Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there are 5 more of these being built, how they will incorporate anything they learned during this failed attempt? Isn't that just a waste of money?
Some parts are interchangeable. The countdown process needs optimization. There are things missing and things which shouldn’t be there. We’re talking about speed of loading propellant, density of it, etc. Then there’s software. So much software. And a million other things. Rockets are complex, launching them doubly so.
SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
371–380 of 1001 posts
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#372Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=2920s (the cheering is actually really funny cause the launch was already a success)
I get that it is a successful test based on the goals they set out, but the cheering seemed staged to me. If that was my rocket, I'd be very upset that it came so close to total success but didn't make it. Maybe everyone at SpaceX is just super emotionally mature
If I worked on that project I would have been in tears of pride and happiness at the launch and how far it flew on the very first attempt. Assuming it is SpaceX staff being shown, I do not think the cheering is in any way staged. Lack of cheering would be strange if anything.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#373Earlier 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…
Your intel example doesn't fully hold water. Chip design has taken a binning approach for decades at this point. The silicon is designed for failure in such a way that yield is maximized assuming there will be a variance in quality. Launch and iterate happens for silicon just like anything else. During the initial product launch, there is a lot of waste, but as processes are improved, microcode updated, rework proced…
It depends on what you count as a chip. Modern "chips" are actually a great many things all one one slab of silicon. Failure then knock out single components, resulting in the final chip going into one bin or another. And each of those components can be as complex as an entire "chip" from a few years ago. That is really creating reliability through numbers. Within every component any slight error will still brick that component. The binning process is really a edge case where the fab is playing at the margins. Any slight increase in error rate would quickly see every chip going into a "bad" bin, with the entire processing becoming uneconomical. Intel, and everyone else building chips, strives for perfection with a zero tolerance mantra.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
The height difference is not huge, but Starship is twice the weight and 1/10th the cost ($50b vs $5bn in 2022 USD)!
Starship at this point is mostly a shell. Internal human grade components aren't there yet. We have no idea what the final cost will be. But doesn't matter since NASA is the one paying.
[deleted]
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#375Earlier 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.
From the livestream (at about T-30:00):
“We consider any data received that helps inform an improved future build of starship a success. From a milestone standpoint, our main goal is to clear the pad. Every milestone beyond that is a bonus. The further we fly, the more data we can collect.”
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
The height difference is not huge, but Starship is twice the weight and 1/10th the cost ($50b vs $5bn in 2022 USD)!
Starship at this point is mostly a shell. Internal human grade components aren't there yet. We have no idea what the final cost will be. But doesn't matter since NASA is the one paying.
> We have no idea what the final cost will be. But doesn't matter since NASA is the one paying.
The HLS contract SpaceX has gotten from NASA is a fixed-fee contract (like most contracts NASA gives out these days), so the final cost absolutely matters to SpaceX's bottom line. Anything they spend beyond the contracted amount they'll have to come up with themselves. A good example of this is Boeing, which is now booking losses on the Starliner program every quarter because it has gone over time and budget.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#377Success 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 test launch was never planned to actually make orbit. It was an "orbital test flight" only in the sense that it was intended to demonstrate system performance that would basically have been enough to reach orbit; the original plan was that they'd reach velocities and aerodynamic stresses similar to an actual orbital flight, test stage seperation, both stages, and part of the re-entry, then crash into the ocean, all on a sub-orbital trajectory. Something apparently went wrong at stage seperation.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
The test was a massive success. So happy to see starship clear the towers. The largest rocket ever built, larger than the Saturn V. Are you kidding me?
If I'm tasked with recording test data for x, y, and z and I only record x, is that a success? Now I need to launch another to try for the y, and z. Edit: What would an unsuccessful test look like then?
Maybe if you were only planning on doing something once. They've already nearly completed the next rocket. The whole point of this launch was a test. There was nothing on it. The next iteration will also be a test, and likely the next few after that. They'll even fly their own satellites up on test vehicles until they've worked out more of the kinks. Then before you know it, it'll be as reliable as falcon 9 and launching 100 times a year.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 point would be that while SpaceX does save lots of money, it doesn't do so by producing cheap or less reliable rockets. It would never accept a failure rate any different than anyone else because, in aerospace, that isn't really a thing. SpaceX can certainly blast forwards with different business practices and different tolerance for developmental risks, but the final product will not be fundamentally different th…
The testing rocket is less reliable (and unmanned). The tests happen earlier in development
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#380People 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…
[flagged]
The described methodology has worked very well for the Falcon 9 stack, and it's carried quite a few humans safely to orbit.
Iteration is key here. Nobody is talking about putting a human on Starship until it's quite reliable.