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SpaceX's Starship was launched last night and as many, including Elon Musk himself expected, things did not go entirely to plan.

In fact, just minutes after the colossus of a machine left the launch pad, it was no more.

Bits of the shiny craft rained down into the Gulf of Mexico for some time, after the separation of Starship from its gleaming stainless steel first "Super Heavy" stage failed in a spectacular manner.

That's how things go in the rocket business sometimes.

However, I must say that I'm still not convinced that Starship is a sensible use of SpaceX's capital.

On some fronts, SpaceX is doing extremely well, with its regular missions to deploy Starlink satellites having a very high success rate.

The re-usable booster stages have allegedly brought down the cost of such launches by a significant margin, although there are those who argue that the savings are not as great as were claimed. Never the less, it is pretty cool to see those launch stanges returning to the take-off point or a barge out in the ocean and (usually) landing with pin point accuracy.

SpaceX is also now providing a valuable connection to the orbiting ISS so that it is no longer totally reliant on the Russian space program for resupplying and crew rotations.

However, at least in my mind, Starship remains something of a folly.

Musk's claims that he would be colonizing Mars in a few short years were always snake oil stuff, just like the hyperloop and his humanoid robot.

Yes, eventually, one day, in the dim distant future, we will put humans on Mars but it certainly won't be during my lifetime and probably not during Musk's lifetime either.

Why not?

Well there are still huge hurdles in the way of such a mission.

The prolonged exposure to radiation during the perilous months-long journey to and from the red planet would place any astronauts at a high risk.

Yes, we have humans in space for protracted periods right now thanks to the ISS but they're still protected from the worst of cosmic radiation by the Earth's magnetosphere. Once you get beyond that then apparently your DNA comes under some pretty wicked stress from ionizing radiation.

Then there are the simple logistics associated with keeping our frail bodies alive for the long periods involved in such a mission. It's not like we can simply take a packed lunch and a picnic blanket then sit out in the Martian sun and enjoy our time on the planet's surface either.

Attempts here on earth to create a closed ecosystem capable of supporting human life for up to a year have been abysmal failures. The chances of success in a real Mars environment would be even lower.

I also have to wonder about the mechanics of the Starship launch system because, to be honest, they seem a little flawed right now.

During last night's launch, six of the 33 engines that comprise the "Super Heavy" launch stage failed to work correctly. That's an almost 20 percent failure rate! Surely, with all there prior rocket-engine experience, we should have expected a much higher level of reliability than that.

As someone with a strong interest in, and some knowledge of, materials engineering I remain perplexed as to why they're building this thing from stainless steel.

The Saturn 5 booster was mostly made from aluminium due to its higher (50 percent higher) strength to weight ratio when compared to stainless. By comparison to hi-strength aluminium alloys, stainless is heavy and weak (but oh so shiny?).

Since weight plays a *huge* factor in the efficiency of a rocket (hence RocketLab's use of carbon-fibre composites) I am left scratching my head as to why SpaceX is using what would appear to be a really crappy material for their rockets. Perhaps when you're selling a dream rather than a reality "shiny" is more important than "functional"?

Regardless of all my reservations, SpaceX continue to put on a wonderful show and we can only marvel at how much greenhouse gas was released in that fiery "unscheduled rapid disassembly". No need to feel quite so guilty when you drive your old Holden to work this morning eh?

Putting my "postivity" hat on for a moment, the best thing about Starship is that it has perhaps rekindled the public's romance with space exploration. It looks like something out of a Gerry Anderson TV series from the 1960s and is something that everyone who's ever had any interest in science fiction will instantly relate to. That's a good thing.

Carpe Diem folks!

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