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

531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#531

Post by SECProto »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #517
wanderingstan wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my part time work as an artist this has been my experience as well: my best work always seems to happen after a “mistake”, then the pressure is off and I just start playing and experimenting. In the rare case where I execute a planned design with no mistakes, the outcome is generally stale and doesn’t live up to how I imagined it.

That doesn’t apply here because they have no opportunity to change anything after the mistake, right?

It absolutely applies here - they didn't want to build the launch mount in Florida until they had actual info from a launch. They also iterate their rockets with each new one (even production rockets, ie falcon 9, gets iterative changes). The lessons from this launch will be key to informing changes before future launches.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#532

Post by szoszon »

baq wrote: post #343
szoszon wrote: post #306

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.

also, to test the software you don't need to launch the rocket, so I'm not sure why you even mention that..

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#533

Post by panick21_ »

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…

> But it costs $2B per launch

The initial launches are gone be more like 5 billion. Its pure fantasy that it will go to $2 billion anytime soon.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#534

Post by seydor »

mwint wrote: post #119
travisgriggs wrote: post #66

One of the new graphics that showed up on the dashboard was that of the engines lit. There were at least 2 on the outer ring that were fed from TO, and a few more winked out during the flight. I’m curious how many off engines the system tolerates. How many do they anticipate regularly? I’ve never noticed if Falcon 9s periodically run as a Falcon 8 or 7? All and all, ‘‘twas an awesome sight. Kudos to all those cheerin…

My guess was for this flight it was "once off the pad, we will fly as long as it doesn't leave the envelope" since it's all about data collection.

Isn't that a safety risk with such a huge rocket?

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#535

Post by scythe »

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…

>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 cost. Ok. So you switch from 0.0001 to 0.001 failure rates. You risk is now 10-fold higher at each failure point,

It seems like a strawman to suggest that you would let failure probability increase by a factor of ten as the first step.

>but with thousands of failure points adding up you are now essentially doomed.

And it was an easy one to tear down.

>And you haven't saved anything. The cost of 0.001 components isn't fundamentally different than the 0.0001 components were.

There is no reason to believe that at all. Invert the question: if a system is 99.999% reliable, does that mean it should be free to make it more reliable? And why?

>It is either go or no go. Take CPU production. Intel spends billions at each of hundreds of fabrication step to push down miniscule error rates because any of a million errors can destroy a chip. There is no money to be saved by allowing any one process to become less than as perfect as it can possibly be.

This is completely wrong. Chip factories do produce chips with defects; those chips are sold for cheaper, since they still work, but not as fast. IIRC most of TSMC's modern processes are designed to sell the good chips at a high price and the bad ones cheaper.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#536

Post by Kiro »

blake929 wrote: post #494

I get that there are multiple endpoints being tested here and some of them may have been satisfied, but I feel like I'm living in a bizarro world on hacker news where people are arguing that multiple failed engines, a failed stage detachment and an exploding rocket worth millions of dollars and and carrying a large number of limited supply raptor engines is a "massive success". Can we just call it for what it is? Mix…

I was under the impression that none of it was ever planned to be recovered. I.e. nothing was really lost here since it would have been destroyed either way.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#537

Post by samus »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #517
wanderingstan wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my part time work as an artist this has been my experience as well: my best work always seems to happen after a “mistake”, then the pressure is off and I just start playing and experimenting. In the rare case where I execute a planned design with no mistakes, the outcome is generally stale and doesn’t live up to how I imagined it.

That doesn’t apply here because they have no opportunity to change anything after the mistake, right?

Well, yeah. In this sense, it's the second-worst thing that could have happened, with the worst outcome being injured or dead people. But they probably didn't expect such a bombastic finale so quickly.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#538

Post by bick_nyers »

bumby wrote: post #264
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…

> "Fail fast" applies to more than just software. Yes, but let's not take the analogy too far. For people who work in safety-critical design (including software), it takes a different mindset than what is often prevalent in silicon valley. When the stakes are high, you don't really want to "move fast and break things". You can actually see this in SpaceX. In development when stakes are relatively low (e.g., no payloa…

I previously worked in medical image processing/transcoding and you are correct, but most people probably don't know precisely how or why.

The knee jerk mindset that most people have in safety-critical design, is being ultra conservative.

In the fields of medical and space (and likely others), you have an asymmetrical risk-reward profile. Think about it this way, if an engineer takes a risk on refactoring some software logic, and it speeds the system up 3%, what is their reward? A raise? A promotion? Fat chance. If that refactor instead breaks 3% of the time; engines blow up, people die, customers yell at them, they get fired, perhaps in some situations they even get sued.

The engineers then converge to a local maxima by the means of: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", and various other ultra conservative leanings. This mindset also will often get selected for in hiring, and rewarded.

Now take the limit of this as time goes to infinity, you have bloated, legacy software that is full of spaghetti code and can't take new features easily (if at all). In the case of NASA's space shuttle program, it was extremely expensive, and the cost wasn't falling significantly over time either.

One might view ultra conservatism as the problem, but the real issue is the asymmetrical risk-reward profile. Solving that takes a head-on approach with great leadership, deploying capital, state of the art testing/QA, great deployment pipelines, and more. Shield people from the risk, and intentionally reward people when they push the envelope.

Imagine if you had a software testing process and product specification that was 99.9999% effective (and no, yours is not even close to that), you could then move at a silicon valley "fail fast" pace and advance the technology and architecture rapidly.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#539

Post by tellurion »

samwillis wrote: post #483
kortex wrote: post #365

Initially posted this as a reply, but going top-level, cause the hot takes are too spicy for my liking. So the plan was to test x, y, and z. Launch sequence and takeoff, stage separation and Starship engine light, and the post-launch stuff like booster wet landing, reentry, and heat tiles. The booster by itself is not aerodynamic, so the only way to test x is with a starship on top. And if you have starship, you migh…

Exactly, the two untested things were stage zero (all the new ground infrastructure) and stage one (booster). I think it's clear one of their biggest lessons is that the construction of the launch mount is wrong, and it REALY needs a flame diverter. Take a look at this photo: https://mobile.twitter.com/LabPadre/status/16490627841670307... That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was…

One of the response to that tweet has a before pic for comparison: https://twitter.com/intrepidpursuit/status/16490707601981317...

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#540

Post by dsfyu404ed »

samwillis wrote: post #483
kortex wrote: post #365

Initially posted this as a reply, but going top-level, cause the hot takes are too spicy for my liking. So the plan was to test x, y, and z. Launch sequence and takeoff, stage separation and Starship engine light, and the post-launch stuff like booster wet landing, reentry, and heat tiles. The booster by itself is not aerodynamic, so the only way to test x is with a starship on top. And if you have starship, you migh…

Exactly, the two untested things were stage zero (all the new ground infrastructure) and stage one (booster). I think it's clear one of their biggest lessons is that the construction of the launch mount is wrong, and it REALY needs a flame diverter. Take a look at this photo: https://mobile.twitter.com/LabPadre/status/16490627841670307... That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was…

Need to see the numbers before passing judgement. Dirt is cheap compared to concrete. Depending on how many cycles the concrete is expected to last it may be cheaper both short and long term to just have "ablative dirt" and bulldoze around afterwards "reloading" the launcher. There's also other variables like how long it takes for the engines to stabilize and the launcher to release the rocket, weight of rocket, etc that would go into it.
Post reply on HN