Major explosion during preparations for static fire test of Starship prototype
As engineers tonight were preparing for a standard static fire engine test at Boca Chica of the next Starship prototype, expected to fly on the tenth Starship/Superheavy test flight, the spacecraft suddenly exploded.
I have embedded video of the explosion below. The event occurred prior to the actual static fire test, while Starship’s tanks were being filled. The image to the right is a screen capture just as the explosion begins. The white cloud is the initial release from the explosion (not standard venting), with the red dot indicating the location where the event began. It appears very much to have started inside this Starship spacecraft, which SpaceX was preparing for the next test flight.
Fortunately, no injuries have been reported.
Obviously, this is going to delay somewhat that tenth test flight. SpaceX has more Starship prototypes ready to go, but the company must first figure out what went wrong in this case. It also appears there might be some damage to that test stand, which will also have to be rebuilt so that future static fire tests of upcoming Starships can take place.
ANOMALY! Just before Ship 36 was set to Static Fire, it blew up at SpaceX Masseys!
Live on X and YT:https://t.co/GPjZIX1Zyd pic.twitter.com/CfZhDeSGae
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) June 19, 2025
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
<As engineers tonight were preparing for a standard static fire engine test at Boca Chica of the next Starship prototype, expected to fly on the tenth Starship/Superheavy test flight, the spacecraft suddenly exploded.
I have embedded video of the explosion below. The event occurred prior to the actual static fire test, while Starship’s tanks were being filled. The image to the right is a screen capture just as the explosion begins. The white cloud is the initial release from the explosion (not standard venting), with the red dot indicating the location where the event began. It appears very much to have started inside this Starship spacecraft, which SpaceX was preparing for the next test flight.
Fortunately, no injuries have been reported.
Obviously, this is going to delay somewhat that tenth test flight. SpaceX has more Starship prototypes ready to go, but the company must first figure out what went wrong in this case. It also appears there might be some damage to that test stand, which will also have to be rebuilt so that future static fire tests of upcoming Starships can take place.
ANOMALY! Just before Ship 36 was set to Static Fire, it blew up at SpaceX Masseys!
Live on X and YT:https://t.co/GPjZIX1Zyd pic.twitter.com/CfZhDeSGae
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) June 19, 2025
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Given the apparent point of origin, I would guess something went badly wrong during loading of propellant into the header tanks in the nose. It really is looking like the Block 2 Starship design is a lemon.
SuperHeavy looks more well behaved.
That from a lot of engines side-by-side?
Maybe adding more engines to Starship could help.
I have this gnawing suspicion that the current Starship engine layout is generating some kind of standing wave.
As Raptors get more compact, perhaps their vibrations cane face himself.
I don’t recall having read about many of these type of events involving SpaceX; the law of averages says they were due.
Official SpaceX statement, posted on X:
“On Wednesday, June 18 at approximately 11 p.m. CT, the Starship preparing for the tenth flight test experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase. A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for.
“Our Starbase team is actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials. There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue.”
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1935572705941880971?t=BsdLGFjpo9FO-x-hX1ZP6w&s=19
Elon, so far, has only posted a meme about it. (Not criticizing, they may simply not know enough yet for him to say anything substantive.)
And about that test stand:
There’s a video up now at the SpaceXLounge subreddit, shot from a boat travelling just off the Massey riverbank on the Rio Grande this morning, looking at that South end of Massey’s. The fires are finally out, thank God …
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1lfa7rr/masseys_after_the_rud_of_s36/
What you can see is limited, but….you can see that the test stand is completely toast. Total rebuild is going to be in order.
That fact alone will set back the schedule of Flight 10. Hard to say more than that, though.
This is the SpaceX I know and love. Blowing stuff up.
BTW, happy Juneteenth! The day Republicans finally forced the last Democrat slave owners in Texas to free their slaves.
Scott Manley
Starship 36
https://youtu.be/0C_L-qgHsE0
13:32
I’m going to go full autist– “not a detonation, a deflagration…”
Saw a screen clip of an Elon Musk xwheet (can’t find it on X, where searching is nearly impossible). Preliminary data indicates a nitrogen COPV failed at a pressure level below its rated maximum. Chain reaction followed.
The biggest fallout from this is probably not the loss of Ship 36, but damage to the Massey’s test site. Test stand, tank farm, and probably more will need to be rebuilt.
Yeah, blowing up hardware is a learning experience, but you don’t want it blowing up your infrastructure with it!
Since Musk started supporting President Trump and especially since he joined the DOGE team, I have been worried about sabotage
“I have this gnawing suspicion that the current Starship engine layout is generating some kind of standing wave.
As Raptors get more compact, perhaps their vibrations…”
I have had exactly the same concern. There seems to be some sort of issue on the last 3 flights. There is a great piece of camera work where it shows the flap of starship on the last flight vibrating. It… didn’t look right.
Pogoing was a huge problem early in the space program and led to many rockets failing. But really it was just a vibrational problem. And this being the tallest and largest rocket ever launched, you are in new realms of potential vibrational issues, new frequencies of vibration can have an effect. Previous spacecraft were never long enough to have these issues. Worse, you can test and test on the stand and never replicate it.
Garbled and Jeff Wright: Though your concerns about vibrations and pogoing might be a concern on the previous test flights (though SpaceX has clearly stated it solved that problem after the first Starship orbital failure), it has nothing to do with yesterday’s explosion.
The rocket was sitting on the launchpad, not in flight. Its engines were not firing. All that was happening was it was being fueled.
Moreover, all the recent serious failures have been on Starship, which has only six engines. It is Superheavy that has a plethora of engines, and so far it has performed with remarkable success.
