[HN Gopher] Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
___________________________________________________________________
Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time
Author : BenoitP
Score : 373 points
Date : 2023-11-18 09:11 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spacex.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spacex.com)
| BenoitP wrote:
| When (launch window opening)
|
| * 4 hours from now
|
| * 5 AM Pacific Time
|
| * 7 AM Central Time (local)
|
| * 8 AM Eastern Time
|
| * 2 PM Central European Time
|
| Live Media
|
| * Official yet channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceX
|
| * Labpadre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIJTeeZj7k4
|
| * NASASpaceflight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg
|
| * EverydayAstronaut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6na40SqzYnU
|
| * TheLaunchPad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0preOnsuo4
|
| * TechniquesSpatiales(FR):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI4cKoSD-Jg
|
| Ressources
|
| * Mission sheet:
| https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
|
| * Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18pCXD709TI
|
| * https://x.com/SpaceX
|
| * https://x.com/elonmusk
|
| * https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/17uyblj/rspacex_int...
| _Microft wrote:
| The SpaceX website also includes a live stream but it seems to
| be broadcast via Twitter:
|
| https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
|
| Edit: this stream works without having to login to Twitter
| gus_massa wrote:
| Does it requieres a X(exTwitter) account? I'm going to miss
| it. :(
| 0xcoffee wrote:
| I would recommend using the Nasa link posted above, since
| it's on Youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOI35G7cP7o
| schiffern wrote:
| > the Nasa link
|
| *NASASpaceflight
|
| NASASpaceflight.com (and their Youtube channel) has no
| affiliation with NASA.
| Y-bar wrote:
| All these years I thought it was an official channel.
| When I first saw their logo it also reminded me of
| National Science Foundation that just cemented my (now
| corrected) belief.
| alright2565 wrote:
| When I first saw this branding, I was also confused.
|
| It's extremely sketchy, and I wish NASA would do
| something to protect their trademark.
| gliptic wrote:
| It's not NASA, but an independent group. There are
| others, like Everyday Astronaut.
| Prickle wrote:
| I am watching it here: https://www.youtube.com/live/6na40Sq
| zYnU?si=t8iwk8rO3lAtF6wj
|
| Everyday Astronaut on youtube.
| bradfa wrote:
| Thanks! I had started watching what I thought was the
| SpaceX live stream on YouTube but turned out just before
| launch to switch itself into some computer generated
| video of a fake Elon trying to scam people about crypto.
| Ended up switching to the Everyday Astronaut stream to
| watch.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Their commenting be like:
|
| Oh my god!
|
| Oh my god!
|
| Oh my god!
|
| Oh my god!
|
| Oh my god!
| franzb wrote:
| Indeed, absolutely unbearable.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Their commenting be like
|
| Their commenting _is_ like.
|
| Otherwise, I agree.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Normally I wouldn't do this, but since you were downvoted
| without explanation:
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=be%20like
| gedy wrote:
| I am watching without a Xitter account:
|
| https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship
| -...
| nkingsy wrote:
| In my head, the X is pronounced "sh"
| stavros wrote:
| 1 PM UTC, for those looking for the one universal time
| reference.
| mnsc wrote:
| PM? Part milliliter?
| stavros wrote:
| Post meridiem.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Milli- is "m" and "M" is mega-. You'll be off by 9 orders
| of magnitude if you confuse the two.
| capableweb wrote:
| But keyboard wise, it's just holding down shift vs not
| holding down shift when typing. The difference in real
| life between m and M is less than you think :)
| euroderf wrote:
| Fortnights? Check. Furlongs? Oops.
| Asraelite wrote:
| Providing Central European Time but not UTC/GMT is really
| weird
| stavros wrote:
| Providing any second timezone but not UTC/GMT is really
| weird. I don't want to have to figure out what other
| countries are doing with their daylight savings, just give
| me UTC and I'll know my current offset.
| qwertox wrote:
| Exactly my thought.
|
| But the real issue is why don't have browsers an integrated
| way of doing these computations by reading some HTML tags
| and also providing input widgets to make sure that it is
| universally readable by machines. Like <datetime
| ts="1700310507" ref-tz="Europe/Amsterdam" /> (if the
| event's timezone is Europe/Amsterdam, only for
| informational purposes)
| HPsquared wrote:
| Yeah... Windows 95 did it, why not the modern web
| browser?
| MalcolmDwyer wrote:
| JavaScript language and browsers have tons of facilities
| for dealing with date times in sensible ways, including
| displaying a `Date` object in the local time zone and
| local preferred formatting.
|
| SpaceX designed their page to display specific time zones
| for whatever reason.
| eqvinox wrote:
| 1700312400 in Unix time ;D
| BenoitP wrote:
| Seems like the link I posted does not work well. Here is the
| broadcast link after login redirect:
|
| https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| @dang: can you please fix the link? It's supposed to be
| https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB
| BenoitP wrote:
| I recreated a thread here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38318763
|
| But it is marked as dupe (HN seems to have already queried it
| and classified as broken link)
| capableweb wrote:
| Maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg
| (NASASpaceflight) would be better, as it's accessible without
| any login-wall and doesn't require creating an account to view.
| eddyg wrote:
| That's third-party/unofficial (and unaffiliated with NASA,
| despite the name) coverage. AFAIK they do not have access to
| all the cameras/drones/animations that the "real" SpaceX
| coverage does.
| capableweb wrote:
| Isn't it better that there is any feeds, than none? The
| Twitter/X link is not accessible for people outside the
| platform...
| eddyg wrote:
| Can't you watch it here without an account? https://www.s
| pacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
| capableweb wrote:
| That seems to work perfectly fine and the ideal
| submission link then, straight from the source and no
| login required.
| shkkmo wrote:
| You can watch it directly on spacex without logging in to
| X
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Please. We (everyone I know) hates the login requirement.
| Switch to YouTube or whatever
| (https://invidious.io.lol/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg) and make it a
| 0-hassle, 1-click affair.
| lenocinor wrote:
| @dang is a no-op. Email at hn@ycombinator.com if you want to
| reach the mods.
| _joel wrote:
| Send it!
| eddyg wrote:
| If you want to watch it on your iPhone in PIP, open the link in a
| browser like Firefox Focus and you can continue to read HN. :)
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| A picture of the flight path
|
| https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi...
|
| (taken from this website:
| https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2023/11/new-starship-launch...)
|
| ____
|
| In animation form:
|
| https://twitter.com/spencertetik/status/1725769578544803975
| panick21_ wrote:
| Thanks. Cool to see the whole path.
| mechhacker wrote:
| So they are trying a boostback. Are they going to try to land
| it or?
|
| NVM they said they were just going to let it splash.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Ideally they wanted the booster to touch down on the ocean.
| runesoerensen wrote:
| Link should be updated to
| https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1725637151176659003 or
| https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
| (no login required)
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now. Thanks!
|
| (Submitted URL was
| https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB but our software
| got caught in a redirect to a login.)
| BenoitP wrote:
| There's a direct media stream that VLC can open (with network
| stream):
|
| https://prod-ec-us-west-2.video.pscp.tv/Transcoding/v1/hls/O...
|
| ----
|
| Much better quality, slightly better latency. Seems like it comes
| from the Periscope transcoding infrastructure. Found it on reddit
| here:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/17uyblj/rspacex_int...
| panick21_ wrote:
| That's nice.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Fantastic, much better quality. Thank you.
|
| For those who almost never use VLC (like me), don't download
| and then open the file. Instead open VLC, Update it from its
| ancient version, and then File, Open Network Stream, paste in
|
| https://prod-ec-us-west-2.video.pscp.tv/Transcoding/v1/hls/O...
|
| then click Play. Enjoy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It'll open natively in Safari too.
| dankle wrote:
| Not mobile safari.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Worked on my iPhone 12 Pro ios17.1.1. My apologies if it
| doesn't work for others, stock config.
| a1o wrote:
| My iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 17 shows a Play button crossed
| with a line in gray over a black background instead of
| loading, on Safari. Is there something else I need to do
| for it to work there?
| ksdnjweusdnkl21 wrote:
| Thanks! Watching with mpv.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Fwiw mpv would also open the normal twitter link, thanks to
| yt-dlp
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > Seems like it comes from the Periscope transcoding
| infrastructure.
|
| It's literally from Twitter livestream; they are just re-
| skinned Periscope.
|
| You can even replace highlatency to lowlatency for better
| latency.
| XorNot wrote:
| Too late now, but this also worked for streaming to Chromecast
| via VLC (which worked seamlessly from my Linux PC by just
| hitting Playback -> Renderer -> <my chromecast> and then
| opening it.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| 404 - NOT FOUND
| panick21_ wrote:
| Its over ...
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Yeah I realized that right after posting. Looks like I got
| confused with the timezone, I expected it to be one hour
| later.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I recommend using an app that tracks that for you. I use
| SpaceXNow.
| Permik wrote:
| As expected, the launch is now complete. I won't spoil the
| results :D
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well, neither is the rocket.
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| More of a 500 class error on the rocket however.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Try / Catch / Explode.
|
| Edit: This is basically how automated FTS works, folks.
| Follow parameters of the flight, and if an "exception"
| occurs, solve the situation by exploding the rocket over
| a safe spot, before it veers too much off course.
| andrepd wrote:
| Imagine if the standard was this, a link that is opened by a
| native media player, rather than 14MB of js for a shitty
| stuttering inconsistent mess.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Stayed up all night looking forward to this. Fingers crossed for
| success on hotstaging - I think that's what everyone is most
| worried about. I read that due to the continuous thrust with
| hotstaging they can carry more payload with that design, rather
| than losing upward momentum during stage separation.
|
| Gosh this is exciting.
|
| Oblig, I can't wait until these are happening every day!!
| mechhacker wrote:
| I'm hoping that this one makes the 2nd stage partial (or full?)
| orbit. This thing is a gamechanger.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Looks like they terminated the flight. I honestly thought they
| were going to make it and get reentry data.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Reaching true orbit wasn't in the plan for the test. Seems like
| they got close to their plan, but something went wrong.
| BenoitP wrote:
| SpaceX on Twitter: "T-40 seconds and holding. This is a planned
| hold. Teams are using this time for final checks. All systems
| continue to look good for today's flight test"
| _ikke_ wrote:
| Lift-off
| michaelmarion wrote:
| ...THAT was a big explosion.
| mechhacker wrote:
| Yeah that was nuts
| geocrasher wrote:
| Can't wait to see the high quality images and video from that.
| Wow.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Everyone who does special effects for science fiction movies
| should watch that explosion.
| regularfry wrote:
| They did not go to space today. But they got REALLY CLOSE.
| lutorm wrote:
| They actually went well into space, given the conventional
| boundary of 100km.
| panick21_ wrote:
| The rocket was mostly empty, so it wasn't all that powerful.
| Imagine the power if it explodes fully tanked.
| mechhacker wrote:
| 1st stage turned around then exploded. Second stage is doing well
| so far.
|
| Edit had the second sentence wrong
| geocrasher wrote:
| And the fact that it survived long enough for the second stage
| to get on its way was incredible in itself. We'll see how it
| goes!
