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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

#671

Post by beerandt »

rmu09 wrote: post #589
samwillis wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After that, they still have a fair way to go on Raptor reliability I suspect the debris from blowing a whole in the ground was the biggest contributing factor for the engines out. It looked like at lease 4 we're gone before it left the pad.

Isn't it pretty unlikely that this debris, flying against the exhaust, can reach the engines with significant energy?

That's my thinking, but ignition is a staggered 6 second duration, so there's at least a window for adverse directional flow.

But looking at that pad and the damage to it- without deluge dampening, I bet the RC spalling might have been a bigger issue than just ground blowback.

Put a blowtorch to some concrete a and watch how quickly trapped moisture starts causing miniature explosions and flying shrapnel.

But that's just my first uninformed impression.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#673

Post by KptMarchewa »

908B64B197 wrote: post #474
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…

To me it's an incredible achievement. Raptor engine development started in 2012. Starship's development started around the same time. They now achieved max Q and got flight data all the way to booster separation. On real, flight ready hardware. By an all-American team started right here in California using private funding from an already profitable all-American privately developed launch platform (the Falcon 9). This…

I don't disagree, but SLS has successfully flown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUiEdqcLg-k

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#674

Post by foota »

szoszon wrote: post #532
baq wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some parts are interchangeable. The countdown process needs optimization. There are things missing and things which shouldn’t be there. We’re talking about speed of loading propellant, density of it, etc. Then there’s software. So much software. And a million other things. Rockets are complex, launching them doubly so.

also, to test the software you don't need to launch the rocket, so I'm not sure why you even mention that..

Tell that to the mars climate orbiter: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#675

Post by mkaic »

skazazes wrote: post #663
mkaic wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they were hoping to possibly get a chance at soft-landing the Super Heavy Booster in the ocean, which might have allowed them to recover some stuff from it, but that was always viewed as a potential bonus, never a guarantee or even a primary goal.

The recovery teams goal was to sink the booster even if it touched down safely. Their plan was to quite literally shoot it with small-arms until it took on enough water to sink. This is a documented best-case outcome for the launch. There were no plans to recover anything other than data

Oh interesting, I wasn't aware! Thanks for sharing.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#676

Post by sixothree »

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…

[flagged]

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#677

Post by soperj »

samwillis wrote: post #498
soperj wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compleat Sorry, i've seen this spelling enough to now ask if this is a word that I don't know about or if it's just a mis-spelling of complete. Not trying to pick on you. I've had errors before, especially in space stuff (altitude & attitude).

Typo+iPhone+Dyslexia I usually edit my posts after posting (sometimes multiple times), I find going back and rereading them I always find errors. Will leave that mistake for prosperity and context. Dyslexia is both a gift and a curse, but only if you let it.

As far as typos go, this one has been very informative :)

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#678

Post by pixl97 »

jungturk wrote: post #564
smiley1437 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parable of the Pots - Quantity leads to quality https://austinkleon.com/2020/12/10/quantity-leads-to-quality... [A] ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he…

This parable elegantly explains how McDonald's came to offer the world's best hamburger.

Just remember that being best doesn't matter... being 'good enough' is.

McD's never tried to build the best burger, they built one of the best supply chains in the world.

SpaceX doesn't have to build the best rocket, in whatever that means, it just needs not to blow up and allow its cargo to reach space.

If you build lots or burgers or lots of rockets its highly likely you'll reach and pass 'good enough'.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#679

Post by physicles »

somenameforme wrote: post #82

One interesting observation here is how long it took the ship to get off the pad from the T-0 mark. This is undoubtedly because some of the raptors on it apparently failed to ignite. I thought they were about to make a mess on the launch pad! I'm also curious about what technically finally got it off the ground - was there a sufficient, but low, level of acceleration, was it a matter of reducing the rocket's mass (by…

The startup sequence is indeed longer than with most other rockets, but I don’t think that’s the reason.

5-6 engines were gone since very early in the flight, and for most of those I suspect that’s because they were damaged by debris from the pad. Everyday Astronaut’s live stream had a different camera angle on the rocket, and you could see it actually slide sideways away from the tower a bit in the first few seconds. Uneven thrust would explain that.

Elon said in the past that the rocket will leap off the pad (thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.5 or 1.6 iirc). But if you’re missing 20% of your engines, that ratio is ~1.2, or less than half the expected acceleration. A slow start indeed.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#680

Post by dr-detroit »

almost_usual wrote: post #598
vannevar wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was not an expected possibility. Interestingly, this post predicting exactly this kind of damage was flagged on HN just days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 I think it's unlikely that SpaceX wasn't aware of the damage that would be caused. They have a pretty good engineering team, and that aspect didn't involve an anomaly,…

I still don’t understand why that post was flagged so quickly.

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