Darwin Teague, same.
Seems like its time write off Block two. I think they are are only two more left ship 37 and 38. And move onto the Block 3. Clearly something was working right on block one that wasn’t worked right on block 2. Maybe that is just a lot bad things happening to the same ship design but sometimes an object or design can be so bogged down with its image of failure that the psychology is you just move onto next design.
Look at some for Microsoft OS. I know Bob in not a Windows guy but was ME or Windows 8 as bad as there reps. Not really but sometimes you just need a clean slate and I think for company and community moral its time to put Block 2 to bed.
COPV again….the engines weren’t even lit.
Drat.
I hope they have shot spotter tech.
It reminded me of Vanguard’s explosion. That style rocket did eventually fly.
Could the issues with Starship Blk 2 be associated with the design philosophy of the best part is no part at all? SpaceX is trying to reduce the weight and complexity of Starship and could have gone just a smidge too far.
At Space News, one comment has a link to an individual named Wyatt who maintains a workplace culture problem.
I actually hope that is false–just a fired employee grinding an axe–but I fear he is telling the truth.
Jeff Wright,
The engines aren’t the problem because they weren’t running. The only previous SpaceX failure this resembles is the destruction of AMOS-6 and its F9 launch vehicle along with much of SLC-40 almost nine years ago. That also occurred during propellant load prior to a static fire test, but, as with this blast, the test never occurred.
Richard M,
The Massey’s test stand looks toasted but is not, I think, actually toast. The main mount structure looks intact, though certainly covered in smaller-gauge detritus. The nearest propellant storage tank had its paint amply singed on its end nearest the test stand but doesn’t look to be either breached or displaced. A lot of cleanup will certainly be in order as well as a lot of repainting, but SpaceX has proven quite good at that sort of thing before – notably, when there was an unplanned deflagration beneath Pad 1 after a Super Heavy spin prime test. This misadventure will certainly delay IFT-10, but not, I suspect, by nearly as much as the SpaceX crepe-hanger chorus is already intemperately predicting.
Jeff Wright & BillB,
There have been noisy critics of SpaceX’s “work culture” and Elon’s design precepts ever since the company’s founding, especially after the company has suffered any sort of reverse, however temporary. This hasn’t been a good year, thus far, for the Starship development effort, but parts of 2015 and 2016 weren’t banner years for Falcon 9 either and SpaceX, as it always does, plowed through its tribulations and left them behind. It will do so this time as well.
The SpaceX “work culture” has been invariant since its founding. During good times for SpaceX, the carping about it tends to die away. It emerges again whenever SpaceX suffers a momentary stumble. But it is exactly this supposedly problematical “work culture” that enables SpaceX to confront problems aggressively and solve them in jig time compared to legacy enterprises in the same business categories.
Criticism of the SpaceX “work culture” from within other enterprises usually boils down to the SpaceX “work culture” making their own “work culture” look bad by comparison in terms of what it can accomplish and the speed with which it can do so. Pure sour grapes.
Crticism of the SpaceX “work culture” from academe and the political left is based partly on the abject failure of all efforts to unionize any of Elon’s businesses, but also on the general lefty conviction that no one should have to work at all in an ideal society. SpaceX mocks this “ideal” because it consists of people who not only work very hard, but very effectively and who display every sign of enjoying themselves while doing so. Unforgivable!
I genuinely worry that starship going to Mars will never actually come to fruition. SpaceX is genuinely struggling to get the thing into orbit and returned safely, then there is the whole fuel transfer factor ( imagine a launch failure with a huge cargo of fuel…. Boom.. launch site destroyed ) , then there is the issues of landing safely on Mars… Have SpaceX got the landing system and process worked out? It’s a long way and time away to use their “test and break” method of development.
I also can’t see at least the first few landers getting back to earth. Mars and the Earth’s atmosphere are very different animals, and where does the fuel for the return trip come from? It’s a thought I have had since the first announcement of the BFR… It’s never a good idea to bet against SpaceX, but I can’t help being skeptical that this isn’t a doomed project.
( On a side note, I am censoring myself to only commenting on space issues…. It’s better for everyone’s blood pressure!)
Lee S wrote: “imagine a launch failure with a huge cargo of fuel…. Boom.. launch site destroyed”
The cargo of propellant is less than 4% or 5% of the mass of the launch propellant. It does not add that much more to the ball of fire that already will be there. There won’t be that much more damage than with a cargo Starship. Hopefully, a manned Starship will never have this happen to it.
“and where does the fuel for the return trip come from?”
The method of refueling uses in-situ resources. The idea is to make methane and O2 from the carbon dioxide atmosphere and the water ice under the landing zone. Making O2 has already been successfully tested on Mars.
Lee S,
I see Edward has already ninja-ed me on the matter of Starships exploding upon launch.
I would only add that, even on the fabulously glitchy first Starship launch, Super Heavy – which is the part of the stack that actually is ignited on the ground – withstood ridiculous amounts of physical insult and still held together and even made decent altitude before succumbing to the inevitable. It has just gotten better with every launch since and has even been recovered thrice and reused once.
Mars is, indeed, a hard place to get to and an even tougher place to return from, but SpaceX will plow onward. The actual schedule is unlikely to match Elon’s aspirational one very closely, but that is hardly a novelty. The one thing we can all be sure of is that no other entity or nation is going to get to Mars, at scale, before him. I hope I’m still around to see it – whenever it finally takes place.
As with ground-level Starship stack explosions, Edward has also anticipated me on the matter of ISRU propellant manufacture on Mars.