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Both the booster and ship have been destroyed. SpaceX can
| keep claiming these RUDs are 'fine' and 'we're getting data',
| but the rest of the industry does not consider it normal or a
| "success."
|
| Hotstaging didn't "work" until they can demonstrate the
| Starship vehicle survives orbital insertion, re-entry, and
| landing without damage or malfunction caused by the
| hotstaging.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The rest of the industry doesn't really matter, they aren't
| landing and reusing boosters. Nor are they developing any
| rocket system this quickly.
| bogantech wrote:
| What new things have the rest of the industry done lately?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The industry laughed it up as Falcon 9 failed landing
| repeatedly. (https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ) Then they
| shifted to "ok but do it 10x". They aren't laughing now.
|
| They've lost as many Starships as NASA lost Space Shuttles
| so far, with no deaths. It's a test program for now.
|
| Ask the "rest of the industry" about how Boeing's Starliner
| is going. _That's_ what failure looks like.
| mechhacker wrote:
| Then they got the double heavy landing, which was
| mindblowing seeing it the first time:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3KEg6b6bE
| hackeraccount wrote:
| This. Especially with NASA. The more infrequently you
| launch the more the expectation is that there are no
| failures so the more time you take to avoid failures and
| so it recurses into launching SLS once every year and
| half or taking 10 years to launch J. Webb.
|
| I understand a lot of it is politics and government
| spending but it would be nice if NASA could get a case of
| go fever every once in awhile. So long as humans aren't
| involved.
|
| I understand if there were more failures there'd be less
| money for big projects -but I think we should take the
| chance to see if that money would end up being spent on
| more smaller quicker projects.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Naysayers offer a problem for every solution, can't stand
| these types. This is an enormous achievement for SpaceX.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Move fast and break things, amiright?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's good enough for NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-
| and-facilities/white-sands/dest...
|
| We've crashed _production_ probes into Mars, we 've
| burned astronauts alive, we've had the supposedly "safe"
| options like Boeing's Starliner have fundamental problems
| even making it to orbit. Space has always been this way.
|
| Starship's more akin to taking the Bell X-1 up for a spin
| than flying a 787 around, for the time being. Problems
| are expected at this point in the program, or we'd be
| sending people on them already.
| x86x87 wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy.
|
| On one side we are talking about how the "space industry"
| is most moving slowly and how spacex is doing great
| things.
|
| On the other side we are saying that this is good enough
| for nasa (who is the establishment when it comes to
| space) and yolo bro.
|
| On one side we are defending nasa because priorities, but
| on the other side we're cheering on spacex who is
| ultimately sucking at the big fat government tit.
|
| i'm not sure anyone is aiming at burning people alive and
| just because it happened does not make it a justification
| moving forward.
| hparadiz wrote:
| I don't know why you're being a contrarian here. Booster
| completed it's primary mission. Main vehicle survived
| long enough to show viability. Multiple technologies were
| proven beyond a reasonable doubt to work.
|
| Shuttle was 1.6 billion a launch. This is gonna be 100
| million a lunch even if you let the booster blow up every
| time.
|
| This test is in line with how every new rocket is
| developed. You really need to Google the 50s and 60s of
| space flight and see how many rockets were lost in those
| days.
|
| Yet they still got to the moon.
| avmich wrote:
| Quite reasonable incremental testing program.
| x86x87 wrote:
| This is not about laughing or not. This is about if it
| was objectfully a successful test or not.
|
| If you want to take the stance that any test is a success
| that's fine but remember this depends on what your
| definition of success is.
|
| The other thing to keep in mind is that past success is
| not always a good predictor of future success.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's no "objectively" here. It's all feels.
|
| _Objectively_ , this test successfully demonstrated the
| water deluge system, an intact launch pad, all engines on
| the first and second stage igniting and staying lit,
| stage separation, hot staging, and a long burn nearly to
| orbital speeds. That's a pretty good list of ticked
| boxes.
|
| They very openly stated they didn't necessarily expect it
| to get all the way to splashdown. You can argue that's
| PR, but their history has _objectively_ been one of
| incremental progress (again, see Falcon 9 's landing
| attempts) via repeat testing.
|
| Personally, I'd consider a mission failed if a) it
| carries a real payload it's supposed to get somewhere and
| doesn't, b) it breaks due to a previously known issue, or
| c) it breaks sooner than the last test. I'd also consider
| it entirely fine to have "reach goals" in a test.
|
| They went longer, faster, further, and more successfully
| than the first test. I'm happy calling that a win, and I
| suspect SpaceX will as well.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Objectively, for any test to be judged a failure or
| success you have to define the outcome you want upfront.
| If you do not any amount of mental gymnastics you you
| after the test does not matter.
|
| It does not matter you call it a win if you are not
| respecting other opinions that this is a fail.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| SpaceX very clearly stated just prior to launch that
| their goal was for the rocket to get through hot-staging
| because the hot-staging process they had large unknowns.
| Sure their flight plan went well beyond that, but I don't
| see how having an aspirational plan that goes beyond
| "we'll blow it up after hot-staging", also likely
| required for the FAA, defeats the "successful"
| qualification of the test.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Here's NASA the day before launch:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/what-nasa-wants-to-
| see...
|
| > "Tomorrow is a test and we're going to learn a lot
| either way," Lisa Watson-Morgan, who manages NASA's Human
| Landing System program, told Ars in an interview this
| week. "We'd love to see it go off perfectly, but frankly,
| if it doesn't, it's still going to be a great learning
| event, and it still will give us progression on the
| schedule for the different flight tests, and then we'll
| know the areas we need to more deeply penetrate."
| jwells89 wrote:
| And on top of all of that, there's a laundry list of
| firsts that are being achieved here: first flightworthy
| full-flow staged combustion engine, largest vehicle
| launched, largest number of engines working in concert,
| first vehicle built with full reusability factored into
| its design from day one.
|
| Every launch where more is nominal for longer is new
| territory and an achievement.
| grecy wrote:
| SpaceX and NASA were _extremely_ clear what the
| definition of success for this flight was.
|
| It was a resounding success.
| cromwellian wrote:
| The rest of the industry doesn't build dozens of ships in a
| massive assembly line. Blue Origin hasn't even completed a
| single full test prototype ship yet.
|
| And if you go look at NASA during the Space Race era of the
| 60s, they blew up plenty of ships.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| And there's tons of video about V2 blowing up which is
| where we got our 1960s tech from
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The 1960s tech also blew up a lot as well.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/USAF_
| ICB...
|
| Blowing up lots of rockets to figure out how not to blow
| up rockets is traditional rocket development. The _" get
| everything perfect the first time so it never blows up
| even once"_ tactic is forced on NASA because Congress is
| dumb.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The rest of the industry is being wholly outcompeted by
| SpaceX so not sure if their assessment is anything to go by
| today.
|
| Or just take a look at "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket
| Booster".
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
| mechhacker wrote:
| It's been so long that anything new has happened that it's
| easy to forget what it takes to move things forward.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8
| Prickle wrote:
| Failure comes before success. If you fear failure, and are
| unwilling to face it, then you have no business striving
| for success.
|
| I thought everyone here knew about this. Every software bug
| is a failure. Going through and squashing every one is the
| path to success.
| secstate wrote:
| I'm not totally sure Space X cares what the rest of the
| industry thinks. This is next-level space engineering
| compared to what's come before. Who's opinions are we
| concerned about? ULA? Arianespace? Those companies can't
| even blow up a space craft successfully because they can't
| launch them (see, SLS, Ariane 6).
| fallingknife wrote:
| I'm totally sure that SpaceX does not care what the rest
| of the industry (what's left of it) thinks.
| sidibe wrote:
| Come on man they did a lot better than last time. How dare
| you bring any negativity here
| x86x87 wrote:
| Are there any rules against having a different take on
| things?
| renewiltord wrote:
| No, but there are also no rules against being told your
| take sucks and downvoting bad takes is original intended
| behavior on this website.
| krisoft wrote:
| > but the rest of the industry does not consider it normal
| or a "success."
|
| True. The rest of the industry also can't seem to muster a
| reusable orbital class first stage. So far evidence is with
| spacex. Their RUDy development seems to have born fruit
| before.
| kortilla wrote:
| The "rest of the industry" isn't doing anything at all.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| IMO this is the coolest thing the rest of the industry is
| doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzqhZLgpiv0
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Notably founded by ex-SpaceX and ex-Blue Origin
| employees.
| hparadiz wrote:
| That is just space hardware porn.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Rocketlab might end up as the AMD to the Intel of SpaceX.
| imetatroll wrote:
| The way you dismiss SpaceX's accomplishments is just
| hilarious. As if you are some "insider" in the space
| industry. ROLF. SpaceX is awesome and inspiring in what it
| is doing.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Are we reading the same comment? I don't see any
| dismissal of previous accomplishments. Why is calling
| this failure a failure bad? You need failures to learn
| and hopefully be successful eventually.
| lutorm wrote:
| Do you mean this was a launch failure or a test failure?
| It was obviously a launch failure, but even the most
| optimistic wouldn't have expected anything else. As for
| whether the test was a failure: since it successfully did
| a bunch of things that didn't work the last time, why
| would you say it's a failure?
|
| A failure would have been scattering the pad all over
| again, and not getting to stage sep. Or worse.
| x86x87 wrote:
| You have to define upfront what you want to get from a
| test. After that you go back and see if what you got is
| what you expected.
|
| Optimistic/Pessimistic does not really matter.
|
| By this criteria, I would say failure/partial failure or
| partial sucess. There is no way this was a success.
|
| Also, everyone can call this what they want. The thing
| that grinds my gears is not respecting that other people
| do have a different opinion.
| hparadiz wrote:
| Your opinion is wrong though. I'm sorry you can't see
| that. Not all opinions are right.
| hilux wrote:
| They did define what they wanted; several incremental
| goals, not just one. You can watch the pre-launch video
| to hear it for yourself.
|
| Years before Covid, my neighbor had an "opinion" that
| vaccines were unnecessary/dangerous, so she wouldn't get
| vaccinated. Just like you, she said "you have your
| opinion, and I have mine." In today's woke culture, that
| makes me the bad guy for not respecting her opinion,
| mansplaining, etc.
|
| But opinions don't trump facts. At least, they shouldn't
| x86x87 wrote:
| i don't see what vaccines have to to with any of this.
