Reddit mentions of Safe Is Not An Option: Overcoming The Futile Obsession With Getting Everyone Back Alive That Is Killing Our Expansion Into Space

I'm firmly in line with what Sandberg wrote in "Safe is not an option".

It cheap and well worth the read.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L3PI102

There's a book about it
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L3PI102/

>Rocket development does not occur in straight lines of progression, it occurs in crooked lines. Taking just the Starship development, we are already more than a month beyond the first hop of Starhopper as announced by Elon.

No one is claiming that it does. Overall development has moved to the left compared to the version based on carbon fiber, and SpaceX has many excellent, highly-motivated engineers who work quite hard - Musk thinks they've solved the vibration issue; they tested again last night, looking for extremes in operating conditions, and found no surprises.

>The Raptor has proven more challenging than thought to perfect. There is a reason why developing the most powerful rocket engine is hard and SpaceX is figuring it out.

Most powerful based on what criterion? Thrust? BE-4 beats them there. Specific impulse? The RS-25 is well beyond Raptor. Raptor is ahead of the RD-180 in engine pressure, but that hardly makes it 'the most powerful rocket engine.'

>And, Starship is chocked full of innovative firsts. It reminds me much of the Space Shuttle in its firsts. And, many of those firsts will take much longer to perfect for human rated space flight. For example, like the Space Shuttle, there is no launch abort system and a unique, never done before, reentry system. To haul people, Starship will have to be tested to close to airliner levels of safety, or each passenger will be a test subject just like the Space Shuttle.

I'm not reminded of the Shuttle at all - one, Starship doesn't have the silly design choice of having the upper stage on the side of the main booster as compared to on top. Two, it doesn't have to satisfy political stakeholders, and thus use solid rockets that cannot be turned off (not exactly the best case for a crew, eh?). Three, it doesn't have the numerous conflicting design choices that guaranteed it would be expensive to operate, no matter what NASA thought beforehand. And I disagree entirely that Starship will have to have airline levels of safety. Dictate that from the outset, and you're almost guaranteed to kill commercial manned spaceflight in general (not just Starship but for Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and so on). Read up on the history of aircraft and compare where manned spaceflight is now, and you'll find that at this point people were taking many more risks (and learning substantially more) than we are today, for the most part. Safety uber alles guarantees spaceflight will be much more expensive than it has to, will be delayed even more, and in the end be less safe (because you're learning less from flown hardware) - witness the debacle that is the SLS.

You may find the book Safe Is Not An Option good reading for a discussion on safety.