Please don’t hold back on political topics if you feel the urge. The only blood pressure that seems at issue at such times is your own. As with, sadly, most of those of your general political persuasion, you don’t seem to deal especially well with opposition – probably because you almost never encounter any in your day-to-day life except here.
American right-wingers of my own vintage, in contrast, have grown up and spent decades in a political milieu that was, for much of that period, trending more and more left. What does not kill you makes you stronger. I’ve had decades to develop immunity. Anent political provocation, I am Rappaccini’s Daughter. It has been a loooong time since anything said or written by anyone on the left has had a significant effect on my own blood pressure. I have, in fact, reached a point at which the more fervid the progressive nonsense on offer, the more I am likely to react with laughter than with anything else.
@ Dick… Given the paragraphs written explaining why I am wrong by some of the commenters here, I would say I wind some people up, I get constantly accused of being closed minded and not willing to contemplate other worldviews by people that are closed minded and not willing to contemplate other worldviews….. To a much greater extent than myself. There are certain aspects of capitalism and free markets I agree with and I am a free speech absolutist. I have no love for the loony left. Yet there has never once in god knows how many years been a poster here that has admitted there could be some merit to my embrace of many aspects of a more socialist society. There is also only so many times one can bang ones head against an immovable brick wall. No one here, including our host, is willing to contemplate the idea that some of my values have merit. I am also sick of posters here writing stupidly long posts, throwing 50 discussion points at me in one go. When I don’t have the time / inclination to answer each and every one I get spoke about in unflattering terms in 3rd person…( “Lee S is too …blah blah blah” ), and accused of having no answers .. I am in no way thin skinned.. far from it, but this post has taken me all breakfast to write. I can assure you all I can argue my corner… But I have better things to do than play keyboard warrior for hours answering disingenuous, condescending and very often insulting posts.
Perhaps you are right and it is only my blood pressure rising during these exchanges, but for me that is reason enough for self censorship.
There will no doubt be replies to this post explaining why I am wrong, but I will not be answering. I think I have explained my reasons why. My self censorship starts here.
@ Edward and Dick
Thank you for the info on the fuel cargo volume of starship. I learned something this morning!
My other points regarding a Mars mission remain tho… Fuel transfer has never been attempted in zero G, how is the thing going to land when it gets to Mars? We have seen recently that it is even hard to soft land on the moon… Mars will be much harder. And what’s the deal with making the return fuel on site? We have extracted minute amounts of O2 , but no methane so far… It is going to take a large amount of untested tech to provide enough fuel for a return journey… The challenges are huge… Even as simple as how to get the fuel , assuming we have managed to produce enough, from the production facility to starship?
To me, the timeline for all of this development seems like many decades rather than a few years, no matter how much Musk money is thrown at the project. ( I genuinely hope I am wrong! )
Also, don’t discount China. They seem to have a much less ambitious, but slow and steady space program. It is almost certain now they will get the first samples back from Mars, and they are no doubt working on boots on the moon, and then to Mars. I don’t 100% discount SpaceX, but I don’t discount China either.
Kinda space related…. Happy midsummer everyone! It’s not a festival of note in most of the Western world, but the longest day here in Sweden where it stays dark all day in midwinter is something to celebrate! Have a great weekend!
Lee S: The Russians did the first refueling in orbit in 1977 on their Salyut 6 space station, and followed up with repeated refuelings on later flights to Salyut 7 and Mir. NASA did its own refueling tests on several space shuttle missions beginning in 1984 and for years afterward, testing several different designs.
All in all this technology has been tested and used in space. Without doubt more engineering tests are needed, but it is not unproven ground.
Cheers Bob! I am further educated! My main area of space interest is planetary science and exo-life, so this is a learning moment for me
Do you have any opinions on the other engineering challenges I mentioned? Getting fuel processed and loaded for the return journey seems to me to be the really hard part… Truly untested technology.
Lee S,
Propellant transfer in zero-G is not new, at least for hypergolics. Large-scale zero-G transfer of cryogens is new, but SpaceX already transferred 10 tonnes of LOX from the main tank to the header tank on one of its early suborbital Starship tests. Transferring hundreds of tonnes at a time is a matter of scale-up, but SpaceX is very good at scale-up.
Manufacture of methalox propellant on Mars at adequate scale will be a bootstrap process, but the main technologies involved – electrolysis of water and synthesis of methane from hydrogen and CO2 are, respectively, over two centuries old and over a century old. The chemical engineering of electrolysis cells and Sabatier reactors is quite mature and well-optimized.
CO2 constitutes 95% of the martian atmosphere. Purifying it is just a matter of freezing it – not too energy-intensive a process given average martian surface temperatures.
Water can be obtained by drilling to a modest depth in any of many mid-latitude regions of Mars and melting the sub-surface ice deposits. There is plenty of extant Earth-based technology of these sorts that can be “martianized” readily.
Electrolysis can produce oxygen, which is the vast majority, by weight, of the propellant required, and also hydrogen to feed the Sabatier process along with atmospheric CO2 to produce methane. The Sabatier process also produces water as a byproduct and this can be fed back into the electrolysis cells or kept for local consumption once humans join the Mars-pioneering Optimus robots.
Propellant can be transferred from production site(s) to the landed Starships and stored in them against eventual departure. Powered boil-off abatement hardware would need to be part of every ship’s equipage, but that technology is also well-understood. Again, the low ambient temperature of the martian atmosphere makes this problem easier to address, from an input energy standpoint, than it is either on Earth or in space.
The nature of the transport mechanism could be either wheeled tanker vehicles or pipelines – probably tankers, initially, and pipelines later.