|
| also, as cool as "facts" are it really bothers me when
| people take their opinion and present it as fact or as
| truth. you see: the truth is something abstract and
| usually, not always, but usually there is a matter of
| interpretation and a gradient of the truth. I'm not
| speaking of well researched things that have mountains of
| evidence behind them. I'm speaking about people having
| really strong opinions without understanding the evidence
| behind it and without understanding the nuances of what
| applies when. It's really fashionable to shit all over
| other people when they don't agree to a T with what you
| are saying but IMHO it's the wrong thing to do - being
| curious and actually unpacking what they are trying to
| say if they can have a civilized discussion and logic
| actually works with them is the way to go.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Before the launch, on the stream, SpaceX were saying that
| getting through staging was their primary goal this time.
| Everything else was bonus. So clearly it was a success on
| the primary mission.
|
| Pretty similar to how a lot of NASA's missions have
| requirements like lasting 90 days on Mars. If that is
| reached, the mission was a success, even though they
| obviously don't just stop having objectives after that.
| kortex wrote:
| I'm sorry, what's that, something about failure? I can't
| hear you over the thunderous roar of cheers from the Spacex
| engineering team after stage separation.
|
| https://youtu.be/w9OsSN2kJrk?si=FZ30c9jmkMOmYo3n&t=180
|
| Certainly doesn't sound like the folks who built the thing
| thought it was a failure.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Are the folks that build it the most objective observers?
|
| You can call a duck an eagle all day long but that does
| not make it an eagle.
| kortex wrote:
| Except objectively they stated ahead of time that a
| success would be stage separation, everything else is
| gravy. I had this same argument on HN after IFT-1. Folks
| were trying to argue that it was a failure because it
| blew up before orbit, when Elon was saying the whole time
| that just getting off the pad would be a success.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Are the folks that build it the most objective
| observers?_
|
| Even the Administrator of NASA is happy with the
| progress. [1]
|
| Objectively, it was a success.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/SenBillNelson/status/172587527576
| 9028836
| ctoth wrote:
| Found the guy who works at ULA :)
| resolutebat wrote:
| Super Heavy/1st stage exploded after separation and turn. The
| important part, Starship/2nd stage, was doing fine but appears
| to have been eaten by the Space Ghoul around T+10 min.
| mechhacker wrote:
| Yup, typo
| Hamuko wrote:
| Looks like it's not doing fine anymore.
| idlewords wrote:
| It's firing nominally on all engines up in rocket heaven
| cookingmyserver wrote:
| 2nd stage was terminated by the automated flight termination
| system right before the coast phase. Saw some interesting
| flaring/clouds coming from second stage engines a bit before
| the final big cloud.
| Darmody wrote:
| I blinked and the first stage disappeared.
| czottmann wrote:
| Why did you do it
| Darmody wrote:
| My apologies, won't blink again.
| sjaak wrote:
| Amazing
| SushiHippie wrote:
| Does anyone know how the start was filmed? The first shot was a
| drone, but after that it nearly looked like either cgi or another
| rocket flying next to it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Video feed switched to ground tracking cam.
| _Microft wrote:
| Maybe something like this:
|
| https://curious-droid.com/393/nasa-filmed-apollo-shuttle-lau...
| SushiHippie wrote:
| Thanks, this could be it
| foota wrote:
| Did anyone else just see something fly down on the stream? About
| T+8:30. I wonder if it was part of the exploded first stage.
| mechhacker wrote:
| I thought I saw an explosion but they seem unsure
| foota wrote:
| Naw, there was that cloud of dust I saw, but this was like a
| black falling object.
| mechhacker wrote:
| Interesting, did not catch that
| foota wrote:
| It's at 46:55 here:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1725861547065684095
|
| I took some screenshots: https://ibb.co/1GvddL5
| https://ibb.co/28BSxwG https://ibb.co/KmccttG
|
| Could be a bird, but doesn't really look like it to me.
| notfish wrote:
| booster confetti
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Is this thing launching from Mars? wow
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| A new era of humanity just started.
| Podgajski wrote:
| Tell me about this new era while I am sitting homeless in my
| minivan...
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| There were people suffering when Sputnik launched, or when
| Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It doesn't reduce the magnitude
| of the event.
|
| Sorry for whatever you are going through, though. Hope you
| get through it.
| Podgajski wrote:
| That was my point, you talk about new eras, but nothing
| changes. Who is this new for? You, me, or the billionaires
| who make lives like mine horrible?
|
| It's all spectacle, and where will it all lead? We landed
| men on the moon, and haven't been back. What is SpaceX
| going to use for going to Mars? Are you gonna be the one
| that's going or are they gonna leave you behind to rot here
| on this burning planet?
| chpatrick wrote:
| Mars is a horrible place to live so I'll take Earth any
| day. But it would be nice if humanity doesn't get wiped
| out if we get unlucky with an asteroid.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| In the meantime, we're already well into ecological
| collapse (I think we've lost something like 3/4s of the
| earth's species?) and existential-threat-level climate
| change which in fifty years or so will be so bad we'll be
| dealing with near constant humanitarian crises...with no
| sign of improvement on either front. Decarbonization
| isn't happening nearly fast enough and industrial
| pollution is chugging along.
|
| Frankly, I don't see human society surviving long enough
| - or perhaps better put, maintaining a necessary level of
| societal development - for us to develop the tech to
| establish a self-sufficient colony capable of independent
| growth and to get us to a planet with the resources to
| make such a thing possible.
|
| It's hard to make rocket parts when everyone is living in
| shacks made of sticks and mud and leaves.
| chpatrick wrote:
| I don't think it has to be either-or. We can work on
| saving Earth while also trying to travel to other
| planets.
| scarygliders wrote:
| Hang on. You said you were living in a minivan - a
| vehicle which took a few technological leaps to be able
| to develop and build, so you could live in it.
|
| You also appear to have an internet connection and a
| means to use it. Again, technological leaps were required
| for you to be able to whine on HN.
|
| Perhaps - if you're so utterly sincere and serious about
| saving the planet as you appear to be - you should be
| living in the nearest available cave? After all, that
| minivan is likely to use an internal combustion engine
| and runs on dead dinosaurs; let alone the plastics and
| metals and silicon used in said minivan's assembly.
|
| See, this is what I don't get about eco-heros like you
| appear to be - even if you are homeless, you're still,
| right now, utilising every single technological leap that
| it took to get you to the stage of even just living in
| your minivan and complaining about rocket development on
| the internet. This, to me, reeks of hypocrisy.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| You would have said the same thing about airplanes at the
| turn of the 20th century and dismissed them as fads for
| rich people. Or about computers. Or the internet. And yet
| here you are.
|
| > you talk about new eras, but nothing changes.
|
| And yes, it does affect my life. I have dreamed my whole
| life of this stuff happening. After growing up in a
| "third world" country, I navigated the byzantine US
| immigration system, went through a decade+ of training,
| to finally be here and working at a new-space company
| right at the beginning of this new space age. The
| industry that I am working at right now would be in a
| completely different place (and a lot smaller) without
| SpaceX. It also wouldn't exist without the advances made
| for Apollo and the Space Shuttle program.
|
| > What is SpaceX going to use for going to Mars?
|
| Starship probably.
|
| > Are you gonna be the one that's going
|
| Maybe. There is a non-zero chance now that the system
| that will achieve it is that much closer to being
| operational. You are missing the step change in cost that
| this will enable.
|
| > or are they gonna leave you behind to rot here on this
| burning planet
|
| It does not have to be one or the other. The "burning
| planet" will be solved just like we solved every other
| challenge facing our species.
|
| You are obviously going through some stuff and seem to be
| in place where you cannot appreciate the good things that
| are happening in this world. But that does not change the
| fact that they are.
| Podgajski wrote:
| What you're telling me here is that you're just being
| selfish. This is good for you so it should be good for
| all of humanity. I'm sorry, but it's not.
|
| I appreciate a lot of good things when they happen. I'm
| saying this this is not a good thing. Do you think it's a
| good thing because it made your life better. But you're
| only seeing it from your perspective. You don't have a
| holistic view of the world.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| > This is good for you so it should be good for all of
| humanity. I'm sorry, but it's not.
|
| You asked me how it impacts me and I answered.
|
| > But you're only seeing it from your perspective. You
| don't have a holistic view of the world.
|
| You are failing to see the holistic view yourself because
| you seem to be having a bad time. Lowering the cost of
| mass-to-orbit by a couple of orders of magnitude
| significantly changes what can be done in space. This
| includes truly massive satellites (e.g.
| https://www.k2space.com/) that can provide services _for
| Earth_ that were not possible before. In-space
| manufacturing of materials that cannot be made easily on
| Earth. Moving polluting industries off the surface,
| mining of resources from space (for use in space or on
| the surface if it is valuable enough) and much more. It
| is a feed-back loop that will compound into massive
| changes.
|
| All of that and more will impact the whole of humanity in
| a very positive way.
| Podgajski wrote:
| Why do we need satellites and space to care about each
| other? I don't need a massive satellite in space, I need
| somewhere to live. A massive satellite in space is not
| going to provide me a house. And it's not gonna provide
| any time before my death. Which is being hind because I'm
| homeless. Which is being hasten because, I have no
| healthcare.
|
| Don't you understand? You're all surprised about my
| negative comments but I'm sure you would be feeling the
| same if you were in my position right now.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| > You're all surprised about my negative comments but I'm
| sure you would be feeling the same if you were in my
| position right now.
|
| There are things that do not benefit you right at this
| moment. That does not mean that they are not a boon to
| society at large and a net-positive for this world.
|
| A significant fraction of the billions of people on this
| planet have had their life changed positively due to
| advancements in space technology - in all probability
| including you. And it will continue to do so. I am sorry
| that you are not in a place where you can appreciate that
| and be happy about it. I hope it changes for you.
| notfish wrote:
| Gps uses satellites, and basically the only high speed
| internet you can get without a house is starlink. Both
| get better with starship
| csomar wrote:
| And how is some company launching a rocket involved in
| you not being able to get housing? I understand your
| frustration but you can't just blame anything for it.
| kcb wrote:
| Yea it's not about new eras. Hold on a sec "Hey Siri,
| navigate to the nearest Costco". Yea nothing has changed
| for the average person as a result of first space launch
| imetatroll wrote:
| The kind of scientific advancements needed to sustain on
| the moon or mars will tremendously improve our abilities
| to be sustainable here on Earth. You are willfully
| ignorant or naive.
| Podgajski wrote:
| Ha! I'm naive? What are you saying that we're going to
| turn the Earth into a Mars or moonlight planet? And we're
| all gonna have to live in bubbles? Do you think that's
| the answer? Talk about pessimistic and negative...
| imetatroll wrote:
| Not what I am saying. Let me roll my eyes at your willful
| strawmanning.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The moon landings are historically seen through an almost
| exclusively middle class, white eye. The "magnitude" was
| definitely reduced if you were poor and/or black.
|
| The "magnitude" of the US Space Shuttle program was
| definitely reduced for me even as a white kid; I got to
| watch the shuttle launch on a TV rolled into the classroom,
| and then go right back to reading my mangled, outdated
| science textbook, watching my teacher write on a chalkboard
| with chalk he had to purchase himself because our school
| district apparently couldn't afford to buy enough, because
| it was more important that we have more, and better,
| nuclear bombs and missiles to transport them than Russia.
|
| We went to the moon. The rest of the world did things like
| set up universal healthcare for its citizens, build
| housing, non-punitive criminal justice systems, public
| transit, etc.
| drstewart wrote:
| > The rest of the world
|
| Can you define that a bit more before I ask further
| questions?
| erupt7893 wrote:
| So you believe if there was no moon program then we would
| magically have universal healthcare, housing, non-
| punitive criminal justice systems. Very ignorant take
| Podgajski wrote:
| If people had more humanity, they would be focusing on
| getting universal healthcare housing, and a non-punitive
| justice system before we focus things like putting a few
| humans on a rock in space.
|
| Why is it that the most difficult things to do are the
| most caring things?
