SpaceX (general discussion)

martinbayer said:
Well, I guess that's at least one key difference between you and me :D. But seriously, I'm just not a fan of gaslighting. My point was to illustrate that there are oodles of topics that reasonable people can disagree on, but that there are also centillions of issues where that is not the case. Both election denialism and declaring a mid air explosion a successful launch vehicle mission firmly fall in the latter category.
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i would not say that its exactly the best way to go about saying that. but it is counted as a successful launch due to the fact that it was doubted to even clear the tower. it made it over 30km up and survived immense structural stress. so not only Elon and the team but also NASA counts it as a successful test flight
 
hagaricus said:
martinbayer said:
Well, I guess that's at least one key difference between you and me :D. But seriously, I'm just not a fan of gaslighting. My point was to illustrate that there are oodles of topics that reasonable people can disagree on, but that there are also centillions of issues where that is not the case. Both election denialism and declaring a mid air explosion a successful launch vehicle mission firmly fall in the latter category.
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Considering the the prognosis pre-launch, I'd say this test launch was a success. It was clearly stated that anything beyond clearing the tower was a bonus.
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As an aerospace engineer with a background in launch vehicle design I have my very own criterion of what constitutes a successful launch, and I am seriously opposed to any rhetorical goalpost moving, no matter what someone else might have "clearly stated". Facts matter.
 
Conspirator said:
martinbayer said:
Well, I guess that's at least one key difference between you and me :D. But seriously, I'm just not a fan of gaslighting. My point was to illustrate that there are oodles of topics that reasonable people can disagree on, but that there are also centillions of issues where that is not the case. Both election denialism and declaring a mid air explosion a successful launch vehicle mission firmly fall in the latter category.
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i would not say that its exactly the best way to go about saying that. but it is counted as a successful launch due to the fact that it was doubted to even clear the tower. it made it over 30km up and survived immense structural stress. so not only Elon and the team but also NASA counts it as a successful test flight
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That's an awfully low bar for "success" you postulate there... My understanding of the real world is that success is a simple yes/no criterion, and not grading on a scale. I might add that I consider neither Musk nor NASA as the supreme impartial arbiters in this case. Facts matter.
 
Michel Van said:
I think the collaps of B7 interstage prevented stage seperation
FuLUpcoWYAA64es
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I've been looking at the replay with special attention to the fleeting views from inside the interstage and there's not much evidence of damage or distortion before the vehicle goes out of control. I don't think the collapse of the interstage prevented staging unless the stack tried to command separation after it was already well into its tumble.

Really hoping for some more information from SpaceX to help draw conclusions. It was moving very slow (even for having lost several engines), the webcast CH4 and 02 gauges indicate it was flying pretty lean, and there seems to be a visible throttle-up right before it goes sideways. Concerning. But the Starship test flights were all flown throttled down, and this was intended as a suborbital flight, so I'm unsure what to read from those.
 
martinbayer said:
Conspirator said:
martinbayer said:
Well, I guess that's at least one key difference between you and me :D. But seriously, I'm just not a fan of gaslighting. My point was to illustrate that there are oodles of topics that reasonable people can disagree on, but that there are also centillions of issues where that is not the case. Both election denialism and declaring a mid air explosion a successful launch vehicle mission firmly fall in the latter category.
Click to expand...
i would not say that its exactly the best way to go about saying that. but it is counted as a successful launch due to the fact that it was doubted to even clear the tower. it made it over 30km up and survived immense structural stress. so not only Elon and the team but also NASA counts it as a successful test flight
Click to expand...
That's an awfully low bar for "success" you postulate there... My understanding of the real world is that success is a simple yes/no criterion, and not grading on a scale. I might add that I consider neither Musk nor NASA as the supreme impartial arbiters in this case. Facts matter.
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i understand that facts matter. but if this was in your hands i would like to see you pull off what they did.
that's why its called "test flight" accidents/mistakes/failures are to be expected.
 