All of this will require appreciable electrical generation capacity. Photovoltaic panels would seem to be the best bet at least initially. Later, nuclear reactors might be part of the mix and even orbiting powersats.
Among SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Co., Musk’s enterprises already have the capability to engineer most, if not all, of what will be needed to get the industrialization of Mars going in a readily scalable way.
I would not advise betting any money you cannot afford to lose on the prospect of the PRC joining SpaceX on Mars, or even on the Moon. The PRC has both unsustainable demographics and unsustainable finances. The only sporting proposition on offer is really which of these will prove the decisive instigator of the PRC’s inevitable collapse. Right now, I would say it seems likelier to be the PRC’s parlous finances. Financially, the PRC is a sort of supersatrated solution. It awaits only a suitable small disturbance to quickly solidify. That could happen, literally, at any time.
Demographics, though, is like an advancing glacier – inevitable and unstoppable. Half of the PRC’s current population will be dead by mid-century and most of the remainder by century’s end. The number of Han left alive inside what are now PRC borders will, by the turn of the 22nd century, probably be less than the current population of Germany. China at that point will have long since faded as a consequential nation-state with the PRC only a dim memory. If post-PRC China reverts to the sort of fractious warlordism that has characterized a great deal of its past history, the remnant population of Han by 2100 could well be even lower.
@ Dick, I won’t argue with you about the inevitable demise of the current Chinese regimen, but given that it’s space program is a very public facing ( and successful so far ) program, I can see them continuing to pump money in, think Russia in the 60’s.. broke, but having a point to try and prove.
But my doubts about the viability of the whole starship/Mars plan remain… NASA now use the “sky crane” platform for decent sized landers ( to be fair, I was skeptical until the first image was returned… At 4am swedish time.. and drank a glass of wine to toast Curiosity’s safe landing , watching the whole thing live ) , but putting a massive craft down safely using retro rockets, unloading cargo, getting everything to work, with so very many single points of failure seems to me now, having left the Musk reality distortion field, to be basically impossible in our lifetimes.
It would be extremely costly and take a decade at least to build a meth/ox extraction plant on earth… With our nice thick atmosphere… I just honestly cannot see SpaceX coming anywhere close to their stated goals when they cannot even get their flagship craft into orbit. Interplanetary missions are not even close … Unfortunately.
@ Dick again… Are you really arguing that anything proposed by SpaceX can be done in a realistic time frame? We have sent 5 rovers to Mars, only 2 of which are still working, and they are all sub SUV size.. we just don’t have the plutonium to power anything bigger, and solar is a dodgy option on Mars… I wish it wasn’t true, but I honestly cannot see the massive infrastructure needed to realize Musks vision of humanities colonisation of Mars occurring in our lifetime
Lee S,
You wrote: “Fuel transfer has never been attempted in zero G, how is the thing going to land when it gets to Mars? We have seen recently that it is even hard to soft land on the moon… Mars will be much harder. And what’s the deal with making the return fuel on site? We have extracted minute amounts of O2 , but no methane so far… It is going to take a large amount of untested tech to provide enough fuel for a return journey… The challenges are huge… Even as simple as how to get the fuel , assuming we have managed to produce enough, from the production facility to starship?”
Dick Eagleson and Robert Zimmerman have already ninja-ed me on fuel transfer.
We already know that landings on Mars are possible. Several different countries have figured out various ways on how to do it. Starship’s reentry may be more difficult, as it must slow enough to go around Mars’s curvature (which is smaller than Earth’s), but SpaceX (or Musk, if you want to personify it) has shown to be patient and persistent after test failures, so I expect they will figure out solutions to the problems that arise. NASA and some companies have not been so patient or persistent. Delta-clipper (DC-X) and VentureStar (X-33) jump to mind.
Extracting minute amounts of oxygen has proved the concept, now they need to scale up the process. They do not have to make it a huge scale, at first, because they will have many months to patiently refill the tanks of return vehicles. Creating methane on Mars has not yet been demonstrated, but I’m sure that will be an early experiment done by SpaceX. They are the only ones who have yet shown an interest in creating and collecting martian methane.
The challenges are huge. So was Apollo, and ever since Apollo, we Americans have wanted to once again overcome such challenges in space. It is one of the reasons why we Americans are so excited about Starship, and the best part is that we taxpayers will get benefits from it without having to pay for overcoming the challenges. No, wait: the best part is that a private enterprise does not have to suffer the fickle government budgeting process that left America hanging fire in space utilization for so long. Go private enterprise!
We observers do not have to worry about coming up with the solutions, but we get to watch the process as it happens more efficiently and effectively than if government were doing it.
“To me, the timeline for all of this development seems like many decades rather than a few years, no matter how much Musk money is thrown at the project. ( I genuinely hope I am wrong! )”
Announced timelines are always optimistic and assume that the problems encountered will be minor and quickly resolved. Optimistic timelines are necessary, otherwise the engineers will work to the longer timeline and will still miss their deadlines. Right now, SpaceX’s engineers are suffering through designs that they thought would work but are not quite right. As long as SpaceX remains focused on its goals, it will manage to achieve them. Nothing proposed is impossible, it just takes the willpower to overcome the problems, conquer the unknowns, and invent the technologies needed for a practical solution. Later, other companies will figure out more efficient ways to do the job at lower cost. Chinese companies, for example, get to bypass a lot of the development costs.
“I wish it wasn’t true, but I honestly cannot see the massive infrastructure needed to realize Musks vision of humanities colonisation of Mars occurring in our lifetime”
Yet another challenge for Americans once the challenge of putting man on Mars is complete. It is a two-fer. What would we have on the Moon, right now, if companies had gone there for profit instead of a government going there just to prove a point?