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/why-explore-space
| Podgajski wrote:
| "Why everyone needs a vacuum"written by a vacuum cleaner
| salesman.
|
| That letter was written over 50 years ago, and we still
| have homelessness. We still have poverty, people are
| still starving, we still have idiotic, ideological wars,
| and separation of wealth. So when's the return on the
| investment going to actually happen?
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| > So when's the return on the investment going to
| actually happen?
|
| It already did many times over what it cost. And
| continues to deliver.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I lived in SF for 5 years. I'll go ahead and stick with
| the punitive justice system, thanks.
| imetatroll wrote:
| Ow wow. I had no idea space or for that matter science
| did not exist for non-white people. Fascinating.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Yup. We basically lose all our melanin on the day that we
| accept a job offer in the space industry.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I grew up poor and in an underfunded school system as
| well. The ever-present reminder of this was buckets
| collecting drips from leaks in roofs. At one point in
| high school we exhausted our paper budget. Some teachers
| were able to locate a bunch of dot-matrix tractor-fed
| printer paper in a supply room and so we students helped
| to separate the perforations so we could have individual
| sheets of paper.
|
| That school was publicly, though poorly, funded. I also
| had Pell grants for college, subsidized medical
| insurance, a free bus pass, an apartment made affordable
| through adequate supply of housing, a criminal justice
| system that has so far protected me from violence.
|
| I have no chips on my shoulder from any deprivation, and
| appreciate everything that helped me to get where I am
| today, which I don't think would have been possible
| anywhere else in the world.
| T-A wrote:
| It could be the era when you strike it big with your new
| T-shirt business, propelled to fame by an instantly classic
| design featuring the words "One giant leap for mankind" over
| a soaring Starship, followed by the inevitable "One small
| step for me" below.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| They hotstaged the booster! That was freaking awesome!
| woliveirajr wrote:
| Lost contact with the Starship at t+08:43, more or less
| dewbrite wrote:
| Stage 2 flight termination? :'(
| JanSt wrote:
| Incredible. What a time to be alive
| belter wrote:
| Sounds like they lost both stages but it was glorious. Still
| progress. This will add another 6 months to a year before another
| try...
| foota wrote:
| Why so long? Will they need to go through another round of FAA
| approval? Or?
| belter wrote:
| They will need to find out what happened. Develop, build and
| test new hardware to fix what did not work. And wait on the
| new FAA review.
|
| This is the old one: https://www.faa.gov/media/72816
| avhon1 wrote:
| Most of the content of that report is about the deluge
| system for the launch pad. Since it tentatively appears
| that this worked, I have high hopes for much more expedient
| environmental reviews of future test flights.
| idlewords wrote:
| They need to redesign the bottom half of the rocket so it
| doesn't blow up during staging, and figure out what happened
| to the top half and fix that.
| saberience wrote:
| It wont be six months. Also, your comment makes it seem
| like they would have redesign the whole first stage, which
| is highly unlikely. This is the first time they've tried to
| do a hot staging and it might be something relatively easy
| to fix related to that.
|
| For the second stage, my guess is they triggered the FTS
| due to the telemetry issues or just for safety's sake, i.e.
| they didn't want to take any risk with the lack of
| telemetry.
| Gare wrote:
| > For the second stage, my guess is they triggered the
| FTS due to the telemetry issues or just for safety's
| sake, i.e. they didn't want to take any risk with the
| lack of telemetry.
|
| Most likely it was on board automatic FTS.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They don't necessarily have to redesign the booster. The
| booster completed its primary mission of boosting
| successfully. It survived long enough that it seems
| reasonable to say that if they wouldn't have attempted
| boost back it would successfully coasted to a splash in the
| ocean. So the SuperHeavy booster can likely be used as is,
| if they're willing to spend an extra ~$50M per mission on
| not recover the booster.
| idlewords wrote:
| I guess it depends on the test program priorities. If
| Elon has promised everyone a succulent ham if they can
| get Starship to orbit before some deadline, then you're
| absolutely right. If instead they want to get the most
| out of every flight test, then they'll take the time to
| fly a fix for the "bottom half blows up" issue.
| userinanother wrote:
| So more booms by Christmas?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I is a lot more complicated than that.
|
| There is a trade off between data per flight, total
| timeline, and overall cost.
|
| I dont think data per flight is the driving goal. There
| are lots of unknown, and if you stop completely for every
| problem, you are aren't learning about new problems.
|
| As long as they get the ship up and make some progress,
| it isnt critical if these boosters blow up or sink the
| bottom of the ocean as planned
|
| They have 4 boosters built and 3 more in production, and
| FAA license for 20 launches per year. My guess is that if
| the fix takes substantial time, they will work it into
| future production and keep going with what they have.
| hparadiz wrote:
| Pretty sure NASA doesn't care about losing the booster
| for a moonshot mission. Shuttle was 1.6 billion per
| flight.
| foota wrote:
| Having a rocket explode next to the shuttle might be a
| bit too much danger though imo.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| Complete nonsense. Which anyone with even cursory interest
| in Starship's development can confirm.
| PlutoIsAPlanet wrote:
| 6 months is very short in rocket time.
|
| just look at Ariane 6...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| IIRC they're aiming for the next one to be between ~February-
| April.
| jryle70 wrote:
| My guess is 2 to 3 months unless they need a big redesign.
| They've already built the next vehicle. The ground system seems
| to work. Safety works perfectly so NASA and FAA would be happy
| mft_ wrote:
| Eh. The first integrated test was on 17th April '23. With
| everything that went wrong, including the huge damage to the
| pad and all of the (slightly hysterical) speculation and
| outrage that followed, it took them 7 months (almost to the
| day) to refly.
|
| This time, after a vastly more successful and competent second
| test, you think it'll take even longer to refly?
|
| SpaceX will likely be ready within a couple of months; then you
| add the regulatory approvals.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Second stage lost, looks like the flight termination system did
| its job. Unknown as to why yet. Going to be very very interesting
| to see the data that's released from this as well as all the
| higher quality video/stills that surface.
| Podgajski wrote:
| "looks like the flight termination system did its job."
|
| Something disturbs me about how this is worded. Like you are
| trying so hard to find something positive.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It's just because last time that was an issue.
| badcppdev wrote:
| 100% and that issue was very important to the FAA. Being
| able to blow up a rocket if it starts to go off course is
| absolutely critical
| olig15 wrote:
| Im not interpreting their message as negative. Something
| obviously went wrong, the termination system was activated,
| and it blew up. Thats what it's supposed to do when
| activated.
| Thorrez wrote:
| >Im not interpreting their message as negative.
|
| But shouldn't it be interpreted as negative? It blew up.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The FTS failed last time and it caused months of delays
| with the FAA. This time it worked so there should be
| fewer delays from regulators in the future.
| spdif899 wrote:
| It's not the most ideal possible outcome, but overall the
| launch was a pretty huge success for SpaceX (and for
| space fans by extension).
|
| The fact they made it so much further than the first
| launch, seemingly having corrected all the notable things
| that went wrong there, is very good news - the flight
| test process serves to root out unknowns and today's
| launch shows they've done so (and now found some more to
| work on for the next launch).
|
| So to answer your question, I don't think it should
| really be interpreted as a negative, as the primary goals
| were met and the controlled nature of the launch seems
| promising for SpaceX getting cleared to keep trying.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You learn more from mission failure than success, so
| failures are useful in the testing stage.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| ...and blowing things up, when nobody gets hurt, is a lot
| of fun.
| midasuni wrote:
| If your program crashes while you are developing it, is
| that a failure?
| ben_w wrote:
| Which is worse: having to send SIGKILL, or a OS bug
| causing your app to perform potentially dangerous
| undefined behaviour for 30 seconds after being sent
| SIGKILL?
|
| First launch had something analogous to latter, this
| launch had two counts analogous to the former.
| prepend wrote:
| What's summoning positions?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| In space you want the things to blow hard and early. No one
| wants Boing 737 Max lurking in the vehicle.
|
| They fixed previous mistakes and made new ones. Eventually if
| they don't repeat the same ones they will run out of big
| mistakes and it will be smooth sailing afterwards.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The FTS actually working this time _is_ positive. FTS exists
| for a good reason, it working is therefore good.
| stetrain wrote:
| The FTS taking too long to destroy the rocket was one of the
| issues with the first flight and the subject of an FAA review
| and mitigations for this flight.
|
| Safety is always more important than getting your rocket to
| orbit.
| ericcumbee wrote:
| Considering that the FTS system didn't really do its job on
| IFT-1. it detonated but it took a while for the stack to lose
| enough pressurization and structural rigidity to break up.
| This time it did exactly what it was supposed to do.
| testplzignore wrote:
| Good trivia question: Is this the first rocket launch to have
| two separate RUDs?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Do second stage failures on other rockets, where the booster
| is a guaranteed rapidly-scheduled-destruction count? :P
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| No because that wouldn't be unscheduled.
| jccooper wrote:
| AFTS activation indicates deviation from planned trajectory.
| It's unusual, being so late in the burn.
|
| Could be a guidance issue, but SpaceX should be pretty good at
| that by now. Could be engine underperformance, but we got
| nominal callouts and it would have to be pretty bad for AFTS to
| notice with minutes left, so that seems unlikely.
|
| I'd guess engine control (due to damage during staging) is the
| main suspect. We say the thrusters fighting pretty hard there
| at the end, which supports that idea.
| goku12 wrote:
| I wonder if something happened at around T+7:39. There is a
| rather sudden and large plume when the starship should've
| been in steady state.
