SpaceX Starship test flights

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

To me this seems little more than a multi-billion dollar demonstration of scaled up, pimped out 1950s technology, given 'they' have had anti-grav and field propulsion cracked for decades now.

I cannot help but marvel at what a spectacular waste of time and money this is.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
To me this seems little more than a multi-billion dollar demonstration of scaled up, pimped out 1950s technology, given 'they' have had anti-grav and field propulsion cracked for decades now.

I cannot help but marvel at what a spectacular waste of time and money this is.

Yes!

But it's still a bunch of fun to see. (Rather like this, vs. a smooth, silent 300 mph Chinese supertrain )

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GW_CqaBg39c

[ozmirage]

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
To me this seems little more than a multi-billion dollar demonstration of scaled up, pimped out 1950s technology, given 'they' have had anti-grav and field propulsion cracked for decades now.

I cannot help but marvel at what a spectacular waste of time and money this is.

Did you mean this?

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
To me this seems little more than a multi-billion dollar demonstration of scaled up, pimped out 1950s technology, given 'they' have had anti-grav and field propulsion cracked for decades now.

I cannot help but marvel at what a spectacular waste of time and money this is.

Yes!

But it's still a bunch of fun to see. (Rather like this, vs. a smooth, silent 300 mph Chinese supertrain )

Yes fun, and I do look forward to watching the spectacle. But this is also a massive troll, and that's what I find insulting.

What they are doing is hoarding the technology that could transform and rebuild our broken, dysfunctional world. Not just in propulsion/transportation, but energy-tech. Instead of an energy crisis we'd have a bonanza, one that would trigger a new epoch and change everything.

Instead, they feast on the goodies in secret, while we plebs live off the scraps.

[Bill Ryan]

One of the reasons this is worth sitting on the edge of one's seat for is that success is not at all certain (though, it must be said, it's highly likely). Elon Musk himself tweeted "Excitement guaranteed". Nothing else is!

Some readers may not know this piece of history. The rocket scheduled for its launch attempt on Monday is the most powerful rocket ever built — taking the place of the previous record-holder, the Soviet N1 back in 1969. But this is what happened to the N1.

The giant explosion is to this day the largest accidental man-made explosion, and the largest non-nuclear explosion, there has ever been. With this disaster went the Soviet Union's plans of beating the US to the Moon.

The video, compiled from Soviet archive footage that only much later became public, is less than 2 minutes.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=u2eAHvFprE8

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

One thing sticks in my mind here. It's been over 50 years since the razzmatazz of Apollo, and we haven't been back to the moon in all that time (at least openly!).

Space is a realm under strict control. There are 'things' up there they don't want us to see. Even Nasa got pretty much cancelled when they mothballed the space shuttle. I don't think they want us in space. Space tours, space hotels, colonization of Mars - I don't see any of that happening.

These billionaires looking to privatize space...I think that's a big problem for them. A problem they will probably look to fix.

I'm not making any predictions, but I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX fails. Maybe it's even set up to fail, the goal: to put the brakes on private space enterprise.

[seehas]

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
One thing sticks in my mind here. It's been over 50 years since the razzmatazz of Apollo, and we haven't been back to the moon in all that time (at least openly!).

Space is a realm under strict control. There are 'things' up there they don't want us to see. Even Nasa got pretty much cancelled when they mothballed the space shuttle. I don't think they want us in space. Space tours, space hotels, colonization of Mars - I don't see any of that happening.

These billionaires looking to privatize space...I think that's a big problem for them. A problem they will probably look to fix.

I'm not making any predictions, but I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX fails. Maybe it's even set up to fail, the goal: to put the brakes on private space enterprise.

Well i counter that, Elon Musk will be one of the first 10 humans to ever walk „officialy“ on Mars.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by seehas (here)
Well i counter that, Elon Musk will be one of the first 10 humans to ever walk „officialy“ on Mars.

I strongly suspect more than ten humans have walked on Mars already, as I think you do, hence "officially" in double quotes.

Whoever is already up there won't easily allow some upstart entrepreneur to drop in and start p!ssing in their sandbox. There's a reason why most unmanned missions to Mars end in failure, and not all of them are "technical faults".

The chance manned missions could end up the same way is to my mind quite high.

[Bill Ryan]

This is the running livestream that I'm watching. SpaceX themselves (https://spacex.com/launches/mission/...ip-flight-test) will start their own coverage something like 45 mins before the launch attempt, now targeted for 8:20 am US Central time (88 minutes from now).

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Vb9hFqF6i0

[Bill Ryan]

Update: today's (Monday's) launch was scrubbed at about T-10 minutes due to a frozen stuck valve. (Aaargh! ) Best guess at the moment for the next attempt is Thursday morning.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
Update: today's (Monday's) launch was scrubbed at about T-10 minutes due to a frozen stuck valve. (Aaargh! ) Best guess at the moment for the next attempt is Thursday morning.