Conspirator said:
martinbayer said:
Conspirator said:
martinbayer said:
Well, I guess that's at least one key difference between you and me :D. But seriously, I'm just not a fan of gaslighting. My point was to illustrate that there are oodles of topics that reasonable people can disagree on, but that there are also centillions of issues where that is not the case. Both election denialism and declaring a mid air explosion a successful launch vehicle mission firmly fall in the latter category.
Click to expand...
i would not say that its exactly the best way to go about saying that. but it is counted as a successful launch due to the fact that it was doubted to even clear the tower. it made it over 30km up and survived immense structural stress. so not only Elon and the team but also NASA counts it as a successful test flight
Click to expand...
That's an awfully low bar for "success" you postulate there... My understanding of the real world is that success is a simple yes/no criterion, and not grading on a scale. I might add that I consider neither Musk nor NASA as the supreme impartial arbiters in this case. Facts matter.
Click to expand...
i understand that facts matter. but if this was in your hands i would like to see you pull off what they did.
that's why its called "test flight" accidents/mistakes/failures are to be expected.
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If I were in any position at all to "pull of what they did", I would still be honest enough to myself and the other eight billion people out there to call it a failure. Objective truth matters, irrespective of what some people might believe or claim. Failure is a fact of life, i.e. I have not just once but on countless occasions failed to win the main prize in various lotteries on two continents in two millennia, and I have no problems whatsoever openly admitting that.
 
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martinbayer said:
Conspirator said:
martinbayer said:
Conspirator said:
martinbayer said:
Well, I guess that's at least one key difference between you and me :D. But seriously, I'm just not a fan of gaslighting. My point was to illustrate that there are oodles of topics that reasonable people can disagree on, but that there are also centillions of issues where that is not the case. Both election denialism and declaring a mid air explosion a successful launch vehicle mission firmly fall in the latter category.
Click to expand...
i would not say that its exactly the best way to go about saying that. but it is counted as a successful launch due to the fact that it was doubted to even clear the tower. it made it over 30km up and survived immense structural stress. so not only Elon and the team but also NASA counts it as a successful test flight
Click to expand...
That's an awfully low bar for "success" you postulate there... My understanding of the real world is that success is a simple yes/no criterion, and not grading on a scale. I might add that I consider neither Musk nor NASA as the supreme impartial arbiters in this case. Facts matter.
Click to expand...
i understand that facts matter. but if this was in your hands i would like to see you pull off what they did.
that's why its called "test flight" accidents/mistakes/failures are to be expected.
Click to expand...
If I were in any position at all to "pull of what they did", I would still be honest enough to myself and the other eight billion people out there to call it a failure. Objective truth matters, irrespective of what some people might believe or claim.
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So i guess as a kid you could walk and run from birth, spell correctly and speak clearly? no first steps successfully achieved but with bumps and bruises from first efforts at things that went wrong but that you considered a success?
 
I don't have the foggiest idea why you would consider me a wunderkind (though I'm certainly flattered by that notion), but as a toddler, even though I have no memory whatsoever of any first steps or words, I'm fairly sure I initially failed at pretty much anything and everything I tried and eventually mastered, and I have no problem whatsoever owning up to those failures. YMMV, of course.
 
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martinbayer said:
I don't have the foggiest idea why you would consider me a wunderkind (though I'm certainly flattered by that notion), but as a toddler, even though I have no memory whatsoever of any first steps or words, I'm fairly sure I initially failed at pretty much anything and everything I tried and eventually mastered, and I have no problem whatsoever owning up to those failures. YMMV, of course.
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:D

Not exactly how it was intend, but it's made me giggle!
I just fail at most things and have mastered nothing sadly!
 
New picture of the smoldering devastation. After / before.


Sans titre.png

By this point it looks more like Chernobyl reactor 4 on April 28, 1986 than shiny Starbase OLM. Sweet geez.

That thing that looks like a chicken coop was at ground level. Now it stands a few dozen feets about a dusty, empty giant hole. Rocket blowtorching is no small thing.
 
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Conspirator said:
was there any news on the next launch window?
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They could have a rocket ready fairly soon, as in a few weeks.

The pad will not be ready in few weeks.

This wasn't a disaster. They got a lot of good data, and the ultimate cause for failure seems to be a system that they are already phasing out.

But this also wasn't a good outcome. They can weather the loss of the vehicle without any issues, this is not so for the launchpad. I suspect will will find out very soon exactly how quickly can you build a launchpad with some kind of actual flame diverter. I think that time will still be disappointingly long.
 
Scuttlebutt is that SpaceX didn't build a proper launchpad with flame channels and the like because it would involve more government permits (Army Corps of Engineers, environmental impact statements) and they decided to cut corners on the pad design. Now they're paying the price for moving too fast and breaking the wrong things.
 
martinbayer said:
Solids in space transportation truly are the devil's playground for a variety of reasons - for one, you can't terminate thrust as easily as with liquids
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Because they keep going. Here, I might want to keep solids attached until after Starship is free and clear---keeping that first stage a little massy might be a good thing....the lighter SuperHeavy got---the worse the oscillations seemed to get in turn...that may have happened even if the stack didn't suffer from Peyronie's.