| lutorm wrote:
| I dunno, it looks like a nominal shutdown to me. The speed
| readout shows rapidly decreasing acceleration just as the
| engine displays go out instead of the telemetry suddenly
| going stale as you'd expect if it just blew up during the
| burn. _Then_ , after the acceleration has gone to zero, the
| telemetry goes stale, so my guess would be on something going
| wrong during shutdown (ullage collapse when the propellant
| sloshes forward as the engines shut down maybe, this was a
| problem during the first landing test.)
|
| AFTS seems unlikely this late in the burn, I think they said
| it was in terminal guidance and it's very hard to laterally
| change the impact point in any meaningful way with that much
| velocity. But I agree, it definitely looked like something's
| venting near the end, too.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Starship engines were cut off at 8:03, while the nominal
| mission profile in Wikimedia mentions SECO at 8:33. The
| speed at cutoff was ~24000 km/h at an altitude of ~150 km.
| Without the AFTS, the Starship would have crashed somewhere
| in the Atlantic.
| Geojim wrote:
| Isn't an exploding rocket in space a bad thing - ie debris
| everywhere? I know space is big but aren't there now a few
| thousand more pieces of space junk to track. I suppose they're
| worried about a starship landing on someone's home - but still
| seems a tad premature.
| ethangk wrote:
| It's more of an issue when the thing exploding is in orbit.
| This was a (just) suborbital launch, and I think the first
| stage was quite a bit slower/ lower than orbital at the point
| that it exploded, meaning it'll all just fall to Earth
| kobalsky wrote:
| it was not in orbit yet so I think everything should fall
| back down to earth.
| invalidator wrote:
| As long as it hasn't achieved orbit, all the pieces will end
| up on an elliptical track with the lowest point inside the
| atmosphere. Some stuff might get flung way up, but it would
| still need another maneuver (requiring working engines) near
| the highest point to circularize the track to prevent it from
| coming back down.
|
| There's not much ambiguity for when to destruct. It's just:
| has it gone far enough off course that it could free-fall
| outside the predetermined borders where it's acceptable to
| crash? Then it's time to blow it up so it doesn't fly any
| farther.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Does this one have a flame deflector?
| hypercube33 wrote:
| I believe so. It also has some water cooling thing that sprays
| the pad
| baq wrote:
| Can't wait to see if the pad survived!
|
| If it did, they might make another attempt sooner than expected.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Definitely did better than last time!
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It appears to have fared much better at least in terms of the
| metric that the various streaming cameras near the site that
| were damaged last time are fine this time.
| ironyman wrote:
| - Starship got just below orbit
|
| - Booster destroyed during hot staging
|
| - SpaceX reporting that destruct system fired on upper stage
| towards end of burn
|
| all in all a pretty good result: clean launch and separation,
| good performance on the booster during ascent (no engine mishaps
| this time)
| mechhacker wrote:
| Wonder if hot staging caused issues with both vehicles or it
| was two separate issues.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I could believe that hot staging might've affected the
| booster, since it seemed to blow up right as it tried to
| light the engines again for boostback. But I don't think the
| ship would've made it so long if it were seriously damaged by
| the hotstaging.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Damage to the grid fins mechanism is a potential failure
| mode here. Even a small amount of damage to the flight
| control systems could make the procedure uncontrollable and
| eventually trigger the FTS.
| anovikov wrote:
| At this altitude, the vehicle is pretty much in the
| vacuum and grid fins have absolutely no control
| authority. It could have resulted in failure later on but
| not at that point where the booster blew up.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Saw that Scott Manley video that came out right after
| that and it looks like fuel issues to engines probably
| caused it. All but one engine started up, but they
| started failing after that.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7LYw6gU65ac
| anovikov wrote:
| Then it's not hot staging but maybe sloshing of fuel in
| the tank just simply.
| anovikov wrote:
| How could hot staging affect the engines of the booster? If
| it affected the tanks then the three engines still running
| through separation would also fail so no flip-around could
| be possible with no thrust to go with.
| midasuni wrote:
| The booster experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly after
| boostback burn following the successful stage separation
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yea, I've not seen up close shots of the launch facility yet,
| but it looks like it's all still there without massive amounts
| of destruction either.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Everyday Astronaut was able to reconnect to their robo-cam
| and pan over the launch area. No damage visible. Not only did
| the cameras at the launch pad survive, they didn't even get
| their tripods knocked over.
| kebaman wrote:
| There does appear to be a large dent in one of the large
| tanks (LOX?) near the launchpad.
| throwawayben wrote:
| that happened during the first test I believe
| jdworrells wrote:
| It's amazing what happens when you apply 60 year old
| solutions (water deluge).
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| There are obviously similarities, but there are also
| important differences between SpaceX's solution and a
| conventional water deluge system.
|
| The primary purpose of the water here is not to dampen the
| sound/energy, but to cool the metal plate below the rocket.
| cubefox wrote:
| I thought the system they use here is unlike anything used
| before.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I can't wait for the next one. How many tests are we expecting?
| 7-8? Seems to be too long! I wish we had the spirit of the
| Apollo.
| T-A wrote:
| > I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo
|
| Careful what you wish for. The Saturn test program peaked at
| 3 tests / year (unless you want to count the separately
| tested launch escape system for the crew capsule), and the
| fully stacked Saturn V was only tested twice (in 1967 and
| 1968) before crewed missions.
|
| For all its speed, Apollo was not a SpaceX-style rapid
| iteration program.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Uncrew.
| ..
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Tortoise and hare, perhaps.
|
| Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years
| later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit.
|
| Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in
| 1969 - with 60's tech.
| newsclues wrote:
| Apollo was also dual use military technology to
| accelerate the development
| mrec wrote:
| To be fair, Apollo also had government funding to the
| tune of approximately 2.5% of GDP. Starship would
| probably go a bit faster too with an annual budget of
| half a trillion.
| mft_ wrote:
| I suspect Starship would also go a lot faster with the
| weight of the President directly behind it, helping to
| remove those pesky regulatory issues :)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Start of the Apollo program literally precedes the Clean
| Air Act, establishment of EPA etc.
|
| When the government decided to build Kennedy Space Center
| in Florida wilderness, they just did. No lengthy
| environmental impact assessment process in the way.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Sure, but most of the (anyways rapid) turnaround time
| from Starship launch #1 to #2 was rebuilding and deluge
| system .. can't be more than a month or two max delay
| attributed to regulations.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| True, this was a major engineering obstacle that had to
| be overcome.
| mft_ wrote:
| The pad rebuild and deluge system install was in parallel
| with the other work. Give or take, it was complete by the
| end of July [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOtw3ucIKng
| vibrolax wrote:
| Well we have the Canaveral National Seashore to enjoy
| today, which was constituted from the undeveloped portion
| of the space program reservation. Otherwise, that area
| today might be a wall of hirise condos instead of a
| pristine coastal barrier island.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Perhaps, although not obvious that it's cash starved.
|
| NASA's slow but meticulous approach has had a few
| failures, but also incredible successes such as the sky
| crane martian rover landing - got to get it right first
| time, tough to move fast and break things when the test
| environment is 100 million miles away!
|
| Edit: Same goes for 1969's lunar lander - had to work
| first time.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Seems to be great for deep space missions but not launch
| vehicles.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| More like it's better with little-noticed science
| programs which can get by with a minimal amount of
| politics involved... which to be fair includes the
| details of deep space missions. Big, flagship projects
| which attract more attention are where things fall to
| crap for the most part.
| thmsths wrote:
| And NASA can be fast too. If I recall the Genesis of the
| Voyager missions correctly, someone noticed the once in a
| lifetime opportunity where the planet would align
| properly for a probe to visit a lot of them in using
| clever gravity assists. And from there NASA acted quickly
| to get funding, design and launch 2 probes that are still
| active today!
| johnyzee wrote:
| Still very impressive. We all know that adding more
| resources to a project does not necessarily make it go
| faster.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Measuring Apollo's start point in 1961 can be very
| misleading. Apollo was the culmination of a more or less
| continuous development process stretching back to the
| early 50s with the start of the ICBM programs.
|
| For example, the F-1 engines that powered Saturn V first
| stage actually began development in the late 50s, with
| the first static firing happening in 1959. The (in)famous
| combustion instability challenges of the engine were
| solved by 1961.
|
| Apollo had a tremendous running start in many areas - to
| say nothing of having the resources and know-how of the
| entire US military-aerospace-industrial complex at it's
| disposal. This isn't to minimize what an accomplishment
| Apollo was. I just don't think you can meaningfully
| compare the timelines of what SpaceX is trying to do with
| Starship, and what Apollo accomplished.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| True, but in same way SpaceX has also been in the rocket
| business for over 20 years, and building upon know how
| and organizational expertise gained from the Falcon 9.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Wiki says Raptor development started in 2009-2012 with no
| predecessor, with first test firing in 2016.
| jholman wrote:
| Since this is a thread about pedantry (rocketry
| pedantry), I'll allow myself to be pedantic about words.
|
| "A wiki" is a type of software. But when you use "Wiki"
| as a proper noun, referring to one specific instance,
| that's the name of Ward's Wiki, the original wiki, also
| known as wikiwikiweb, available at wiki.c2.com .
|
| I'm guessing that you were not citing Ward's Wiki, but
| were rather citing some other site, in particular the
| site that contains this advice on citing it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_abbreviat
| e_%...!
