They Blew Up Another One

     SpaceX has a lousy record so far with their Starship rockets.  They keep blowing up.  They do appear to be blowing up in a different way each time, so that's something.

     On social media, it's easy to find people fretting over the damage these huge machines must be causing every time they fail, and wondering who is footing the bill for that harm.  The answer isn't simple, but it breaks down into two parts:
     1. Launch damage: This is the most predictable (assuming the rocket doesn't blow up on the pad or shortly after launch) and does a lot of harm -- especially the first launch, done before the water-deluge system had been installed, a self-own by Mr. Musk that remains largely inexplicable and which rained chunks of concrete and more across the launch area.  Payment was mostly via Federal fines and "on lawsuit" for everyone, at least until Elon Musk buddied up with the present boss of the FAA, EPA and other alphabet agencies; now, well, good luck in court.
     2. Re-entry damage: once again, payment on lawsuit, though in what court?  The good news is that there's very little in the way of exotic materials in those rockets, other than carbon-fiber wrappings around high-pressure tanks. It's mostly stainless steel, oxygen and methane, and the primary danger is if big pieces fall on persons or property.  SpaceX is a little more careful about launch and flight trajectories than the People's Republic of China, who let expended boosters and expired satellites fall where they may, and the American company's LOX and methane is considerably more safe than the damn near nerve gas of UMDH and nitrogen tetroxide the PRC uses.  Nevertheless, pieces fall unpredictably when rockets fail and it's difficult to shrug off as the price of progress if you happen to be underneath them.

     These big rockets are not quite Cyril Kornbluth's The Rocket of 1955, and I find myself less and less of a fan of Mr. Musk based on his abrasive personality and extreme politics, but they are fundamentally different to the Saturn series of boosters they superficially resemble: NASA put men on the Moon by hand-tightening every mine-to-installation-tracked bolt with teams of engineers and scientists checking each step, and then triple-checking the checks.  Dogged by the tragedy of "Apollo 1," well aware that failure could hand Moon-race victory to the Soviet Union, no expense was spared -- and they still nearly lost Apollo 13 after a string of successes.  Compared to every element of a Saturn, the Starship is a passenger car -- or a commercial airliner: built on assembly line, in volume, and intended to be a "big, dumb booster" supporting a high launch rate.  It's a giveaway calendar* with 4-color process decorative scenes for every month, up against NASA's old hand-painted masterpieces -- and SpaceX is essentially the model for every other company making launchers in the U. S., including NASA's current subcontractors.  Nobody can afford the kind of painstaking effort that went into the first series of Moon rockets; it's unsustainable.

     Starships are going to keep on blowing up until they get them right or Elon Musk and his investors run out of money, politics and personalities bedamned.

     Update: On the other hand, maybe Starship is The Rocket of 1955, only scaled for maximum return.  I don't have enough design development background to evaluate this article, but it doesn't look great.  Infuriating if true.  There was supposed to be a Lunar base by now, something on the order of an Antarctic research station and instead, what have we got?  Plagiarism robots that tell lies and make bad art?  Pfui! 
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* Who remembers those?