<story><title>SpaceX loses its third Starship prototype during a cryogenic test</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/spacex-loses-its-third-starship-prototype-during-a-cryogenic-test/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dwaltrip</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s funny how extreme the reactions are here. It&amp;#x27;s either the end of the world or exactly as planned. Both are nonsense.&lt;p&gt;To me, this looks like it was definitely a noteworthy fuckup, but in the big picture it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be a major setback -- nothing like the recent Boeing issues. That is, as long as a pattern of such events doesn&amp;#x27;t develop. SpaceX continues to push the industry forward in interesting and exciting ways.&lt;p&gt;To continue the arm-chair quarterbacking... I feel like a moderate decrease in process aversion would be a good response to this incident. Reduce the chance of similar future fuckups without slowing down too much.</text></comment>
<story><title>SpaceX loses its third Starship prototype during a cryogenic test</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/spacex-loses-its-third-starship-prototype-during-a-cryogenic-test/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mabbo</author><text>What I love about SpaceX is that they truly take on the start-up approach of fast iteration, in complete opposite to most of their competitors.&lt;p&gt;This is a silly loss, as it sounds like it was a test procedure error and not a valuable experimental failure. But even then, how much is lost? The rocket was built on-site in a tent, welding some cheap steel together. They&amp;#x27;ve got more test articles being built. The engine is probably salvageable. This is a month or two set-back at worst.&lt;p&gt;And just like when our software fails in a silly way, I&amp;#x27;ll bet you there will be new automatic tests, procedures, etc, so that this kind of error can&amp;#x27;t happen again. They&amp;#x27;ll learn, iterate, and continue to move fast (and break things).&lt;p&gt;With nearly all of their competitors, any kind of failure like this would be millions of dollars lost, months or years of setback. This fundamental difference is why SpaceX is slowly coming to dominate the industry.</text></comment>