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| While we're at pedantry, English is a descriptivist
| language... I guarantee you that when I say "the wiki",
| approximately nobody thinks of Ward's.
|
| (Yes, I think Wikipedia's Don't Abbreviate... page is
| just wrong about this.)
| mathgeek wrote:
| You should note the banner at the top of your reference:
|
| > This is a humorous essay. It contains the advice or
| opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is
| made to be humorous. This page is not one of Wikipedia's
| policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly
| vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread
| norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. This
| essay isn't meant to be taken seriously.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Starship didn't really start in a meaningful way in 2012.
| In 2012 there were at best some vague concepts of a large
| rocket and some initial concept ideas for Raptor. But at
| that time for Raptor they were still thinking about
| Hydrolox.
|
| SpaceX simply didn't have the resource to fully invest in
| Starship until much later. Even by the early
| presentations around 2016 it was a tiny part of SpaceX
| and was prototyping with limited resources. Real ramp up
| of spending happened significantly later.
|
| Your understanding of Apollo is also flawed. The F-1
| engine started development as early as 1955, not 1961. So
| if anything your 2012 date would be more like 1955.
|
| Starship is also twice as powerful as Saturn V and
| designed to be reusable in both stages. That's a
| significantly harder task. Had SpaceX just wanted to
| match Saturn V, that would have been significantly
| easier.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Well, whether you want to call it 8/9 years ('61-'69) or
| 14 ('55-'69), I don't think NASA looks too shabby landing
| men on the moon in that time frame without the decades of
| experience we have to draw on today, and with 1950's/60's
| technology, and so far no-one else has done it.
| ben_w wrote:
| The Apollo missions were certainly an achievement worthy
| of getting memorialised.
|
| I also think that, given the size of the Apollo landers,
| if SpaceX had actually wanted to they could've redone
| those missions years ago with a Falcon Heavy and a
| variant of the Crew Dragon design.
| electriclove wrote:
| The NASA of that time has been long gone for decades
| panick21_ wrote:
| Nobody said it was 'shabby'.
| leoc wrote:
| It also seems that Saturn V's performance wasn't
| flawless, even on crewed missions (though some of the
| problems were down to external factors like lightning or
| debris from Skylab): https://www.wired.com/2012/03/great-
| balls-of-fire-apollo-roc... .
| tempaway215751 wrote:
| Where did you get 2012 from? BFR wasn't announced until
| 2016
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Apollo also killed three astronauts on the ground in the
| posthumously named Apollo 1, and almost killed at least
| three more with Apollo 13. Apollo 6 (the final uncrewed
| test) suffered from pogo oscillations and also had two
| engines go out in the second stage. Apollo 11 had problems
| with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil
| Armstrong's piloting skill.
|
| This is all to say, Apollo was an extremely risky program.
| mulmen wrote:
| > Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer,
| but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill.
|
| This is a common misconception but mixes up at least
| three things.
|
| 1) Yes, Eagle was long, but not because of a software
| bug. The exact reason is unclear and there may have been
| multiple factors.
|
| 2) Yes, there were unexpected computer alarms but these
| were caused by a hardware bug that manifested because a
| switch was in an unexpected position. The software
| handled this appropriately.
|
| Margaret Hamilton said: "To blame the computer for the
| Apollo 11 problems is like blaming the person who spots a
| fire and calls the fire department. Actually, the
| computer was programmed to do more than recognize error
| conditions. A complete set of recovery programs was
| incorporated into the software. The software's action, in
| this case, was to eliminate lower priority tasks and re-
| establish the more important ones. The computer, rather
| than almost forcing an abort, prevented an abort. If the
| computer hadn't recognized this problem and taken
| recovery action, I doubt if Apollo 11 would have been the
| successful Moon landing it was."
|
| 3) Neil Armstrong did adjust the landing point late in
| the descent after noticing rough terrain. He utilized
| semi-automatic control to do this. Essentially adjusting
| the target point for the autopilot. Eagle wasn't directly
| flown like an aircraft.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
|
| A great video on the AGC and Apollo 11 landing:
| https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM?si=Ypn6Gtp16_DEkpK9
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Small correction, I think. The booster appeared to survive hot
| staging fine. It went through quite a bit of it's flip back
| maneuver. It was awesome to watch. There were some interesting
| activations of engines in the booster engine ring at that
| point. It's unclear to me if that was anticipated as an offset
| subset was what was desired for the off axis maneuver, or
| things were degrading at that point. And then it blowed up,
| rather instantly. That something happened to the booster during
| the separation that led to its RUD ~20 seconds later is likely,
| but technically it was "long since separated" (in rocket launch
| time) when it was destroyed.
| api wrote:
| It was probably self destructed by the range safety officer
| if things were going south.
| cdash wrote:
| Just want to add another comment in here that there is no
| manual termination, they are using a fully automatic flight
| termination system.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| Surely the final Starship carrying passengers will not
| have auto flight termination?
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Imagine explaining to the court that the passengers were
| blown up by your AI algorithm...
|
| I expect these things are only on test flights indeed.
| dave78 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Falcon 9 carrying crew has an AFTS.
| Challenger was destroyed by an FTS system as well despite
| having crew on board. I think it's just a risk you have
| to take to go on a rocket ride.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The Crew Dragon capsule has escape rockets that will fire
| as part of the flight termination system to carry the
| crew safely away.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Dragon_In-
| Flight_Abort_Te...
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Challenger was destroyed by an FTS system
|
| No. The shuttle broke up when the overall stack became
| unstable due to the right hand SRB separating because a
| strut that attached it to the external tank failed (due
| to a blowtorch effect from a failed O-ring). The
| Challenger orbiter ended up 'on top' and broke into
| several chunks - without involvement of any FTS - because
| of the aerodynamic stress (one of these chunks was the
| crew compartment). The SRBs _were_ destroyed by their FTS
| systems, but this was more than 30 seconds after
| Challenger broke up. The ET simply disintegrated.
|
| [Edit] added emphasis that the orbiter break-up (and
| destruction) was not due to any FTS.
| dave78 wrote:
| I'm very aware of why it initially broke up. But once
| that started, the range safety officer did activate the
| FTS system.
|
| The point is that rockets carrying crew do indeed have
| FTS systems - presence of a crew doesn't negate that
| need.
| ben_w wrote:
| The SRBs (and the EFTs) had FTS's, but the Orbiters
| didn't.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| >the range safety officer did activate the FTS system.
|
| That doesn't sound very automatic.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Imagine explaining to the court that the passengers
| were blown up by your AI algorithm...
|
| Autonomous flight termination systems are not "AI". It
| uses an on-board GPS and INS to figure out where the
| rocket is. It applies a pre-defined set of rules to the
| state vector and if any one of the rules fail it
| terminates the flight. You can read more about them here:
| https://www.gps.gov/cgsic/meetings/2019/valencia.pdf
| ben_w wrote:
| GOFAI is still AI in my books.
|
| *old man shouts at The Cloud*
| ikari_pl wrote:
| Heuristics used to be AI. Now only chat gpt is ai
| krisoft wrote:
| Okay, but then I assume you also call AI the model
| predictive controller flying and landing the rocket too?
|
| An other question if you don't mind: Did you ever used
| software which was not AI in your view?
| sroussey wrote:
| Hopefully no GPS jammers nearby.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| A bit hard to GPS jam a rocket on the way up.
| krisoft wrote:
| Yes. I'm sure they apply all the mitigations possible.
|
| Worth mentioning that the previous state of the art
| solution relied on a radio link too. Not sure if it was
| an implementation where jamming could led to flight
| termination, or where jamming could lead to failure to
| terminate a flight. But jamming, and resistance to it,
| was a concern even before autonomous flight termination.
| WJW wrote:
| If I were writing such a system it would have very
| straightforward if-statements linked directly to FAA
| requirements. No faffy AI stuff is needed.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Not sure about that but indications are it won't have an
| escape system like other manned craft.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Space Shuttle didn't have an escape system either; its
| total death toll was 14.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Space Shuttle didn't have an escape system either
|
| To be pedantic, the early flights had ejector seats for
| the pilot and commander, and the post-Challenger orbiters
| had a 'fire-pole' bail-out system. These systems could
| only be used in a very limited set of circumstances.
| midasuni wrote:
| Absolute numbers don't really mean much. More than 14
| people have died since this test flight on American
| roads.
|
| Shuttle death rate was about 1 in 75, which is insanely
| high.
| troupe wrote:
| How does that compare with other rocket systems?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Pretty poorly, Soyuz has 4 fatalities (Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11)
| during it's over 140 flights, Crew Dragon has none.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| That's a unnormalized metric: shuttle had two failures in
| 135 flights and generally carried up _way_ more people
| per flight and also did _way_ more stuff per flight.
| queuebert wrote:
| What are the units on 1 in 75? People? Missions?
|
| To compare with other launch methods, you'd need to use
| the same metric.
|
| IIRC, Soyuz is actually more deadly, but it's been some
| time since I've seen the stats. Both Soyuz and the Space
| Shuttle are by far the most deadly form of
| transportation.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| As I understand it, on crewed flights of the Falcon 9 the
| AFTS is somehow integrated with the abort system so that
| it is impossible for it to detonate without the capsule
| having a few seconds to get to safety first.
|
| I don't see how this would work for Starship, since it
| won't have an abort system.
| api wrote:
| Couldn't Starship detach and fire its engines to get away
| from the booster? Of course I guess if they are not
| hypergolic there is startup time.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The real question here is what happens with a crewed
| second stage that has a problem with _its_ engines /fuel.
| We've yet to see designs for the crewed interior beyond
| very conceptual stuff.
|
| Maybe something like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule for
| launch abort.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| I believe that the crewed version is way in the future
| when operations are much better understood. There's no
| chance in hell they're catching that 2028 window to
| march.
| dotancohen wrote:
| This same question was asked in the early years of
| commercial aviation. In the end, the industry (mostly)
| settled on aircraft designs that could passively glide
| reasonably well enough to land (sometimes). But some
| aircraft, e.g. military jets and Cirrus, came up with
| different answers (parachutes for the crew and for the
| whole aircraft, mostly).
|
| We'll see how the commercial spacecraft industry deals
| with this, but I do think that we are at far too early of
| a stage to start expecting progress in this area. The
| first few decades of commercial spaceflight will be
| dangerous just like the first few decades of commercial
| aviation, or for that matter the first few centuries of
| commercial shipping. The answers, varied or uniform, will
| be interesting and I hope that I'll be around to see
| them.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Wonder if we'll ever have commercial aircrafts with whole
| aircraft parachutes.
| theolivenbaum wrote:
| There's no parachuting from 900km/h
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| There's been a number of successful supersonic ejections
| of military pilots over the years. It's extremely
| dangerous and very likely to fail, but it's better than
| the alternative. The basic idea is a drogue chute
| stabilizes and slows the pilot.
|
| Whether the same idea could be adapted to a whole plane I
| don't know, but I would be skeptical of just on the basis
| that you probably wouldn't trigger such a thing unless
| the plane has had a substantial failure such that it
| could overpower any drogue chute.
| serf wrote:
| i'd be willing to believe it's an economics thing more-so
| than a physics thing.
|
| one could envisage a '747-like' sized plane with many
| passenger escape-pods similar to the pod from an B-58
| Hustler -- but who would pay the astronomic cost for such
| a ticket?
|
| and similar to what the other person in this thread
| mentioned : those escape pods won't help during
| takeoff/landing phases.
| endymi0n wrote:
| There is at least one documented survival at the insane
| speed of Mach 3: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/bailing-
| out-at-mach-3-the-in...
| nradov wrote:
| No. Those systems can't really scale up in size and
| speed. And it would be pointless anyway because the few
| commercial airliner crashes that do occur are mostly
| during take off or landing where parachutes aren't very
| effective.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| https://brsaerospace.com/cessna/
| pantalaimon wrote:
| How did Space Shuttle approach this problem?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Death.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| They added this system after Challenger, seems extremely
| limited.
|
| https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/crew-
| escape-sy...
| fnord77 wrote:
| "The crew escape system was intended for emergency
| bailout use only when the orbiter was in controlled
| gliding flight and unable to reach a runway. "
|
| I'd take my chances and stay with the orbiter
| ben_bai wrote:
| There was a estimated 1/16 failure possibility for the
| first couple flights. Lots of edge-cases where: If XYZ
| happens, you die.
