SpaceX (general discussion)

Moose said:
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.
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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.
 
Orionblamblam said:
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.
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Suboptimal? Nine year old to mom and dad: "I'm sorry my report card was suboptimal."

I would have been spanked...
 
sferrin said:
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.
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They relit all the remaining central engines for the boost back
 
edwest4 said:
And the payload would never reach its destination so, no, not a success...
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Uh, main ship disconnected succesfully and can continue it's mission. It's irellevant for astronauts or sattelite if booster is returned or not.
After all it's the main working principle of almost all modern rockets.
 
Booster and payload both separately went boom after separation.
Booster disintegrated just after separation while it was reorienting for return and Starship just as it was approaching the end of its sub-orbital trajectory insertion burn decided to self destruct but they dont know why yet as telemetry was lost just before it did.
 
In regards to IFT-2 TheSpaceBucket has just put out a video about it:


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.
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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.
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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.
 
I have no doubt that pieces of the second stage successfully splashed down North-West of Hawai'i;):D.
 
Launch Pad after IFT-2
F_PN_NHWwAEgEtJ
 
Josh_TN said:
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.
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Doubtful.

Its in the FAA courts now for figuring out what went wrong and if how SX plans to fix it is to satisfaction.

And while the booster going up can be marked off as design the Vehicle itself also decided to pop.

And Im willing to bet a pretty penny the why of that is going dog SpaceXs team like hell.

Cause the Booster work in all regards but tge return, which is fine as seen by the original Falcon 9 attempts.

The Vehicle? Starship itself? That the most important bit with all the money making fun and is going to looked at hard unless its something blindly obvious. Cause that needs to be absolutely perfect.
 
PMN1 said:
The situation has improved....
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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.
 
Firefinder said:
Its in the FAA courts now for figuring out what went wrong and if how SX plans to fix it is to satisfaction.
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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.
 
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?
 
TomS said:
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.
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Gotta hope for good tracking footage. Or for the Navy to find some debris.
Orionblamblam said:
The front fell off.

View attachment 712076

t.co

Starship Explosion Footage From The Florida Keys

t.co t.co
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Well there's your problem
 
No doubt the nose-section arrived at the splashdown site - in pieces;):D.
 
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WatcherZero said:
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.
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Burned paint hardly, "raises questions".
 
Orionblamblam said:
The front fell off.

View attachment 712076

t.co

Starship Explosion Footage From The Florida Keys

t.co t.co
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When you “lift things up and put them down”
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q7gzmoqmL7g


—-a lot like the chopsticks have recently…well…we all know a certain spoon-bender who couldn’t perform live on Carson:
www.shared.com

The Night Johnny Carson Exposed A Psychic On Live TV

Yuri Geller was a household name back in the '70s.
www.shared.com www.shared.com

Why?

Because 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!

There is a reason SLS is babied until launch, after all.

Falcon? That’s like those strong, narrow metal straws about as hard to bend as rebar. A wide Franklin stove flue? Easy.
 
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sferrin said:
Burned paint hardly, "raises questions".
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Compare it to the first launch and its been a lot more toasted (its also not a painted structure, thats raw steel), steel repeatedly exposed to temperatures greater than 200°C and cooled will over time experience Creep slowly deforming its natural resting shape and causing it to want to twist and buckle. Between 538°C – 649°C it will experience subcritical annealing and lose its heat treatment properties, being heated beyond outside a carbon/oxygen controlled environment its desirable Austenite crystalline content will be gradually replaced by Cementite causing it to lose its mechanical tensile strength and become brittle with a charcoal like consistency.
 
shin_getter said:
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?
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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.
 
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Flyaway said:
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.
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A week before launch Starship was destacked to replace tiles that had fallen off while waiting for launch approval.
SpaceX knew that part (or most) of the tiles would not stay attached during flight but launched anyway, knowing that even if powered flight would be successful the reentry would be a failure.

NMaude said:
IFT-2 met its' basic test-flight objectives, it was a qualified success.
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Even in the 1960's this launch would not have been called a qualified success.

I am getting more and more disappointed with the way SpaceX is working on Starship/Booster.
It's just trial-and-error like Wernher von Braun did in the 1940's, but in those days they did not have 80 years of experience with rocket launches like we have nowadays.
If before the first Saturn V launch in November 1967 von Braun had said (like Musk did in April) that the launch would already be a success if the rocket cleared the launch tower he would never have gotten permission to launch at all.

The first Saturn V launch was a success, only 25 years after the first successful A-4 (aka V-2) launch.
Saturn V could bring astronauts to the moon and bring them back.
The second Starship launch was a failure, 81 years after the first successful A-4 launch.
Starship is merely a two-stage rocket. Yes, it is big and heavy but that does not change the basic design principles.

Everything can accurately be calculated and simulated nowadays, but if that is done by young enthusiastic, overconfident, but inexperienced engineers working under extreme time pressure then the results are full of mistakes. It's no different in my world (process design) where also most calculations and simulations done by young coworkers have to be corrected by more experienced engineers. Seems to be a result of the modern education system.

Well done SpaceX, frustrate experienced engineers so that they leave (or fire them), and hire obedient graduates instead. Like any dictator Musk will finally be surrounded by only yeasayers.
 
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.
 
TheKutKu said:
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.
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Wasn't a complete failure. It flew under power for most of the time it was schedule to. Demonstrated separation, powered flight, and control.
 
Dagger said:
Everything can accurately be calculated and simulated nowadays,
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Eh, what?

I am getting more and more disappointed with the way SpaceX is working on Starship/Booster.
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If only they had been smart enough to use more triangles in the interstage, they could have avoided your disappointment entirely!
 
publiusr said:
Because 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!
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Nothing like that. Lifting loads are nothing like inflight loads. Plus vehicles are designed way above the yield loads
 

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