Good video overall, though I disagree with his statement that Starship is "failing at the easy stuff and succeeding at the hard stuff". Booster catches, while impressive, build off of SpaceX's experience with F9 landings. Starship is a very different beast from an F9 upper stage though, so it's not surprising to me that it is proving to be the more difficult part of the program.

That said, the performance of Ship Block 2 has been particularly disappointing.

[–] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 22 hours ago

What kills me about this is that they did the long pause and reset and infrastructure buildup between the hoppers and the first full stack.

[–] clothes@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I found this insightful. Eager Space has lost a lot of optimism about the program, and argues that SpaceX is now at the dreaded threshold of hubris. The Apollo program faced a similar crisis after the Apollo 1 disaster.

I find myself agreeing, especially with the spreading "block 3 will fix everything" mentality online. It doesn't feel that simple.

[–] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, some of the problems are not Block 2 specific. Maybe the resonance and disappearing Raptor 2s are, but some of the leaks, blown up COPVs, and heat shield issues will destroy Block 3s, too.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago

Have they had heatshield issues? So far, as long as a ship didn't lose attitude control or fail on ascent, the ship survived to splashdown.