|
| But we were in a hurry, so it was just part of the
| project.
| adastra22 wrote:
| If the booster is still firing, then starship will have
| to have a greater acceleration than the super heavy
| booster in order to separate. On F9 Crew this is done by
| the abort system, which is able to accelerate the crew
| capsule away at a higher acceleration than the whole F9
| stack is experiencing at the time.
| jccooper wrote:
| At certain phases. It will not have enough thrust to
| survive that at low speed/altitude.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If you pay the Non AFT Fee, yes.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| No. If thing go south, they'd just suicide themselves
| manually.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Surely it will, but prob only Elon and a couple others
| will know about it
| bandyaboot wrote:
| The instantaneous nature of the explosion would certainly
| be consistent with a self destruct.
| pixl97 wrote:
| With we had another angle of the booster during engine
| relight. From the SpaceX feed maybe engines didn't start
| back up? Hard to tell. Could have been leaving the
| expected flight area maybe?
| bandyaboot wrote:
| There is a brief view as the inner ring of engines
| relight (note that the 3 core engines don't shut down).
| All but one come back online initially but begin shutting
| down again shortly thereafter. There are some pretty
| violent events happening near the engines during the time
| that they are being lost one by one. The more I look at
| it, the more it looks like an actual RUD. It seems like
| maybe those violent events around the engines compromised
| something in the mid section of the rocket, which is
| where the explosion originates from. Scott Manley
| speculated that the very fast flip manuever may have
| caused some issues with continuous fuel delivery into the
| plumbing which seems quite plausible given the erratic
| behavior of the engines after they first appear to
| relight without issue.
| thelittleone wrote:
| Demonstrative Flight Termination System (if booster did FTS
| rather than RUD) might have been more desirable than a
| splashdown. For instance, FTS proven to operate effectively
| for FAA to see.
| kortex wrote:
| Watching the replay, it looks like some of the engines failed
| to light during boostback reignition. Then, either total
| flameout occurred, or AFTS started cutting fuel in
| preparation for termination (maybe there are settings for
| "terminate right tf now" and "try to shut down engines before
| popping off", idk just speculating).
|
| Either way, it looks like the start of boostback was not
| quite norminal, and AFTS decided that wasn't close enough to
| the flight envelope and decided to exit status 1.
|
| Some are speculating that the flip maneuver sloshed the fuel
| too much and resulted in vapor ingestion and/or complete fuel
| starvation. The fact the failures are clustered on the side
| the fuel would slosh away from adds weight to this idea.
|
| https://youtu.be/081a5Thjl5g?si=JUT3P6EcnG51hmHI
| pantalaimon wrote:
| All but one engine successfully relit (the outer engine
| ring has no re-light capability) but they started to fail
| quickly afterwards.
|
| Scott Manley also has the theory that the maneuver caused a
| sloshing motion of the fuel and the water hammer ruptured
| piping on the engines, causing a cascading failure.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7LYw6gU65ac
| lisper wrote:
| I love how at the end of the video the SpaceX announcer
| refers to what just happened as a "rapid unscheduled
| disassembly of the booster".
| bronson wrote:
| That's an industry term. Lithobraking is too.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Below orbit is a strange way to put it. Orbit is more speed
| then height. Google says it was going 1,400 mph when it was
| lost. Orbital speed is around 17,600 miles per hour.
|
| The goal was something just under orbital speed.
|
| Not that this wasn't totally amazing. Hopefully the launch pad
| wasn't damaged and they can crunch the data and have another
| test that gets further soon.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The readout showed 20k km/hour towards the end. It was
| definitely near orbital speed.
|
| You might be looking at the first stage's data.
|
| Edit: 24,124 km/hr when telemetry stopped on the stream; 15k
| mph.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| A 'k km' is an Mm, so 24 Mm/h , (or 6.67 km/s , if you'd
| like to go full SI)
| hetman wrote:
| Technically correct but not really clear of it helps
| clear communication in this context. SI natives think of
| a "kilometre" as its own thing (in the same way one
| thinks about a "mile") rather than thinking about it as a
| thousandfold multiple of a metre.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I think you googled the April launch. Starship was going
| 24000+kmh, needed 27000, it was like 20-30 seconds away from
| successfully inserting itself into its target orbit.
| Kubuxu wrote:
| They also weren't targeting orbit but just bellow it.
| thelittleone wrote:
| It was doing ~24,000km/h which is ~15,000mph.
| lutorm wrote:
| Well the technical term is "suborbital", which literally
| means "below orbital". (It's the _energy_ that 's below
| orbital, not the height...)
| cratermoon wrote:
| I previously said that if the launch works through staging,
| SpaceX fans would declare it a success. Personally, that seems
| like a pretty low bar compared to things like Saturn V and even
| STS, both of which launched successfully to orbit the first
| time.
| kbenson wrote:
| What you count as success depends on what your goal is. It's
| entirely possibly SpaceX could have thrown extra billions at
| it and had a higher chance of successful orbit, but that
| doesn't mean they deemed that the most efficient use of time
| and money to advance the project. Sometimes it's far less
| costly in time and effort to start it up and see where it
| fails rather than look it over another 20 times and wrack
| your brain for anything you've missed before.
|
| When I think I've gotten pretty far in a program I'm writing
| and there's even a small chance of it partially functioning,
| I'll often fire it up to get feedback on the errors I wasn't
| aware of as early as possible. Some of those may indicate
| larger structural changes that are required in the worst
| case, and the earlier I can learn about those the better.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > What you count as success depends on what your goal is
|
| Yes. My point is that the bar seems pretty low for
| Starship, and it's not clear why. Yes, some of the ways
| they are doing things are new, but overall, building large
| multi-stage rockets is 50s tech.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The "50s tech" was not based around easily reusable
| systems. It was all based on explosive bolts, solid
| fueled ullage motors etc.
|
| On top of that the fuel was much easier to work with and
| did not involve needing to be able to handle
| pressurization and sloshing during flips.
|
| It's 50's tech only in the same way that a Ryzen CPU is
| 70's tech.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Just for a minute, then, let's think like engineers and
| not Starman Jones. Granted it was a test flight: so what
| were the objectives of the flight, how man y of them did
| it achieve, and how many were not? Get beyond calling it
| a success or failure and talk about what worked and what
| didn't.
|
| > the fuel was much easier to work with
|
| This is a technical detail where I hard disagree. The
| oxidizer was liquid oxygen, so that's the same. The fuels
| were either RP-1 or hydrogen. Methane is somewhere in
| between those two in difficulty. kept at -180 degC,
| compared to -253 degC for hydrogen, and LOX is LOX. In
| the Saturn V, sloshing of the RP-1 led to the Pogo
| Effect, but that was solved[1]. Granted it didn't involve
| the maneuvers of the Starship first stage, but in some
| ways it was worse, because it happened during full thrust
| at the end of the boost stage, not after separation. You
| can read a lot more about NASA's experience with pogo at
| [2], but it's worth noting that it continued to crop up
| as late as Apollo 13, when the 2nd stage center engine
| shut down early as a result.
|
| Yes, SpaceX is doing some things new, but the engineering
| experience is definitely something from the 50s and 60s.
|
| 1. https://www.nasa.gov/history/50-years-ago-solving-the-
| pogo-e...
| refulgentis wrote:
| Interesting re: good result...I've sort of lost track because
| the program's timeline has been extended several times: what
| sort of results are they shooting for?
| kranke155 wrote:
| Fully reusable rockets ?
| LanceJones wrote:
| Good one. :-) SLS, anyone?
| ben_bai wrote:
| Gathering data and making orbit. Plan was to return the
| booster near the launchsite and make a water splash down. The
| ship should make a single suborbital flight with orbit
| velocity to simulate reentry and should have splashed down
| near hawaii.
| frederikvs wrote:
| I believe the primary goal was stage separation. Secondary
| goals were for the booster to make a controlled splashdown,
| and Starship to make almost a complete orbit, before
| splashing down near Hawaii.
|
| So they achieved the primary goal, which is a good result.
|
| It could even be argued that they got pretty close to one of
| the secondary goals. Starship was fairly close to shutting
| off its engines. If it would have completed that part of the
| flight, the next hour or so it would just be coasting.
| Physics alone would guarantee they'd end up near Hawaii.
| sentrysapper wrote:
| "The super booster experienced a rapid unscheduled
| disassembly".
|
| Neat phrase for the booster explosion in the mesosphere.
| mongol wrote:
| What is the benfit of hot staging?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Maintaining velocity / acceleration.
| idlewords wrote:
| Fantastically cool explosion
| mpweiher wrote:
| Their previous method didn't work at all.
| martindevans wrote:
| Less time spent not firing engines, no need for separation
| hardware (e.g. hydraulic pushers), no need for ullage thrusters
| (settling fuel before lighting stage 2).
| aw1621107 wrote:
| To expand on KennyBlanken's answer:
|
| Rockets generally want their fuel to be sitting on the bottom
| of the tank, where the engines are. That's easy enough when the
| rocket is sitting on the ground and when the engines are
| firing, but once the rocket starts coasting/decelerating (e.g.,
| when the engines turn off due to reaching the end of their
| burn) the fuel may drift away from the fuel intakes, resulting
| in the engines ingesting vapor/gas the next time the engines
| turn on. Rocket engines are designed with a pretty specific
| operating environment in mind, so ingesting vapor/gas instead
| of fuel usually leads to the engines expressing their
| displeasure in a very vocal fashion.
|
| This poses a challenge for staging. The naive way to stage is
| to turn off the previous stage's engines then ignite the next
| stage's, but the time between the first set of engines turning
| off and the second set of engines reaching a sufficient thrust
| level to keep the fuel at the bottom of the tanks may be enough
| for the fuel to drift away from the fuel intakes, especially if
| staging occurs lower in the atmosphere or after an extended
| coast period.
|
| One way of addressing this issue is to use "ullage thrusters" -
| small rockets that maintain a small amount of forwards
| acceleration during staging to keep the fuel at the bottom of
| the tanks. This is what the Saturn rocket did between the
| first/second stages.
|
| Another way is to "hot stage" - ignite the new set of engines
| before the old ones cut out. This is what the Soyuz does (and
| is why its stages are connected with a lattice - to let the
| exhaust out), and is what Starship was trying out this time.
| This can be simpler than using ullage motors since there are
| fewer pieces, but also poses some additional challenges in that
| the first stage needs to survive the second stage's exhaust for
| long enough.
|
| The last way is to use RCS thrusters for a period to settle the
| fuel. This was used by the Saturn third stage before trans-
| lunar injection, but can really only be used once you're in
| orbit.
