It looked just like a regular launch in Kerbal Space Program at the end.
Truly! RIP brave Kerbins.
Jeb will be back.
SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
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Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#202Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. Suggesting that this test “failed” is at best a mischaracterisation.
> "Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad." I am confused. Everything I read before the launch said that it was intended to reach orbital altitude and make it around the Earth.
This is a bit of spin by SpaceX. Blowing up the pad would be a serious failure and would be a large and costly setback. But they obviously didn't achieve the goal of the test flight here. It is a test flight, so it's not a complete failure and not entirely unexpected. But it's not a full success either, significant parts that were planned to be tested could not be tested because the rocket failed early.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
N1: 30 engines working next to each other instead of big engines. Starship: 33 engines working next to each other. There might be some details, but concept and idea are same.
Thats basically saying a car made in the mid 1900 is the same as a car made in 2020's because they have 4 wheels. It demonstrates a profound ignorance of the improvements made in technology and engineering in over 50 years.
No, it is like comparing 4 stroke engine from 1960 and 4 stroke from today. Still same concept despite the fact that engine from today has ECU.
N1 was only rocket attempting this setup before Starship. And failed miserably.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#204"a rapid unscheduled disassembly" - what a phrase for an explosion
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#205Better headline: SpaceX successfully launches the biggest rocket in history.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#206Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
It didn't blow up on the pad. They'll be happy to blow up dozens of these, hopefully incrementally perfecting the design each time.
That's not engineering. What they did is identical to developers copying code from SO and running it to see if it works.
How is it not engineering? They engineered it to clear the launch pad, and it did.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting thought: Starship just expended more engines on a *test* (39?) than I believe the entire SLS program has budgeted through the end of the 2020's (16 from shuttle + 18 new = 34?). edit: Never mind, it's slightly less – see the comment below correcting me. The SLS program has 40, not 34, RS-25's.
Yep. And they are trying to get Raptor 2 to less than $2M a pop (iirc). The "cattle not pets" of rocket science.
SLS is at $100 million apiece and has no realistic path forward for improving that. Fail-and-iterate was never even an option for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25#Space_Shuttle_program ("contract extension to manufacture 18 additional RS-25 engines, with associated services, for $1.79 billion")
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#209Regrettably, I was unable to watch the launch live. I'm looking forward to seeing the footage and hearing about all the analysis that will go into understanding what happened.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#210My mind is so blown. Definitely disappointing, but let's be honest: this is a win for SpaceX, given that this was the first fully integrated flight test of a very complex, very unproven vehicle. (Yes, the ship has flown before, but this was the booster's first flight.) Did anybody else notice the Apollo-style maneuver to avoid the launch tower?
How could this be a success? It was a catastrophic failure. Sorry but bullshitting releases only works in software.
Seems to me like it's a kinda medium result.
A failure would've been "oh shit we discovered another problem with the launch sequence, guess we're a few weeks behind where we wanted to be."
A catastrophic failure would've been "oh shit we didn't discover a problem with the launch sequence and it blew up on the pad and damaged our ground facilities."
A huge success would've been the planned mission.
This seems like, "Well, some thing went well, some went poorly."