Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 1001 posts

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#281

Post by bumby »

mabbo wrote: post #231
sandworm101 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. That sounds logical, but isn't really a thing in aerospace/space. Complicated high-energy systems have thousands of failure points. So to have any chance of success each failure point needs to be engineered below, by way of example, a 0.0001% chance of failure. That costs lots of money. But say one decides to accept more risk for less c…

I'm not proposing something, I'm describing it. This is what SpaceX is doing , and it's quite successful. And you can look all the way back to their little hopper version of the Falcon 9 and see that this strategy has been the key to them undercutting the launch market significantly. My prediction: SpaceX will have a 5th 100% successful launch of Starship before the SLS has a 5th successful launch. They'll just have…

>My prediction: SpaceX will have a 5th 100% successful launch of Starship before the SLS has a 5th successful launch. They'll just have ten not-100%-success launches before then.

I'm not the best way to frame this is "first one to a single successful launch". Reliability matters when you're dealing with high-risk scenarios, so a better measure is "probability of a given launch being successful".

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#282

Post by Already__Taken »

nomy99 wrote: post #254
tekla wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but engineering doesn't give a shit about your feelings. The primary objective was to leave the pad and not destroy the billion dollars of gear on it. Everything else after that was a win.

How was the gear not destroyed in that explosion? I genuinely don't know.

The mean the gear on the launch site

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#283

Post by danpalmer »

seydor wrote: post #77

Pity that the rocket did not separate. I wonder if spaceX has considered a scaled down, like half the capacity, which would still be huge

They actually did scale it down from the original plans in ~2015.

I'm not sure if it's worth scaling down substantially from where it is. There is a certain scale that's necessary for the economics (payload vs dry-weight vs fuel) to work out, and ultimately they want to be able to put very significant amounts in orbit. They're currently targeting 150 tons, would it be worth targeting 50 tons? Probably not.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#284

Post by trollied »

awb wrote: post #217

Any guess as to how big the debris field is and what risk there is to people on the ground? Does the flight plan just take it over largely uninhabited land?

The launchpad is right next to the Gulf Of Mexico. It launches straight over water.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#285

Post by 7e »

dzader wrote: post #253
marcuskaz wrote: post #204

"a rapid unscheduled disassembly" - what a phrase for an explosion

generic term - lot of time aerodynamic forces rip the vehicle apart and isn't an "explosion"

Well, it wasn’t disassembled either. That implies you can reassemble it. This just a funny phrase designed to cover an embarrassing situation. SpaceX just farted in an elevator.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#286

Post by 93po »

mcculley wrote: post #155
nagisa wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might have been the flight plan. When drawing these up you don’t typically mark down "experiences an unexpected rapid disassembly a few minutes after launch.”

I thought they were very clear on how they defined "success". This is progress, and admirable, but not a success according to their previous statements.

They defined success as being able to gather information. They did that :)

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#287

Post by mempko »

simondotau wrote: post #6

Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. Suggesting that this test “failed” is at best a mischaracterisation.

The Soviet N1 moon rocket, which SpaceX shares a bit of design (30+ engines for example) failed 4 times before being scrapped.

The Soviets had the 'launch often, fail fast, learn faster' view that SpaceX employs today.

However, nobody viewed the N1 launches outside the Soviet Union as successes. I'm glad to see that 'fail fast, learn faster' is finally part of American aerospace engineering.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#288

Post by CydeWeys »

sandworm101 wrote: post #198
mabbo wrote: post #61

People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. Compare the SLS to Starship. SLS has had a 100% success rate. One launch, one success. But it costs $2B per launch (and climbing) and has taken 12 years to get here. Plus, it's stealing pieces of the Space Shuttle, which was developed in the 70s over a long period of time. Starship will launch a half a dozen "failures" before they achieve…

>> People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. That sounds logical, but isn't really a thing in aerospace/space. Complicated high-energy systems have thousands of failure points. So to have any chance of success each failure point needs to be engineered below, by way of example, a 0.0001% chance of failure. That costs lots of money. But say one decides to accept more risk for less c…

You're talking about failure rates per rocket, but we're talking about the overall development program. Falcon 9 certainly has very low failure rates on its individual components now (below your suggested 0.0001 number). But the way they got there was via a higher risk iterative development process, same as what we're seeing with Starship. The Falcon is the most reliable rocket on the planet at this point, so clearly it's working!

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#290

Post by 93po »

mcculley wrote: post #131
swarnie wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chief Twit said "anything other than blowing up the launch pad is a success."

Sounds like he moved the goalpost.

They defined success up front as being able to gather information. They did that.
Post reply on HN