SpaceX launches Starship megarocket on 11th test flight

That and the other thing I think he does that's just as important is go get things unstuck. When there is bureaucracy and managers getting in the way he gets it through. Very under appreciated IMO.

This isn't really the case. For Falcon 1 he hired a bunch experts but a pretty small handful. Then he hired a lot of really young hungry engineers.

And its also hard to say that 'top talent left'. Because arguable some of the achievements after some of those people left is bigger then before. Tom Mueller for example build the Merlin engine, but claims to be more proud of the team he build that then went on to build Raptor. So clearly even while some talented people left, many others joined.

SpaceX is not 'iterating and keeping the lights on' they are always going for something harder in the next iteration.

He deserves at least some credit, considering that he and Bezos are the only billionaires actually willing to put their wealth into chasing a vision. Books documenting SpaceX's early days make it pretty clear that Musk had a pretty significant role in putting in place the kind of thinking that has allowed SpaceX to blow open the commercial space market.

Both also have at least some understanding of what they're paying for considering the tours and testimony from former employees. They also frequently thank the employees for their successes.

My advice to you is go touch grass.

Tell that to the parent, I'm the one trying to make actionable suggestions out here.

A bunch of info came out a few years ago. Shotwell is widely known to be effective and a great leader, and to insulate most people at SpaceX from Musk. She's the reason the Falcon program works so well.

However things changed with Starlink, as it was an org controlled by a Musk loyalist and apparently got a lot of control very quickly internally. They prioritised loyalty over experience and capability and forced out some long term SpaceX folks who had made Falcon a success. Starlink was mostly ex Tesla and Boring people at the beginning I think.

I think Starship is somewhere in the middle. It started as a Musk hobby project but has now got contracts and is the future of the company so Shotwell is involved.

I think the tile loss rate will still be important to them before that. Even in such low orbits, any tiles lost would take some time to come down (and might even survive all the way down).

If they can make it so they only lose tiles when in a suborbital trajectory, they may be safe to begin deploying real Starlinks as soon as V3 has proven engine relight.

Yes, as after it leaves the atmosphere and achieves that 98% of orbital speed, its trajectory wouldn't change much even if it exploded - its engines are turned off after ascent that takes ~9 minutes, then it free-falls for an hour to the other side of the Earth. They target a spot in the Indian Ocean near the west coast of Australia (it's coming from the west). In case of explosion debris would fall to the ocean sooner, farther to the west from Australia. More dangerous part of the flight is ascent (when it gains that speed), as its ground path is near some Caribbean islands, and it can cause problems like on flight 7:

> Around three minutes later, Ship 33 exploded over the Turks and Caicos Islands, causing debris to litter the Caribbean islands, Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands. While no injuries were reported, the debris caused minimal damage to infrastructure in Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands, and prompted airspace closures in the region for over an hour. The FAA ordered SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation into the breakup, grounding Starship until the inquiry was complete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_flight_test_7#Mission...

I think it depends on which specific step fails. The farther into flight it happens, the narrower the area over which the debris is spread. But, I think being over the entire ocean is unlikely, since the trajectory intersects with the planet, and that intersection point would also have to be in the ocean.

Correction: the trajectory only intersects with the planet prior to engine relight testing. After that it's at ~50km [1] (though to be fair, if they make it safely through the relight, all testing so far shows they're likely to make it through most of reentry)

[1] https://x.com/planet4589/status/1977917833825730792

There’s a very short period of time where if it exploded debris would fall on the African continent which is an unavoidable risk of orbital flight out of the US. Other than that it’ll either fall in the Atlantic or Indian Ocean.

Pretty much everybody know that launch site and exclusion zones for human are great for wildlife. Turns out, what is destroying the environment is humans living in places, large areas with few humans usually do pretty well.

But instead of focusing on that, we need to test if dolphins get hearing damage from rockets.

> So that's the cost of progress

Its actually the benefit of progress. The cost of progress is having to close the beach and having to relocate a small village.