[mempko]

This incremental progress, far smaller improvements than planned, has put them so far behind schedule I'm not confident this design is any good. Still haven't done orbit. This launch was not a smooth launch. SLS by contrast seems to work. Why did nasa contract SpaceX for the lander. The whole plan is bad.

[XorNot]

There's plenty of finicky systems which go on to be good systems with a lot of work. Some things are just hard, a lot of the time you just don't see them being hard so publicly.

[mempko]

Sometimes a design is poor and needs a lot of modification and patches to kind of work.

[XorNot]

That's software engineer "I'll simplify it!" logic and the score of it's successes is far too low for how common it is.

If a design with a bunch of modifications works, then it's a good design. Thinking you need to clean sheet redesign everything is how you get Second System Syndrome.

[decimalenough]

Are you serious? They just launched a completely revamped version of Starship from an entirely new pad, and still hit almost all of their planned milestones while demonstrating that the design is reliable enough to handle a missing engine.

[mempko]

Go back and look at the original plans and projections. Constantly redesigning is not something to be proud of. I call it vibe spaceship design.

[modeless]

Two successful test missions over 15 years using a dead end rocket and ship design for $50+ billion is not something to be proud of either.

Starship's design is so far beyond where the rest of the world is that even if it takes another 3 years of iteration to perfect it will still be by far the best rocket in the world for many years afterward, to the point where it would hardly make sense to choose to launch on any other existing or currently in development rocket for any reason other than political ones.

[xyzsparetimexyz]

You can't perfect a flawed design. The whole thing might be too big and complex to launch reliably in the way that NASA and spacex need.

[xyzsparetimexyz]

Its plainly obvious that the lander should have been launched on falcon heavy. I do believe that starship will eventually work but it'll take a long time to get 10+ launches working in a row so that a lander can work.