> At liftoff, the rocket kicked up huge plumes of sand and dust around the pad. In Port Isabel, about 10 miles (6 kilometers)
Oh come on, AP
SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
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Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#902Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect SpaceX will have to add something resembling an escape system before the thing gets "man-rated". That system could also be used to protect the passengers in case of a failed landing. It will add weight and thus lower the carrying capacity but they seem to have enough margin to allow for such an addition. They already have the header tanks in the top of Starship, adding a number of escape engines and some ex…
Something like the B-58's armored escape capsule, perhaps. Each seat had an armored capsule that could close up, including oxygen and steering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule
I was thinking more in terms of the B-1 crew escape capsule [1] consisting of the whole cockpit equipped with rocket engines and parachutes to push it away from the plane and allowing it to land in one piece. The same could be done with the top of Starship, the part above the fuel tanks.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#903According to https://www.metaculus.com/questions/14270/spacex-starship-or... its chances to reach orbit in 2023 have just risen from 85% to 90%. Therefore generally I would call the launch a relative success.
It looks like it has dropped 4% over the last week, so while the monthly trend is upwards, I'm not sure this launch, or the scrub a few days ago, have improved things.
Worth also noting that Elon "chronically overoptimistic" Musk said 80% himself, suggesting that Metaculus is too optimistic here.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#904Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am generalizing but a lot of the space community and certainly a lot of SpaceX fans were deriding the several scrubbed launches of SLS/Artemis. I am not suggesting that it’s the exact same people, and the context for each vehicle is very different. Nevertheless both the SpaceX and NASA approaches to this are valid engineering approaches. Whether this particular failed launch is a long term success remains to be see…
NASA approach cost 20 billion $ at least and has a per launch cost of 4-5 billion $ going forward. They didn't develop new engines and is mostly based on legacy avionics. There really isn't a comparison in those terms. If SpaceX spends the next 10 years and another 10 billion $ on Starship. It would still be far superior to SLS. > maybe the NASA approach of get it right first is the way to go when it comes to space f…
Starship is the reason why SLS and Orion should be cancelled immediately.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#905Earlier quoted context omitted.
What provoked this response? The headline makes no assertions about success or failure. It is extremely literally a description of what occurred. It’s one thing to feel defensive about a misleading headline. This is just fanboyism.
There are, of course, multiple ways to describe any situation in a literally accurate way. A canonical example is "glass half empty" vs "glass half full". If a glass is expected to be at one tenth of its capacity, but then, by surprise, it is found to be at one half of its capacity, then it is a bit odd to write the headline "Glass Half Empty". We would instead expect something like "Glass Half Full by Surprise", or…
Sure that's fair. Some discussion in a sibling comment chain clears this up.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#906Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like the author was closer to the truth that HN gave him credit for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thA8jlgcJ-8
the wide angle makes it look a lot further away from the rocket than they really were - The camera is about 440m away from the rocket. The damage shown in the video appears to be entirely caused by debris while the article was suggesting possible property damage ("shattered glass and damaged foundations ... from a miscalculated sonic blast") to towns 8500m away - 20 times further
Wow! You can see the chunk nail the corner of the NASASpaceflight stream van (on the left of the frame) at 0:15.
Unlucky hit! But I guess lucky it missed the camera gear.
The team was chuckling on the stream about how they opened the vehicle windows for airflow to the electronics gear inside... but SpaceX helped them open it even more.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#907Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, the two untested things were stage zero (all the new ground infrastructure) and stage one (booster). I think it's clear one of their biggest lessons is that the construction of the launch mount is wrong, and it REALY needs a flame diverter. Take a look at this photo: https://mobile.twitter.com/LabPadre/status/16490627841670307... That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was…
>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,…
no one thats been following the test campaign for Super Heavy is surprised by the damage. the damage to the pad has been documented after the 3, 14, and 33 engine Static fires in the run up to launch. I believe they said SpaceX has been experimenting with different concrete formulations in the repairs after each static fire. There has also been photos of what appears to be flame diverters on site at Starbase, and I think they have even done a crude test fit of them under the OLM at some point recently.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#908Went POOOFH faster than twitter, but much less entertaining.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#909I continue to think that this is cool stuff, while being very, very dismayed by what he's doing with Twitter. I don't understand what the attraction of the latter is for someone with the wherewithal to work on spaceships.
He has released a lot of "Twitter files" data regarding highly questionable FBI interference and things like Twitter Trends manipulation in the past. And he has released large parts of the recommendation algorithm. And there is now a tab "following" which only shows you the tweets of the people you follow. And most importantly, free speech seems to be upheld much better than in the past, where people got blocked for extremely questionable reasons.
So all-in-all, he seems to be doing great. The one thing that is worse is that replies show now mostly people with blue checkmark instead of tweets with a lot of likes or followers.
Re: SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
#910Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, the two untested things were stage zero (all the new ground infrastructure) and stage one (booster). I think it's clear one of their biggest lessons is that the construction of the launch mount is wrong, and it REALY needs a flame diverter. Take a look at this photo: https://mobile.twitter.com/LabPadre/status/16490627841670307... That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was…
>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,…
Why do things like this get flagged? Who decides which topics aren’t allowed for discussion on HB