alt Hacker NewsFTA: "SpaceX suffered upper stage failures on three test flights of the massive Starship rocket last year. "
SpaceX has also had numerous failures with the larger generation of second stages and currently doesn't have a lead there. Nobody does.
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boznz • yesterday at 10:43 PM
It's a hard problem, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin will probably have failures in the future too, I am encouraged that they both see failure as a way to do better and looking forward to both of them eventually succeeding. It's a good time to be a space nerd.
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Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if not more.
Yes, Starship development has been slow and occasionally explodey, but they've successfully demonstrated all the fundamentals and it's "just" iteration from here. (They haven't gone into full orbit, but that's by choice, not lack of capability.)