From Musk to Branson to private Japanese: even in space you can go wrong
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You learn by making mistakes is a proverb as old as the world, but in the space field in recent times it has been a bit abused to hide more or less sensational failures and unsustainable business models. Space X, iSpace and Virgin Orbit are three paradigmatic cases.
The most positive case is that of SpaceX which, as a philosophy, has introduced a working method based on trials and errors, trial and error, typical of many experimental sciences, such as physics, but certainly not of the large space agencies, such as NASA, which have inevitably made many mistakes, too. Just think of the Shuttle Challenger disaster in February 1986 which cost the lives of seven crew members.
Elon Musk, the founder and patron of SpaceX has stated it several times: experiment, acquire the data of the experience made, think about it and go further in the creation of the final product. So far it has gone well, very well: its Falcon 9 carrier rocket now dominates the launch market, especially after Russia has practically left the scene and Europe is essentially on foot, while it waits for its two launchers, Ariane 6 and Vega C , start working. Only China, with its Long March carriers, can keep up with Musk.
The (partial) failure of Musk
In recent days, with the attempt to launch the large Starship carrier rocket, the largest and most powerful ever built, essential to carry out the Artemis project to bring humanity permanently to the Moon, the method developed by Musk has perhaps reached its limits.
It must be said that the main parts of the powerful rocket, engines and tanks, and shuttle were tested separately, and a couple of times the experiment ended in an explosion. The complete rocket, on the other hand, took off and reached a height of a few kilometers, but various malfunctions prevented the normal detachment of the second stage and the whole thing was detonated as a precaution. The next day it was also seen that the carrier was so powerful, with its 33 engines, that it had practically put the launch pad completely out of action.
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