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Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: Didn't the first stage of the Saturn V have 5 engines? And didn't they lose one at least once and still successfully place the payload in orbit? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: Originally Posted By castlebravo84: Originally Posted By Dagger41: Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: I'd imagine the engines being produced now already have improvements that these didn't. At least they know they whole thing won't blow up or become uncontrollable if they lose a few engines. It went out of control because they lost a few engines. I think we will see a new booster design in the works with 5-9 much larger engines, like super-dooper Raptors or some such thing that produce as much if not more thrust than the 33 engine combination. As long as they can detect an engine failure in progress and shut it down before it blows up and takes out other stuff, having 33 engines is a huge reliability advantage because they can lose a few of them and still complete the mission and land safely. If they only had five engines, losing just one would result in the loss of the vehicle. Didn't the first stage of the Saturn V have 5 engines? And didn't they lose one at least once and still successfully place the payload in orbit? Yes, and the first stage vehicle was lost. With five engines, super heavy wouldn't be able to land with an engine out. |
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so did it explode ? or not explode.
i did not see an explosion --- did that occur at a high altitude ? |
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View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Sailboat: Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: Wow. I'm betting there's some serious damage to the pad and tank farm |
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Originally Posted By mort: Am i seeing this right, is the concrete eroded in a crater? Is there now an air-gap under that footing bottom of the picture left of center? Wasn't the area under the pad previously flat? View Quote Yes. But the piers are on pilings so still supported it looks like. The concrete perimeter ring though is experiencing structural sunlight. |
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Originally Posted By Orion_Shall_Rise: Intentional choice a lot have argued over. They probably don't want to deal with the amount of water that would be required for their planned launch tempo. That may be a expensive poor decision. View Quote One source indicated that the number of flights like this make be around five per year. It is probably in this thread and I don't recall the numbers and some appeared to be just Starship. |
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Originally Posted By Orion_Shall_Rise: Blew up at 30,km after failing second stage separation. Presumed intentional. Small explosion as first stage was presumably out of fuel. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Orion_Shall_Rise: Originally Posted By MFP_4073: so did it explode ? or not explode. i did not see an explosion --- did that occur at a high altitude ? Blew up at 30,km after failing second stage separation. Presumed intentional. Small explosion as first stage was presumably out of fuel. Pretty sure I heard on-stream that it was confirmed detonated for safety. |
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Sir (Username Redacted), charter member Knights of Wonder
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Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: Didn't the first stage of the Saturn V have 5 engines? And didn't they lose one at least once and still successfully place the payload in orbit? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: Originally Posted By castlebravo84: Originally Posted By Dagger41: Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: I'd imagine the engines being produced now already have improvements that these didn't. At least they know they whole thing won't blow up or become uncontrollable if they lose a few engines. It went out of control because they lost a few engines. I think we will see a new booster design in the works with 5-9 much larger engines, like super-dooper Raptors or some such thing that produce as much if not more thrust than the 33 engine combination. As long as they can detect an engine failure in progress and shut it down before it blows up and takes out other stuff, having 33 engines is a huge reliability advantage because they can lose a few of them and still complete the mission and land safely. If they only had five engines, losing just one would result in the loss of the vehicle. Didn't the first stage of the Saturn V have 5 engines? And didn't they lose one at least once and still successfully place the payload in orbit? Apollo 6 (unmanned) lost multiple 2nd and 3rd stage engines, resulting in a significantly lower orbit. Apollo 13 lost a 2nd stage engine, which could be compensated for because it's at a higher altitude where TWR is less important. No 1st stage engine ever failed. |
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Originally Posted By Orion_Shall_Rise: Blew up at 30,km after failing second stage separation. Presumed intentional. Small explosion as first stage was presumably out of fuel. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Orion_Shall_Rise: Originally Posted By MFP_4073: so did it explode ? or not explode. i did not see an explosion --- did that occur at a high altitude ? Blew up at 30,km after failing second stage separation. Presumed intentional. Small explosion as first stage was presumably out of fuel. |
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be ascribed to sheer stupidity." LTC (CENTCOM)
"Round is a shape, right? I have the body of a god...Just happens to be Buddah! Az_Redneck |
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Originally Posted By notso: And the civil engineering work that would be needed to make a full trench and such below the mount. Given the elevation there, that would be non-trivial, and probably need more .gov approvals for that much construction. View Quote Look at the launch sites in Florida. The launch ducting/passageways may be at ground level and above. There is a long ramp UP to the launch area. |
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I feel like the cheapest solution may be to just launch from a higher pad.
