SpaceX Starship test launch

[bashMOH]

Did anyone catch the launch? Here is the recording of the live broadcast starting at t-10 seconds. This thing is huge!

 

[TheGrumpyGuy]

Link no workie

 

[indyblue]

I've always wanted to see a launch in person. All these years I never got the opportunity to go see the shuttle launch. Now a bucket list item to go watch a launch of one of these.

 

[rhamersley]

Elon Musk's SpaceX Launches Starship Rocket, Suffers Mid-Flight Failure

Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its Starship rocket to space on Thursday, which suffered a mid-flight failure a few minutes into its flight.

www.breitbart.com

Probably why the link doesn't work any more...

 

[Pepi]

How many batteries are now floating in the Gulf lol

 

[tbhausen]

“Rapid unscheduled disassembly”… those commentators cracked me up!

 

[Ark]

It's amazing how slow it is in taking off from the sheer mass. It's significantly bigger than a Saturn V.

At around 30 seconds you can see an engine grenade and blow shrapnel out the side. Amazingly the booster just keeps on going. But, a couple engines die outright and others flicker and then fail. Maybe fuel lines or pumps damaged? But most of the engines survive and continue burning, which is really freakin impressive. Unfortunately the stack seems to go off balance and cannot correct.

Though it's at high enough altitude to not have significant aerodynamic stress, the stack impressively withstands that spin. This thing is built out of steel, it doesn't fold like paper the instant forces act on it outside the axis of thrust.

Obviously it's not equipped to do this for this test flight, but I think Starship could conceivably have aborted, decoupled from the booster, and flown itself back to the pad for a landing. Certainly a crew escape system would have worked, as well.

I thought they static fired the full engine cluster at some point, I'm surprised an engine blew like that. But the vehicle surviving it is darn impressive.

 

[bashMOH]

This link should work. Tried to get fancy with time-stamping it, lol

 

[bashMOH]

Elon Musk's SpaceX Launches Starship Rocket, Suffers Mid-Flight Failure

Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its Starship rocket to space on Thursday, which suffered a mid-flight failure a few minutes into its flight.

www.breitbart.com

Probably why the link doesn't work any more...

It was expected to blow up. This is an experimental rocket and this was the first time they had the full 33 engines firing at once

 

[bashMOH]

It's amazing how slow it is in taking off from the sheer mass. It's significantly bigger than a Saturn V.

At around 30 seconds you can see an engine grenade and blow shrapnel out the side. Amazingly the booster just keeps on going. But, a couple engines die outright and others flicker and then fail. Maybe fuel lines or pumps damaged? But most of the engines survive and continue burning, which is really freakin impressive. Unfortunately the stack seems to go off balance and cannot correct.

Though it's at high enough altitude to not have significant aerodynamic stress, the stack impressively withstands that spin. This thing is built out of steel, it doesn't fold like paper the instant forces act on it outside the axis of thrust.

Obviously it's not equipped to do this for this test flight, but I think Starship could conceivably have aborted, decoupled from the booster, and flown itself back to the pad for a landing. Certainly a crew escape system would have worked, as well.

I thought they static fired the full engine cluster at some point, I'm surprised an engine blew like that. But the vehicle surviving it is darn impressive.

Triple posting, but I didn't want a long post.

The announcers didn't state it well, but it was supposed to flip. I think they may have had a failure to light the second stage or there was some other separation failure. It entered and exited max-q without problems, I thought. Haven't dug into it much and I'm sure people much smarter than me have already theorized what went wrong.

I was impressed with how it handled engine failure as well. I think it had 6 out at one point, and still was able to get that far. The fact that it didn't rip apart the second it started tumbling blows my mind

 

[Ark]

Triple posting, but I didn't want a long post.

The announcers didn't state it well, but it was supposed to flip. I think they may have had a failure to light the second stage or there was some other separation failure. It entered and exited max-q without problems, I thought. Haven't dug into it much and I'm sure people much smarter than me have already theorized what went wrong.

I was impressed with how it handled engine failure as well. I think it had 6 out at one point, and still was able to get that far. The fact that it didn't rip apart the second it started tumbling blows my mind

My understanding was it was supposed to burn, separate, and the first stage flip and burn back for a soft water landing while Starship burned on for a single near complete orbit. The flip with Starship attached is clearly not intentional. It's behaving, hilariously, just like an unbalanced rocket in Kerbal Space Program.

The Starship upper stage is immensely heavy and stuffed with fuel. After most of the first stage propellent is burned off, it's like trying to balance a pencil on your fingertip... with a golf ball stuck to the eraser. You can gimbal the engines a little bit to correct, but if the stack and the thrust axis drift just a couple degrees it's as unrecoverable as that pencil tipping off your finger.

They held fire on the self destruct system for a long time and let it continue burning and tumbling. Going in circles, it probably didn't exit the general launch corridor, so they just let it run for data collection.

 

[Shadow01]

one of the pad pictures showing the destruction caused by 33 engines. They say the crater under the launch pad is very deep.

 

[Ark]

one of the pad pictures showing the destruction caused by 33 engines. They say the crater under the launch pad is very deep.

On STS-1 the big flap under the main engines got damaged, control surfaces were flexed, and some struts and tiles and stuff were damaged by the overpressure waves coming back from the SRB exhaust. That's why NASA built those giant water injectors into the launch pads for noise suppression.

