When is the Starship orbital launch?

[Rex R]

Perhaps space x merged with Elon's boring company , and this was also a test bore.

 

[Funkworks]

It did occur to me that there doesn't appear to be any water deluge system at that launch pad...

I think I read somewhere this was because there won't be any on Mars or the Moon, so it sort of simulates extra-terrestrial conditions. Although I don't think any booster will ever make it beyond Earth. I guess it also saves on costs.

 

[rocket_troy]

6 engines out and unbalanced. 2 appeared to blow at 30 seconds. Flight termination system activated at 4 minutes.

View attachment 576251

Yeah I noticed that. How about the vapour releases from random nozzles during the final few mins of the countdown? Is that normal?

TP

 

[mh9162013]

SpaceX has already gotten 27 engines to work together reliably on the Falcon Heavy. Good engineering, testing, and best manufacturing practices get rocket engines to work, not blind luck.

Who said anything about blind luck? The more complex you make a system, the more likely you'll have failures. One way to deal with it is to make the components of a system more reliable, right? I imagine SpaceX has done that; as you said, they have a lot of experience getting clusters to work (although with the Falcon Heavy, are all 27 engines on the same rocket, or some on the boosters, too?).

Another way to deal with potential failure is to have redundancy, right? So is it so far fetched to imagine that SpaceX engineers have maybe added an extra few engines to help in that respect? This also gives them the flexibility to say:

"We can get XXX tons of payload into LEO with a projected 95.5% success rate. Or, we can get XXX + 20 tons of payload into LEO with a prjected 92.4% success rate."

SpaceX isn't my favorite company, but I would never equate their success to blind luck.

 

[lakeroadster]

There's some major repair work to be done on the launch mount before the next flight. No wonder there was so much debris flying everywhere at liftoff, look at the size of that crater!



View attachment 576261

Wow... that certainly was an exciting launch.

After seeing the post launch pad.... who thought a "dry" pad was a good idea? I'm thinking the launch site repairs should be sponsored by....

 

[Antares JS]

Who said anything about blind luck? The more complex you make a system, the more likely you'll have failures. One way to deal with it is to make the components of a system more reliable, right? I imagine SpaceX has done that; as you said, they have a lot of experience getting clusters to work (although with the Falcon Heavy, are all 27 engines on the same rocket, or some on the boosters, too?).

Another way to deal with potential failure is to have redundancy, right? So is it so far fetched to imagine that SpaceX engineers have maybe added an extra few engines to help in that respect? This also gives them the flexibility to say:

"We can get XXX tons of payload into LEO with a projected 95.5% success rate. Or, we can get XXX + 20 tons of payload into LEO with a prjected 92.4% success rate."

SpaceX isn't my favorite company, but I would never equate their success to blind luck.

It was more directed at Dotini. The idea that getting all the engines to work would be a "statistical anomaly" is an insult to rocket engineers.

 

[mh9162013]

It was more directed at Dotini. The idea that getting all the engines to work would be a "statistical anomaly" is an insult to rocket engineers.

Gotcha

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

I woke up too late to see it live. Rewound the stream, and WOW! That was pretty amazing.

That thing did an impressive number of flips at the end — like a 40-story tall tower tumbling through the sky on fire. I’m amazed it didn’t just tear apart at that point.

You could see an explosion and pieces flying off just a few seconds in, and I figured it might not end well, so I‘m impressed it made it all the way to the stage separation step.

I wonder if with the number of engines out, was it still on a nominal trajectory when the stage sep failed? If the Starship had separated from the booster at that point and continued on, would it have been able to achieve the right course? Or was it already too low or too slow to make it?

 

[boatgeek]

It was more directed at Dotini. The idea that getting all the engines to work would be a "statistical anomaly" is an insult to rocket engineers.

That said, a selling point of the F9 (and presumably Starship) is that there is enough redundancy that an engine out failure doesn't doom a launch. I would assume that is valuable to customers. That doesn't take away from the fact that rocket engineers are good at getting all of the engines to light nearly every time.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Not only that, there didn't seem to be any flame deflectors either. It looks like it was just 30-odd Raptors aimed at the dirt. Well, concrete, but close enough.

That concrete became dirt!

 

[boatgeek]

That concrete became dirt!

Alchemy!

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

Obviously this pad setup is not going to work long-term. Anyone know what they are planning to do when the pace picks up? They can’t be filling in the hole after each flight.

 

[cbwho]

I wonder if they intentionally keep flipping it, trying the separation a few times before they gave up?

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

I’ve kind of wanted to launch a large HPR straight off the ground just to see the smoking crater...

 

[Antares JS]

I wonder if they intentionally keep flipping it, trying the separation a few times before they gave up?

That is extremely unlikely to be the case.

 

[Funkworks]

I’ve kind of wanted to launch a large HPR straight off the ground just to see the smoking crater...

