Starship maybe about to go up

I'd want the one least likely to blow up. For the entire history of rocketry to this point, that's NOT one that's been used repeatedly. We'll see if they can change that.

But, oh by the way, the last one they used, blew up.

Fair enough. The reentry part was the problem, the landings were never an issue. The heat tiles couldn't hold up to repeated reentries.

Do we know what caused the last one to explode yet?

And NASA will process data as it gets it. Considering this thread is about a mission that went wrong, no matter what BS spin Musk is lying about, that data has to be incorporated as well.

Remember, it was supposed to separate and have a 90 minute flight.

They already have changed that. There have been 161 launches of reused F9 first stages with 0 failures.

Starship? Yeah it absolutely did fail, on the first flight.

They lost two Starlink missions in a row as they crash landed and exploded. If you want to count a reusable booster a success, it needs to be intact the next time you want to reuse it. Yes, both of these explosions were after the engines had been used before and refurbished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches#F9-083

They've tested Starship before - it blew up that time too. This is the first time it was totally assembled, but not the first time they've tried to launch and recover the heavy booster.



Regardless, I think we can both agree that unmanned tests without payloads are not the same thing as actual use. It's literally still in the testing stages. Of course there are going to be more problems during this time period until they work out the necessary issues. Falcon-9 blew up several times during testing as well. They didn't let the 747 fly passengers until it completed safety testing either, per your previous analogy.

Oh, and NASA has pulled the plug on future tests until it can be proven to be safe.

They didn't lose the Starlink missions, both those you linked successfully completed the primary mission and they just didn't manage to recover the booster after.

I feel like the subject changed and we're talking past each other? The initial assertion seemed to be that reusing boosters was more unsafe than not doing so. The fact that occasionally still recovery fails doesn't demonstrate that, it just means that occasionally the reused boosters are only as successful as new ones.

I certainly wouldn't trust my life on a propulsive landing versus parachutes based on the occasional landing failures to date, is that what you're referring to rather than the reused aspect?

1. This was the first time that either this particular booster or Starship had flown, so not sure how it's relevant to reuse.

2. Your assertion is false in a couple of ways. This was the first time that they had tried to launch the Super Heavy booster, and they also had no plans to recover it on this launch even in the best case scenario.

For sure, anyone who would climb onboard a Starship before it has successfully flown is literally insane and inviting death, but again that seems to have little to do with the safety of reused rockets versus their first flight.

What plug on what tests?

Not a rocket scientist but this seems bad:



https://twitter.com/unrocket/status/1649425500526329863

Check out 13 seconds on from this launch video, but look at the ocean, not the rocket.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1649097087248891904?t=6ZDXU-7J8zb6eg20IGQQ1Q&s=19

More people coming out and explicitly saying that the lack of a flame diverter was an Elon call. Given the environmental approvals they have to work with in the area and the amount of repair/rebuild work required it's quite possible that they may never launch again from Boca Chica.

No, but if it’d been a capsule or lander, even one the size of a shuttle, the heat shield would have been a lot easier to replace. There were basically no interchangeable heat shield tiles on the shuttle. 23400 tiles and each one had to be sculpted to a particular shape and put in exactly the right spot in order to maintain its aerodynamic properties. Plus the shape required by the ability to land at the meant that it had to be attached radially to the fuel tanks, which led (in combination with the substitution of insulating foam for insulating (but environmentally unfriendly) paint) to the loss of Columbia. Something like 85 or 90% of the Starship heat shield tiles are interchangeable.

Starship/SuperHeavy? Loss of hydraulic power caused the stages not to separate, so they activated the flight termination system.

Supposed to, yes. All they NEEDED to do was get away from the mount, which they did.

What are you talking about? They'd never launched the SuperHeavy until yesterday. They tested several Starship prototypes up to 12.5 km, the last 2 of which succeeded in landing.

That's Starship, not SuperHeavy.

Are we reading the same news? NASA's been nothing but congratulatory. https://www.space.com/nasa-hails-1st-spacex-starship-launch-april-2023

I wonder if any of the engines out were caused by concrete jumping up and smashing into engine bells.

