We’ve become accustomed to nimble rovers, sky cranes and helicopters operating seamlessly on the red planet. But since 2000, the success rate has been nearly 80 percent. In the first few decades of Mars exploration, half of all the missions failed, which prompted NASA scientist John Cassini to speculate that a galactic “ghoul” was dining on spacecraft aimed at Mars. Funded by the taxpayers, they can’t afford too many high-profile explosions. Government space agencies move more methodically than SpaceX.
Then Falcon 9 became the workhorse rocket for a decade, with just two failures in 232 launches, for a phenomenal success rate of 99 percent. Its first three launches were failures, followed by two successes - a fairly low success rate. The company’s first rocket was the Falcon 1. This type of rapid innovation cycle has worked for SpaceX.
He knows that the engineering data gathered from the short flight will help track down problems and improve the outcome the next time Starship launches. SpaceX founder Elon Musk was sanguine after his big new rocket suffered a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” He embraces the tech sector’s “move fast and break things” ethos, first espoused by Mark Zuckerberg.
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