SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
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Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#2Seeing both the Starlink mass simulators deploy and the camera view from the last simulators looking back at Starship was really cool.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#3Oh man, so glad I stayed up to watch it. Kind of a rough start (but it's the 1st flight w/ new redesign, new engines, etc), had an engine out on both booster and ship, but the views were absolutely worth it. They managed to get the last satellite to connect to starlink and download the footage of the ship in orbit. Even with an engine out, the ship managed to reach orbit, deploy all the satellites, re-enter, flip and soft splash into the ocean, near a buoy! And on top of that we got the drone views of the landing. Fucking spectacular views.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#4Oh man, so glad I stayed up to watch it. Kind of a rough start (but it's the 1st flight w/ new redesign, new engines, etc), had an engine out on both booster and ship, but the views were absolutely worth it. They managed to get the last satellite to connect to starlink and download the footage of the ship in orbit. Even with an engine out, the ship managed to reach orbit, deploy all the satellites, re-enter, flip and…
I'm guessing / hoping that the engine outs we're planned, or that they ran the engines with slightly different parameters to test them. If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#5Oh man, so glad I stayed up to watch it. Kind of a rough start (but it's the 1st flight w/ new redesign, new engines, etc), had an engine out on both booster and ship, but the views were absolutely worth it. They managed to get the last satellite to connect to starlink and download the footage of the ship in orbit. Even with an engine out, the ship managed to reach orbit, deploy all the satellites, re-enter, flip and…
I'm guessing / hoping that the engine outs we're planned, or that they ran the engines with slightly different parameters to test them. If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve.
> If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve.
It might, but it certainly helps having a ton of them around. Given that they used 42 of them today and 2 failed in some fashion, we'll call that a 1:21 failure rate. On a more typical rocket with say 10 engines (eg falcon 9), there's a good chance they wouldn't have seen the same failure till flight 3.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#6Oh man, so glad I stayed up to watch it. Kind of a rough start (but it's the 1st flight w/ new redesign, new engines, etc), had an engine out on both booster and ship, but the views were absolutely worth it. They managed to get the last satellite to connect to starlink and download the footage of the ship in orbit. Even with an engine out, the ship managed to reach orbit, deploy all the satellites, re-enter, flip and…
I'm guessing / hoping that the engine outs we're planned, or that they ran the engines with slightly different parameters to test them. If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve.
Very first flight of a brand new engine type (Raptor 3) with totally reworked heatshielding/plumbing/sensors/control systems/etc.
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing / hoping that the engine outs we're planned, or that they ran the engines with slightly different parameters to test them. If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve.
> If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve. It might, but it certainly helps having a ton of them around. Given that they used 42 of them today and 2 failed in some fashion, we'll call that a 1:21 failure rate. On a more typical rocket with say 10 engines (eg falcon 9), there's a good chance they wouldn't have seen the same failure till flight 3.
[deleted]
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing / hoping that the engine outs we're planned, or that they ran the engines with slightly different parameters to test them. If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve.
> If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve. It might, but it certainly helps having a ton of them around. Given that they used 42 of them today and 2 failed in some fashion, we'll call that a 1:21 failure rate. On a more typical rocket with say 10 engines (eg falcon 9), there's a good chance they wouldn't have seen the same failure till flight 3.
It’s something like up to 6 can fail and it keeps going, seems pretty good. I know they did some stuff like remove a heat tile to get failure feedback, wonder if engine was planned or accidental
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing / hoping that the engine outs we're planned, or that they ran the engines with slightly different parameters to test them. If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve.
Very first flight of a brand new engine type (Raptor 3) with totally reworked heatshielding/plumbing/sensors/control systems/etc.
Which is true, but at the same time: this is Starship Flight 12.
The whole point of Starship is that it's a reusable vehicle with easy turnaround and quick maintenance. And in particular it's supposed to be different than the other reusable vehicle with easy turnaround and quick maintenance, which turned out to be sort of a boondoggle.
Yet, they've now hand-built and destroyed twelve of these things across multiple redesigns, and it still hasn't completed its design mission once. In fact basically every launch has unexpected major failures.
As poor as its safety record ultimately ended up being, the shuttle launched successfully on its very first try. And we only had to hand-build five of them. And lost two, sure, which is still a lot less than twelve.
Yes yes, I understand that iterative design has merits and that the ability to rapidly prototype and try things in the stratosphere allows for less conservative tolerances and better ultimate performance.
But does it really take 13+ tries?! At what point to we start wondering if we have another boondoggle on our hands?
Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If it's just unreliability then it might be a hard problem to solve. It might, but it certainly helps having a ton of them around. Given that they used 42 of them today and 2 failed in some fashion, we'll call that a 1:21 failure rate. On a more typical rocket with say 10 engines (eg falcon 9), there's a good chance they wouldn't have seen the same failure till flight 3.
It’s something like up to 6 can fail and it keeps going, seems pretty good. I know they did some stuff like remove a heat tile to get failure feedback, wonder if engine was planned or accidental
Accidental since they didn’t make the sub-orbit they were aiming for and thus couldn’t test engine re-light.