Starship Integrated Flight Test 2 at 7 Am Central Time

- Starship got just below orbit

- Booster destroyed during hot staging

- SpaceX reporting that destruct system fired on upper stage towards end of burn

all in all a pretty good result: clean launch and separation, good performance on the booster during ascent (no engine mishaps this time)

Small correction, I think. The booster appeared to survive hot staging fine. It went through quite a bit of it's flip back maneuver. It was awesome to watch. There were some interesting activations of engines in the booster engine ring at that point. It's unclear to me if that was anticipated as an offset subset was what was desired for the off axis maneuver, or things were degrading at that point. And then it blowed up, rather instantly. That something happened to the booster during the separation that led to its RUD ~20 seconds later is likely, but technically it was "long since separated" (in rocket launch time) when it was destroyed.

It was probably self destructed by the range safety officer if things were going south.

Just want to add another comment in here that there is no manual termination, they are using a fully automatic flight termination system.

Surely the final Starship carrying passengers will not have auto flight termination?

As I understand it, on crewed flights of the Falcon 9 the AFTS is somehow integrated with the abort system so that it is impossible for it to detonate without the capsule having a few seconds to get to safety first.

I don't see how this would work for Starship, since it won't have an abort system.

Couldn’t Starship detach and fire its engines to get away from the booster? Of course I guess if they are not hypergolic there is startup time.

The real question here is what happens with a crewed second stage that has a problem with its engines/fuel. We’ve yet to see designs for the crewed interior beyond very conceptual stuff.

Maybe something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule for launch abort.

This same question was asked in the early years of commercial aviation. In the end, the industry (mostly) settled on aircraft designs that could passively glide reasonably well enough to land (sometimes). But some aircraft, e.g. military jets and Cirrus, came up with different answers (parachutes for the crew and for the whole aircraft, mostly).

We'll see how the commercial spacecraft industry deals with this, but I do think that we are at far too early of a stage to start expecting progress in this area. The first few decades of commercial spaceflight will be dangerous just like the first few decades of commercial aviation, or for that matter the first few centuries of commercial shipping. The answers, varied or uniform, will be interesting and I hope that I'll be around to see them.

Wonder if we'll ever have commercial aircrafts with whole aircraft parachutes.

There's no parachuting from 900km/h

There is at least one documented survival at the insane speed of Mach 3: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/bailing-out-at-mach-3-the-in...

Here's Weaver's own account:

http://www.chuckyeager.org/news/sr-71-disintegrated-pilot-fr...

I love the serendipitous detail of what happened on his next flight, though I'm sure it was not so amusing when it happened.

Well, his _next_ flight was to see the body of Jim. But yes, the next Habu flight started off interesting.

i'd be willing to believe it's an economics thing more-so than a physics thing.

one could envisage a '747-like' sized plane with many passenger escape-pods similar to the pod from an B-58 Hustler -- but who would pay the astronomic cost for such a ticket?

and similar to what the other person in this thread mentioned : those escape pods won't help during takeoff/landing phases.

There's been a number of successful supersonic ejections of military pilots over the years. It's extremely dangerous and very likely to fail, but it's better than the alternative. The basic idea is a drogue chute stabilizes and slows the pilot.

Whether the same idea could be adapted to a whole plane I don't know, but I would be skeptical of just on the basis that you probably wouldn't trigger such a thing unless the plane has had a substantial failure such that it could overpower any drogue chute.

https://brsaerospace.com/cessna/

No. Those systems can't really scale up in size and speed. And it would be pointless anyway because the few commercial airliner crashes that do occur are mostly during take off or landing where parachutes aren't very effective.

How did Space Shuttle approach this problem?

They added this system after Challenger, seems extremely limited.

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/crew-escape-sy...

"The crew escape system was intended for emergency bailout use only when the orbiter was in controlled gliding flight and unable to reach a runway. "

I'd take my chances and stay with the orbiter

The vehicle touches down at 214 to 226 miles per hour, back wheels first. The nose then touches down, the drag parachute is deployed, and the shuttle cruises to a stop.

That's a lot of energy to bleed off.

Death.

There was a estimated 1/16 failure possibility for the first couple flights. Lots of edge-cases where: If XYZ happens, you die.

But we were in a hurry, so it was just part of the project.

As ceejayoz said, "Death". The system WillPostForFood mentioned is indeed, as he said, extremely limited.

In the very first missions with only two astronauts, the shuttle had ejection seats. They were removed when more than two people flew at a time, because a) it is not possible to add more, and b) crew ride on two decks, not one.