Keep the towers the same height to stack, them lift complete stack to like the catch height to launch from. |
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It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack
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View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Sailboat: Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: Wow. I'm betting there's some serious damage to the pad and tank farm Attached File |
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Guys... there is going to be a water deluge system. The parts for it are already at Starbase. It just hasn't been installed yet.
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be ascribed to sheer stupidity." LTC (CENTCOM)
"Round is a shape, right? I have the body of a god...Just happens to be Buddah! Az_Redneck |
View Quote The tower structure itself looks pretty good.....concrete not so much. |
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EP429: Today's lesson - Don't provoke ARFCOM. People will see your butthole.
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Originally Posted By fox2008: The tower structure itself looks pretty good.....concrete not so much. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By fox2008: The tower structure itself looks pretty good.....concrete not so much. Guess stage 0 still needs some work. Maybe the oil platform launch site idea should get another chance? |
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So did the thrust on launch kickback and destroy some of the engines on launch?
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I've seen better riots at Walmart on a black Friday - SrBenelli
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Reminded me of firefly FLTA001
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"A dead thing can go with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it." - GK Chesterton
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View Quote Yikes. The launch stand is still there but I don't think that's the way it should look. |
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EP429: Today's lesson - Don't provoke ARFCOM. People will see your butthole.
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Originally Posted By fox2008: When you see the volume of concrete missing on the picture.....I'd guess it's possible that caused some of the issues. View Quote They also left the pad at a bit of an angle, the clearance is pretty tight so I wouldn’t be surprised if some engines contacted the pad |
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"A dead thing can go with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it." - GK Chesterton
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Edit: Whoops wrong video.
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Originally Posted By realwar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x85gXFdOqbo View Quote That’s uh, not the SpaceX channel and that’s a really old video |
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"A dead thing can go with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it." - GK Chesterton
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Originally Posted By TapRackBang45: I honestly can't even tell if you're trolling. View Quote Okay, a little. And a lot of hyperbole. Obviously it wasn't supposed to go through several 360° flips. The spin-flick to get Starship clear of Superheavy with the minimum amount of hardware and complexity is maybe 30° or even smaller. Not like it's supposed to wind up like a baseball pitcher in Looney Tunes then let go. Although... if the stack could actually handle it, the release timing/attitude was accurate, and you've got an unusually heavy payload, or need to hit an apogee somewhat outside the normal maximum it can achieve, and the extra m/s² from making the whole stack windmill through a few full 360° flips then fling/release might be valid, in a Hail-Mary sort of way. Superheavy could be tumbling well past what it's RCS could handle for backburn and recovery, so it might be a case of operating it in disposable-mode. And there's issues with Starship having tank slosh pointing upwards towards the nose, until release then rebound as it's back in ballistic/zero-g. All the systems meant to work under gravity/thrust-acceleration etc. But, maybe, if payload mass or the initial LEO insertion was critical or worth the expense, and the necessary RPM for the extra m/s² needed was survivable without massive redesign, perhaps it's a valid strategy. And obviously, in normal circumstances, in space launch especially, you want stuff to go 100% right 100% of the time. "Burning Semi down the freeway style" isn't a valid or sustainable operating mode. But the amount of abuse and failures that happened to that Superheavy/Starship, and it kept functioning, and even how long it spun 360° and held together was just nuts. And n the flaming 18 wheeler analogy, if everything that caused it to be on fire, have blown tires, and a chunk of engine non-functional gets fixed and designed out, you might consider how amazingly reliable it might be under normal circumstances. Or in the event of more minor failures. And that could be an iverall indication of how robust, redundant, and fault-tolerant Superheavy/Starship is to more minor and less dramatic failures, ones that can still easily cased a failed launch with other rockets. You never want to rely on a system's ability to be resilient to accidents or failures, but damn if it isn't nice to have. If this test does indeed indicate there's a "reliability divadend", there's a ton of potential implications. For eventual man-ratmg, and even boring and un-sexy things like lower premiums for satellite/payload insurance. And I'm indeed serious in that I don't recall any rocket having that much shit fail, that many significant off-axis events, large corrections, engine CATO/RUDs, and get as far as it did. And even how long it held together while tumbling was impressive. And I don't know if SpaceX command-detonated it, or it finally spontaneously RUD'ed yet [edit: comand detonated, so it could ave conceivably held together longer...] And all of this being the first attempt at launch of the largest rocket in human history. By a private company.... One mostly operating in "If you build it, they will come..."-mode. And frankly, despite having a ton of telemetry, and a Superheavy & Starship recovered from the ocean for analysis in the "success scenario"... had everything gone 100% perfectly, a "success" is also somewhat "spooky" too. Especially if you're on a strategy of physical testing and rapid iteration. Because when there's no demonstrable failures to correct, you're left wondering if there's any chznce you just got lucky, and there's a landmine or pitfall waiting to bite you in the future, especially when you're using the system in production, for paying customers, or entrusting human lives to it. And something finally rears its head after significant time, effort, and money is invested and is now suk costs. And the initalbsuccess is actually very unlucky in the long run. |
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Like most Americans, I learned all I needed to know about the Vietnam War by watching M*A*S*H*...