Interesting, would one get RSO approval for that? Provided it's on sand without any dry grass around?

 

[Rex R]

Maybe line the crater with concrete, fill with water and call it aheat sink.

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Alchemy!

I was thinking more like blast-phemy!

(kinda goes back to the pizza cheese thing we were working on...)

 

[Blast it Tom!]

DP

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

Interesting, would one get RSO approval for that? Provided it's on sand without any dry grass around?

I think it’s kind of unlikely, and maybe doing something like that breaks a rule, but I saw someone fly a large pyramid straight off the ground once. I don’t know what he did to get permission for that.

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

Maybe line the crater with concrete, fill with water and call it aheat sink.

Dump in a few bags of Quikrete, hose it down, good to go.

 

[afadeev]

I'm pretty sure they have another booster and starship waiting in the wings. My bet would be on months until the next attempt.

A few months, per Musk:

 

[boatgeek]

Interesting, would one get RSO approval for that? Provided it's on sand without any dry grass around?

I think you'd be more worried about the club GSE maintenance people up in arms about what you're going to do to the launch pad. I've definitely seen some decent-size craters at the end of blast deflectors though. And one flight on a full G that bored a 1" diameter hole in the sod (sorry, Parks Department!)

 

[Tractionengines]

I wonder if they intentionally keep flipping it, trying the separation a few times before they gave up?

I think more the opposite.

They knew with that many engines out they were off nominal trajectory. So they ( the flight director ) disabled the staging. They couldn't have it going of in an unexpected flight path. ( Crashing down over Africa, or Europe would be really bad. ) So they inhibited the staging rode out the flight to collect data, and make sure data downloads were captured. Then terminated the flight still over the booster landing exclusion zone in the Gulf.

 

[Chad]

man what a beast, was that a hydraulic unit exploding off the bottom a few sec after liftoff?

 

[A-ron]

Obviously this pad setup is not going to work long-term. Anyone know what they are planning to do when the pace picks up? They can’t be filling in the hole after each flight.

A couple of weeks ago on Twitter, Elon said "We will need to make a water-cooled steel jacket to achieve full reusability."

 

[Antares JS]

I think more the opposite.

They knew with that many engines out they were off nominal trajectory. So they ( the flight director ) disabled the staging. They couldn't have it going of in an unexpected flight path. ( Crashing down over Africa, or Europe would be really bad. ) So they inhibited the staging rode out the flight to collect data, and make sure data downloads were captured. Then terminated the flight still over the booster landing exclusion zone in the Gulf.

This is also extremely unlikely.

Rocket launches are, and I cannot stress this enough, automated. There is no way for a human to make decisions on something that can go south as quickly as a rocket launch can. Also, the flight termination system does not need the vehicle to still be together. The idea that they would disable the staging mechanism to prevent the second stage from flying off course makes no sense. Automated FTS systems usually work by sensing whether the rocket is within a certain deviation of on its proper course. If it goes beyond that deviation, the FTS activates. This is so whether it's the whole vehicle or just the upper stage.

There is also usually a manual activation that can be engaged by an RSO in case the automated system has obviously failed.

Most likely scenario is the vehicle's control computer attempted to activate the stage separation mechanism, but it failed for whatever reason, the booster started doing its flipover anyway like it was supposed to, but it didn't work properly with the massive starship still attached to it, and once the vehicle had veered off course enough, the FTS activated and destroyed the vehicle. All without any human intervention.

 

[CalebJ]

This is also extremely unlikely.

Rocket launches are, and I cannot stress this enough, automated. There is no way for a human to make decisions on something that can go south as quickly as a rocket launch can. Also, the flight termination system does not need the vehicle to still be together. The idea that they would disable the staging mechanism to prevent the second stage from flying off course makes no sense. Automated FTS systems usually work by sensing whether the rocket is within a certain deviation of on its proper course. If it goes beyond that deviation, the FTS activates. This is so whether it's the whole vehicle or just the upper stage.

There is also usually a manual activation that can be engaged by an RSO.

Most likely scenario is the vehicle's control computer attempted to activate the stage separation mechanism, but it failed for whatever reason, the booster started doing its flipover anyway like it was supposed to, but it didn't work properly with the massive starship still attached to it, and once the vehicle had veered off course enough, the FTS activated and destroyed the vehicle. All without any human intervention.

Why would the FTS have waited so long to activate? It looked like the entire stack was rotating for about 1:15, going well beyond 360*.

 

[Antares JS]

Why would the FTS have waited so long to activate? It looked like the entire stack was rotating for about 1:15, going well beyond 360*.

Because it took that much time to deviate from where it should have been in its flight path to a point when the deviation was no longer acceptable. As large as it is, and as fast as it was going, it had a lot of momentum going in the correct direction that was never going to be overcome instantly.

 

[roc_boy]

Hopefully this link will work, video of what is being speculated as HPU failure -