the whole. Nor was anyone along the way knowledgeable enough to know the ramifications of specific engineering designs.
Which might have you ask, what about the engineers? Again, it’s all compartments and budget constraints. Assumptions that are made about design that aren’t correct assumptions but no one knows they aren’t correct because some bean counter wants Mary the engineer to shave as much cost off her design for her module, not knowing how any of those redesigns will out with any other redesign that’s also being implemented.
Boeing from ground up is not built to handle the task they are being given. There’s too few engineers, too many corporate shills, and too many barriers between departments to facilitate the kind of communication that’s required to build the same thing SpaceX does for Dragon. And the thing is, Boeing will just deploy the bean counters to see if they can find the issue, when it’s the folks sending the corporate and the corporate themselves that’s the problem. They are never going to solve their issues.
At the same time, none of this goes unnoticed by Boeing employees. It’s pretty demoralizing watching hard work not work correctly. Then have the corporate pull everyone into a room and explain “what happened?” Then the finger pointing happens and nothing gets solved, rinse and repeat till your nerves are frayed beyond belief.
The employees and the engineers to get this kind of work done is there. There’s just this whole corporate layer that’s not needed that make everything 10,000% worse. Yes, there needs to be leadership, but the layers of operations that Boeing adds to the process is just people trying to enrich themselves.
This shitworker boeings. Sorry for ya, it sounds like you’ve been in the room for that pointless finger pointing.
Imo the contrast between Starship and SLS are even starker, but in the opposite direction. I hope I’m wrong (I want as much in space as possible) but SpaceX seems to be running pretty rough and roudy for manned missions rn. They’re popping off these experimental rockets like toys with very short turnaround. But to be fair they did the same with Falcon-IX and it’s a success now so again I could be wrong.
The alternative being you sit down, put in the time, and resources and have a 100% success rate like SLS. Ofc the catch being it costs like 10x but NASA doesn’t have the luxury of televisied launch failures. I’m just REALLY concerned something fails with humans to the moon in it and poof that’s that for a another 5 decades. There’s a reason extremely valuable launches like human life and the JWST are done on tested platforms like Soyuz and Aireon VI.
That being said yeah the Boeing craft looks even worse rn. I’m surprised they let it even dock with all the issues.
Destructive testing has always been part of every engineering development projects.
When developing new parts it’s common to make a lot of test parts and stress them to failure to see how they react.
For innovative design it can take several iterations before finding the right material/design. Each destructive testing is bringing valuable information.
Knowing exactly how a part will fail gives extremely valuable information on how to build a part that will NOT fail and everyone does that including NASA.
SpaceX has just brought this philosophy to whole different level by doing destructive testing on the whole rocket. The best example is that on the last flight they purposefully removed heatshields on some area of the Starship and added sensors in the area to see how it would impact the ship.
The can afford to do that because they focused on building a rocket factory to mass produce starships rather than building a rocket. It means that even if they were not launching it the factory would still produce Starships.
PS: SLS is not 10x the cost of Starship. According to an independent report ( source ) Right now the estimated cost of a Starship launch is estimated around $90 million, one the program is operational the cost of a Starship launch is estimated to be around $10 millions.
A SLS launch is estimated to be around $4.1 billion
So a Starship launch is 40 to 400 time cheaper than a SLS launch
I’m super curious what the public response will be if people die in a SpaceX launch. Will it get as much scrutiny as if it were the NASA shuttle?
I don’t think so, I think it will be a blip in everyone’s feeds. For NASA they built their program on the country’s involvement, because that’s how they got funding, and so there was an emotional attachment and involvement. SpaceX is background noise for the majority of people, they could have people dying left and right and it probably wouldn’t be a big deal.
https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/when-to-use-agile-vs-waterfall/