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

831–840 of 1001 posts

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#831

Post by tootie »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #123
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 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?

Serious question, but why is bigger better? Is there a pending need to launch something huge in one go?

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#832

Post by baq »

hef19898 wrote: post #807
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…

Just in case, if Arianne 6s first launch fails as well, can cut them as much slack as we cut SpaceX here in HN? Or do we go full Ariane cannit builf rockets, because of legacy and Europe blocking innovation?

Arianne 6 is sorely needed and is a decade behind right now. Not sure it deserves cutting it slack… though I’ll cheer when it gets off the pad as I cheered when the starship did.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#834

Post by nickpp »

double0jimb0 wrote: post #792
sbuttgereit wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Pretty sweet that they got to test 33 Raptors at a time. You can find failure modes approximately 33 times faster that way.

Plus the combinations.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#835

Post by throwaway4aday »

elil17 wrote: post #30
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)

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

The thing you saw blow up was a prototype, a test vehicle and the first ever flight to boot. Do you have any idea how many prototypes get thrown in the trash when you're trying to figure out a physical product and how to manufacture it? If you loved every one of them you'd give up after a week. You have to be merciless and willing to scrap everything and start over if you want to get to production.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#836

Post by panick21_ »

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?

Yes, SpaceX makes all their own engine, even inventing their own materials. They are building these very vertically integrated. SpaceX is pretty much the undisputed best rocket engine company in the world. They build more engines then anybody in the world and its not even close. And the Raptor is the most advanced engine in the world.

Rocket engines have different challenges then airplane engines. They are as hard in some ways but easier in others.

Rocket engine operate in a far more extreme environment, peak stressed are far larger, failures and issues far more violent. But the big advantage is that they only have to operate for a few minutes at the time (at least on the first stage). Jet engines need to operate for 1000s of hours.

SpaceX has upped the level significantly, interdicting higher efficiency full flow stage combustion and making them reusable and being able to launch quickly and reliably. So they complexity of Raptor is much higher then your typical first stage rocket engine.

I would say the complexity of a modern jet engine might still be higher, but its hard to estimate these things. Not sure how you would do that scientifically.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#837

Post by throwaway4aday »

jtchang wrote: post #229

I can't believe I am alive to witness this. I can imagine 100 years from now a SpaceX plaque will be in some museum timeline with this very event being one of many "failures". It's so hard to put that into perspective when you are actually living these events. I think partly because society has been conditioned to expect success out of all things when in reality true technological progress is rarely a straight line.

and all the haters will be forgotten, deservedly so.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#838

Post by fivestarman »

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]

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#839

Post by jansan »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #524

I am really surprised at the negativity, it makes me want to stop coming here. How many here are actual engineers by profession? The default state of any novel engineering project is “not working”. Rockets are very hard among engineering projects. Failure here would look like the rocket doing nothing visible, perhaps a little bit of smoke. Neutral is the rocket exploding. Success is the rocket moving at all. The rock…

I disagree (and I actually do have a degree in mechanical engineering). Success and failure is not binary. There is always an expectation range. If your result is at the bottom of that range, it is more of a failure, if it is at the upper end it is more of a success. Usually, in an iterative development process your result will be within the range, and in this case it is, too.

The minimum goal was to get the ship off the pad and not having it explode near it. The maximum goal was to achieve separation of stage 1 and reaching orbit. Discussing why the maximum goal was not reached has nothing to do with negativity, but is the natural thinking of an egineer who mainly tries to solve problems. So we naturally think about the ignition failure of some of the engines. Was is caused by the (obviously larger than expected) damage of the launch pad? Or is there a problem with reliability of the engines? Also, will the damage of the launch pad cause a delay for the next start? How can this be improved? These are all things that we are trying to find answers for fro our armchairs.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#840

Post by gridspy »

kortex wrote: post #702
sandworm101 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the intention of the flight was to test the vehicle at max Q, then the rest of the plan is almost a contingency. We don't know what the intention or internal expectation was. What we have are public statements, which are generally more conservative in order that every success be an amazing surprise, every failure an expected event. What SpaceX was internally hoping for, what they were aiming for, and the details o…

I don't need to know the internal - it's pretty obvious. When you are test launching a rocket, MaxQ is the moment to test (aside from ignition, which you can test with static fire, so not really "test launching a rocket"). So SpaceX wants to test the booster launch; they have tested everything else on the ground that they realistically can at this point. That means ignition, get off the pad, MaxQ. Everything after th…

Great post. I think a huge number of points were also put into the 10 seconds directly after liftoff.

I.e, if the ship is going to fly, ensure it doesn't need termination in range of the tower. Anything to ensure the next test article in the pipe can be ready to fly in minimum time.

Post reply on HN