Yes, they're trying again. The launch window (US Central Time) is from 8:28—9:30 am. Here's the best livestream, coming on air at 6:30 (just under 3 hours from now)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eAl3gVvMNNM

[Bill Ryan]

A brief update: (!) There will be a zillion videos online later.

1. It launched successfully and cleared the pad — but half a dozen of the 33 engines shut down. Soon after that, several other engines seemed to flame out.
2. Then, after a minute or so but now well away from the launch site, the rocket started to spin and tumble.
3. After a couple of minutes either the SpaceX team activated the flight termination system (i.e. they purposefully blew it up in mid-air) — or it exploded all on its own.
4. The launch mount, the support tower and the fuel tank farm are all (pretty much!) intact and undamaged. That alone is a major success. There was always the risk, almost impossible to evaluate, that the entire launch area might have been badly damaged from the immense power of the 33 engines.

Here's the truly impressive lift-off: (of the largest and most powerful rocket ever built)

https://twitter.com/heydave7/status/1649057151065919491

This zoomed image shows the 8 failed engines which caused the entire flight to become unstable. This double ring of engines is supposed to be symmetrical.



But overall, it was a genuine success. (Yes, really!) The only bad outcome here would have been if the rocket had fallen back on the launch pad and destroyed everything.

• It actually lifted off.
• The launch pad is intact.
• SpaceX will have a ton of good telemetry data to analyze over the coming weeks, prior to the next attempt in a few months time.

[AlaBil]

Watched it live and it was really, really exciting. Great to be headed back to space and to do it with a private company is amazing. Watching the crowd at SpaceX headquarter, the vast majority of the people shown were young. I was not sure this next generation had it in them to get back to space.

Great job Space X and great vision to you Elon Musk!

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
The launch mount, the support tower and the fuel tank farm are all (pretty much!) intact and undamaged. That alone is a major success. There was always the risk, almost impossible to evaluate, that the entire launch area might have been badly damaged from the immense power of the 33 engines.

There's been a huge amount of discussion and speculation among the SpaceX-watching community (which consists of a lot of very bright people and highly experienced engineers), prior to any kind of formal post mortem statement from Elon Musk and his team.

It seems that:

• While the launch mount, tower and tank farm are all intact, there's actually a huge crater under the launch mount where the 33 raptor engines blasted into the concrete. That's like a large bomb going off, and videos show huge chunks of concrete flying into the sea as far as half a mile away. Many observers believe that some of the debris probably impacted the engines or other systems during the several seconds before it was released from the launch mount.

• One of the systems that seems to have been damaged or failed was the HPU (Hydraulic Power Unit), which was critical. That controls the gimbaling (directional steering) of the engines, as well as (it's being assumed) the release of the second stage (the Starship itself) from the Booster. (The two never actually separated, even when it was doing its cartwheels in the upper atmosphere.)

An amazing photo showing (a) the size of the rocket, and (b) the scale of the explosive blast at takeoff:

[Ravenlocke]

The liftoff and flight starts at the 45 minute mark




Starship gave us quite a show during today’s first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Starbase in Texas.

At 8:33 a.m. CT, Starship successfully lifted off from the orbital launch pad for the first time. The vehicle cleared the pad and beach as Starship climbed to an apogee of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico – the highest of any Starship to-date. The vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble. The flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship. As is standard procedure, the pad and surrounding area was cleared well in advance of the test, and we expect the road and beach near the pad to remain closed until tomorrow.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI

[mountain_jim]

going to need to rethink the pad structure. Saw another video of flying concrete cratering a car...

Louis Balderas, the founder of LabPadre, which films SpaceX’s launches, said that while it was common to see some debris, smoke and dust, the impact of Thursday’s liftoff was unlike anything he had ever seen. “There were bowling ball-sized pieces of concrete that came flying out of the launchpad area,” Mr. Balderas said.

https://twitter.com/_emergent_/statu...263003136?s=20

later

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/stat...765330945?s=20

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4qkib-rlDWQ

[Bill Ryan]

In the online armchair engineer community watching all this, there's a great deal of hand-wringing, 20-20 hindsight criticism, and know-it-all "I told you so"s. About 2/3 are harping about the whole thing, while 1/3 are enthusiastically celebrating a historic test flight.

Here, in an excellent 5 minute interview on CTV News, former NASA astronaut and test pilot Chris Hadfield states exactly how it is — pointing out that the very first test flight of ANY newly designed aircraft or space vehicle nearly always only just gets off the ground (if that ). It's worth listening to. I agree with everything he says.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iiDGb1CXw4I

And here's the archived real-time livestream from SpaceX themselves, which was also posted above.

Start in at 40 minutes, and feel first the suspense and then the ecstatic delight among the SpaceX employees who can barely contain their excitement as this ginormous rocket fires up and slowly starts to leave the ground.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI

Much of the internet hand-wringing has been about the flying-concrete damage around the launch site, but it's all intact. The tank farm has some tents, and the launch mount has a sizeable crater under it, but all that can be fixed within a couple of months. The bigger obstacle might be FAA approval for the next attempt, if the authorities get worried about worst-case scenarios, which is [partly] their job.