After the loss of Challenger serious consideration was given to designing some sort of escape capsule for the entire crew, but it was decided that the weight and practicality considerations were not worth it.

The bottom line is that it is impossible to design any practical means of high-speed travel that can cover all eventualities. A century of extensive experience has led to air travel being the safest way to travel on average, but there are still fatalities. Maybe once we have a century of experience with Starship and its descendants we'll be able to say the same about space travel.

I believe that the crewed version is way in the future when operations are much better understood. There’s no chance in hell they’re catching that 2028 window to march.

At certain phases. It will not have enough thrust to survive that at low speed/altitude.

If the booster is still firing, then starship will have to have a greater acceleration than the super heavy booster in order to separate. On F9 Crew this is done by the abort system, which is able to accelerate the crew capsule away at a higher acceleration than the whole F9 stack is experiencing at the time.

For the first flights of the space shuttle it was fitted with ejection seats, though how useful they would have been in reality is questionable.

Probably the same. Even with an abort system, aborting isn't an option throughout the whole flight.

Imagine explaining to the court that the passengers were blown up by your AI algorithm...

I expect these things are only on test flights indeed.

Imagine explaining to the court that the passengers were blown up by your AI algorithm...

Autonomous flight termination systems are not "AI". It uses an on-board GPS and INS to figure out where the rocket is. It applies a pre-defined set of rules to the state vector and if any one of the rules fail it terminates the flight. You can read more about them here: https://www.gps.gov/cgsic/meetings/2019/valencia.pdf

Hopefully no GPS jammers nearby.

Yes. I'm sure they apply all the mitigations possible.

Worth mentioning that the previous state of the art solution relied on a radio link too. Not sure if it was an implementation where jamming could led to flight termination, or where jamming could lead to failure to terminate a flight. But jamming, and resistance to it, was a concern even before autonomous flight termination.

A bit hard to GPS jam a rocket on the way up.

GOFAI is still AI in my books.

*old man shouts at The Cloud*

Okay, but then I assume you also call AI the model predictive controller flying and landing the rocket too?

An other question if you don’t mind: Did you ever used software which was not AI in your view?

Heuristics used to be AI. Now only chat gpt is ai

I'm pretty sure Falcon 9 carrying crew has an AFTS. Challenger was destroyed by an FTS system as well despite having crew on board. I think it's just a risk you have to take to go on a rocket ride.

Challenger was destroyed by an FTS system

No. The shuttle broke up when the overall stack became unstable due to the right hand SRB separating because a strut that attached it to the external tank failed (due to a blowtorch effect from a failed O-ring). The Challenger orbiter ended up 'on top' and broke into several chunks - without involvement of any FTS - because of the aerodynamic stress (one of these chunks was the crew compartment). The SRBs were destroyed by their FTS systems, but this was more than 30 seconds after Challenger broke up. The ET simply disintegrated.

[Edit] added emphasis that the orbiter break-up (and destruction) was not due to any FTS.

I'm very aware of why it initially broke up. But once that started, the range safety officer did activate the FTS system.

The point is that rockets carrying crew do indeed have FTS systems - presence of a crew doesn't negate that need.

The SRBs (and the EFTs) had FTS's, but the Orbiters didn't.

the range safety officer did activate the FTS system.

That doesn't sound very automatic.

The Crew Dragon capsule has escape rockets that will fire as part of the flight termination system to carry the crew safely away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Dragon_In-Flight_Abort_Te...

If I were writing such a system it would have very straightforward if-statements linked directly to FAA requirements. No faffy AI stuff is needed.

Not sure about that but indications are it won't have an escape system like other manned craft.

Space Shuttle didn't have an escape system either; its total death toll was 14.

Absolute numbers don’t really mean much. More than 14 people have died since this test flight on American roads.

Shuttle death rate was about 1 in 75, which is insanely high.

How does that compare with other rocket systems?

Pretty poorly, Soyuz has 4 fatalities (Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11) during it's over 140 flights, Crew Dragon has none.

That's a unnormalized metric: shuttle had two failures in 135 flights and generally carried up way more people per flight and also did way more stuff per flight.

And how many failures in the most recent 100 Soyuz flights?

Crew dragon hasn’t had anywhere near enough launches to compare. F9 itself though has and its a great system.

Going to be a long time before it’s a trusty as a 737 max though.

What are the units on 1 in 75? People? Missions?

To compare with other launch methods, you'd need to use the same metric.

IIRC, Soyuz is actually more deadly, but it's been some time since I've seen the stats. Both Soyuz and the Space Shuttle are by far the most deadly form of transportation.