I wonder if the thrust and noise damaged something. Although, in that one picture of the immediate liftoff, they all appear to be firing and do not begin failing until several seconds after the tower is clear. Honestly blasting THAT much thrust directly into flat concrete with no flame trench or water system is asking for damage, in retrospect.

 

[ditcherman]

I’ve never seen people so happy - giddy - over such a catastrophe “failure”.

Kinda hard to comprehend to me.

 

[bashMOH]

My understanding was it was supposed to burn, separate, and the first stage flip and burn back for a soft water landing while Starship burned on for a single near complete orbit. The flip with Starship attached is clearly not intentional. It's behaving, hilariously, just like an unbalanced rocket in Kerbal Space Program.

The Starship upper stage is immensely heavy and stuffed with fuel. After most of the first stage propellent is burned off, it's like trying to balance a pencil on your fingertip... with a golf ball stuck to the eraser. You can gimbal the engines a little bit to correct, but if the stack and the thrust axis drift just a couple degrees it's as unrecoverable as that pencil tipping off your finger.

They held fire on the self destruct system for a long time and let it continue burning and tumbling. Going in circles, it probably didn't exit the general launch corridor, so they just let it run for data collection.

Ah. I was under the impression that the boost back flip and separation happened at the same time. I know that's not how F9 does it, but this is a different vehicle.

I’ve never seen people so happy - giddy - over such a catastrophe “failure”.

Kinda hard to comprehend to me.

That's the thing. It wasn't a catastrophic failure. Expectations were that it would blow up basically on startup. It's going to be the most powerful rocket ever made, I think. Using an engine technology that hasn't been flown before. Add all that in with their development plan of build, launch, gather data, repeat and I don't think anyone expected it to get as far as it did. It didn't have a payload and was going to land in the ocean by Hawaii. Blowing up was in the plan

 

[ditcherman]

Ah. I was under the impression that the boost back flip and separation happened at the same time. I know that's not how F9 does it, but this is a different vehicle.

That's the thing. It wasn't a catastrophic failure. Expectations were that it would blow up basically on startup. It's going to be the most powerful rocket ever made, I think. Using an engine technology that hasn't been flown before. Add all that in with their development plan of build, launch, gather data, repeat and I don't think anyone expected it to get as far as it did. It didn't have a payload and was going to land in the ocean by Hawaii. Blowing up was in the plan

I get that it’s progress. But as a baling wire and duct tape kind of guy it’s just hard to comprehend.

ETA This was typed using Elon’s internet service…

 

[bashMOH]

I get that it’s progress. But as a baling wire and duct tape kind of guy it’s just hard to comprehend.

ETA This was typed using Elon’s internet service…

Lol I can't comprehend it either. I've been following them since about 2016 and each launch and landing still blows my mind. I guess I have a bit of a leg up because I work in computers, so try, break, fix is our motto

 

[Alamo]

On STS-1 the big flap under the main engines got damaged, control surfaces were flexed, and some struts and tiles and stuff were damaged by the overpressure waves coming back from the SRB exhaust. That's why NASA built those giant water injectors into the launch pads for noise suppression.

I wonder if the thrust and noise damaged something. Although, in that one picture of the immediate liftoff, they all appear to be firing and do not begin failing until several seconds after the tower is clear. Honestly blasting THAT much thrust directly into flat concrete with no flame trench or water system is asking for damage, in retrospect.

They have parts for a water deluge system, they just haven’t installed them yet. I suspect part of the thinking, was “let’s just see how big a hole the thing will dig and then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

A trench might be a problem. They were very close to the water and I suspect the water table is pretty close to the surface. I think the ones in Florida at the Kennedy space Center are actually raised platforms dirt with the trench cut through the middle of them, and then the whole thing concreted over.

Every single Apollo and shuttle launch caused damage to the pad. One of the shuttle missions blew 1500 fire bricks out of the flame diverter trench. I think the problem is not “how do you keep damage from happening” but “what’s the fastest way to fix this after launch so we have a good turnaround times”.

 

[bashMOH]

They have parts for a water deluge system, they just haven’t installed them yet. I suspect part of the thinking, was “let’s just see how big a hole the thing will dig and then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

A trench might be a problem. They were very close to the water and I suspect the water table is pretty close to the surface. I think the ones in Florida at the Kennedy space Center are actually raised platforms dirt with the trench cut through the middle of them, and then the whole thing concreted over.

Every single Apollo and shuttle launch caused damage to the pad. One of the shuttle missions blew 1500 fire bricks out of the flame diverter trench. I think the problem is not “how do you keep damage from happening” but “what’s the fastest way to fix this after launch so we have a good turnaround times”.

And some of their rational is they won't have any of these systems with mars and the moon. If your rocket needs those to launch, that means you need them on the first trip rather than after you've established something

 

[Alamo]

I thought they static fired the full engine cluster at some point, I'm surprised an engine blew like that. But the vehicle surviving it is darn impressive.

They test fired 33 engines on just the booster at half thrust a few weeks ago. One engine either quit or failed to light, and a corresponding engine on the opposite side shut itself down to equalize the thrust. Instead of making it perfect, they pressed ahead with the booster launch.

I think launching and clearing the tower was considered a win, and everything after that is gravy.