Good news from more footage: it looks like Starship might have lost as few as 10 tiles on launch rather than shaking a large fraction off. Bad news: the upper side of the exhaust flame looks pretty, shall we say, engine-rich. The lower, pinker, more transparent side is what a methalox flame is supposed to look like. The oranger, brighter flame is a sign of other things burning. Since it's not green, it's probably not the chambers burning, but it's something with a lot more carbon than oxygen. And that doesn't make sense when the oxygen tanks were emptying faster than the methane tanks.

Steel plate? I'm skeptical, but no question that's innovative if it works. 1-2 months in Elon time means 3-4 though.

Damn.

Good.

Both really. Perhaps it's my bias working in the tech industry - refurbished is never as good as new. Once the initial tests are done and you have a stable platform you are increasing your chances of problems, both due to the nature of the universe being entropic, and the fact that if you are requiring human intervention to fix problems then you have additional points of failure.

Seems pretty obvious to me.

It's not particularly relevant period as this is testing, it was just a statement of fact that seemed to contradict your previous statements.

Well, you did make the assertion that this was Starships first flight, so...

But I think we were both having a bit of fun and being flippant. I still would feel much safer on a rocket that was recently manufactured as opposed to one on it's tenth reuse, once the design was successfully tested and the final design approved.

The 2nd Starlink recovery failure was due to a hole in a heat shield thought to be caused by fatigue. It was a mechanical failure that wasn't caught by the refurbishment process.

I misremembered. It was the FAA.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/20/spacex-starship-explode-elon-musk-00093042

I think it is more the dilbert principle. There seems to be some science for science sake missions out there, and they seem to be more able to refurbish items, and know when to make new. Elon obviously has too much stupid management and pitch people in all of his companies. Part of his style of ownership is to prioritize image over value and quality, and that is why he is poison to anything he touches.

Elon is the capitalist jaba the hut, but he has no marketing, no pitch people. He just does stuff and the market decides based on performance.

He has a problem over promising timelines but constantly delivers systems that work and people want.

Falcon has revolutionized the industry. So has Tesla. Starlink is aiming to.

I'm interested in what sense Jabba was never a capitalist.

Yeah, really, Hutts are basically more bloodthirsty Ferengi.

Grounded, but they didn’t revoke the launch license. It’s immaterial, their investigation will be completed long before SpaceX can launch SuperHeavy from Boca Chica again.

It doesn’t matter how dumb Elon Musk is. Outside of Jeff Besos, he’s the only one doing this. If he buys and sells enough Shiba Inu coin, he’ll finance another space run. Even an idiot learns something new if they do it enough. Even though you would probably succeed after two turns, do you have 48 billion dollars?

Wow. That’s some heavy handed broad brushing there. I suppose next you’ll say all Italians are less bloodthirsty Ferengi.

If I had 48 billion dollars I would probably find much better ways to spend it here on earth rather than seeking some sort of rich guy fame by blowing up dick ships trying to get expensive space rocks. but my dad didn't steal emeralds from black people in south africa so I could play world's richest dumbass with Donald trump and the people on twitter.

I recently saw Super Mario Brothers, so... yeah?

Botched SpaceX Starship Launch Leaves Texas Town Covered in Debris and Dust

Yeah, he's not launching any time soon because some of that debris was from the rocket, not just shit on the ground that got blown all over the place. That's not going to sit well with the FAA, regardless of what gets done on the ground.

Not having proper mitigation for launch exhaust is criminal. This isn't new. The damage they sustained looks like he's not listening to his engineers.

Has he jumped the shark? A year ago NASA requested additional proposals for the moon lander. Starship seems like overkill to land a few people and loft them back up to lunar orbit.

Maybe fuck around and find out is not the genius scientific development tool all the elon fluffers are making it out to be? We don't want every dumbass with some money trying to blow things up into space and we should not be calling this a success at all.

The only development that should come from this is some safety regulations on space-X and some fines to pay for the damages.

Elon hasn't so much jumped the shark as stuck his own dick in the sharks mouth repeatedly.

Lunar Starship is much bigger than the initial minimum specs NASA laid out, but if it works out, the extra capacity will be useful. That it got chosen is more a testament to how bad the other proposals were.