Thread

1. Zigurd · 1790601391 · focus · HN ↗

   Having an impossible critical path will be the demise of the starship project. Too many things have to work that cannot be tested out of order. Too many of those things that needed to work years ago still don't. And those are the easy ones.

   The items I'm listing here are just a subset of the critical path, and each milestone along the way will take months, optimistically, and years more realistically. To the point that starship won't be relevant to moon missions or any commercial use by the time it does what it needs to do to even partially fulfill the plans for it:

   It needs to meet payload specifications. Currently it is off by a factor of two, which sounds doable until you realize the spec is 100 tons, and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system.

   It needs a launch cadence fast enough so that refueling doesn't take 15 separate starship tankers. Currently it would take years to refuel one single starship to make a one-way trip to the moon.

   There's just a minor milestone on the way to that launch cadence: catching both stages.

   Once both stages are reliably caught after a mission, refurbishment needs to be minimal. Proving that out will take several missions.

   This is a simplified list of items on the critical path, but reaching each of these items has risks, and if those risks prove to be problems to solve, then each of those problems has a list of tasks and tests associated with it.

   Some people think very highly of Elon for proposing technologically elegant solutions. But he's got a really big blind spot for the project management implications.

   1. jve · 1790605255 · focus · HN ↗

      I wonder how this type of comment would apply to software development world where something innovative is being built, currently not ideal but the devs would just look at it: Meh, it doesn't do X, it doesn't do Y, it does Z worse and it doesn't send email!

      Maybe AI applies here - from a few years of supercharged intellisense to builds stuff on its own. But even here I don't remember such a skepticism some folks are aiming at Starship.

      It's like running into R&D department and just pointing out at the flaws/not implemented features while you iterate on your product. Annoying.

      1. Zigurd · 1790607910 · focus · HN ↗

         AI and the success of agentic coding is an excellent example. It works because validation is external to the AI coding process. If it had to validate itself it wouldn't work. Luckily, humans created a lot of tools to validate the work of humans. If your use case doesn't match the characteristics of agentic coding, don't expect the same success. That kind of serendipity is rare when conditions for it are good, and the conditions for serendipity around rockets is never that good.

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