_______________________
“Given the paragraphs written explaining why I am wrong by some of the commenters here, I would say I wind some people up, I get constantly accused of being closed minded and not willing to contemplate other worldviews by people that are closed minded and not willing to contemplate other worldviews….. To a much greater extent than myself.”
As Dick Eagleson noted, many of us here have spent decades contemplating other worldviews, worldviews to a much greater extent than the one(s) you express as well as to a lesser extent. The problem you are encountering is that you do not present anything new, yet we present you with our explanations as to why we have come to our conclusions. We have heard almost all of it before (you presented me with a new viewpoint on Hamas and its supporters that I, before your very eyes, contemplated and drew conclusions), and we have contemplated it all before. You have read many debates here, and you have witnessed many people come to new conclusions and many change their minds about their previous conclusions. I suspect that you are projecting your own closed mindedness onto others.
“there has never once in god knows how many years been a poster here that has admitted there could be some merit to my embrace of many aspects of a more socialist society. ”
Not only have we seen few merits to socialism or any other form of marxism, but you have failed to present arguments that show merit to any of these worldviews. You have argued that they are better for you, but we know and have pointed out that your benefits come out of our own pocketbooks, negating the merit to the overall system. Socialism is good for you but expensive for us to support you. Worse, you have yet to thank us for supporting your lifestyle.
“ There is also only so many times one can bang ones head against an immovable brick wall. ”
Some of us here have not yet reached that point, but then maybe that is because we aren’t banging our heads so much as talking to that brick wall. We aren’t expecting any changes in your political worldview, but we are getting a lot of practice in refining our own arguments and reinforcing our previous conclusions. This may be due to your strategy of complaining rather than explaining. Complaining that you make no progress changing our minds is not an argument in favor of your worldview.
On the other hand, where technology is concerned, you have shown that you soak up new information like a sponge.
“I am also sick of posters here writing stupidly long posts, throwing 50 discussion points at me in one go.”
Do you mean a reduced set of the same discussion points that you have thrown at us? If you bring it up, shouldn’t you expect a reply? Don’t you deserve explanations as to why we have concluded what we have concluded? Or maybe you aren’t interested in our viewpoints, since they vary from your own. You may not be as different from American leftists as you think you are.
Lee S,
The Soviet Union was less broke than the PRC is now when it collapsed. Russia, though – at least if it abandons its idiotic Ukraine misadventure – could continue to feed its own rapidly diminishing population as it has enough energy production capacity in European Russia as well as enough domestically available fertilizer inputs and arable land. If Russia keeps going with the Ukrainian misadventure, the Ukrainians will likely deprive it of at least the industrial infrastructure part of that. It would be ironic, but also karmic, if the Ukrainians treated Russia to the same sort of forced famine the Russians inflicted on Ukraine not quite a century back. If that happens, I will shed no tears for Russia. Russia delenda est.
The PRC has almost none of what Russia still has and must import nearly all of it. The job of feeding a rapidly shrinking population admittedly gets easier by the year, but that same shrinking population makes it harder to earn the cash needed to pay others for the inputs not available at scale domestically. As, first the PRC, then post-PRC China, move rapidly down the Maslovian Hierarchy of Needs, I think space spectaculars will be tossed overside pretty early on.
Now back to Mars stuff.
Starships will not rely more than a few percent on retropropulsion for landing. Most of the arrival energy is set to be scrubbed off via aerobraking in the martian atmosphere. At fairly low altitude and speed, the Starships will do their pitch-up maneuvers, then land tail-first – perhaps on their main engines and perhaps on “high-pockets” landing thrusters as are planned for the HLS Starship Artemis Moon lander.
I’m not sure what you see as “single points of failure.” Even assuming such exist, Elon’s Mars plans involve massive redundancy. Losing entire individual ships – or even several – will not be fatal to any particular expedition.
Pu 238 production is irrelevant. The power produced by RTGs is miniscule compared to what settlement of Mars will require. Ground-based solar and battery storage will do initially, with, I think, a fairly quick transition to orbital powersats as time goes on and probably to thorium reactors as well at some point. There is apparently a decent amount of thorium on Mars.
How much of this will prove possible in my lifetime is a legitimate issue, but then I’m nearly 74. I come from long-lived stock on both sides so I am hopeful I can last long enough to see a cargo-and-robots-only expedition or two and still be around when Commodore Isaacman takes the first human steps onto Mars. If not, well, c’est la vie – I will have done the best I could.
You don’t seem to have much grasp of the realities of large-scale chemical engineering. SpaceX plans to have several sizable air separation and methane liquefaction plants in operation within the next couple of years. Electrolysis and Sabatier plants for Mars will be neither nearly as large, at first, nor as complicated as the Earth-based Starship propellant infrastructure. A lot of the parts of both can be ordered from catalogs even now.
Perhaps your pessimism about timelines derives from simply being too used to the rather leisurely pace at which most everything seems to proceed in Europe. I worked in Europe for a couple of years back in the day so I have some personal experience with that. Europeans average being a lot older now than they were then so I can only assume things have gotten worse in the interim.
Anent power, one can cram quite a pile of Kwh – even at martian surface levels of insolation – into a cargo Starship along with stands on which to deploy them and Optimus robots in EVA suits to do the deploying and keep them dusted and otherwise maintained afterward.
Drilling rigs capable of reaching barely-buried ice formations are not a major challenge anent Mars surface operation. Modest modification of Earth designs should suffice. SpaceX already has plenty of experience using the latter as part of construction projects at Starbase. Nor is the process of melting ice in situ some exotic undertaking. This has been done for decades in Greenland and Antarctica.
