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.
At this point in the test campaign, every new Starship has so many changes from the previous ship flown that it's almost a different vehicle altogether. Plus, the test ships are built with potential flaws on purpose, to see what they can survive. For example, they've even left off some of the heat shield tiles, which are there to protect the ship from the heat of re-entry from orbit, to see if losing a few during launch would doom the ship. The key point is that it is a test ship and will remain so for at least a few years. Every flight will test how far the envelope can be pushed, and to make real progress, many of them won't make it back down in one piece. It's simply how this works.
This doesn't stop people who don't understand-- or want to try to make a bad political point-- from misrepresenting what happened.
I saw commenters on social media mocking SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, telling him he can't even keep his rockets from exploding, so he needs to focus on rocketry and stop dismantling the federal government through The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). These people are wrong on both counts. I can't take anyone seriously if they act as though government accountability and eliminating waste and fraud are bad things.
Either government is chopped or America dies. There's no other alternative.
I have my own criticisms of Elon Musk, but with Starship and DOGE, he's doing the right things. Only ignorance or politics would make someone think (or pretend to think) otherwise.
To change things for the better, you've got to be willing to break something. Maybe everything. Government needs more RUDs, just like Starship does. Maybe it's time to make the "E" in DOGE stand for "Elimination". This would be an improvement those who don't understand rocketry or government would scream about. Which means it's the right thing to do.
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