Comment by Symmetry

Comment by Symmetry 2 days ago

39 replies

Pretty unusual for a new space company to make orbit on their first launch. Generally par for the course in established companies is 2 failures in the first 10 launches so lets see how they do.

The stage didn't land successfully but I'd have been very surprised if they got that on the first try.

NG's launch price is supposedly only about 50% higher than a Falcon 9 with a lot more payload weight and volume. Hopefully this will result in SpaceX cutting their price, they've got a lot of room to do so before hitting their launch costs.

katbyte 2 days ago

?

Isn’t the norm not crashing and succeeding? it’s only space x who normalized so many failures to “move fast”?

  • Symmetry 2 days ago

    ULA is pretty remarkable for it's run of new rockets not blowing up. Looking at ESA, JAXA, RosCosmos, ISRO, etc too is how I'm setting the par. A history like the Ariane 5 is pretty typical where flights 1 and 14 failed.

    • throw5959 2 days ago

      Wouldn't really consider that NewSpace. These are as old as space industry gets...

      • Symmetry 2 days ago

        Yeah, 2 failures is par for OldSpace. NewSpace usually does much worse, though SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Rocket Lab's Electron managed to get the traditional par.

      • dmix 2 days ago

        China's various new rockets are another example.

  • myself248 2 days ago

    Exactly as OP said, launcher failures happen and then you drive down their frequency.

    Landing failures are still quite expected, especially on the first few tries. It's weird that they even tried on the first launch, but I don't even think of it as a try, I think of it as a "let's gather some data, and in the freakishly unlikely occurrence that everything goes perfect on the way down, we might as well load the landing software too".

    • zitterbewegung 2 days ago

      I read about spaceship on one of their launches is that they attempted everything that it could possibly do on one of their boosters because you basically have the next iteration built so why not attempt anything for the telemetry.

  • sebzim4500 2 days ago

    Firefly, Rocket Lab and Astra spring to mind as having failed to reach orbit on their first attempt.

    • WWLink a day ago

      Astra drifted on the launch pad before taking off lol

  • DiggyJohnson 2 days ago

    Space shuttle had some harrowing early missions too, just didn’t explode.

    • lupusreal 2 days ago

      Shuttle got very lucky. On the first flight, STS-1, an overpressure caused by the ignition of the SRBs forced the orbiter's body flap into an extreme angle which could have destroyed the hydraulic system controlling it. Had John Young know this had happened, he and Robert Crippen would have ejected, which would have destroyed the orbiter on its first flight.

      • mmooss 2 days ago

        You could eject from the Space Shuttle? At what speed and altitude? What was the mechanism?

  • numpad0 2 days ago

    Norm is something like 3 rescheduling within a week from launch, 3 auto-aborts or equipment NoGo, 2 wayward boats, and 0.15-0.3 kaboom per launch. The fact that SpaceX haven't been letting wayward boats/planes for a while is remarkable by itself.

  • ternnoburn 2 days ago

    IMO, there are too few entrants to meaningfully draw any conclusions about "the norm" in this industry.

  • crowcroft 2 days ago

    My perception is that SpaceX do in fact move fast, curious why you feel the need to put that in inverted commas?

lupusreal 2 days ago

The new space company is over twenty years old. For such a long development time I figured they actually had a reasonable chance of nailing the booster landing. I bet they'll do it next time.

  • trothamel 2 days ago

    It also helps that they fairly routinely land boosters (with New Shepard), which means they've likely worked out the 'landing' part.

    Now to see if they can solve the reentry problem.

  • bpodgursky 2 days ago

    Sounded like maybe a telemetry loss, which is hard to fully simulate. They'll abort to be conservative in these situations even if the rocket could land itself without tele-operation.

    • mulmen 2 days ago

      Stage 1 is remotely operated? I find that surprising.

      • nirav72 2 days ago

        I’m not knowledgeable in the deep technical details of rocketry. But curious - how else would the first stage be operated? Should it be autonomous?

      • bpodgursky 2 days ago

        No, but they want to be able to remotely abort.

chollida1 2 days ago

> Pretty unusual for a new space company to make orbit on their first launch. Generally par for the course in established companies is 2 failures in the first 10 launches so lets see how they do.

Where are you getting your stats and how many companies are you in your model?

  • TheJoeMan 2 days ago

    I grew up on the space coast, have watched many new expensive fireworks. I expect one of the next ones to either go boom, or the less exciting hear the 2nd stage separation failed.

  • DiggyJohnson 2 days ago

    Why are you disagreeing like this? It would be like asking for a source if a software developer said “most software launches encounter some issues on their initial release”.

    • chollida1 2 days ago

      Really, that was your take away?

      All I did was ask for the data used to come to that conclusion. I was only aware of SpaceX as a new space company. I was curious as to what other companies were included in her/his model.

      How did you possible take offense to someone trying to learn?

      And how did you possibly manage to find any ill will in the question?

      > Why are you disagreeing like this?

      I never once disagreed with the OP. Again, how did you get to this wild of a take from what i wrote?

      • s1artibartfast 2 days ago

        I read it the same way as combative or at least skeptic.

        If you say that was not your intent, then you might want to consider your approach.

        A common hostile debate tactic is to ask the other person to "bring the receipts", and then pick through them for something to object to. It is akin to saying "prove it", and puts all of the burden on the other person with minimal effort.

        In a world where the internet is often combative and full of bad faith actors, you may want to be more specific to distinguish yourself from them. If you have a specific question, ask it directly instead of asking them to provide more and sorting it yourself. You may also want to be clear about intent eg "what other companies are you considering".

        • DiggyJohnson 21 hours ago

          GP here, thanks for this reply. It's exactly what I wanted to say before remembering my goal of not getting in too many internet disagreements.