– Why is the current SpaceX challenge different than their solution going to the space station?

Question

I understand that SpaceX is able to deliver material goods and personal to the international space station.

I don’t understand why the design to take people to the moon is substantially different, and why it’s failing while getting to low earth orbit.

In: Engineering

Answer 1

The biggest difference is that  starship  is supposed to have a recoverable second stage, making the entire stack fully reusable. This is hard and has never been done before.  This time, they didn’t even try to get to the orbit, and the failures they had were in the parts that no other organisation was ever able to do (landing first and second stage).