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Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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Technology
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Well, basically that whole post is simply incorrect.
SpaceX is definitely 1 company the whole company has the same CEO (Gwynne Shotwell) who oversees the whole operation. And for what it's worth, the highly successful falcon 9 definitely was one of those "Lame brained" ideas once. "Landing an orbital class rocket is ****impossible" that was the prevailing wisdom, because it had never been done before. SpaceX is experimenting, figuring out what's actually possible and redesigning a rocket from the ground up. The falcon 9 was the first phase of redesigning, it proved that you can make a rocket cheaper and you can further optimize a staged combustion cycle rocket engine, more than anyone has in the past, and finally it proved that you can land a booster and reuse it. The starship is phase two of that process, (Reusing the whole thing). They've switched from kerosene to methane, a change that will make engines much more reliable for extended use. They've figured out how to make very large rocket bodies out of sheet metal. And they've figured out how to mass produce the first ever reliable full flow staged combustion engines (That's a very big deal)! In short, nothing about Starship is "Lame brained".
The boca chica facility is not taking money away from development of falcon 9, there is no development of falcon 9, it's done, the design set in stone. Ever since they started ferrying astronauts NASA needs them to stick with a set design. They got that design (called block 3) approved for crew use by NASA and from this point on they're only allowed to make very minor changes to the rocket.
I actually agree that Musk has some problems and seriously needs some people who can tell him "no". He needs that in his companies and he needs that at home, I think he's got some addictions he needs to deal with before they ruin him.
Gwynne Shotwell is not the CEO of SpaceX, she's the President and COO. Elon Musk it the CEO and chairman of SpaceX.
Yeah... so Presidents are often figureheads, both in corporations and for countries.
Even the CEO can be a figurehead, because what really matters is who's the majority shareholder. Or do you really think Linda Yaccarino is calling the shots at ~~Twitter~~X?
But anyway Gwynne Shotwell is COO, so that would involve be overseeing operations of the company. Boca Chica is R&D so it wouldn't be a thing the COO would have a big hand in.
But the Falcon 9 operations would be something that you'd expect a COO be heavily involved in. So it's likely Gwynne Shotwell is overseeing operations of that side of things.
You see Elon Musk hanging around Boca Chica sometimes (when he can pry himself away from his insane $44B social media addiction) but doesn't seem all that involved in the boring routine Falcon 9 launches. Which is kinda the point. SpaceX has a reliable launch system with the Falcon 9, but Elon Musk only cares about big new and shiny things. If he was heavily involved with Falcon 9 he'd be wanting to make all kinds of arbitrary changes which would be problematic in keeping the Falcon 9 human rated, and would likely negatively impact it's reliability. So give him a few billion dollars and keep him at his little Boca Chica playground where he can't hurt the core launch business. Well other than taking financial resources away from it of course.