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are we sure they didnt blow it up? 'self destruct' actually IS built into these things so something massive large and aerodynamically stable cannot come down unfettered...
LAWN DART!
Haha, congratulations on SpaceX not blowing up the launch pad. TBH, that was the minimum requirement.
I'd call this "Meets Expectations" I give it a "C+" or maybe “B-”
50/50 to near orbital velocity was optimistic. I was guessing 20% chance of complete success.
Major successes:
+Long duration burn of 33(ish) raptors all next to each other.
+The raptors that did shut down did so in a benign manner.
+Didn’t blow up too much stuff on the ground.
+Definitely tested all possible dynamic loads on the full vehicle stack. (Since it was upside down and bassackwards at times.)
+It didn’t fall apart while cartwheeling across the sky (which is actually freaking amazing! The view of the interstage looked rock-solid despite the vehicle flying sideways under full power. The monster stack is a lot tougher than I would have expected)
+They successfully got rid of some older hardware, as planned.
It's disappointing Starship never got a chance to separate and ignite. Even if sideways.
It looked like they had 6/33 engines out at one point, and then one seemed to come back. I forget how many they could handle without failing to reach orbit.
It looked cattywampus from the get-go. I was worried they were just going to sit on the pad and burn stuff up on the ground.
I hope they explain the details of what went wrong. Were the engine outages clustered too closely? Did the RCS system not perform as expected? Were there unexpected external dynamic loads (fins or control surfaces didn’t work right, or they hit unexpected wind shear? Did something (propellant, ballast) break loose and shift internally?
I’ve got to say, this looked uncannily similar to some of my big-rocket Kerbal Space Program launches where I forgot to add gimballing to my engines (or RCS or Verniers), and stuff went really sideways when it got exo-atmospheric.
I guess spending 100X more money per rocket, and building them to be thrown away, does get you more initial mission success. So much for my prediction that Starship would beat SLS off the ground.
are we sure they didnt blow it up? 'self destruct' actually IS built into these things so something massive large and aerodynamically stable cannot come down unfettered...
They did active the flight termination system (FTS) for both the booster and starship.
I'm surprised they waited that long to use the FTA, it did quite a few flips and corkscrews, before they blew it up.
So how long before pieces are up for sale on eBay!
I talked to my rocket scientist buddy (who coincidentally founded spacex with Elon) and his take it was it looked like an engine 'explosion' near the end of first stage burn. Is that consistent with the video?
I talked to my rocket scientist buddy (who coincidentally founded spacex with Elon) and his take it was it looked like an engine 'explosion' near the end of first stage burn. Is that consistent with the video?
I've listened to a bunch of commentary post-launch and between T-0:00 (launch) to T+15 seconds, 3 of the raptors (out of 33) were not working at all, then an additional 2 or 3 engines went out.
If you rewatch the SpaceX video of the launch, they have a graphic in the lower left corner of the 33 raptors and you can see when certain ones stop working.
Someone commented that at T+30 seconds one of the hydraulic units on the side of the booster broke/failed, and that allows the raptors to move/gimbal around, which could have also caused issues at MECO (Main Engine Cut Off).
So two things didn't obviously happen when they should have, MECO and then separation of the booster and starship.
I'm not sure how the separation of the two works, but if it's hydraulic related, then there was no chance.
Good news is, Booster 9, the next one up, supposedly doesn't use hydraulics and instead, uses electric motors to move/gimbal the raptor engines.
The bigger issue is the launch site, the tank farm was damaged and the concrete under the orbital launch mount was severely damaged/destroyed; it could be months before another launch, even though they already have new boosters and starships ready to go.
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