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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

#841

Post by bitL »

notfish wrote: post #694
bitL wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It almost blew up on the launchpad (see the debris flying after a few seconds), then at around 30 seconds you can see some explosion at the bottom, throwing away some surface parts. Multiple failed engines. Then it went into an unsurvivable "tailspin" if there was any crew around. Cheering for failure was the topping.

Maybe they were cheering for failure because they know more about their goals than you do

Why is achieving parity with a 60s/70s Soviet tech so admiration-worthy? What am I missing?

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#842

Post by dotnet00 »

jpgvm wrote: post #812
RetpolineDrama wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How many here are actual engineers by profession? Almost none, because "software engineers" aren't _actual_ Engineers! (ducks for cover) But really, this was a huge step in the right direction on the cutting edge of propulsion science and spaceflight. SpaceX will iterate and in a few months/years everyone here will be telling you how "they always knew it would work" and "starship succeeding was obvious"

Can confirm, am "Software Engineer" but from a family of Real Engineers™, what we do on a day to day basis only resembles engineering in the weakest sense. Both professions iterate on failure but Real Engineers actually spend a significant amount of time studying each failure and drawing strong conclusions based on collected data. We can do that (and sometimes do) but usually just hack it and re-run the tests until i…

Agreed, I think us software people are too used to the 'safety' and conveniences of the abstract world of software. Besides the comparatively smaller amount of people working on software for safety critical stuff, most of us are too used to just being able to quickly hack together fixes, where for safety critical stuff you do have to work with similar rigor as 'real' engineering and failures result in similar reviews of processes leading up to them.

For example, after Starliner's first test flight's software debacle, NASA ordered a full safety review of all of Boeing's software practices, for all of their projects - planes and spacecraft. Most of us don't have to deal with that amount of rigor over buggy code.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#843

Post by dingosity »

enslavedrobot wrote: post #627
dingosity wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect they were told "if we get off the ground, it's a success." Elon's been saying similar things over the last week.

I suspect they knew that since they built the thing.

In large engineering organizations, it is not uncommon for highly specialized engineers to not be aware of the status of the overall project. Plus, you hear A LOT of different stories, rumors and expectations as projects progress. I'm SURE they started with "Oh Yeah! This Baby is Going into ORBIT!" but as time went on they were like "Well.. we don't have time to build these 18 components to spec, so we loosened the tolerance so we think it'll launch but might explode 10 seconds later." And the nameless drone in sector 47 only heard the first projection.

I would be very surprised if Shotwell didn't have an all-hands to set the whole team's expectations beforehand.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#844

Post by bottlepalm »

hackernewds wrote: post #640
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…

This reads strangely like a PR damage control post

It’s not, it’s been 20 years, you think people would be used to SpaceX failing their way to success.

But every time we have the same debate.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#845

Post by RetpolineDrama »

6d6b73 wrote: post #185
Coffeewine wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't blow up on the pad. They'll be happy to blow up dozens of these, hopefully incrementally perfecting the design each time.

That's not engineering. What they did is identical to developers copying code from SO and running it to see if it works.

Yes it is. Source: am Engineer

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#846

Post by mhandley »

mhandley wrote: post #332

I'm really interested to see the hole it dug under the launch mount. The NASA SpaceFlight van took a direct hit from a fast moving chunk of concrete. https://twitter.com/JerryPikePhoto/status/164905272269878477... https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649053476276797440 Edit: it really did dig a crater (this was flat concrete under the pad before): https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649062784167030785

If I'm calculating correctly from the frame rate, the lump of concrete that hit the van was doing about 330 mph after the impact. I couldn't find a pair of frames to compare before impact.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#847

Post by panick21_ »

superultra wrote: post #655
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 am generalizing but a lot of the space community and certainly a lot of SpaceX fans were deriding the several scrubbed launches of SLS/Artemis. I am not suggesting that it’s the exact same people, and the context for each vehicle is very different. Nevertheless both the SpaceX and NASA approaches to this are valid engineering approaches. Whether this particular failed launch is a long term success remains to be see…

NASA approach cost 20 billion $ at least and has a per launch cost of 4-5 billion $ going forward. They didn't develop new engines and is mostly based on legacy avionics. There really isn't a comparison in those terms.

If SpaceX spends the next 10 years and another 10 billion $ on Starship. It would still be far superior to SLS.

> maybe the NASA approach of get it right first is the way to go when it comes to space flight.

Again, it has to be pointed out that SLS is not close to the same thing, its a lot of legacy tech.

If SpaceX had to build a large booster auto of Falcon 9 tech they could likely design it to work on the first attempt. As they did with Falcon 9.

But Starship is just a different beast. With NASA methods, it would take multiple decades to get to first test and likely never get there.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#848

Post by nickpp »

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…

> Its a failure, but it's a testing failure, so its a success.

Cultural misunderstanding then. Only in USA failure is seen as learning opportunity. Most other countries punish you severely for failure, hard enough to discourage you from trying ever again.

This is why SpaceX could only happen in the USA. And why other countries are left behind while Americans are flying to Mars.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#849

Post by sterlind »

marktangotango wrote: post #809
mrandish wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were multiple unexpected "energetic events" seen by observers apparently due to some of the engines failing around liftoff. These "energetic events" could have contributed to greater than expected downward force under the launchpad. If correct, it seems positive that the excess energy was directed downward still permitting the liftoff. That the ship was able to continue the flight through Max-Q and up to MECO a…

> I believe they've already started construction of upgraded launch facilities which include fire trenches and water deluge systems. Ah, so excavating the launch tower was intentional; demo tower 0.1 to make room for tower 0.2!

when life hands you engine-rich exhaust..
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