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SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

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Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#711

Post by brookst »

sidibe wrote: post #88
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…

The way I'm hearing it was not a failure but an unbelievable smashing success. No one expected the rocket to get to the launchpad, much less off of it. The second stage was not expected to be reached at all, it's cool that they even tried. Greatest test launch of all time. From what I've read this morning if the test flight had worked all the way it would be like man on moon levels of good.

Eh, if SpaceX had genuinely not expected the rocket to get off the launch pad, they would not have launched it.

I expect their math was something like:

95% chance of enough engines lighting to launch 90% chance of clearing launch pad 60% chance of making 60 seconds of flight 30% chance of 2nd stage separation 15% chance of re-entry

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#712

Post by baq »

enslavedrobot wrote: post #621
dingosity wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon says Starship launches will get down to $10M per launch within 2-3 years. But he also said we would have our CyberTrucks by now, so... ymmv. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-starship-ro... By comparison, Falcon Heavy costs about $62M per launch, but Gwynne Shotwell predicted they can shave 40% off that price tag when they start re-using heavies. https://spacedotbiz.substack.com/p/is-starship-real…

They literally have another booster/starship ready to go. The project cost may be 2-10B but the individual launch vehicles will cost less than 200M$ each. The design targets 10$/kg to orbit.

Wonder how expensive and time-consuming is filling a big-ass hole in the ground with concrete.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#713

Post by nonethewiser »

a4isms wrote: post #91
eisvogel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking this as well... It spiraled seemingly forever without failing, while they hoovered telemetry off of it, until pressing the big red button. Massive fault tolerance at play. SpaceX is awesome in so many ways. Thanks Elon.

Perhaps you mean, "Thanks Gwynne Shotwell." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell I think HN understands the difference between a charismatic leader who is good at laying out a vision and generating a tremendous amount of hype around it (like Steve Jobs) and someone who is an expert at actually realizing a vision (Steve Wozniak, Tim Cook). They may both be necessary for success, but if you are praising the ro…

I’m have no doubts that she’s doing an incredible job but by all accounts Musk is intimately involved with the engineering in addition to being the head of the company.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#714

Post by mmmm2 »

lm28469 wrote: post #692
vannevar wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was not an expected possibility. Interestingly, this post predicting exactly this kind of damage was flagged on HN just days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 I think it's unlikely that SpaceX wasn't aware of the damage that would be caused. They have a pretty good engineering team, and that aspect didn't involve an anomaly,…

I don't follow space stuff nor space x but I was quite surprised not to see the usual water flooding system

Yeah, I think it's been surprising to a lot of people. There have been a lot of questions among people who follow space as to why they didn't start with a flame diverter and water deluge system.

I guess they felt the delay to install one would be too long, and they really wanted to get this launched? Or maybe they had reason to believe they'd get away with it... seems implausible given the forces involved.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#715

Post by PartiallyTyped »

wkat4242 wrote: post #620
vannevar wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was not an expected possibility. Interestingly, this post predicting exactly this kind of damage was flagged on HN just days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 I think it's unlikely that SpaceX wasn't aware of the damage that would be caused. They have a pretty good engineering team, and that aspect didn't involve an anomaly,…

Interesting article. He doesn't really speak of a large hole in the ground and huge chunks of debris flying around though. More of the effects of the heat and sound energy on wildlife which is not quite as obvious. He raises some good points indeed, not sure why it was flagged at all.

Lately HN has been critical of dissent against certain ideas, with flagging and mass downvotes used to push certain narratives.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#716

Post by DemocracyFTW2 »

mkaic wrote: post #649
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So yeah OK by that metric if a rocket lifted to a height of 1m above the launch pad, so technically being beyond it, before spontaneously disassembling, it's technically a success. Not 'moving goalposts'.

I'm not sure what your point is here — a stainless steel skyscraper-sized rocket powered by 33 methalox full-flow staged combustion engines just made it all the way through max-Q and most of the way to orbit before exploding on its first ever attempt! I'd definitely count that as an unqualified success.

That's not my problem. Space X can define their limit for what counts as success as they see fit. I totally acknowledge that getting this huge thing to any height is an achievement. But there's still a mismatch between what the general audience would label 'success' and what they do. So maybe talking about 'milestones' or something to that effect would be better. After all, in itself it is not yet a useful workhorse to put something in orbit at this stage (pun not intended), even though it's a probably necessary and helpful intermediate step given how finicky and complex rockets are. I was actually only poking fun at your 'not moving goalposts' combined with the idea that 'we call it OK if it doesn't explode right on the ground'. That sounds a lot like a moved goalpost if the aim is to get to the moon or even mars and back. It's a bit like that 'draw an owl in three easy steps' meme: draw a circle for the head, draw an oval for the body, now draw the rest of the owl.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#717

Post by mongic »

gnulinux wrote: post #134
ptsneves wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has many issues, but what is the point of bringing his grudge with Trans? The rocket is a great success and in the grand scale of things is worth the ego grandstanding. The man has done nothing illegal and has accomplished a lot amazing things. Congrats to SpaceX, Elon, the Americans and Humanity. What good is freedom of thought and speech if one cannot exercise it? I probably drank the old american koolaid and…

> but what is the point of bringing his grudge with Trans? Let's not pretend like he just has a "grudge" with trans folks. It goes many orders of magnitude beyond that. Perhaps he was not, and maybe he even still is not a transphobe, but right now he's tweeting like a full-blown transphobic maniac on Twitter. [1] That's a severely negative personality trait. Discriminating against a group of people simply because of…

> right now he's tweeting like a full-blown transphobic maniac on Twitter

Are you sure? Seems he's mostly been tweeting about SpaceX and Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?q=from:elonmusk&src=typed_query&f...

I can't see any recent tweets that match what you describe.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#718

Post by geoelectric »

teagoat wrote: post #507
soperj wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compleat Sorry, i've seen this spelling enough to now ask if this is a word that I don't know about or if it's just a mis-spelling of complete. Not trying to pick on you. I've had errors before, especially in space stuff (altitude & attitude).

huh - TIL: https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-com3.htm TL;DR: Compleat and Complete were originally different spellings for the same word. In UK, compleat is still just an archaic spelling. In USA, compleat is used as an adjective to refer specifically to having all the necessary elements or skills.

I’ve never heard it in the USA outside of in old book titles. I’ll add The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague DeCamp as another prominent example. That’s from 1975 and probably a conscious reference to The Compleat Angler, along with a pun on a prior anthology called The Incomplete Enchanter.

Even the examples cited in the article seem like they’re out of older books deliberately invoking antiquity with the spelling. The only recent example (Bova, Mars, 1992) is from the SF/F genre where esoteric words like that get batted around more in general.

So I’m going to go with that being about as common in US English as UK—used for effect only.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#719

Post by throwaway202303 »

Hey everyone time to show your political affiliation. Are you red pilled/republican or right of centre, maybe you get your news from Fox. let’s praise Elon for an amazing test flight. If you’re progressive, left wing, get your news from msnbc, lets join together in mocking a gigantic failure as Elons rocket explodes in the morning sky. There is no need to investigate the facts, pick a side and let rip.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#720

Post by kahrl »

sixothree wrote: post #681
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…

I'm not sure why people need to be reminded of this. This isn't a reply to anyone making complaining about the lack of success. It comes off as fanboyism.

Who are "people?"
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