Once staging has taken place and Starship is away---then chunk the solids. They get you off that pad quick too.

But let's mark that off for now.

martinbayer said:
Parallel burn has an advantage in igniting (and confirming functionality of) all engines on the pad, but it may lead to the additional complication of propellant cross feed if the propellants are the same and shared across stages....
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But he is going to have to learn to master cross-feed anyway---and in orbit no less---for Starship to work as a depot, right?

He managed to avoid parallel staging with Falcon---but he can't here....
One way or the other, two large SpaceX cores are going to have to kiss and swap propellant.

Might as well learn now.

So if he doesn't want solids---and doesn't want to eat holes in the ground---then parallel staging it is?

Maybe he could have Starship like a giant Polyus if some of SuperHeavies engines are on outriggers underneath Starship---but by having both cores under their own power---maybe he is at least able to stage and save one booster?

Easier to turn loose from the side.
as a theoretician I prefer parallel staging for a variety of reasons
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No interstage to stove in. Crimp everything up top---no engines hidden....walk up to both sets of engines with a flashlight---stage separation hardware as far from the engines as you can get.

Elon Musk doesn't know it yet---but he isn't building N-1.

He's building Shuttle 2.
 
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Orionblamblam said:
If the damage to the engines and associated systems was due to getting thwacked with dust, debris and house-sized chunks of concrete, then the performance of the vehicle itself is actually damned impressive.
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Indeed. I was quite impressed by the fact that Starship-Superheavy managed to reach "Q" despite several engines going offline, and even when it started tumbling, it didn't break apart (!). True marvel of engineering!
 
hagaricus said:
My impression was that it started too slow, went well, then the obvious issues of top-heavy and top-draggy (all the fins and fuel at the top) overcame control authority and made staging fail. Whether the ensuing pirouettes were an attempt at a boostback with the starship still attached or merely the death-spasms of an overwhelmed system IDK, but it was impressive.. I was surprised how long it went before it self-destructed.
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Top heavy and top draggy are new aerodynamic terms that I am not aware of. Top heavy would indicate excessive stability I believe, and top draggy ............. well the space shuttle must have been side draggy. I think "overcame control authority and made staging fail" is a reach for the stars, no pun intended.
 
This was absolutely amazing, but I'm still struggling to understand the decision making when looking at debris thrown 100 m above ground mere meters from the SuperHeavy.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1649197130731630593
View: https://twitter.com/jdeshetler/status/1649197130731630593


As I see it, the launch only made sense if either:

-The engineers didn't predict the risks
-The engineers did predict the risks but the information didn't manage to come to the top with the importance it had
-The engineers did predict the risks but some kind of go fever overtook it due to pressure either from the higher ups or from an external source
-SpaceX genuinely accepted a multi-kiloton launch pad RUD with 5000 tons of propellant as an acceptable risk, both from a PR, legal and development point of view, that wouldn't set their program back more than not launching it.

I'm not really criticisng spacex, this was a blast and I'm glad the worst didn't happen, but I'm just trying to understand the decisions and wonder how it could affect the company going forward.
 
Anduriel said:
Why don't just place stool into the pool of water deep enough? Water will take most of the brunt of flame damage and evaporates. New launch - add more water. And theoretically you can just replace stool/fill water again and concrete underneath the water could be of cheaper quality.
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Ahem . . .
ROMBUS Pad.jpg
ROMBUS launch pad from Bono/Gatland's 'Frontiers of Space'.

cheers,
Robin.
 
Please remember that ground work and architecture are still expensive as being a niche domain of engineering regarding regulations.

Hence the cost of casting concrete is a significant part of such project. So then what do you do? Given you have a new unique product that, if deemed a failure will probably never see any new attempt from your business unit, would you invest full 100% to meet every aspect of risks for what you know could be only half a dozen of prototypes, or will you offset the risk with damage and repairs of the launch site?

I think SpaceX did a pretty good analysis and went from the second option: cheap design, sturby as possible and easy to fix and rebuild.

Then, IMOHO, it is true that the terrifying aspect of pyrolysis clouds washing over a natural landscape would have a detrimental effect. Thanks God, no one, yet, has collected the roasted sea birds that might have been caught in this Texan Armageddon.
 