| grecy wrote:
| It also makes the rocket more efficient, because any time
| spent coasting with no engines lit is time that gravity is
| acting on the rocket and slowing it down.
|
| By always accelerating (with engines lit), hot staging
| improves the payload to orbit about 10%. So it's well worth
| doing.
| aw1621107 wrote:
| Less gravity losses is another advantage, that's true.
|
| I think it'd be interesting to see a breakdown of that 10%
| improvement number. Hot staging in and of itself resulting
| in a 10% additional payload capacity seems large enough
| that I feel it's rather odd that it isn't more commonly
| used. I'm curious how much of it is due to "direct"
| improvements from reduced gravity losses and how much is
| due to "indirect" improvements like (maybe?) not needing to
| save as much fuel for boostback.
|
| A comparison against what a "Saturn-style" staging that
| uses ullage motors might achieve could make for a fun
| addition as well.
| lutorm wrote:
| Well, the old staging method tried in the last launch was
| to rotate the entire vehicle stack and "fling" the ship
| off. That obviously has a performance penalty in that
| you're not going to be pointing in the correct direction
| when you come off. I don't know if the 10% was compared
| to that or compared to a hypothetical "straight" staging
| with pushers, though.
| bbojan wrote:
| I think that was not intended, it's just that the control
| of the rocket was lost. The plan was just a normal stage
| seperation, just like on the Falcon.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Given how successful our Saturn package was, it seems curious
| to me that we wouldn't just follow the ullage motor method.
| panick21_ wrote:
| One needs to put success into perspective. Saturn V only
| launched a very small amount of times and had some near
| misses in that time. How successful it would have been if
| it had flown 100+ times is a question.
|
| Also, If you are not reusable you have much more margin to
| play with. SpaceX is optimizing this thing to an incredible
| amount. Liftoff thrust is 2x as much as Saturn V and they
| are aiming at 3x as much. Total payload to orbit is 2-3x
| larger while being reusable.
|
| SpaceX could have done what they did on Falcon 9 (200+
| successful launches in a row) but Hot-Staging like the
| Soyuz is also successful.
|
| SpaceX optimizes for long term performance and operational
| simplicity. Ironically that leads to more Soviet way. The
| N1 would also have used hot staging.
| avmich wrote:
| Ullage motors have to be solid - this way they don't need
| ullage themselves to fire - or to be fed from separate
| tanks - this is another reasonably complex subsystem which
| needs to be refueled somehow between flights. If ullage
| motors are solid, that needs to be re-loaded between
| flights. So, overall the ullage system is a certain
| complexity to design, build, refuel, a weight to carry in
| flight - clearly some drawbacks.
|
| Hot firing simplifies things in this regard.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Ullage motors as they were on Saturn V (and in most other
| cases) are solid fueled. Making them incompatible with
| reuse. SpaceX emphasize reusable systems even when not
| recoverable because that allows for testing of the exact
| flight hardware (eg mechanical separation systems over
| explosive bolts).
|
| A reusable approach would involve some form of gas
| thruster, so might as well just try hot staging.
| jryle70 wrote:
| 10% increase in payload
|
| https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/64713/how-is-hot-s...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| You never stop accelerating. Escape faster. Less time fighting
| gravity.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| What I don't see mentioned: at the end of the day, Starship is
| designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. The core / the most
| important part of that goal is obviously to recover the 1st
| stage (not throw it away) and to recover it safely and with
| minimum delays. That's why, once operational, almost all
| starships will have their booster return to launch site. To
| return to launch site, you need to keep some of the fuel in the
| booster to flip it, do a boostback burn and a landing burn (
| starship boosters do not need entry burns but they will need
| landing burns that are not suicide burns ending with hoverslams
| like falcon does, but basically end almost at zero velocity,
| hivering as the tower arms close around it).
|
| The primary reason for hot staging is that without it, they had
| to turn off all engines, mechanically "push" the ship away from
| the booster and then light the ship engines. Say this takes 5
| or 10 seconds. During this time, the entire system is not
| accelerating anymore, but it's still screaming away from the
| launch site (because to go to orbit, you don't just go "up",
| you mostly go "sideways", that's why you often hear "vehicle
| pitching down range" during broadcasts) and to get the booster
| back to the launch site you then have to spend more fuel to get
| back to the launch site - you have to counteract all that time
| you spend moving away from the launch site.
|
| With hot staging you get to the velocity you need to get the
| first stage to orbit sooner, because the system never stops
| "pushing", and there's less distance you need to cover to get
| the first stage back to the launch site. With means you need
| less fuel that remains in the first stage after stage
| separation, which means you can use more fuel during the first
| stage firing (and therefore put more mass to orbit).
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Really surprised by how the Raptors performed! Genuinely didn't
| expect that they'd have them all lighting up properly already.
| XorNot wrote:
| Yeah that stood out to me too. Hopefully they'll drop some info
| on what the metrics said, but that looked like a full healthy
| set to me.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Yeah this is a huge positive. Perfect performance of all 33
| engines, up until the boost back anyway.
| ben_bai wrote:
| I think the engines worked perfectly. The booster broke up in
| the middle, at least it looks like it on the everyday
| astronaut feed.
| pelorat wrote:
| I believe this flight used the old Raptor engines, and not the
| new simplified ones.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Pretty sure they used Raptor V2 which simplifies from V1;
| Raptor V3 I believe is simpler still, but that's still being
| tested at the SpaceX MacGregor TX facility.
| yarekt wrote:
| Impressive, but does anyone know where will the debris from the
| second stage re-enter?
| kortilla wrote:
| The flight termination system detonated the ship so it was
| blown into small enough pieces that they all likely burned up
| on reentry. Might find a heat tile at the bottom of the gulf.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| A rough estimate from Jonathan McDowell (well known for
| tracking lots of space objects and launches) is that the debris
| landed north east of the Turks and Caicos islands.
|
| https://nitter.net/planet4589/status/1725873032244195495
|
| Edit: a newer update shows direct evidence of the debris field
| area https://nitter.net/planet4589/status/1725917544114974995#m
| kaiwen1 wrote:
| It's astounding that until very recently it was standard practice
| to put humans on top of untested, first-of-kind rockets.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Well, to be fair, NASA is _much_ more risk-averse than SpaceX.
|
| That's why everything takes so much longer, the "classic" way.
|
| But the way SpaceX does things, gets seriously good results,
| quite quickly (and gives us some great videos of stuff getting
| blowed up).
| cryptonector wrote:
| I think it's the other way around. NASA flew the shuttle 135
| times and lost two of them, but they kept going after the
| first failure. And both failures followed NASA being advised
| of the root cause before the orbiters' destruction, and NASA
| management _ignored_ the advice. Meanwhile the safety track
| record for Falcon 9 exceeds that of the shuttle, and it
| exceeded it before humans were put on top of Falcon 9. The
| Apollo program did very few launches and yet they put humans
| on top of it. No, I think what you might say is that NASA in
| the 60s cared a lot less about safety than SpaceX do today,
| though perhaps NASA _today_ cares a lot more about safety
| than NASA 20 years ago (and definitely than 60 years ago).
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Lip-service to safety versus actual safety that _looks_
| unsafe.
|
| I deal with bureaucracies a lot and this is how they do
| everything: it has to look good, but they don't actually
| care to make things good.
|
| E.g.: fill out a ton of paperwork about how secure the web
| application is against hacking, but nobody reviews the
| source code for vulnerabilities. Or they fill out the
| paperwork and report the app as "secure" even when third
| parties like me are listing vulnerability after
| vulnerability.
|
| The report is what mattered, not reality.
|
| _OFFICIALLY_ , on paper, the Shuttle was very safe.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| What are you referencing???
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| "very recently" is more than 40 years ago, when the Space
| Shuttle made its first flight in 1981. That's closer in time to
| Sputnik than it is to today.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| We haven't fully stopped. The Orion that flew in SLS's first
| flight didn't test the life support system, the second launch
| is already going to carry a crew.
| Geee wrote:
| That was a beautiful launch. Would love if someone filmed in HDR
| to see the brightness and hue of the exhaust more accurately.
| pdar4123 wrote:
| I have loved watching space x launches for years. And here I am,
| scrolling around on my phone and I can't for the life of me find
| a stream that opens- this is just so sad
| ge96 wrote:
| You could watch someone's capture on YT, I didn't wake up in
| time myself dang.
| dmix wrote:
| At 2:30
| https://www.youtube.com/live/A8Z9LUX7fg0?si=r3brlpnVw5xoAgr_
| haspok wrote:
| Even Thunderfoot was impressed:
| https://www.youtube.com/live/BLlctxJnxy8?si=4NOk13foG-cIPbQL...
| nurettin wrote:
| Overall it looked like a good launch. But I think the world ended
| up with a bunch of space debris at around 150 km above earth,
| which will eventually come down (hopefully won't land on
| someone's head, or backyard), since it wasn't travelling at
| orbital velocity.
| kortex wrote:
| What is the sudden change in the exhaust plume at occurs here [1]
| at 149km / 17650 kph? I believe that's squarely in the
| thermosphere, and there aren't any step changes in
| temperature/pressure at that point that I'm aware of. It would
| make sense if that were near the mesopause, but that's around
| 100km.
|
| Maybe it's something on SpaceX's side of things, a change in the
| burn profile? Perhaps it's related to losing the Starship about a
| minute later.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/w9OsSN2kJrk?t=446
| jdworrells wrote:
| I think what you are seeing is a sudden burst of poorly
| combusted and/or unburned fuel as the engines are cut off. The
| engine telemetry indicators in the bottom right of the screen
| show engines off shortly after the plume.
| lutorm wrote:
| Yeah, this is a good question. It could be from the engines,
| but nothing should change at that point that I can think of,
| since it's well before shutdown. It might also start to vent
| something, intentionally or not.
|
| I hope they tell us.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Seems like a solid B, yes?
| ridgeguy wrote:
| Starship re-entering over Puerto Rico:
|
| https://twitter.com/eliassob/status/1725871782186381474
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I understand that having these prototype rockets blow up may be a
| cost-efficient way of improving the design. However, I still
| wonder how much of that was really expected, and what it says
| about the project progress. Also, how many successful launches
| will they consider enough before putting people's life at risk. I
| wouldn't feel super confident going into that rocket after having
| seen it blow up many times.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The Falcon 9 rocket started off the same way. They blew up on
| launch and on landing multiple times early in its development,
| but has now become perhaps the most reliable and certainly the
| most reusable rocket model in history, with hundreds of
| launches per year now with no incidents.
| mlindner wrote:
| The first planned use for Starship will likely be launching
| Starlink satellites. And there's no immediate plans to directly
| launch with humans on board.
|
| I'd personally ballpark that there will be well over 20
| launches before anything regarding humans is considered.
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