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steveBK123 parent
Has the media coverage become more selectively focussed on the failures, or has the success rate of their move-fast-and-break-things approach really fallen off the last ~6-12 months?
simmonmt
If it bleeds it leads. Also a bunch of people are cheering Musk's failures, so anything along those lines gets even more clicks.
faefox
It's silly to try to pin this on media bias or Musk haters when the fact is that every Starship launched in 2025 has exploded.
dzhiurgis
You can't be serious. The wording of every article is in worst way possible while completely ignoring crashes from competitors - i.e. European Space Agency's launch in Norway, lunar landers being lost or even that sub-space Blue Origin all-female flight with such cringe slogan (Taking Up Space) that it's been edited from wiki.
simmonmt
I'm not pinning anything. I'm commenting on why SpaceX failures get more press than SpaceX successes. If it bleeds it leads is the way it's always been. And I'd be remiss to point out that there's /more/ appetite for it in the case of SpaceX because of feelings towards Musk.
faefox
Although I feel like SpaceX's successes (many of which have been truly remarkable, like the booster catches) get plenty of press themselves, you make a fair point. I apologize for taking your previous comment in bad faith. :)
steveBK123 OP
Sure but I also remember watching a number of very impressive launches, landings, etc "firsts". Recently I don't recall any of these, and this was watching SpaceX direct streams on their site.
dmix
They are testing V2 of Starship so it provides more opportunity for this sort of thing, not entirely a linear progression.
mikepavone
So looking back to the Falcon 9, there were only 4 failures to complete orbital objectives across 503 launches and one of those was only a partial failure (main payload delivered successfully, but the secondary payload was not due to a single-engine failure). These failures were not consecutive (4th, 19th, what would have been the 29th and 354th). Now apart from the first launch or two (COTS Demo Flight 1 had some useful payload, but still seemed pretty disposable) these all had real payloads so they were less experimental than these Starship test flights.

If we compare to the propulsive landing campaign for the Falcon 9 1st stage it's a bit more favorable. The first 8 attempts had 4 failures, 3 controlled splashdowns (no landing planned) and 1 success. I think in general it felt like they were making progress on all of these though. Similarly for the Falcon 1 launches they had 3 consecutive failures before their first success, but launch 2 did much better than launch 1. Launch 3 was a bit of a setback, but had a novel failure mode (residual first stage thrust resulted in collision after stage separation).

Starship Block 2 has had 4 consecutive failures that seem to be on some level about keeping the propellant where it's supposed to be with the first 2 failures happening roughly in the same part of the flight and this 4th one happening during pre-launch testing.

lukeschlather
They are failing more but they are also succeeding more and the successes aren't recognized as successes. The previous Starship blew up but the Booster successfully launched and landed two flights in a row, and that was in the same two flights both of which were viewed as failures because the Starship blew up.

Even if Starship turns out to be a dumb idea the super heavy booster already seems like it might outperform SLS as a reusable heavy-lift stage.

faefox
Starship has yet to experience a successful launch in 2025.
rsynnott
This version (Block 2) has never had a successful launch.

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