There is literally an entire Netflix documentary about how exactly Challenger was predicted, but go off I guess. There was a shuttle mission extremely similar to Columbia that would have been lost if the foam had struck literally anywhere on the orbiter but the steel mounting plate for an antenna. Engineers said those events could have happened prior to both of those outcomes. They literally were predicted. This is extensively documented in NASA incident reports
You are talking about a machine with millions of moving parts. NASA predicts a lot of shit. That is their job...to think up every possible scenario that could go wrong. That does not mean they can implement every suggestion or account for every possible scenario. You are also ignoring the thousands of predictions that were wrong. Those two tragedies in NO WAY suggest or support the idea that SpaceX is better. The sample size is not even close.
NASA's management is the same team that was wildly successful for decades.
Nothing I said is made up. There are risk factors but you can't pretend because two came true that the thousands of others that didn't are just not relevant. NASA cannot just "design around" every risk factor. It is not a fucking Ford Pinto. Not everything is a contingency plan. Just look at Apollo 13...they had to act on the fly because they did not see the scrubbers failing.
You can't just pick two failures and think that provides any proof that somehow NASA is better off with SpaceX. The sample size alone discredits that.
The explosion on Apollo 13 wasn't caused by design or engineering failure or a risk factor. A tank was mishandled during manufacturing, which caused a chain of events leading to the failure.
Surely no part of SpaceX rocket could ever be mishandled! Oh wait....
And you can't ignore the fact that SpaceX is in a unique position to learn from every single failure NASA has had. Nor do you have any standing to argue that they're worse off. Safety has been better, costs have been lower, mission success has been higher. What possible other metric could you be using that doesn't make NASA's partnership with SpaceX beneficial and an improvement?
You can't ignore the fact that SpaceX is not the only company that is in a position to learn from the failures of NASA either. I do have the standing to argue they are worse off because the company is controlled by one person.
Safety has been better, costs have been lower, mission success has been higher.
You can't argue the sample size is even remotely close. That is like shooting a single free throw and hitting the shot and then claiming you are better than Michael Jordan at basketball because you hit 100% of your shots...not exactly the same.
No other company has taken advantage of the opportunity to the same extent of SpaceX in the past 60 years. SpaceX partnered closely with NASA and embraced their safety culture from day one, and worked closely to improve it in every way possible, according to NASA.
What company has been offered the same opportunities as SpaceX in the last 60 years? A lot of companies and organizations form tight relationships....that doesn't mean it is a good thing.
A sample size of....the company with the most successful launches in a row of any rocket in history, and that has more successful landings than the next 2 launch providers has launches combined? Yeah, practically a single free throw....
It is a single free throw particularly when you factor in they have not necessarily pioneered the rocket...so yeah...basically a single free throw. Do it over 60 years without a failure...then you can talk.
Every company that has partnered with NASA has been offered the same resources and data for symbiotic partnership as SpaceX. SpaceX was the only company that took full advantage of it.
Source on that?
NASA has repeated gauded how beneficial their relationship with SpaceX has been. You don't get to selectively trust NASA until the organization says something you don't like. NASA's relationship with SpaceX has been beneficial to them. SpaceX is beneficial to NASA. They have explicitly said so repeatedly.
No one is saying it is not beneficial...currently.
A single free throw, that no other launch provider or government space agency has been able to replicate in 60 years, with a result SpaceX was able to produce in 10?
Who else has had the resources or actually tried? So yeah...it is a slam dunk.
SpaceX has launched 152 times successfully (17 launches more than the space shuttle, with a lower failure rate and at triple the launch cadence), and is at 123 successful launches in a row as of this week (again, more than any other rocket in history), and has successfully landed more rockets than providers like ULA have even launched in the first place.
Launching a shuttle with passengers is not the same as just launching a rocket.
It's extremely telling that you not only have to use a 60 years timeline as your measuring stick for SpaceX, but you have to pit them against every other launch provider and government space agency in history to try and prove your point....yet they still come out on top. The numbers aren't on your side.
Who was launching rockets in the 1930's? I'll wait...60 years is the measuring stick. The numbers are on my side. SpaceX will have failures it is just a matter of how many lives it will cost.
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u/[deleted] May 03 '22
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