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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

#741

Post by travisporter »

nunuvit wrote: post #418
mabbo wrote: post #231

Earlier 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…

Completely agree. I've worked in "old space" and the fundamental problem is that they can't afford to experiment. SpaceX has the option to physically test an idea that's holding them up before investing in fully bringing it up to production quality, only to have to redo all that work next iteration. That's why they can make new things and do it cheaper and faster.

Ironically, "old old space" = Soviet space was so damn good at innovating it probably would have made SpaceX look old-fashioned. Really I don't think there's a fundamental reason why we can't have two SpaceX's (Spaces X?) so why is there no other?

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#742

Post by Kreutzer »

segasaturn wrote: post #237
ianai wrote: post #189

Let’s not move the goalposts. This company develops differently than historical aerospace. Success was defined as blowing up any point beyond the launch pad. It made it well past max-q which is the point of highest atmospheric stress on the rocket.

I'm wondering what the environmental impact of all of these exploding rockets is though. Surely they won't be able to fish every piece of the rocket out of the ocean, along with all of the fuel.

Destruction of the sensitive ecosystems in and around the ocean, no doubt.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#743

Post by PoignardAzur »

supportlocal4h wrote: post #501

Somewhere there is a team that is over the top happy about an incredibly successful explosion. Their job was to make sure that if flight path deviated beyond some threshhold that the whole vehicle would be blown into tiny parts that would become ballistically safe. They were on the edge of their seats on how well that would work. They saw the lift off team celebrate their success. They saw the booster team fist pumpi…

Heh. Reminds me of that scene from the Tintin comic where the test moon rocket gets hacked by the bad guys and the good guys go "Holy crap, good thing we secretly installed a remote detonator in there!".

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#744

Post by kortex »

sixothree wrote: post #676
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…

[flagged]

"If you want peace, prepare for war"

Sure our MIC has grown a bit fat on the teat, and the US government has done some very unpleasant things, but to totally boycott someone cause they work on weapons systems, I don't think is really the right mood.

I believe he work(s/ed) on anti-ship guided missiles. I'm sure the Ukrainians are grateful to all those who worked on guided missiles when a Javelin pops a T-72 or the Moskva was sunk.

(not saying Destin worked on the Javelin, or that the Ukraine ASGM was built using tech. Just the general concept)

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#745

Post by nerpderp82 »

pixl97 wrote: post #662
nerpderp82 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Causally attributed mistakes as possible. Mistakes on their own aren't useful unless you can determine a causal relationship.

There are also mistakes versus the unknown, you can only know the true value if its a mistake after measurement. The key is to measure the value at the earliest possible time to reduce the amount of sunk costs. And simulation doesn't buy you anything here either. Simulation will many times cost more than an actual test article and still may not simulate reality accurately.

> true value if its a mistake after measurement

Exactly! This realization should lead to a lot of thinking around the experimental design and the level of characterization of the inputs.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#746

Post by kortex »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #683
stephc_int13 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a total success. Partial success OK. Calling it a huge success feels super weird for me, but I am not American so maybe this is a cultural thing.

A private company just launched the largest rocket ever built. It was a test. Tests fail, but failed tests aren't failures, theyre learning opportunities. SpaceX had several of these types of failures when testing and iterating on falcon 9. It now sends people to the ISS. There is a PR battle going on with this, there always have been but in particular, Elon is associated very publicly with this company and he's no l…

> failed tests aren't failures, theyre learning opportunities

I could frame this. Task failed successfully. Maybe folks need more experience in hard science (I'm a former bench chemist), but the only way a test can truly fail, is if someone or something is harmed, or you don't collect good data.

Blowing up rockets is arguably better than successful missions (provided you get telemetry), cause you found an edge of the envelope.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#747

Post by tetris11 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #312
haunter wrote: post #8

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=2920s (the cheering is actually really funny cause the launch was already a success)

Some Tesla events have been shown to have artificially-inserted cheers to show more enthusiasm than the crowd actually had. I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing that for SpaceX, too, but I also wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX launches had a lot of enthusiastic people in whatever crowd watched them. It was pretty telling that we didn't hear the roar of the engines on the "cheering" track, which would have happene…

Hell, listening to the commentator describe the rocket's ascent like a giddy sports commentator really reminded me that this is just another corporate event with people paid to shape narratives of what you see. I really miss NASA launches in this respect. Less hyped, but you had the solemn sense that something special was happening without anyone yammering in your ear with nonsense patter.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#748

Post by nunuvit »

travisporter wrote: post #741
nunuvit wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. I've worked in "old space" and the fundamental problem is that they can't afford to experiment. SpaceX has the option to physically test an idea that's holding them up before investing in fully bringing it up to production quality, only to have to redo all that work next iteration. That's why they can make new things and do it cheaper and faster.

Ironically, "old old space" = Soviet space was so damn good at innovating it probably would have made SpaceX look old-fashioned. Really I don't think there's a fundamental reason why we can't have two SpaceX's (Spaces X?) so why is there no other?

Haha I had a feeling someone would bring this up. To me, old space isn't farther back in time in the golden age of space, but rather what the space industry eventually calcified into. New space is like a Renaissance.

There are other new space companies, but they're just not as good.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#749

Post by MH15 »

mkaic wrote: post #652
segasaturn wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering what the environmental impact of all of these exploding rockets is though. Surely they won't be able to fish every piece of the rocket out of the ocean, along with all of the fuel.

It's extremely, extremely tiny compared to the impact of the thousands of commercial airplane flights that happen every day. Plus, methalox burns very cleanly, second only to the much more dangerous and finicky hydrolox in terms of environmental friendliness.

It is extremely tiny now- but definitely will be something worth thinking about when (here's hoping!) SpaceX and others reach their goals. When we run 100x or 1000x current launch capacity I don't think it's unreasonable to worry about rocket pollution.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#750

Post by mempko »

orbital-decay wrote: post #426
mempko wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very different situations. N1 was a technical blunder on many levels (and it wasn't a moon rocket - it was a hastily repurposed LEO launcher intended for in-orbit assembly, not optimal for the TLI). Instead of adopting the proven R-7 stacking scheme which was much easier to test piece by piece, Korolyov opted to a novel design which was too wide (17m!!), and static fires required a humongous and prohibitively expensi…

N1 got funding in 1964 and had it's first stacked test flight in 1969 (5 years). Starship was announced in 2017 (though the raptor engines in 2016) and had it's first stacked test flight today (5 years). So far development speed is the same, even with SpaceX's better technology.

Whatever technical issues N1 had, could have been resolved with enough iterations. We have no idea if Starship will work and if it does have design problems, we won't know until years from now if it fails or succeeds.

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