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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

#771

Post by kortex »

DuckFeathers wrote: post #723
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…

Before the anti-Musk cats get too wet, Elon Musk has said, and I quote, "If we get far enough away from launch pad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success. Just don't blow up the pad.": https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/16/world/starship-spacex-lau...

Right. The criteria for this test was "Failure = CATO (catastrophic at takeoff)". It took off, it didn't CATO, it even hit max Q, therefore success. That's not "partial success". That's 100% success, you won the game show, but you didn't get all the points in the sudden death bonus round.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#772

Post by chasd00 »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #551
samwillis wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with this assessment and probably the biggest problem in the test. After that, they still have a fair way to go on Raptor reliability; I was a bit disappointed with the number of engine outs: clearly the engines have not arrived. I think the big win of the day was the overall resilience of the vehicle. It seemed to handle (what looked to be) possibly explosive engine failures and kept going and stayed intact.…

> clearly the engines have not arrived.

I think Raptor2 as an engine has definitely arrived. Igniting and running this many at the same time has some work remaining however.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#773

Post by wellanyway »

mempko wrote: post #262
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.

Actually the 'fail fast, learn faster' and 'launch often' approach is what the Soviets did. SpaceX is following the same methodology 20 years later but with far better technology and learnings. Though it seems they are again attempting the Soviet N1 rocket attempt of using more than 30 engines in Starship. It's historically different in US aerospace, but not Soviet aerospace.

We get it, you are communist. Go away now.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#774

Post by chasd00 »

kortex wrote: post #565
samwillis wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Woof, that's a hole! Yeah I completely forgot "w", all the stage 0 stuff. There's only so much you can test with wet dress rehearsals, at some point you need to just launch a fully loaded rocket from it and see how it behaves. > On top of that there was significantly more debris making its way to South Padre Tim Dodd got coated in dust and sand (probably pulverized concrete) kicked up from the launch well outside the…

> Tim Dodd got coated in dust and sand

i don't see that being that big of a deal, winds blowing west to east and no one would have ever even thought about it.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#775

Post by mjamesaustin »

nonethewiser wrote: post #691
CydeWeys wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was amazed at how resilient Starship was despite how many engines had failed, right up until the point they needed to yaw for stage separation and lost control. They've gotta improve the reliability of those engines (which I'm sure they will), but it's a testament to the quality of their control software how far they got despite having those malfunctioning engines.

Does SpaceX build the actual engines? Are they as complicated as airplane engines which are famously hard to produce?

SpaceX designed and built all the engines. The Raptor engine is the world's first full flow staged combustion engine to fly in a rocket.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#776

Post by T-A »

rmu09 wrote: post #589
samwillis wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After that, they still have a fair way to go on Raptor reliability I suspect the debris from blowing a whole in the ground was the biggest contributing factor for the engines out. It looked like at lease 4 we're gone before it left the pad.

Isn't it pretty unlikely that this debris, flying against the exhaust, can reach the engines with significant energy?

Assuming that this photo

https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649062784167030785

is real, I guess not. What used to be in that crater couldn't just move sideways, it had to go up to get out of the hole. Engine exhaust hit the center of the crater, dislodged rocks, pushed them away radially and up the sides of the hole.

Four of the six engines later seen to have gone dark were in the outer ring. Coincidence?

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#777

Post by dizzant »

holler wrote: post #684

For anyone curious here's my video from watching the launch live at Isla Vista park on South Padre Island. It's hard to state just how loud and insanely massive Starship is in general and compared to Falcon 9 (which I was fortunate to see launch twice recently). My bones shook and my ear drums felt like they might burst. Incredible experience watching and meeting people from far and wide. Highly recommend getting out…

Great video, thanks for sharing!

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#778

Post by ekimekim »

p1mrx wrote: post #541
s1artibartfast wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even about the FAA requirements, it is just bare minimum engineering to ask where will this rocket go if it doesn't blow up mid-air?

It's been launched beyond the environment. Nothing's out there.

Well the problem here is that the front didn't fall off.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#779

Post by wellanyway »

samsari wrote: post #392
vvillena wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of SpaceX company culture. All their launches are cheer-heavy. Even mission control gets rowdy at times.

I remember I think it was when they first landed the booster successfully, there was a big "USA! USA! USA!" cheer from mission control. I thought that was a bit of an ugly look myself.

How dare people be proud of other countries than the birthplace of the Glorius Leader.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#780

Post by bluescrn »

vannevar wrote: post #575
samwillis wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 wonder whether all that debris was a factor in the engine failures?
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