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If Michelle Obama weren't a man, she'd have a yatch.
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That was an EPIC flight Test, and I'm even more excited for the future than I was previously.
It's one bright spot in a world of darkness. |
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Originally Posted By wwace: hydraulic actuators blew up taking engines out, they are already changing to electric View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By wwace: Originally Posted By Dagger41: It started losing engines in a very short order and you could see them eating themselves on the way up. They have a lot of work to do to sort that out. NSF was discussing the possibility that the three stage separation hooks may have been hydraulically powered and subsequently unable to disconnect booster from ship. There's also no telling how much damage booster and it's engines sustained due to frag that would be mitigated with a deluge system. Either way, I'm certain there were/will be lessons learned and hopefully it won't be too difficult or time consuming to apply them. |
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double tap
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If Michelle Obama weren't a man, she'd have a yatch.
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What do they say?
"There are successful launches.and then are launches rich in learning opportunities." |
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Originally Posted By jordanmills: That and they were probably ordered to cheer as long as nobody died. View Quote This isn't some stupid football game. It's a rocket launch. People put their lives into it. When the rocket does something good, the cheers come automatically. You can't stop it. You have no control of the sound's coming out of your mouth. |
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Originally Posted By DarkGray: NSF was discussing the possibility that the three stage separation hooks may have been hydraulically powered and subsequently unable to disconnect booster from ship. There's also no telling how much damage booster and it's engines sustained due to frag that would be mitigated with a deluge system. Either way, I'm certain there were/will be lessons learned and hopefully it won't be too difficult or time consuming to apply them. View Quote I am hearing from SpaceX people that multiple car sized pieces of concrete were liberated from the pad and flung hundreds of feet into the air and away. Some of these “impinged” on the grid fins during takeoff |
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"A dead thing can go with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it." - GK Chesterton
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Originally Posted By DarkGray: NSF was discussing the possibility that the three stage separation hooks may have been hydraulically powered and subsequently unable to disconnect booster from ship. There's also no telling how much damage booster and it's engines sustained due to frag that would be mitigated with a deluge system. Either way, I'm certain there were/will be lessons learned and hopefully it won't be too difficult or time consuming to apply them. View Quote A properly designed water suppression system also reduces the acoustic energy reflected back onto the engines. That reflected acoustic energy is enough to shake the engines apart, which may be why so many of the booster engines failed during liftoff. But it doesn't address the failure to separate the booster stage. |
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Originally Posted By DnPRK: A properly designed water suppression system also reduces the acoustic energy reflected back onto the engines. That reflected acoustic energy is enough to shake the engines apart, which may be why so many of the booster engines failed during liftoff. But it doesn't address the failure to separate the booster stage. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By DnPRK: Originally Posted By DarkGray: NSF was discussing the possibility that the three stage separation hooks may have been hydraulically powered and subsequently unable to disconnect booster from ship. There's also no telling how much damage booster and it's engines sustained due to frag that would be mitigated with a deluge system. Either way, I'm certain there were/will be lessons learned and hopefully it won't be too difficult or time consuming to apply them. A properly designed water suppression system also reduces the acoustic energy reflected back onto the engines. That reflected acoustic energy is enough to shake the engines apart, which may be why so many of the booster engines failed during liftoff. But it doesn't address the failure to separate the booster stage. It looked like some of the engines were still running when they tried to separate. If thrust is accerating the booster into the ship faster than the rotation is trying to pull them apart, the ship won't come off the booster. I dont know a lot about rocket engines, but once lit and running, you probably need to cut off propellant flow in order to shut them down. If damage from the reflected shockwave, debris from the pad, or shrapnel from a blown engine takes out the mechanism used to cut off propellant flow to an engine, it might keep burning until the propellant tanks are empty or depressurized. |
