Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 265 posts

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#161

Post by kev009 »

trixie_ wrote: post #147
kev009 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not cosmetics. What kind of tolerances can you get dangling a massive assembly from a crane in the wind? How many people are cross checking the work? What kind of instrumentation are you using to check joint quality and integrity at these heights from a genie lift? It’s hard to shoot a stucco roof from a genie lift, I can’t help but laugh out loud at the assertion this is sane. Astronomically stupid.

I laugh out loud at armchair engineers who think they have any real insight into a massive engineering development program like Starship. SpaceX has proven themselves over and over again of being more than capable of achieving their goals in light of people like you.

Yup let's see how the non critically thinking Musk fan thing works out for you in 10 years. People like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman would be shaking their heads at these spectacles.

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#162

Post by trixie_ »

kev009 wrote: post #161
trixie_ wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I laugh out loud at armchair engineers who think they have any real insight into a massive engineering development program like Starship. SpaceX has proven themselves over and over again of being more than capable of achieving their goals in light of people like you.

Yup let's see how the non critically thinking Musk fan thing works out for you in 10 years. People like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman would be shaking their heads at these spectacles.

You were the guy who 10 years ago said electric cars and reusable rockets would never be practical.

Meanwhile SpaceX is on their way to building a global internet constellation, have a working full flow combustion engine, and has multiple prototype Mars rockets in development.

I'd love to take your 10 year bet. Easy money.

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#163

Post by ew6082 »

davedx wrote: post #156
ew6082 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They left the nose cone off to save money. I wonder if the designer counted on some portion of the cone weight to support the cylinder head in their design?

I don't think you can really count in weight on an object capable of flying into orbit or interplanetary space...

By the time gravity becomes a factor most of that pressure is blown off, though.

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#164

Post by yread »

tus88 wrote: post #145
lmilcin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what kind of test that was supposed to be. If they pumped it until it explodes it would be a kind of test (also called experiment) where it makes sense. If you design something with a margin of safety, then pump it to working pressure and it blows, then it means you made a mistake. If you made a mistake it shows you don't know what is necessary to design a rocket (yet). Seriously, they don't build skyscrap…

Boeing intentionally snaps of the wings of prototype aircraft to find the breaking point/prove the margin of stress.

No, they don't. They load it to 150% of max design load. Sometimes they keep bending it until it snaps (777) and sometimes they don't (787 - no one wants to clean carbon fibre mess). Sometimes it snaps before it's reached and it's ok (airbus a380).

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#165

Post by jml7c5 »

Someone wrote: post #158
jml7c5 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference, the average human seems (from a very brief search) to swing an 8lb sledgehammer at ~25mph. So it's a bit like someone very, very strong (think strongman competitions) nailing the thing as hard as they can with a sledgehammer.

It would be a glancing blow, though. Bad, but not as bad as a blow striking orthogonal to the surface.

Ah, good point. For some reason I was imagining the rocket lying on its side or some nonsense.

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#166

Post by hoseja »

kev009 wrote: post #87
Klathmon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling that they could blow up another dozen of these and still be spending less than doing it the "traditional" way of in cleanrooms and the VFAB building. This was a prototype that they've publicly said was most likely never to reach orbit, they are building this stuff right now to learn, test, and prove that their design works and find improvements that can be made.

Any elementary student of history can tell you how bad an idea this is. Apollo 1 almost ended the program. A backlash in public opinion will crater SpaceX in the market and legislature. There is no space mission in the near decades worth the loss of human life. Economy in terms of money is no priority if you are to undertake human space flight. Move fast and break things is cute for a global search index or regressin…

I love how people keep bringing up the fact SpaceX gets some government subsidies. Ever heard of SLS? LMAO.

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#167

Post by Roark66 »

double0jimb0 wrote: post #127

I read this was a manufacturing pathfinder. Manufacturing and assembly of high strength hardened steel is near black art. Pathfinders do exactly what they say, they lead you through unknown territory to the outcome of the manufacturing journey you embarked on. Often things go boom, you find out why, add it to your corpus of black art knowledge, and keep pathfinding until you run out of budget / succeed / change missi…

Why would they be using hardened steel for a pressure vessel that has to deal with vibrations?

Also, someone on twitter said a horizontal weld failed. If this is true I'm surprised they didn't do two things: - tune their welding procedure by destructive testing with the same type of steel - and X-ray (or use another non-destructive method) the welds after assembly.

Welding (including more interesting metals) is my hobby so I had an opportunity to see that there a huge amount of knowledge in the field. There are routine testing procedures that ensure situations like this one don't happen.

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#168

Post by _Microft »

djohnston wrote: post #90

for some reason i feel like im watching a 2nd grader's baking soda volcano project. i guess it's the perspective of the camera, or im not accustomed to the looks of prototype rockets, but to me it looks like a paper mache diorama

The Starships shininess makes it look even more wrinkly. If it wasn't reflecting its surroundings so well, you would not be able to see that it's not perfectly smooth.

Here's a similar effect on windows:

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D60B28/distorted-reflections-in-a-...

That's why Starship can look a lot better when photographed from nearby - the view is tilted more upwards and the sky is reflecting in it which does not have enough details to let one see these wrinkles.

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#169

Post by cbhl »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #141
Diederich wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dug around and didn't find an official SpaceX statement. The cause was a poorly constructed struct they bought from a 3rd party company. > Compare their statements about the cause of the CRS-7 explosion to NASA's. Did NASA's and SpaceX's statements differ in content?

SpaceX statement: https://www.spacex.com/news/2015/07/20/crs-7-investigation-u... NASA accident investigation report: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/public_... TBF the NASA report came much later than the SpaceX explanation. However it might be of interest to compare: SpaceX explanation of why looking at the right telemetry is hard vs "Technical Finding 4" from NASA. SpaceX explanation of the st…

"SpaceX chose to use an industrial grade (as opposed to aerospace grade) ... cast part"

Hmm.. Isn't this a common cost-cutting strategy for Musk's companies? The touchscreen in the Model 3s was (is?) also industrial grade, if I recall correctly.

Re: SpaceX's Starship Mk1 just blew off its bulkhead in a pressurization accident

#170

Post by combnoinipo »

double0jimb0 wrote: post #127

I read this was a manufacturing pathfinder. Manufacturing and assembly of high strength hardened steel is near black art. Pathfinders do exactly what they say, they lead you through unknown territory to the outcome of the manufacturing journey you embarked on. Often things go boom, you find out why, add it to your corpus of black art knowledge, and keep pathfinding until you run out of budget / succeed / change missi…

What does pathfinder mean in the context of manufacturing?
Post reply on HN