Will Starship Landings Ever Be Safe Enough? -- Part 1: Engine Reliability
SpaceX's Starship promises to revolutionize spaceflight, but its planned future missions and capabilities have drawn a lot of skepticism. Much of the skepticism surrounds Starship's goal of launching large numbers of people to space -- without any launch escape system, and landing them back on Earth or on Mars using not wings, not parachutes, but rocket propulsion. SN8 landing attempt. Source: SpaceX Anecdotally, it seems that the most common criticism is "Starship will never be say enough for large scale human transport", and the most commonly touted risk factor is the reliance on rocket engines for landing. If you have an engine failure, it is said, you will crash into the ground with no chance of survivability, and rocket engines have never been close to reliable enough for depending on them for routine transport without some kind of backup system for safely recovering the passengers in the event of a failure. Those familiar with the Starship system will know tha