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Starship Flight 7

(www.spacex.com)
649 points chinathrow | 1 comments | 16 Jan 25 21:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.217s | source
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figassis ◴[17 Jan 25 07:48 UTC] No.42735060[source]▶
What worries me about space innovation is the fact that there is such little margin for error. Materials are being stressed so much while trying to defy the laws of physics that the smallest angle error, the smallest pressure mismatch, smallest timing error, and boom. This did not happen when we were inventing cars, trains and air planes. Now imagine these risks, while you're halfway to mars. Is it possible that we just have no found/invented the right materials or the right fuel/propulsion mechanism to de-risk this, and that is where we should be allocating a lot more resources?
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1. mschuster91 ◴[17 Jan 25 08:56 UTC] No.42735429[source]▶
> This did not happen when we were inventing cars, trains and air planes.

Cars are small, and they still go up in flames routinely all on their own (for older cars, aged fuel lines rupturing is a top cause, for newer cars shit with the turbocharger), it just doesn't make more news than a line in the local advertisement rag because usually all it needs is five minutes work for a firefighter truck.

Trains had quite the deadly period until it was figured out how to deal with steam safely - and yet, in Germany we had the last explosion of a steam train in 1977, killing nine people [1].

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesselzerknall_in_Bitterfeld