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Rocket goes up,
Flames go down, Concrete goes up flies all around, Rocket goes up, Flames go down, Rocket goes up spinns round and round, Rocket blows up flames fall down. SpaceX cheers up as newsie gloats abound. |
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No one cared who I was until I put on the mask
USA
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View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Sailboat: Originally Posted By t75fnaco3pwzhd: Wow. I'm betting there's some serious damage to the pad and tank farm That will not buff out |
"It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong"
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Originally Posted By DarkGray: NSF was discussing the possibility that the three stage separation hooks may have been hydraulically powered and subsequently unable to disconnect booster from ship. There's also no telling how much damage booster and it's engines sustained due to frag that would be mitigated with a deluge system. Either way, I'm certain there were/will be lessons learned and hopefully it won't be too difficult or time consuming to apply them. View Quote This makes sense |
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Remorse is for the dead
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Originally Posted By wwace: hydraulic actuators blew up taking engines out, they are already changing to electric View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By wwace: Originally Posted By Dagger41: It started losing engines in a very short order and you could see them eating themselves on the way up. They have a lot of work to do to sort that out. And don't forget whatever might be FOD related from the impressive amount of concrete, rebar, sand/soil/rocks that went flying at an appreciable fraction of a Raptor's sea-level exhaust velocity of around 11,706 fps, and bouncing back or riccocheting around. Looking at the pad, I'm left wondering if the Superheavy might have dual-use tech-transfer aspects that could be beneficial to Musk's Boring Company. I think a lot of people have a sort of binary "Rocket go space! Vs. Rocket explode!" mentality. This is sort of like stuff that only happens in movies. The common trope where the heroes are striving to "invent XYZ" that'll save the day etc. And after a montage of funny/disappointing failures it blows up in spectacular fashion. After a second of shock, they're screaming and celebrating like madmen because it worked. And maybe was even better thsn they'd hoped. That's kind of what happened here. Except SpaceX didn't even have much of a funny/disappointing montage first. And the Superheavy/Starship stack survived,and continued to function, after at least a half-dozen things happened to it that would have very likely caused many, if not all previous space launch rockets to RUD almost instantly. |
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Like most Americans, I learned all I needed to know about the Vietnam War by watching M*A*S*H*...
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Tom Sawyer.
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So when's the next SS Heavy launch try?
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Fuck Cancer. Love you Pop.
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Seriously... unTex the Mex..
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Originally Posted By fox2008: Watching the live stream again and took some screenshots. When SpaceX put the graphics on the screen at 20s it showed 3 engines not running. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/397309/Starship_20s_JPG-2789516.jpg At 29s you can see what looks like flames coming out of the bottom edge of the booster https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/397309/Starship_29s_JPG-2789526.jpg Shortly after you can see debris fly from the bottom of the booster (hard to capture on a screenshot but here is one piece) https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/397309/Starship_29-2s_JPG-2789524.jpg At 40s the 4th engine stops https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/397309/Starship_40s_JPG-2789523.jpg At 62s the 5th engine stops https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/397309/Starship_62s_JPG-2789522.jpg At 102s the 6th engine stops https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/397309/Starship_102s_JPG-2789521.jpg At 111s the 6th engine shows back online, could be a sensor issue??? https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/397309/Starship_111s_JPG-2789532.jpg View Quote The :29 screenshot looks like those flames (and the subsequent piece of debris) may be from the bottom of the hydraulic power unit. |
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Tom Sawyer.
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