SpaceX mission control lost contact with the rocket after it leaked fuel and spun out of control, despite already flying halfway around the world
SpaceX mission control lost contact with its latest Starship rocket on Tuesday, as it leaked fuel, spun out of control, and made an uncontrolled re-entry after flying halfway around the world, likely disintegrating over the Indian Ocean, officials said.
“Just to confirm, we did lose contact with the ship officially a couple of minutes ago. So that brings an end to the ninth flight test,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot during a live feed.
Starship, the futuristic rocket on which Elon Musk’s ambitions for multiplanetary travel are riding, roared into space from Texas on its ninth uncrewed test launch and flew further than the last two attempts that ended in explosive failure.
It concerns me from a standpoint that is similar to Oceangate - the engineers are probably aware something is going wrong, but money is getting the final say. Then the people on one of these things end up dying, and it won’t be Musk.
I’m also concerned because this lax approach to engineering is becoming more apparent in the private sector. Engineers have a very difficult job -traditionally balancing budget, schedule, and quality. But we also are vital in ensuring regulatory compliance, safety, disposal, process, efficiency etc.
Engineer salaries, however, have stagnated like the rest of American workers. It’s true we still get paid better, but compared to how much the salary got you in the 80s-90s, we get much less.
Private sector engineers are largely not PEs as we’re shielded by our employers. We are more worried about being laid off than fucking up a project to the point lives get risked.
Part of this is why I chose to no longer work on systems that can cause injuries/ harm to a user. If I’m doing that, I can assume I’m not alone. If those of us consciously avoiding it because of fears of hurting users, it might mean that the ones working on the systems aren’t motivated by safety of the user.
The one good thing from oceangate was the fact that the CEO trusted his own life to his invention. He was in the sub when it imploded.
As stupid as he is, musk is unfortunately smart enough to know not to risk his own life in his own rockets.
he was use defective airplane parts as part of the hull, carbonfiber, instead of steel or titanium subs. he went supercheap, since his rides are 150k/per person. while the one james cameron was in was the titanium sub, which is 6-10mil per ride.
Oceangate, stockton basically cut corners on everything. hence he got killed by his owned hubris.