311–320 of 559 posts
Second stage lost, looks like the flight termination system did its job. Unknown as to why yet. Going to be very very interesting to see the data that's released from this as well as all the higher quality video/stills that surface.
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Safety is always more important than getting your rocket to orbit.
What is the sudden change in the exhaust plume at occurs here [1] at 149km / 17650 kph? I believe that's squarely in the thermosphere, and there aren't any step changes in temperature/pressure at that point that I'm aware of. It would make sense if that were near the mesopause, but that's around 100km. Maybe it's something on SpaceX's side of things, a change in the burn profile? Perhaps it's related to losing the St…
- Starship got just below orbit - Booster destroyed during hot staging - SpaceX reporting that destruct system fired on upper stage towards end of burn all in all a pretty good result: clean launch and separation, good performance on the booster during ascent (no engine mishaps this time)
Yea, I've not seen up close shots of the launch facility yet, but it looks like it's all still there without massive amounts of destruction either.
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Imagine explaining to the court that the passengers were blown up by your AI algorithm... I expect these things are only on test flights indeed.
I'm pretty sure Falcon 9 carrying crew has an AFTS. Challenger was destroyed by an FTS system as well despite having crew on board. I think it's just a risk you have to take to go on a rocket ride.
No. The shuttle broke up when the overall stack became unstable due to the right hand SRB separating because a strut that attached it to the external tank failed (due to a blowtorch effect from a failed O-ring). The Challenger orbiter ended up 'on top' and broke into several chunks - without involvement of any FTS - because of the aerodynamic stress (one of these chunks was the crew compartment). The SRBs were destroyed by their FTS systems, but this was more than 30 seconds after Challenger broke up. The ET simply disintegrated.
[Edit] added emphasis that the orbiter break-up (and destruction) was not due to any FTS.
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Not sure about that but indications are it won't have an escape system like other manned craft.
Space Shuttle didn't have an escape system either; its total death toll was 14.
To be pedantic, the early flights had ejector seats for the pilot and commander, and the post-Challenger orbiters had a 'fire-pole' bail-out system. These systems could only be used in a very limited set of circumstances.
Really surprised by how the Raptors performed! Genuinely didn't expect that they'd have them all lighting up properly already.
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I'm pretty sure Falcon 9 carrying crew has an AFTS. Challenger was destroyed by an FTS system as well despite having crew on board. I think it's just a risk you have to take to go on a rocket ride.
> Challenger was destroyed by an FTS system No. The shuttle broke up when the overall stack became unstable due to the right hand SRB separating because a strut that attached it to the external tank failed (due to a blowtorch effect from a failed O-ring). The Challenger orbiter ended up 'on top' and broke into several chunks - without involvement of any FTS - because of the aerodynamic stress (one of these chunks was…
The point is that rockets carrying crew do indeed have FTS systems - presence of a crew doesn't negate that need.
There's a direct media stream that VLC can open (with network stream): https://prod-ec-us-west-2.video.pscp.tv/Transcoding/v1/hls/O... ---- Much better quality, slightly better latency. Seems like it comes from the Periscope transcoding infrastructure. Found it on reddit here: https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/17uyblj/rspacex_int...
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I can't wait for the next one. How many tests are we expecting? 7-8? Seems to be too long! I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo.
> I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo Careful what you wish for. The Saturn test program peaked at 3 tests / year (unless you want to count the separately tested launch escape system for the crew capsule), and the fully stacked Saturn V was only tested twice (in 1967 and 1968) before crewed missions. For all its speed, Apollo was not a SpaceX-style rapid iteration program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apo…
This is all to say, Apollo was an extremely risky program.