[slenk]

I don't understand why people are celebrating failed rocket launches.

Apollo 4, the first time the full Apollo Saturn V rocket stack was assembled, did not blow up on the first attempt to space. That is something to celebrate. Now wasting millions of government dollars from subsidies, which in the end comes from citizens.

We should not be celebrating failure.

[avhon1]

I notice you omitted an earlier, extremely prominently failed, Apollo mission.

Apollo 1 is highly analogous to the current testing of Starship. New spacecraft, highly ambitious, coming together for the first time.

Its conflagration was predictable, and a total waste of the life of the astronauts onboard. Only their deaths forced the whole spacecraft to be redesigned the way it should have been before any astronauts were onboard. Even afterwards, a second electrical fire nearly killed three more astronauts, far from any safety though their shiny new door.

The Space Shuttle ran much the same way. Carrying astronauts on its very first flight, people though it was safe, right up until it spectacularly killed seven astronauts. After that, it was flown much less ambitiously, and then it killed seven more people, and then we still kept flying it because it was all we had, and our bureaucracy was stuck with it.

Starship blowing up today poses no risk to human life, or to any organizational ambition. Rather, its present failures represent progress towards future success. Somebody is trying to do better than has been done in the past. If they learn all the things to not do to their rocket before valuable payloads and people fly on it, all the better.

[fragmede]

Because, even in failure, there's progress. "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration" is often attributed to Edison, without whom, we wouldn't have the lightbulb. In order to make progress, you need to try. And if you never fail, you're not trying hard enough. Would it be better if it hadn't failed? Absolutely. But better to try and fail than never try.

[slenk]

What bothers me is that they don't even try to succeed. They only want liftoff - they don't seem to care about the ever important orbital aspect

[avhon1]

Why don't you think they're trying to succeed? They got very close to orbit today, much closer than many prototype rockets do. Just earlier this year, Japan's new rocket also failed to achieve orbit. Its second stage just didn't ignite at all. Starship got closer to orbit than that today.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/the-launch-of-japans...

The Soviet N1 rocket never even got past first stage separation, in 4 launches. They got closer every time, but after the 4th stage blew up during main engine cut-off, they canceled the program, and never flew a cosmonaut beyond low-earth orbit.

[MatthewElvey]

I think most people don't understand the concept of if you want to succeed, fail faster.

It's valid (and explained well and often) but counterintuitive.

(And with mundane tasks, it's less applicable, as with them, it's reasonable to expect that when competent people attempt them, they generally get done correctly.)