Teaching Optimus robots how to do all of this stuff can be done in advance of departure and can even be practiced here on Earth in places like Mojave or any other convenient US western desert or even the Australian Outback. Ditto the assembling, setting up and operating of electrolysis and Sabatier plants and the transport of propellant from synthesis site(s) to landed Starship(s).
The scale of such efforts would start small and be exponentially expanded with each increase in size of the squadrons, flotillas and armadas that arrive at successive 26-month intervals. I really don’t see why you think it would take decades to get to even token scale with such activities.
Ok… Let’s get the political stuff out of the way first… Yes, I am in principal a socialist, I live in a fairly socialist country, I have benefited from the system. I had a long paternity leave, I had benefits ( not very much ) towards my rent as a single parent, and a small amount paid by the state towards the care of my kids every month.
I get state subsided health care. My insulin and heart medicine is “free”, as are all medicine that stops you from dying, the rest of my meds I pay full price for until I hit a ceiling, then the price comes down incrementally. My doctor’s visits cost about 50$ .. obviously state subsided.
I pay about 33% in tax… I was reaping the benefits when my kids were young, now I am a net giver… But that is how it works… I seriously do not understand how you can live in one of the richest countries in the world , you pay more for health care than any other country in the world, yet your standard of care rates 29 in the ranking, the USA has one of the highest poverty rates in the first world, certainly the most gun deaths ( but heck no! Absolutely no gun control! ) … The list goes on and on. I don’t claim that the system I advocate is perfect, but I think it behoves all those that condemn my attitude and politics to take a good long look at your own systems of governance and social care before criticizing mine. Is it not the sign of a civilized society that those with the most have a moral duty to take care of those with the least?
I keep getting criticism for refusing to take on board any points thrown my way… This is untrue. I have taken on board the fact that private enterprise is most certainly the way to go with manned space exploration ( capitalist thinking!) .. and we are getting back to the topic … NASA is absolutely the world leader in robotic missions… Rovers, landers, exoplanet helicopters ,space telescopes, missions with purely science returns… ESA has a little standing, but NASA leads the pack. In my humble opinion this is where your dollars should be focused. It’s what you do best. And yes, even tho my doubts still remain about starship and it’s viability to get to Mars safely, contract out the manned stuff… Therein lies a profitable business, and not just via NASA contracts.
I hope I have addressed some of the points raised, and explained my thinking, and the environment I live in.. and indeed why I am quite happy to live where I do. . I know you guys will never change your mind, but there are other systems of government… And they work. I am living breathing proof. And I am happy… Not brainwashed, not a slave to the state,.just a proud father of 2 wonderful teenager’s who are doing very well at their respective schools, which are not going to leave them in chronic debt.
And I can’t help myself…. I’m a pinko commie socialist… Let’s just stick to space stuff… Hugs and kisses to all!!
And please…. Do us over here a favour, and give that bloody exomars rover a lift … It must be 15+ years it’s been sitting waiting… Indeed can’t Elon cut us a break and hitch us a ride?… Just not on starship…
LeeS: How do you feel about this prospect and proposal by a potential Socialist NYC mayoral candidate?
“Mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani wants to spend $65 million in taxpayer funds on transgender treatment – including for minors – if he’s elected to lead New York City.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/zohran-mamdani-wants-to-spend-65m-on-trans-medical-treatment-including-for-minors-if-elected-nyc-mayor/ar-AA1Hggp4
Just curious.
LeeS: Something else I would like your opinion on, you know, because of your socialism:
“One of Mamdani’s people-pleasing planks is a promise to raise New York City’s minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030.
In the world’s richest city, making the minimum wage shouldn’t mean living in poverty,” his campaign’s platform states.”
Just curious.
Lee S, you wrote: “I seriously do not understand how you can live in one of the richest countries in the world , you pay more for health care than any other country in the world, yet your standard of care rates 29 in the ranking, the USA has one of the highest poverty rates in the first world, certainly the most gun deaths ( but heck no! Absolutely no gun control! )”
Well, we gotta live somewhere, it might as well be a rich country. We pay more, because we subsidize a large part of the world with pharmaceuticals. You even pointed this out last year, where your country bought one of our drug development companies and now your country makes the drugs we invented, and your country profits from our work. Then you had the audacity to say that your country was supplying ours with the development jobs. If your country hadn’t bought the developer, then America would be profiting from the drugs it invented, and our people would have the manufacturing jobs. You do us no favor, but we do you a favor.
Your free insulin and heart medicine are subsidized by Americans paying more for the development of those drugs, which then — by law — are sold to your country (and all others) at cost, so all the profits must come from American consumers. This is one reason we pay more for health care than any other country. We subsidize you and many others. I would say once again, “you’re welcome,” but you have shown us many times that you are ungrateful.
The high poverty rate is because we have taken in a whole lot of parasites who leech off our largess, driving up our taxes (we pay similar rates as you), our medical costs, our school costs, our housing costs, and they add to the crimes, driving up our prison costs. For those we took in that get jobs, they reduce our wages and take our children’s entry-level jobs; no wonder so many of our twenty-somethings are living at home, they cannot get work experience to get the jobs that pay well enough to live on their own.
You are wrong about the gun deaths. We are in the middle of the worldwide pack. We have some marxist cities that have very high gun death rates as well as what you consider gun control — gun bans (the defenseless have difficulty defending themselves against the criminals and tyrants) — but the conservative cities tend to be gun-rich zones (which you consider uncontrolled) that only the desperate bad guys and tyrants dare to work in. The rest migrate to California, New York, Chicago, and other socialized American places.
