I don't understand this. The booster shuts off all but the three central engines, hot staging occurs, then those same three engines perform the boost-back. No engines "re-light". The three are never shut down.The re-light after staging immediately had issues, the number of lit engines kept falling off asymmetrically. Wonder if an engine went RUD energetically at re-light and that caused all kinds of issues.
Looks like both stages exploded: stage one several seconds after successfully staging, second stage several seconds before SECO. Vastly more successful than the first flight, but still suboptimal.
Still, shouldn't it be considered as success? After all, big badaboom occured after separation of main body, so payload is intact.
They relit all the remaining central engines for the boost backI don't understand this. The booster shuts off all but the three central engines, hot staging occurs, then those same three engines perform the boost-back. No engines "re-light". The three are never shut down.
Uh, main ship disconnected succesfully and can continue it's mission. It's irellevant for astronauts or sattelite if booster is returned or not.And the payload would never reach its destination so, no, not a success...
I'd say so. They got further than previously. and as long as they can keep that up without running out of money, starship has a shot at the moon.Still, shouldn't it be considered as success? After all, big badaboom occured after separation of main body, so payload is intact.
After 212 days of repairs, upgrades, and iteration, SpaceX just attempted the second integrated test flight of the Starship launch vehicle, and the improvements were obvious. The last flight was on April 20th earlier this year and ended with a bang after a few issues with the launch pad, engines, internal fires, etc. This time around, we saw a very different result from engine ignition all the way to an eventual explosion.
With this test complete, SpaceX now has a lot of work ahead of them as they find out exactly what went wrong, and launch the next Starship prototype. Here I will go more in-depth into what happened on this second flight test, where the issues arose, what to expect in the near future, and more.
Doubtful.Well one key difference is that all the ground infrastructure is intact, so there likely isn’t any rebuild or redesign of that. That should speed the process of retesting.
Launch Pad after IFT-2
The situation has improved....
Its in the FAA courts now for figuring out what went wrong and if how SX plans to fix it is to satisfaction.
Gotta hope for good tracking footage. Or for the Navy to find some debris.That's not quite true. SpaceX does the actual investigation here, FAA just has to accept it, agree on the corrective measures, etc. A lot of the timing will depend on how fast SpaceX can figure it out. And with the telemetry loss before the RUD, that could be tricky.
Well there's your problem
Gotta hope for good tracking footage. Or for the Navy to find some debris.
Well there's your problem
It sucks that the vehicle failed. it's awesome that even after failure, the part that would be the crew compartment said "Screw you, I can still make it!" and tried to claw it's way into orbit.It's OK. They flew it out of the environment.
Burned paint hardly, "raises questions".Some concrete pitting and a few steel panels blown off, didnt dig a hole in the ground but also doesnt look like it has worked perfectly.
The cooking it looks to have taken raises questions about how frequently it can be used before reconditioning though.
When you “lift things up and put them down”
Burned paint hardly, "raises questions".
It means it's a nearly irresistible invitation to potential competitors. If you have some time to spare, look up the history of Pan Am. I think Juan Trippe and Elon Musk might have had some truly captivating conversations.It does seem like the engineering difficulty of the project is really high and it would be hard to replicate. If starship gets developed it can would a massive moat. I mean, flipping hundreds of tons moving at high speed with all engines on...
What does monopoly on cheap space access mean for the future?
Not sure why elsewhere certain people had an issue with this article on the flight.
The front fell off.
A week before launch Starship was destacked to replace tiles that had fallen off while waiting for launch approval.Scott Manley’s analysis of the flight, as he points out with the number of heatproof tiles missing even early on it probably wouldn’t have survived re-entry anyway.
Even in the 1960's this launch would not have been called a qualified success.IFT-2 met its' basic test-flight objectives, it was a qualified success.
Wasn't a complete failure. It flew under power for most of the time it was schedule to. Demonstrated separation, powered flight, and control.It didn't have dummy stages, and it couldn't follow the suborbital trajectory that was planned, it is a failure.
But it's probably a very useful failure for the development program, and relatively promising for its future.
Everything can accurately be calculated and simulated nowadays,
I am getting more and more disappointed with the way SpaceX is working on Starship/Booster.
Nothing like that. Lifting loads are nothing like inflight loads. Plus vehicles are designed way above the yield loadsBecause he couldn’t work the metal back and forth to induce stress fatigue/annealing—-Like stacking…destacking…restacking, etc.
The pitch up looks to have destroyed SuperHeavy, but had it burned to depletion and expended? No problem.
I say the Chopsticks broke Starship…or gave it a hernia that popped right when…ow…just pulled a muscle!