Brother I love NASA but you're kidding yourself if you think they didn't have as many or more failures. SpaceX is just more open about them and follow a different development philosophy by doing rapid iteration

Tf? Absolutely nobody would cheer if people were on this rocket. What a sick assumption

I don't see how it failing twice after a lot of success shows it's a horrible idea

Believe it or not, building the most powerful rocket in the world with a fraction of the budget of Apollo is pretty difficult. It might be late, but the smart men and women at SpaceX proved their competency with Falcon 9 being so insanely reliable. They are pushing the limits with these test flights

I don't even disagree. My original point was that it doesn't make sense to compare the Saturn Vs success during actual missions to Starships Test flights. If starship blows up multiple times with a payload then I'll join the outrage

It hasn't reached or orbit bc they aren't allowed to as it's still experimental. A couple of the flights would have reached orbit but they purposely stopped short due to regulation. It might be late, but they're making insane progress. The skyscraper booster they caught didn't exist 2 years ago

They successfully caught the booster

Starship has had successful flights which proves they're able to do it. This is after a complete redesign of the ship, and at the end of the day these are test flights, with the entire purpose of learning what they need to fix. I don't see why they should be expected to nail every test flight

I still don't see the comparison of starship to JUST the Saturn V. The booster is useless without ship but the Saturn V is useless with a SM that explodes. Starship has had successful flights, and at the end of the day these are TEST flights. If these were commercial flights it'd be very different.

Dude in two years they CAUGHT a booster the size of a skyscraper. It's the most powerful rocket in the world with 1/25th the R&D budget of Apollo and you expect them to nail it during test flights?

I'm not even sure where you got $40B from because that's just straight up not true. Saying they weren't caused by the Saturn V is a moot point because this also wasn't caused by the super heavy booster

Brother 3 people died in the very first Apollo mission and Apollo 13 had an explosion on the way to the moon that required an emergency return. Also SpaceX currently has a success rate of 97.65%. Over 99% if you don't count their TEST vehicle.

"crazy how the Saturn V was able to fly after spending 171 billion dollars in R&D before ever flying, and SpaceX can't do the same thing after spending 5 billion"

Also, "Saturn V didn't have this level of problems"??? Three people DIED during Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 had an explosion in space lmao