“I don’t claim that the system I advocate is perfect, but I think it behoves all those that condemn my attitude and politics to take a good long look at your own systems of governance and social care before criticizing mine.”
Oh, yeah — we have looked at our system of governance, all right. We have been looking at how it is trying hard to emulate yours, and we have seen how far we fall every time a new socialist idea is introduced. All the complaints you bring up are a result of marxist and socialist ideologies introduced into our country.
In our country, it is the areas that most emulate your system (greater central control — deviating from freedom and free markets) that have the problems you gloat about. We have been seeing this happen since 1960, when the socialist Democrats took over Detroit from the Republicans and declared it their Model City, only to turn it into the typical socialist “paradise” with half its 1960 population, desperate unemployment, and abandoned properties. What a dump most of the city is. Other cities are rapidly decaying into the same state of socialist decrepitude.
We have taken a half-century look at our own systems of governance, and that is exactly why we can criticize your system of governance and social care. We see that yours fails everywhere it is tried, even in the U.S., and the conservative system thrives everywhere it is tried. Even when China and India move slightly toward free market capitalism, a billion people are liberated from poverty in those two countries combined. Socialism doesn’t work no matter who works it and no matter where it is worked. It goes against human nature. Free market capitalism thrives everywhere it is tried and no matter who tries it just a little, such as the communist Chinese and the socialist Indians.
You, on the other hand, have only visited areas of the U.S. that have embraced marxism, so your view of the U.S. system is skewed against the conservative viewpoint. In order for your government and advocates of your system to convince you that your system is best, they add to that skewed viewpoint, which is why you are so bad at accurately describing the U.S.’s freedoms and free market capitalist system, where it is available, and why you do not see that the problems in the U.S. stem from the use of marxist ideologies.
On the other hand, the U.S. government has been taking away freedoms and is doing much to control the once-free markets, much like your system of governance. One of the latest was the takeover of the medical system that you say is so terrible. It was much better, back when it was a free market system, but now it is government controlled and heavily regulated, and decisions are no longer as much between the patient and his doctor or the investor and his company’s officers. Frankly, your system sucks. It is OK for you, because you are riding on other people’s money — on our money.
Your American friends are in an area where the population prefers poverty over the advantages of freedom to move to a prosperous place. America’s half-century-old marxist welfare system allows for that to happen. Your friends are living in the “Detroit” of the Appalachian Mountains, but they won’t move to a better place, like the Detroiters did.
“I keep getting criticism for refusing to take on board any points thrown my way… This is untrue. I have taken on board the fact that private enterprise is most certainly the way to go with manned space exploration ( capitalist thinking!)”
So, you are saying that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander? If free market capitalism works in one industry, why do you think it does not work in the rest? Free market capitalism is how we got to be such a rich country in so little time, and the American insistence, half a century ago, to implement the marxist/socialist system of welfare to the world is why our government is in so much debt.
“.. and we are getting back to the topic …”
As we have seen over the past fifteen years, NASA and government control of space held us back. Now that We the People are freer to do as we please in space with our own money, we are doing for ourselves what we had expected to get from space industrialization. Instead of only getting what the government wanted (e.g. unmanned exploration, the type you like so much) at taxpayer expense and unstable budgets, we have one company actively doing pharmaceuticals manufacturing in space, today a UK company launched another manufacturing satellite on a Falcon 9, other companies are doing a variety of activities in space, but NASA and the government cannot even get back to the Moon while another company is working on putting colonies on Mars. Marxist governmental control sucks, free market capitalist control rules in space as it does on Earth.
You have a hard time believing that a company can get to Mars, because you have a worldview limited by marxist and socialist ideology: If the government does not make it happen, then it cannot happen. We have the opposite worldview: We are free to make it happen, and by gum, we will! — even if we have to create a Starlink constellation to help fund it and blow up a bunch of development rockets to figure out how to do it right.
You don’t see it, but you and your country lean on us so heavily that you expect a lot from us. Now you expect us to give free rides to your projects to Mars. When we give a “pinko commie socialist” some health care, he demands our space program. Give him an inch and he takes a mile. It is never enough; the leaches always demand more, no matter how generous you have been. No good deed goes unpunished.
“I am quite happy to live where I do.”
And you will remain quite happy until your system collapses and you realize that it was supported by us, who are so prosperous that we can be a benefactor to much of the world and still be such a rich country.
Oh, how much better your place would be if it, too, were it like the U.S., with similar prosperity that it could support others, and how much better our place would be if we could keep more of what we make and earn. It is freeloaders like you socialists that spoil the world. Socialism is why we cannot have nice things.
Lee S, you wrote: “I am quite happy to live where I do.”
I should have pointed out that I sure hope you are happy where you live. We Americans pay dearly for your lifestyle (as well as the lifestyles of people in several other countries, too), and I would be seriously disappointed if all that extra expense on we Americans were not having a good effect on those we benefit. What a waste that would be.
“Given the paragraphs written explaining why I am wrong by some of the commenters here, I would say I wind some people up”
If you don’t want us to respond, then why do you bring up the topic? Shouldn’t we consider topics that are raised to be open for discussion?
Just because we respond or explain why you are wrong does not mean that we are wound up. I, myself, respond just to practice my arguments. They don’t work in person, either, because leftists become too emotionally attached to their positions on various topics to be willing to change their minds — unless leftist leaders change the way they want leftists to think, then their followers change very quickly so that they continue to fit in with the leftist crowd.
Maybe some year you will see past the rose colored glasses that come from the subsidies the rest of us supply you and your country and realize that you have been a burden on other people your whole life. You may think that you now pay more than you collect, but we Americans have been subsidizing much of the world our entire lives.
