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Starship Flight 7

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Re: Starship Flight 7

#361
post #286

I absolutely cannot relate to the HN excitement over rockets. What is the point? What are we going to do with them? It feels like half religion half misplaced techno-positivism. (Also a person who actively platforms outspoken neo-nazis runs the company that is launching them)

Rockets are good. They give us hope that one day we ll explore the stars. Let people enjoy the small wins.

Also the hope that we can go on vacation to the lunar hilton, or orbital O'Neill colony.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#362
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention Only used once, when the Soviets dropped a nuclear reactor on Canada. > States (countries) bear international responsibility for all space objects that are launched within their territory. This means that regardless of who launches the space object, if it was launched from State A's territory, or from State A's facility, or if State A caused the launch to happe…

I feel like it should be updated. When it was written it wasn't like every Musk could launch high-orbit rockets on sundays. Only actual states did.

Every rocket flight has to be approved by the government. No launch until FAA (and also FCC) OK's it.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#363
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the video post does mention "Right in front of us", and it may have appeared that way to the pilots, it wasn't. Gauging relative distance and altitude between aircraft in flight can be notoriously deceptive even to experts, especially in the case of intensely bright, massive, unfamiliar objects at very high speed and great distance. The RUD was in orbit over 146 kilometers up and >13,000 mph. I'm sure using the…

It's in front of them enough.

Sure. In a similar way as when the moon is low on the horizon and I stand in my back yard facing it. There's the moon. It's right in front of me... :-)

Re: Starship Flight 7

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the flight termination system is sort of a shaped charge that's designed to rupture the oxidizer and fuel tanks. Even if only a few % fuel remains, it'll be a big boom.

It wasn't FTS, it just blew up: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1880033318936199643

That doesn't explicitly say that it wasn't FTS. Activation of the FTS is never scheduled and it results in rapid disassembly. There's speculation that it flew for a significant time after losing telemetry. FTS is designed to activate if it goes off course (if it's still on course, it's better to keep flying).

Re: Starship Flight 7

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably similar to if a US ship crashed into your yacht.

Rules of the water says smaller ship yields right of way to bigger ship. Sounds like you screwed up if your yacht got hit by a bigger ship. Of course that applies when the vessels are not tied up. If a big ship his a docked boat, that's an entirely different scenario

There is a whole hierarchy of right of way on the water, but a better rule of thumb is that the less maneuverable boat generally has priority.

https://www.whoi.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Abbreviated-...

Re: Starship Flight 7

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something measurable had to go very wrong Or slightly wrong. An FTS is programmed to be conservative. Particularly on unmanned flights. Doubly particularly on reëntry. Triply so on experiments bits.

Depends on the programmers I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All of the exception handling was spent on the try/catch of the booster.

Re: Starship Flight 7

#367
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity. Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880060983734858130

[flagged]

It sounds like he's talking to investors and not to general public.

In my experience in corporate america you communicate efficiency by proclaiming a checklist of things to do - plausible, but not necessarily accurate things - and then let engineers figure it out.

Nobody cares of the original checklist as long as the problem gets resolved. It's weird but it seems very hard to utter statement "I don't have specific answers but we have very capable engineers, I'm sure they will figure it out". It's always better to say (from the top of your head) "To resolve A, we will do X,Y and Z!". Then when A get's resolved, everyone praises the effort. Then when they query what actually was done it's "well we found out in fact what were amiss were I, J K".

Re: Starship Flight 7

#368
post #286

I absolutely cannot relate to the HN excitement over rockets. What is the point? What are we going to do with them? It feels like half religion half misplaced techno-positivism. (Also a person who actively platforms outspoken neo-nazis runs the company that is launching them)

Rockets are good. They give us hope that one day we ll explore the stars. Let people enjoy the small wins.

Also, the (IMHO false) hope that we can escape the planet after we destroy it. Well, maybe the few richest will be able to do that ...

Re: Starship Flight 7

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't FTS, it just blew up: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1880033318936199643

That doesn't explicitly say that it wasn't FTS. Activation of the FTS is never scheduled and it results in rapid disassembly. There's speculation that it flew for a significant time after losing telemetry. FTS is designed to activate if it goes off course (if it's still on course, it's better to keep flying).

Yeah, I was wondering if it was FTS. I guess it doesn't really matter as FTS is just designed to intentionally cause the same kind of RUD that happened anyway. The main criteria is a RUD sufficient to ensure pieces small enough to burn up on reentry. From the looks of the explosion from the videos helpfully captured from the ground, the RUD certainly looked sufficient. Given it was 146km up at >13,000 mph, rolling down a window would trigger a sufficient RUD.

At those speeds, temps and pressures exploding into tiny pieces isn't just easy - it's the default. NOT exploding is much harder!

Re: Starship Flight 7

#370
post #280

Looks like second stage broke up over Caribbean, videos of the debris (as seen from ground): https://x.com/deankolson87/status/1880026759133032662?t=HdHF... https://x.com/realcamtem/status/1880026604472266800 https://x.com/adavenport354/status/1880026262254809115 Moment of the breakup: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE52_hVSeQz/

Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity. Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880060983734858130

I'm not sure there's fire suppression effective enough for this type of leak (especially given rocket constraints)
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