Why do SpaceX rockets keep exploding?
With yet another failed Starship test this week, in which the ambitious heavy rocket exploded once again, you might reasonably suspect that luck has finally run out for SpaceX. But this degree of failure during a development process isn’t actually unusual, according to Wendy Whitman Cobb, a space policy expert with the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, especially when you’re testing new space technology as complex as a large rocket. However, the Starship tests are meaningfully different from the slow, steady pace of development that we’ve come to expect from the space sector.“The reason a lot of people perceive this to be unusual is that this is not the typical way that we have historically tested rockets,” Whitman Cobb says.Historically speaking, space agencies like NASA or leg...