Starship failure essential to its progress

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for March 12, 2025)

SpaceX's Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket (or flying machine) ever built, lost control and exploded soon after launch last week. Rocket nerds jokingly call this a "rapid unscheduled disassembly"; a RUD. When inventing something as unprecedented as Starship, it's to be expected and shows limits are being pushed.

People who don't understand what's going on called this a "test failure". If there were no explosions, it wouldn't be a rocket test. No test is a failure when it teaches something...read the rest...

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