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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

#871

Post by robryan »

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.

There was a time where people questioned if 33 of them packed in like this would work at all. Pretty impressive that it does and survives multiple engine failures.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#872

Post by octobus2021 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #786
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…

I think the thing that a lot of people are still stuck at is the NASA attitude of "we've spent a lot of money on this already, we Need to make sure it works first try". Whereas SpaceX is more like Kerbal Space Program in that if it blows up, at least you're having fun. And while they had some failures early on with their early rockets, the Falcon 9 is now a very reliable craft that's done dozens of successful mission…

I know I'm being nitpicky, but Falcon 9 completed 223 missions since 2010 with 221 being total success, and 60 missions completed in 2022 alone. So way more than "dozens".

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#873

Post by timeon »

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?

Seems bit petty dragging Arianne here.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#874

Post by bencoder »

cratermoon wrote: post #753
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,…

Seems like the author was closer to the truth that HN gave him credit for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thA8jlgcJ-8

the wide angle makes it look a lot further away from the rocket than they really were - The camera is about 440m away from the rocket.

The damage shown in the video appears to be entirely caused by debris while the article was suggesting possible property damage ("shattered glass and damaged foundations ... from a miscalculated sonic blast") to towns 8500m away - 20 times further

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#875

Post by bottlepalm »

mkaic wrote: post #661
davidw wrote: post #461

I continue to think that this is cool stuff, while being very, very dismayed by what he's doing with Twitter. I don't understand what the attraction of the latter is for someone with the wherewithal to work on spaceships.

Agreed. It's incredible to me how good Musk can be at running SpaceX and simultaneously how bad he can be at running Twitter — strengths and weaknesses, I suppose...

I use Twitter, not much has changed for me. Tweets still work, my feed still works, what’s the issue?

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#876

Post by rootusrootus »

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 am really surprised at the negativity

I would wager that a good part of that is just a reaction to the over-the-top "massive success!" posts.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#877

Post by panick21_ »

eatmyshorts wrote: post #572

Watching the mission, I noticed that engines kept shutting down. There are 33 of them. When they had turned off 7 of them, with 26 engines remaining lit, it started to lose control. The engineers all seemed ecstatic about the mission. I have to wonder if they weren't intentionally shutting off engines to see how many could fail while still retaining control. If that was indeed tested, the answer appears to be 6--they…

It didn't start to lose control because the engines. It tried to do a stage separation flip and the stage didn't separate. Only then was it doing something that might have been out of control, or maybe it was trying to do the seperation again.

Control can be maintained with very few engine. I depends if its center engines or outer ring. Only the central cluster can gamble, 2 or 3 of those should be able to handle to rocket depending how full it is.

With only outer engines the could use differential thrust but the rocket isn't really designed to do that.

The Soviet N1 used differential thrust only. SpaceX prefers gimbled engines.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#878

Post by mlindner »

mcculley wrote: post #104
simondotau wrote: post #6

Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. Suggesting that this test “failed” is at best a mischaracterisation.

> "Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad." I am confused. Everything I read before the launch said that it was intended to reach orbital altitude and make it around the Earth.

That was the stretch goal. They made it clear several times on the webcast and in tweets that clearing the launch pad was the primary goal and further than that to gather lots of data. The farther they got, the more data they gathered and the more successful it was. You can have varying degrees of success and still be successful.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#879

Post by cubefox »

fastball wrote: post #394
szoszon wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are 5 more of these being built, how they will incorporate anything they learned during this failed attempt? Isn't that just a waste of money?

From watching the launch, my absolutely pulled from my butt guess is that something went wrong with the stage separation system, and that the explosion was deliberately triggered by the SpaceX team / triggered by automated guardrails when the mission didn't go according to parameters. If that's true, then they can just fix whatever is wrong with the stage separation. And if it's something else, they can probably fix…

Yes, stage separation failed apparently. Then the flight termination system was triggered.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#880

Post by fnordpiglet »

baq wrote: post #444
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

Why dig a flame trench if you can have your test article make one for you. Efficiency!

When I dig, I only dig with super massive rockets.
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