Scott Manley has just put out a video about the launch attempt:


SpaceX performed the debut launch of their next Generation Starship-Superheavy launch vehicle, and it didn't make it to orbit. But it was still very much a case of Excitment delivered as the vehicle destroyed its launchpad, had engines fail and parts explode as it ascenced, before finally spinning end over end until it was destroyed in a giant cloud of cryogenic propellents.
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publiusr said:
Anduriel said:
Michel Van said:
launch was good, despite five raptor not working
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That's quite a lot.
N-1 curse?
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N-1's last flight looked straight and true at least-not going on walkabout. And each end made for a nice fiery ka-boom. SS/SH couldn't even explode right. :p Maybe Elon could brush off some ALS/NLS papers-make SH longer, stronger....and side-mount. Each stage contributes thrust so you spread out your exhaust and not eat a hole in your pad. But Elon needs a pick-me-up, and I suggest a film about a team that suffered a loss-but came back stronger: "We Are Marshall"
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At first I wondered "There's a movie about MSFC I haven't seen?"...
 
The problem really has been the extreme delay. Rather than continuing in the original "fail fast fail often / hardware rich" (and viewer-friendly) vein of the early tests, they have been building stuff that never flew and never had the opportunity to make an informative explosion. Time has raised expectations. If this had happened as soon as the first batch of hardware could be assembled, no one would expect much of it and blowing up a few would be par for the course and popular entertainment.

I'm always reminded of swamp castle..

View: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4b3cvc


After all, billionaires are just like us, except their fireworks are bigger, and when someone takes their matches away they buy a social media platform to distract them
 
new issue, the damage to Tank farm is serious
according NSF several tanks are puncher by debris are now leaking

that's reason why no one inspecting the Launch side, they wait until tanks are empty

one of concrete fragment around 10 meter 33ft. in size, was catapulted 70 meter or 230ft. high!
it flew parallel vertical to the Rocket
other smaller fragments flew higher and allot of them hitting the Booster
That Rocket was so robust it manage to lift off despite hit by giant shotgun filled with concrete...

Source: NASA SPACE FLIGHT FORUM

oh by the way
Launch Pad 39A after Saturn V maiden launch 1967
FuO2sY_acAEW4-f
FuO2skaaQAA7bv0


Launch complex after N1 rocket fell on it
2954a.jpg
 
One additional problem (and consequence) - the exhaust flame (after penetrating the concrete deck) dug out to below the groundwater level - turning it to high pressure steam tunneling under and lifting the deck.

Question for the physics majors, take a cubic foot of water at STD. Raise the temperature to 2000 degrees F, still constrained to that cube. What is the pressure of that water vapor in PSI? (sorry for the imperial units.)
 
The Starship launchpad should've had a water-cooled flame-deflector plus a sound suppression system right from the beginning.
 
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TheSpaceBucket has put out a video of his own about the test-flight:


After years of waiting, yesterday we watched as SpaceX attempted the first integrated test flight of the Starship launch vehicle. However, Starship was not the only thing being tested yesterday. Arguably as important as the launch vehicle itself, the stage 0 infrastructure was also put to the true test for the first time.
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Here we saw 33 Raptor engines firing at full thrust straight onto the concrete below. Combine this power with the almost 8 seconds of time that Starship was on top of the mount and the results were explosive. This not only destroyed the ground right under the engines but shot projectiles hundreds of meters in every direction.
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Thankfully, despite this explosive start, Starship was still able to lift off and continue in flight for a few minutes. This being said, it’s possible that those initial projectiles caused some damage that sealed the fate of Starship’s first launch. Here I will go more in-depth into the extent of damage to the pad, possible solutions SpaceX might look into, what to expect in the coming months, and more.
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I love the reference to the first launch being an "Explosive start" to the test programme;):D.
 
Now, with a whole town covered in rocket launch remnants, some residents of South Texas are questioning the impact Starship will have on its surroundings. Even before Starship got off the ground, a group of Rio Grande Valley residents and organizations released a unified brief(opens in new tab) in opposition to SpaceX's activities in the area. They claim SpaceX is "destroying wildlife refuges and sacred lands of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and are threatening Rio Grande Valley communities with explosion risks."
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www.space.com

SpaceX celebrated Starship's 1st launch. Some locals called it 'truly terrifying'

The debris at the launchpad and from the rocket's mid-air explosion is widespread, to say the least.
www.space.com www.space.com
 

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