Finally, an interesting snippet of insight, while everyone awaits a formal statement from SpaceX of what did and didn't go as planned. One imagines they're still sifting through a whole mountain of flight telemetry data, while engineers start to examine the launch pad area to see how superficial (or not) the damage is.

Two members of the NSF forum (which I've been scanning with interest as a guest), themselves experienced retired engineers, have spoken to SpaceX engineers off the record who say that the entire thing went absolutely as well as could be hoped for until the stage separation, which failed. That failure auto-activated the remote flight termination system. (No human would have pressed the "destruct" button: it was all computer controlled.)

The thing was intended to rotate in the upper atmosphere at a certain height (alarmingly to the human eye!), rather like a field athlete spinning a couple of times before letting go of the discus. (In other words, a kind of sling-shot effect.) The flight self-terminated — apparently — merely because of the failed separation. It's possible that one reason for that was because several failing engines prevented it from reaching the correct high altitude, but that will all come out in the wash when SpaceX are ready to explain everything that we saw.

[Johnnycomelately]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
In the online armchair engineer community watching all this, there's a great deal of hand-wringing, 20-20 hindsight criticism, and know-it-all "I told you so"s. About 2/3 are harping about the whole thing, while 1/3 are enthusiastically celebrating a historic test flight.

Here, in an excellent 5 minute interview on CTV News, former NASA astronaut and test pilot Chris Hadfield states exactly how it is — pointing out that the very first test flight of ANY newly designed aircraft or space vehicle nearly always only just gets off the ground (if that ). It's worth listening to. I agree with everything he says.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iiDGb1CXw4I

Much of the internet hand-wringing has been about the flying-concrete damage around the launch site, but it's all intact. The tank farm has some tents, and the launch mount has a sizeable crater under it, but all that can be fixed within a couple of months. The bigger obstacle might be FAA approval for the next attempt, if the authorities get worried about worst-case scenarios, which is [partly] their job.
.
.
Finally, an interesting snippet of insight, while everyone awaits a formal statement from SpaceX of what did and didn't go as planned. One imagines they're still sifting through a whole mountain of flight telemetry data, while engineers start to examine the launch pad area to see how superficial (or not) the damage is.
.
.
The thing was intended to rotate in the upper atmosphere at a certain height (alarmingly to the human eye!), rather like a field athlete spinning a couple of times before letting go of the discus. (In other words, a kind of sling-shot effect.) The flight self-terminated — apparently — merely because of the failed separation. It's possible that one reason for that was because several failing engines prevented it from reaching the correct high altitude, but that will all come out in the wash when SpaceX are ready to explain everything that we saw.

Is a critical opinion not legitimate, if it can be charactized as “hand-wringing”? The definition says this means the excessive display of concern or distress.

My hands are relaxed, and so are my mind and emotions. Mr. Hadfield gave a good pep talk, as have many others, but the reason for the rocket failure seems likely to be damage to on-board systems, due to flying chunks of concrete.

It’s not about how badly the launch area was damaged, it’s a question of how this mode of failure (of the rocket) was not foreseen. Is concrete not a well understood thing? This brings into question the competence of SpaceX’ engineering management, IMO. I don’t want to, and so don’t, entertain the idea that they intended this failure mode.

The high groundwater level at the site is why they used that setup. I predict that, if they really want to keep launching from there, they will raise the launch platform (and, then necessarily, the service tower), and incorporate suitable geometries and maybe add water ablatement. Might take a bit longer than just repairs.

From my limited POV, I am onside. Onward and upward! ~8D

[Bill Ryan]

This would be very interesting for armchair rocket geeks (and no-one else! ), a detailed live audio-only Q&A held with Elon Musk 12 hours ago about what the heck really happened with the last Starship launch.

I've posted it here not for the engineering discussion, but because I was astonished how truly terrible Elon was when trying to explain things to others, even when his audience was fairly well-informed. Maybe he was stressed, completely unprepared, or hadn't had enough sleep, but he was just so totally inarticulate it really surprised me.

As an aside (but the discussion doesn't really belong on this thread!), he seemed to me to show every symptom of being on the autistic spectrum — which I'd now guess he probably is, as a high-performing Aspergers. Listen in for a couple minutes at almost any point, and you may be able to see this clearly.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mmIqSPux3FY

[grapevine]

Funny you should say that Bill . . .

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57045770
The SpaceX CEO spoke about his use of social media, saying: "I sometimes say or post strange things"

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has revealed he has Asperger's syndrome while appearing on the US comedy sketch series Saturday Night Live (SNL).

The 49-year-old told viewers he was "the first person with Asperger's" to host the long-running programme - to loud cheers from the audience.

People with Asperger's interpret the environment around them differently to other people.

It is thought to be the first time Mr Musk has spoken about his condition.