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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

#781

Post by lutorm »

bumby wrote: post #467
phkahler wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's look back at Star Hopper. SpaceX literally hired a company that builds water towers to build a prototype tank for Starship - and flew it! They were primarily trying to figure out how to build it, move it, etc. Obviously the risk tolerance was high. That's really the difference between them and say Boeing. SpaceX starts with higher risk tolerance just to figure out the lay of the land, but they start reducing th…

Alternative take: SpaceX is so new they don't know what they don't know. Take their example of a failed F9 strut, where the material supplied by a vendor didn't come close to meeting the necessary specs. A mature aersopace company would have processes in place to check the material for these specs before use. SpaceX has since levied these new process checks, but prior to that failure lots people may have pointed to t…

A mature aersopace company would have processes in place to check the material for these specs before use.

Would a "mature aerospace company" also know to not use O-rings outside the temperature range specified by its engineers? Or know to test whether foam traveling at high velocity would penetrate the TPS?

Look, this is hard stuff. It's very easy to tell when you screw up, but very difficult to tell how close you are to screwing up. You're deluding yourself if you think some entities are immune to screwing up just because they've been around.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#782

Post by holler »

dizzant wrote: post #777
holler wrote: post #684

For anyone curious here's my video from watching the launch live at Isla Vista park on South Padre Island. It's hard to state just how loud and insanely massive Starship is in general and compared to Falcon 9 (which I was fortunate to see launch twice recently). My bones shook and my ear drums felt like they might burst. Incredible experience watching and meeting people from far and wide. Highly recommend getting out…

Great video, thanks for sharing!

No problem!

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#783

Post by gpm »

s1k3s wrote: post #275
simondotau wrote: post #6

Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. Suggesting that this test “failed” is at best a mischaracterisation.

> Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. That's not what they said in their mission presentation though. It was supposed to launch, separate, return the booster back, then the rocket was supposed to orbit once around the Earth and then fall into the ocean. I understand people have their feelings invested into this (for whatever reason), but objectively speaking that was not what "success was defined…

It literally is what they said in their presentation. Repeatedly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI

@ 9:38 "We will consider any data inform and improve future builds of starship as a success. From a milestone our main goal is to clear the pad. Every milestone beyond that is a bonus."

@ 15:57 "We're focusing on the fundamental systems and operations, so that's the liftoff portion, but we are going to try and get some data on how the fins work..."

@ 35:26 "I want to remind everyone that success today is anything for today success is anything that helps improve the future builds of starship. If we lift off and clear the pad we're calling that a win."

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#784

Post by adastra22 »

bob1029 wrote: post #425
mhandley wrote: post #332

I'm really interested to see the hole it dug under the launch mount. The NASA SpaceFlight van took a direct hit from a fast moving chunk of concrete. https://twitter.com/JerryPikePhoto/status/164905272269878477... https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649053476276797440 Edit: it really did dig a crater (this was flat concrete under the pad before): https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649062784167030785

I wonder if this was expected or not. This video immediately comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMbUeO4iGhY (Why SpaceX Cares about Concrete) This probably explains why some of the engines didn't make it off the pad. That is some incredible damage.

Depends on what you mean by "expected." It was absolutely not supposed to happen, although a lot of people in the industry have been shouting "we have flame trenches for a reason!"

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#785

Post by ge96 »

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…

yeah it's sad so much hate

first time in a long time a rocket of this scale (number of engines) since N1 has been made

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#786

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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…

I think the thing that a lot of people are still stuck at is the NASA attitude of "we've spent a lot of money on this already, we Need to make sure it works first try".

Whereas SpaceX is more like Kerbal Space Program in that if it blows up, at least you're having fun.

And while they had some failures early on with their early rockets, the Falcon 9 is now a very reliable craft that's done dozens of successful missions, successful recoveries (which I think they still consider a bonus rather than a goal) and re-uses, and a streamlined launch process, which has become more economic - and possibly profitable - over time.

I will add "possibly" profitable though, given that it feels like the majority of their launches is for their own Starlink project, which is costing them billions - but it's a project to ensure use and reuse of their rockets, instead of the company going stale waiting for customers.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#787

Post by rob74 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #757
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 think it's unlikely that SpaceX wasn't aware of the damage that would be caused. "SpaceX" isn't a unified mind. It's not even a hivemind, no company is. We keep saying "company knew about X", but it's a such a mischaracterization of how companies, or any group of humans, work. Yes, some people in the company might have known it, but for various reasons, be it poor communication, mistaken assumptions, willful igno…

Or maybe they estimated the chances of the launch pad being entirely obliterated during the launch attempt as pretty high and didn't want to invest more money into it than absolutely necessary?

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#788

Post by wkat4242 »

j16sdiz wrote: post #645
wkat4242 wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting article. He doesn't really speak of a large hole in the ground and huge chunks of debris flying around though. More of the effects of the heat and sound energy on wildlife which is not quite as obvious. He raises some good points indeed, not sure why it was flagged at all.

Given what have happened in the past few years, we (as a whole) are less tolerant to alternative ideas. IMO, we (as a whole) should spend less time spreading ANY information online, use more time to think before speak

> IMO, we (as a whole) should spend less time spreading ANY information online, use more time to think before speak

When it comes to insensitive tweets vomited out over the internet I totally agree. Though even those of us more considerate can contribute to this by simply not following people who do that. I'm personally not even using Twitter at all and I never did even before Musk took it over. I find the signal/noise ratio way too low there and anything really interesting there makes Hacker News anyway. But anyway that's a tangent.

So, if you read something that really makes you think: "Wow that's really an insensitive hot take", just block the person from your feeds, no matter who they are. Especially if it's not the first time. Makes your life a lot more relaxing. And it's more effective than wishing that haters are gonna stop hating.

However this particular article was thoughtful and came with a lot of explanations, diagrams and source links. It was pretty hard criticism of SpaceX and the FAA but it was not agressive or flaming. To me it seems pretty well thought out and it gives balance to a complex story by showing a side to it I wasn't aware of yet. Not saying the story itself is balanced, but it gives balance to the other media which are overwhelmingly positive and don't cover the ecological side at all.

In other words, this is not the thing that should be cut from being spread online, in my opinion.

The author has clearly written about this before but that doesn't necessarily invalidate them or make them biased. They can also simply be right and been ignored so they keep writing about it. When you 'go fast and break things' it's important to consider the things you are breaking, even if they are not very obvious. One of the questions that comes to my mind is: "Why is this thing even in the middle of protected habitats?"

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#789

Post by double0jimb0 »

mrandish wrote: post #731
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,…

There were multiple unexpected "energetic events" seen by observers apparently due to some of the engines failing around liftoff. These "energetic events" could have contributed to greater than expected downward force under the launchpad. If correct, it seems positive that the excess energy was directed downward still permitting the liftoff. That the ship was able to continue the flight through Max-Q and up to MECO a…

From the launch commentary, the rocket is designed to do a 180 at that altitude for the separation event. So a couple extra rotations isn’t going to hurt anything. Additionally, air density at 100k ft is ~1/80th of sea level, which helps.

Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

#790

Post by adastra22 »

fabian2k wrote: post #202
mcculley wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad." I am confused. Everything I read before the launch said that it was intended to reach orbital altitude and make it around the Earth.

This is a bit of spin by SpaceX. Blowing up the pad would be a serious failure and would be a large and costly setback. But they obviously didn't achieve the goal of the test flight here. It is a test flight, so it's not a complete failure and not entirely unexpected. But it's not a full success either, significant parts that were planned to be tested could not be tested because the rocket failed early.

For the record, they did blow up the pad.
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