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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

#971

Post by Kiro »

sidibe wrote: post #514
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…

Why can't you just be satisfied and just bask in the warm glow of SpaceX like the rest of this thread? In all seriousness I don't follow space stuff much so I give the benefit of the doubt when 99% of posters give rave reviews... but I also know who is in charge of this company and the same thing was happening with Tesla a few years ago with every announcement/demo getting 99% of HN people giddy and just a few shoute…

What's wrong with Tesla?

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#972

Post by skissane »

xnx wrote: post #826
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…

To me, this comment implies that SpaceX is better/smarter than NASA, Northrop, Boeing, et. al. That may be true, but it's worth remembering that the goals are very different. Because of congressional oversight, SLS is largely a jobs/pork program. Spaceflight is incidental.

> To me, this comment implies that SpaceX is better/smarter than NASA, Northrop, Boeing, et. al.

I don’t think SpaceX has smarter engineers. I don’t think they even have smarter managers, since many of their executives used to work for NASA and/or traditional aerospace firms (e.g. President+COO Gwynne Shotwell started out in aerospace at a private non-profit research centre doing contract engineering work for the NASA Space Shuttle and the US military space program)

One big difference is Elon Musk at the founding of SpaceX told his executives to take big risks (as in “if this fails we go bankrupt”). I think Tory Bruno at ULA is a great CEO, but no way is Boeing or Lockheed-Martin ever saying to him “we want you to take such big risks that we might go bankrupt if they fail”. He, and all the people under him, are only allowed to take small-to-medium sized risks. But that puts a definite limit on what they can achieve compared to SpaceX whose executives and engineers have the freedom to make much riskier decisions

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#973

Post by ikekkdcjkfke »

greenhearth wrote: post #574
outworlder wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that bothers me about this rapid unplanned disassembly development methodology is all the environmental damage that this thing is doing. It was bad enough blowing up next to a wildlife preserve, but now they are (with some degree of certainty) blowing it higher up and scattering fragments across a huge area. The rockets are not getting any smaller. > so the only way to test x is with a starship on top. Why…

This is the real legacy of propulsion flight. What is the end goal of this? Moon trips for rich people? Disgusting.

Space lasers

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#974

Post by asdfman123 »

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…

The more time I spend on this site the more I realize everyone here watches the exact same YouTube channels.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#975

Post by bmitc »

ikekkdcjkfke wrote: post #969
bmitc wrote: post #967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting that link. I found the article informative and actually well-written and driven by evidence and examples. It is really striking to me how people are willing to throw the environment under the proverbial bus and literal rocket in order to further some false idea of improving humanity. We're actively killing a live planet, currently the only planet known to be able to house human and life in general…

Maybe we could get minerals and stuff from space instead of digging up nature

Ignoring the complexity of accomplishing that, such an enterprise would cost an immense amount of material and pollution. Also, it would not stabilize or decrease mining on Earth.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#976

Post by jve »

double0jimb0 wrote: post #789
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…

From the launch commentary, the rocket is designed to do a 180 at that altitude for the separation event. So a couple extra rotations isn’t going to hurt anything. Additionally, air density at 100k ft is ~1/80th of sea level, which helps.

You mean it should have separated on a 180-flip? Boosting rocket all the way there to break and start orbiting in opposite direction? No way. F9 doesn't do that. The booster should have flipped without starship. That was mistake on commentator side - they were talking all the time like everything is normal. Even when we all saw it started to twist, commentator sayd something like: waiting on separation.

Anyways, the stress rocket experiences in a position like that is such that they break up, because its not designed for positions like that - we have seen that on failing rockets videos. This one did multiple flips with upper stage attached that shouldn't be there on rotation. And thats great :)

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#977

Post by rickdeckard »

bmitc wrote: post #965
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's unlikely that SpaceX wasn't aware of the damage that would be caused. "SpaceX" isn't a unified mind. It's not even a hivemind, no company is. We keep saying "company knew about X", but it's a such a mischaracterization of how companies, or any group of humans, work. Yes, some people in the company might have known it, but for various reasons, be it poor communication, mistaken assumptions, willful igno…

My issue with this take is that companies have used leverage and lobbying to get to define when a company isn't a single entity and when it is not, always in their advantage. For example, a company is involved in a human death: the company is suddenly not a single entity and is instead simply part of this complex system of moving parts out of which emerged a human death. As another example, a corporation wants to don…

1. Company is doing good --> Company is a single, good individual doing good

2. Company is doing bad --> Someone inside the company must have been bad, company would have prevented it but was powerless, because #1

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#978

Post by svnt »

soperj wrote: post #623
svnt wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes good point — we’ve previously done a ton of environmental damage so as long as we are doing less than that it is silly to mention it.

we do a magnitude more environmental damage every day, and it's not brought up, it's not about past environmental damage. People get up in arms about littering, and they liter the air out their tailpipe for hours every week.

It is brought up. People complain about the destruction of the earth due to mining, oil consumption, etc. Large numbers of people exclusively ride transit and use bicycles. Just because some people are hypocrites doesn’t mean we shouldn’t assess the environmental consequences of space travel.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#979

Post by cubefox »

davidw wrote: post #929
cubefox wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has released a lot of "Twitter files" data regarding highly questionable FBI interference and things like Twitter Trends manipulation in the past. And he has released large parts of the recommendation algorithm. And there is now a tab "following" which only shows you the tweets of the people you follow. And most importantly, free speech seems to be upheld much better than in the past, where people got blocked for…

All that "twitter files" stuff was nonsense though. And then he pissed off the guy he paid to do it by blocking substack. Which wasn't very 'free speech' of him at all. He's stumbling around rudderless.

The Twitter files ware certainly not nonsense. Journalists ignored them only because they care only about the left.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#980

Post by bencoder »

bencoder wrote: post #874
cratermoon wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To come back and admit that I was wrong:

"In Port Isabel, a city about six miles northwest where at least one window shattered, residents were alarmed. " from [0] posted to HN [1]

I stand corrected - the warning article was pretty accurate

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/spacex-rocket-dust-tex...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35651757

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