They've blown up 11 Starships without any of them making it to orbit. Artemis I flew around the moon and came back already.

And don't compare costs because Starship does not and may never work so I dont care how much cheaper it is. If we are comparing fictional rockets I have a $1 rocket that can fly to Jupiter.

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bhouston 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> They've blown up 11 Starships without any of them making it to orbit.

They purposely were not trying for orbit from my understanding. The last one did orbit the earth at suborbital heights and release satellites. It did seem to do what they wanted it to do, it wasn't a failure.

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delichon 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not only were they not trying to reach orbit, they are specifically trying to do risky things that they can learn from. It's not exactly destructive testing because they hope to succeed, but it's close.

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UltraSane 5 hours ago | parent [-]

That just seems like a huge waste of money

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elictronic 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Each Expendable Starship Super Heavy launched costs less than a single engine on the Artemis program.

Every time you see a Starship launch what you aren't seeing is manufacturing processes corrected, issues in launch protocols and field issues resolved. All the little things that build up to make your system reliable. Do you want the doctor who has done a hundred successful surgeries, or the one who has done one or two but spent a long time in school watching videos.

The big difference is in the end, Starship gets built faster, costs much less, and can do more. It's not even close.

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2OEH8eoCRo0 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can't compare costs for a rocket that doesn't work yet. It's fictional. As I said in my post, if we are comparing fictional rockets then I have a $1 rocket that can fly to Jupiter.

	▲	signatoremo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Of course you can. It wasn’t fictional when Superheavy flew back and was caught, was it? It costed real money, not fictional. What kind of mental gymnastics are you doing?

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UltraSane 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Until it actually works every dollar is waste.

	▲	NetMageSCW 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Do you think that about cancer research, or antibiotic research, or development of the JWT?

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delichon 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It wouldn't if you were scheduled to fly on it.

	▲	NetMageSCW 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		By the time people are scheduled to fly on it, it will have launched 100s of times and SLS wilk have launched once. Which so you want to ride on?

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qingcharles 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Elon Musk's net worth now (sadly) near a trillion dollars... :/

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freejazz 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Easy not to fail when you are purposefully not trying to succeed

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verzali 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I doubt they set out to launch eleven times without reaching orbit.

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ThrowawayTestr 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They very explicitly were not setting out for orbit for most of them.