[kickopotomus]

I agree with this sentiment. I have also been somewhat unsettled by the detractors here. I am not sure if this is purely an American sentiment, but it seems like more of the general population has started to view advancement in binary terms. In both science and public policy, it seems that an increasing proportion of the population view anything less than 100% success/improvement as an abject failure.

[jiggawatts]

“ChatGPT couldn’t solve world hunger, nor could it come up with a peaceful solution to Israel and Palestine when I asked it! See, I told you it’s useless and not really intelligent.” — hyperbole but not even that far from some comments I’ve seen.

[gumballindie]

Au contraire. It succeeded the opposite.

[IshKebab]

Yeah there's a lot of "well fine, you invented a teleporter but it doesn't work with dogs so who cares?".

[jiggawatts]

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, because this is precisely what I'm seeing from both the IT crowd and the general public.

"Computers understand English now, but they occasionally make mistakes, so who cares?"

Something I've noticed is that GPT 4 seems to make mistakes less often than humans. That is, if you asked a random person to stand up in a lecture hall and answer questions thrown at them like the type people have been trying on ChatGPT, they would fail at least 50% of the time, like more.

For example, from what I can tell, GPT 4 has nearly perfect spelling and grammar. Better than mine, certainly, and up there with professional copy editors.

[WWLink]

> I have also been somewhat unsettled by the detractors here.

I wouldn't worry about it. The news papers always view it in a sorta pessimistic way. I used to joke about this with spacex's booster landings. When they couldn't stick a landing even though the mission itself was successful, the news sites always made headlines that sounded like "welp, spacex screwed up again" lol :D

The news sites will always pick the headline that raises the most eyebrows.

As for my liking of spacex but my great distaste for the jackass known as Elon, well, that's nothing new. I was saying that 10 years ago lol. You can still cheer on the accomplishments all of the engineers are spacex are making. That's fine.

[AstralStorm]

The problem with it is this is actually burning many millions of US taxpayer dollars. You think Musk is paying for it? Check SpaceX grants.

As for the failure, the Raptor 2 failures have caused a RUD on multiple Starship launches so far. They should be back to static firing the Super Heavy or something, but this is not sexy enough for the billionaire.

Until the engine and launchpad works reliably, there is literally no point in launching the boosters when you have high probability of mission failure right at the launch. (Even if it clears the tower.)

Musk/SpaceX redefining failure as success is terribly annoying too. If done repeatedly enough it has the potential to tank the whole space program. They obviously wanted to test separation the most (since it was issued despite the control failure) and that failed too.

[goalieca]

The director of nasa calls this a great success. So does a former astronaut.

> Thursday's launch was hailed as "a real accomplishment" and "so successful" by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and retired International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield, respectively. SpaceX agreed.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1171202753/spacex-starship-la...

[tetris11]

I read it more as jeering at private companies who promise the world and deliver a fraction of the product with price-gouging tactics.

Somewhere in there is an innovation that might do a public good, but most people are realising that corporations don't do public good. They do what they want.

If it was a government entity that tried and failed to reach for the stars, I think there'd be jeering too ("there go my tax dollars") but a large portion of the scientific community would be happy with the result.

[ksec]

>I am not sure if this is purely an American sentiment

My observation is that it is an online sentiment. But due to the way Technology news cycle works most of these online sentiment do have their source from America. So I think it is an American Sentiment being exported. But most places outside America, especially those without the usage of English being main language tends to be less affected.

[adastra22]

I'm neither a fan nor a detractor of Elon Musk. The man has his faults. I am a huge fan of space exploration and the settlement of Mars, and therefore I really, really want SpaceX to succeed. For that reason I've been very critical of this test.

Professionals in the industry whose life work is the study of rocket plumes (e.g. @ DrPhiltill on Twitter) warned about what would happen if they proceeded with this plan. They were right. The FAA license application, as it turns out, was wildly off base and the projected environmental impact was off by as much as an order of magnitude, being based on an earlier design with much, much lower thrust.

This does not help the cause. It makes SpaceX come off as reckless, irresponsible, and untrustworthy. It makes it less likely that the FAA is going to sign off on a launch from Boca Chica again, and certainly not in the next year or so.

[scaramanga]

There needs to be some new word for, like, the "humblebrag" on behalf of a personality-cult.

Like, that low-key way where when you pretend to be in complete denial about all the reasons why people might delight in the failures (perceived or otherwise) of a Nazi billionaire's ridiculous vanity projects and then come to the highly self-serving (well, cult-leader serving) conclusion that "they must just be impatient with the saviour of mankind for not being the saviour of mankind enough"

[kickopotomus]

On the contrary, I find it more concerning that people are willing to discount the efforts of hundreds of people to progress human spaceflight just because the CEO is an asshole.

It is interesting that you would immediately default to a cult-of-personality retort when I never mentioned Elon in my original post. SpaceX is not just one man.