SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
He certainly didn’t have to be all anti-Semitic to deflect attention from this failure. It’s telling.
And he wasn’t! He was all white power just by hisself.
Alright, let me clear something up.
This is literally rocket science. The process to put humans into space is literally done this way, for this exact reason. They had two key primary objectives for this launch:
- Successful ignition and control of 33 raptor engines in first stage.
- Successful hot separation into second stage.
The first stage separated entirely and gained plenty of distance before it did explode.
The second stage flew for several minutes before the automated emergency flight termination kicked in and destroyed it.
All of the data that they were recording will pinpoint the failures in the return of the first stage, and the destruction in the second stage. They would not have that data if they did not do this test and nothing went wrong.
All of the data that they were recording will pinpoint the failures
Do they need data like last time with the launch pad? Where it was clear that it will desintegrate? Did that give them additional insights into how the engines react to debris doing back into them? Was that the goal all along?
Seriously, they are iterating, sure. But we already know they ignore known problems. So it is not like every explosion is necessary or helps in any way.
I’m not a rocket scientist, but I research complex systems. Failure is the best way to improve something, even if you know it’s going to fail, you want to see how and what are the repercussions. I’ve done so many experiments that I knew were doomed, but I still have to do them just because I wanted to see how the system is would react.
Not a fan boy of Elon by the way, not trying to defend him or anything.
That was really non of that. It was predictable that and how it would fail. NASA etc. solved that issue decades ago. It also created new issues, like the (protected) water table being affected. All because he wanted a certain date and cheap out.
deleted by creator
Primary objective was to get further than last time, which they absolutely did. Not only were all the engines reliable for their first burn, they tested a successful hot separation, in flight ignition, and effective flight termination system. All of this was on top of the achievements they made last time and allowed Starship to reach space for the first time, making it reach past the N1 in only two attempts.
It was a great success.
PS. No it did not explode in orbit. The actual rocket scientists did think about this you know. The flight plan featured a suborbital track, and it splashed down safely in the ocean somewhere along it’s predicted path at most about an hour after launch.
deleted by creator
You’re either a malicious troll or completely uninformed. A landing sequence was never planned for this test nor the one before it. Even if they met all their stretch goals, both stages would have crashed into the ocean, just in a different location from what ended up happening. The goals haven’t changed, you just assumed that they were something they were not.
deleted by creator
People here are conflating progress with space flight with Elon musk. Like yeah Elon musk sucks, but frankly, progress in space flight is cool. It is a good thing that space x exists because it is on one of the frontiers of science.
As for this flight, like yeah of course it would be cool if they could just know that their designs would work on the first flight up, but that’s not how science works. This was a test. They learned from the test. Next time they will improve and make more progress.
One day that progress will take us to Mars. That is cool not because musk wants to go to Mars - it is cool because humans going to Mars is freakin amazing and an incredible achievement.
It weirds me out how many people want to get a brain implant done by a company of this guy
It would be very weird, if we could verify they weren’t shills or bots. Insane and desperate people. It was only “interesting” years ago, before he exposed himself as a fraud (and tortured animals during failed testing).
so how many?
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
While the mission was similar in thrust profile to an orbital one, it was not an orbital mission. The vehicle broke down and landed about an hour after launch.
You do realize that SpaceX is (currently) the only manufacturer that’s trying not to dump their rockets into the ocean (or wilderness/villages in the case of Russia and China respectively), right?
deleted by creator
Not really. If anything, starship will be the most environmentally friendly space vehicle when it’s done. It runs on methalox which can be produced from CO2 and water. As long as the energy source is renewable, it can be 100% carbon neutral as a fuel. Since they’re planning to refuel in Mars, which has no fossil fuels, developing the technology isn’t really a choice. They have to do it either way.
how nice for mexico
Wow. Was not expecting that from the rocket.
Here’s the everyday astronaut livestream of the launch: https://www.youtube.com/live/6na40SqzYnU?t=27150
Haha good, fuck that fascist piglet.
lol: “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly”. That’s one way to describe it!
Look, I really want to like SpaceX and enjoy all their successes and so on.
But it’s just not. going. to. happen. And they know why. This isn’t complicated.
deleted by creator
eh… it looks like hot-staging still has some bugs to work out, but the 2nd stage worked just fine (and since that’s the part that matters, the end fate of the first stage is irrelevant)
good test all in all
What bugs? At this point we don’t have an explanation for the first-stage RUD, looking at the overlay it seems there were issues re-lighting the Raptors which could be for any reason.
From what I saw, the hot-staging went perfectly with the RUD happening when the ship was already in space.
There’s no shame in highlighting what went right and still acknowledging what went terribly wrong.
Censoring the latter prevents improvements. No need for fanboyism.
On test flights, having something go terribly wrong is expected. This is the second test flight of a brand new vehicle system which also happens to be the largest and most complicated vehicle ever made. They also have half a dozen more vehicles already made and waiting to fly, each with improvements learned in manufacturing the previous one. They are behind their original schedule, for sure, but this mission was a huge success for SpaceX considering all of the things that did work.
So, actually kinda successful.
deleted by creator
It blew up about 3000 km/hr short of orbit, so thankfully all of it has burned up in Earth’s atmosphere already :)
Actually kinda really successful 👍 All 33 engines were firing, the hot staging was successful. On both the first and second stages, it looks like the automatic FTS (flight termination system) was triggered. That would happen if it veered too far off of it’s approved flight path (don’t need it coming down over a populated region.) The only thing that didn’t happen that I was hopeful for was atmospheric re-entry - we really need to see how that heat shield works in practice.
If the stage exploded due to the hot staging change, perhaps it won’t count as a success. But it’s too early to tell either way
Looked to me like the hot staging plus flip maneuver sent the 1st stage into a slow spin it couldn’t recover from using the ullage gas thrusters.
A user in another thread pointed out that during relight, not all engines lit, and the ones that did started going back out.
Scott Manley suggested the hot-stage combined with the fast flip maneuver may have caused fuel to slosh away from the intakes in the tank, leading to ingestion of gas bubbles in the fuel lines. Those would have damaged or destroyed engines as they worked their way into the turbo pumps, leading to the progressive engine-outs seen on the stream before the eventual catastrophic failure of the booster.
I’m guessing they wanted to show the FTS works really good now and terminates at the first sign of something wrong. Last time it was doing those flips for quite a while.
Maybe. I would think the best FTS is the one not used ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If i had a nickel for every time this happened to me in KBS…
Explosion at T+03:20
To late for Indipendence Day, to early for New Year - But what a splendid fireworks!