It seems to have started after WWII, when we rescued the world from fascism and tyranny. Somehow, after the rest of the world had better buildings, factories, infrastructure, and cetera than we Americans had, various forms of the Marshall plan continued for many decades and continue today (Trump wants to change that so that everyone pulls their own weight and we don’t have to). Apparently, being more productive per capita than most other countries (and being the most productive nation), we were gullible to continuing our generosity, saving most of the world from marxism, communism, and socialism.
Instead, we should have insisted that the other countries become as productive per capita as we are, so then the world would be a much more prosperous place than it is today. That mistake is on us. We tried but failed to teach the world that the secret to this much productivity and prosperity is: having natural Rights, which lead to freedom and liberty. Natural Rights are not granted by man or by constitutions, but they can be protected by them. It is why our Bill of Rights is written the way it is, explaining that our Rights may not be violated, not that we are granted our Rights.
National constitutions should be written similar to our Bill of Rights, stating that government may not violate our natural Rights, not that the Constitution grants Rights. No other country acknowledges natural Rights as inviolable; all are written as though they grant their populaces their rights. Even the United Nations treats rights as capricious, where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has Article 29, Clause 3, which allows the UN to revoke our rights willy nilly. If rights are granted, then they may be taken away. Human rights are constant, no matter whether they violate a government’s sovereignty. Human rights are superior to government, which is an institution created by man in order to protect man’s natural Rights. The rest of the world does not at all understand human rights, universally declared or not.
What makes people more productive is the right, freedom, and liberty to do what we want rather than be limited by government overregulation or centralized control. We work harder when we work on things we enjoy or things we think will bring us prosperity. As many American companies have learned, over the years, leisurely effort allows the competition to prosper. SpaceX has taught that lesson twice, once with the success of its Falcon line of launchers and again with its Starlink constellation. Rocket lab has learned and applied the same lesson, also to good effect. SpaceX has had the freedom to work faster, and it also has the freedom to try new concepts, such as reusability and reentry methods that may work well for landing on Mars. Amazon, Blue Origin, and ULA have exercised their freedom to work more leisurely, and are losing business to SpaceX. SpaceX is free to work fast and to break its development hardware in order to find the limits on what can be done and to get it done quickly so that it can keep ahead of the competition. Its profits are the reward for finding and developing efficiencies that the competition has yet to find.
When we get to keep what we earn, we work harder, happier, and more productively. We become more willing to take the risks that improve human lifestyles, such as colonizing a New World or investing in space endeavors. When what we earn is taken from us and redistributed according to need, we tend to work near our least ability, and we tend to claim to need more — especially when we are then given more. This is why welfare states (such as the U.S. is turning into) do not work out well, going deeper into debt. Eventually they don’t take care of themselves, which is what happened to the Soviet Union, California (my state), Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other places that are trying marxism.
California changed from free market capitalism to a central-control marxist state. It once attracted businesses and workers (that is why my family moved here when the company moved here), but now businesses and workers are fleeing. As SpaceX learned, California’s governmental bodies now reward those with right-think and punish those with wrong-think. I have lived under both types of governance, and I like the former, not the latter. But then, I haven’t been the recipient of free stuff, just been the guy who pays for other peoples’ free stuff.
We Americans have fifty states, which have been experimenting with various forms of governance since the Plymouth and Jamestown colonies in the early years of the 1600s. For more than four hundred years, we Americans have been examining what works and what does not. We do not get wound up by our observations, and we are able to explain why we have come to our conclusions. Not everyone wants to hear the results of our experiments, as they tend to be emotionally attached to their own systems of governance. You, Lee, have yet to present us with much that is new, except that you are happy being a receiver of American largess.
Free markets and capitalism work much better than socialist central control. Meritocracy works better than communism and marxism. Meritocricy, free markets, and capitalism work in accordance to human nature, but marxism, communism, and socialism are at odds to human nature. The former concepts work because that is how humans want to work. The latter don’t because that is how humans don’t want to work, but we are happy to receive free stuff or inexpensive stuff, which explains why you are so happy.
Have you ever taken such a good long look at your own countries’ systems of governance and social care as Americans have done? Or are you merely happy living under the system you have always lived under, not knowing any other way?
Lee S,
I know that you do not believe that the U.S. subsidizes Europe or the rest of the world, but we do make sacrifices for your benefit. One percent of our national debt was created in three years when we supported Ukraine because the rest of Europe did not. One percent of our national debt is due to just that one event over only three years. We have been supporting Europe and the world since the Second World War.
It is time for you all to become more independent and support yourselves. It is time for you all to become productive enough to do for yourselves. It is time for you all to give up the marxist dystopia and embrace free markets, capitalism, and your own natural Rights. You guys are expensive, so it is well past time that you all spread your wings and became self supporting. Marxism, socialism, and communism cannot do that for you. You are happy, because other people’s money has let your government seem generous toward you, but those other people are Americans, donating through our military, through our pharmaceuticals, and through tariffs, as was recently pointed out.
Robert is excited that the European space industry is now taking up the responsibilities of space leadership. Like America’s government-space, Europe’s government-space has led to very little progress, very little productivity in space utilization. With the European people now taking the responsibility, the Europeans will also start getting what they had wanted and had expected when the ESA was formed. We see in America that the space industry does better when it is free of government control and that some of our other industries have been harmed by increased government control.
It is time that you all free yourselves from your dependence upon government and start doing for yourselves. This is the freedom and liberty that we have been protecting for you for a century, and it is long past time that you enjoy them.