Broadly the same - 7 seats a launch, about 2 failures in about 150 launches, or 14 seat failures in 1000 seat launches. The early launches didn’t have 7 people on but it’s not really relevant.

Worryingly for the shuttle the second failure was well into its lifespan. 5 failures in 50 launches then no failures for 200 more launches is better than 1 failure every 60 launches despite the second being theoretically better from the numbers.

You can either use 14/833 crew positions (individuals flew more than once), or 14/355 actual people who ever flew on the shuttle. You could also use 2/135 missions. I suppose an argument could be made for 2/269 as well if you want to count launch and reentry as separate risk events.

Source: https://www.space.com/12376-nasa-space-shuttle-program-facts...

Space Shuttle didn't have an escape system either

To be pedantic, the early flights had ejector seats for the pilot and commander, and the post-Challenger orbiters had a 'fire-pole' bail-out system. These systems could only be used in a very limited set of circumstances.

Surely it will, but prob only Elon and a couple others will know about it

No. If thing go south, they'd just suicide themselves manually.

If you pay the Non AFT Fee, yes.

The instantaneous nature of the explosion would certainly be consistent with a self destruct.

With we had another angle of the booster during engine relight. From the SpaceX feed maybe engines didn't start back up? Hard to tell. Could have been leaving the expected flight area maybe?

There is a brief view as the inner ring of engines relight (note that the 3 core engines don’t shut down). All but one come back online initially but begin shutting down again shortly thereafter. There are some pretty violent events happening near the engines during the time that they are being lost one by one. The more I look at it, the more it looks like an actual RUD. It seems like maybe those violent events around the engines compromised something in the mid section of the rocket, which is where the explosion originates from. Scott Manley speculated that the very fast flip manuever may have caused some issues with continuous fuel delivery into the plumbing which seems quite plausible given the erratic behavior of the engines after they first appear to relight without issue.

Demonstrative Flight Termination System (if booster did FTS rather than RUD) might have been more desirable than a splashdown. For instance, FTS proven to operate effectively for FAA to see.

Watching the replay, it looks like some of the engines failed to light during boostback reignition. Then, either total flameout occurred, or AFTS started cutting fuel in preparation for termination (maybe there are settings for "terminate right tf now" and "try to shut down engines before popping off", idk just speculating).

Either way, it looks like the start of boostback was not quite norminal, and AFTS decided that wasn't close enough to the flight envelope and decided to exit status 1.

Some are speculating that the flip maneuver sloshed the fuel too much and resulted in vapor ingestion and/or complete fuel starvation. The fact the failures are clustered on the side the fuel would slosh away from adds weight to this idea.

https://youtu.be/081a5Thjl5g?si=JUT3P6EcnG51hmHI

All but one engine successfully relit (the outer engine ring has no re-light capability) but they started to fail quickly afterwards.

Scott Manley also has the theory that the maneuver caused a sloshing motion of the fuel and the water hammer ruptured piping on the engines, causing a cascading failure.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7LYw6gU65ac

I love how at the end of the video the SpaceX announcer refers to what just happened as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly of the booster".

That's an industry term. Lithobraking is too.

Oh, I know. I used to work at NASA. But I still think it's a delightful euphemism. (And yes, I'm being ironic.)

Is it a humoristic (sarcastic) style form, or just a very neutral, matter of fact, professional assessment? I can't tell, in part, I guess, due to esl.

It's not clear either way. But as a neutral, matter-of-fact, professional assessment it sounds really weird because "disassembly" generally implies an orderly process, and this was not that.

The process is orderly. They tested and designed the explosion very specifically.

RUDimentary jargon

I can't wait for the next one. How many tests are we expecting? 7-8? Seems to be too long! I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo.

I wish we had the spirit of the Apollo

Careful what you wish for. The Saturn test program peaked at 3 tests / year (unless you want to count the separately tested launch escape system for the crew capsule), and the fully stacked Saturn V was only tested twice (in 1967 and 1968) before crewed missions.

For all its speed, Apollo was not a SpaceX-style rapid iteration program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions#Uncrew...

Tortoise and hare, perhaps.

Starship development started in 2012, and now 11 years later has had 2nd launch and failure to reach orbit.

Apollo program started in 1961 and had men on the moon in 1969 - with 60's tech.

To be fair, Apollo also had government funding to the tune of approximately 2.5% of GDP. Starship would probably go a bit faster too with an annual budget of half a trillion.

I suspect Starship would also go a lot faster with the weight of the President directly behind it, helping to remove those pesky regulatory issues :)

Start of the Apollo program literally precedes the Clean Air Act, establishment of EPA etc.

When the government decided to build Kennedy Space Center in Florida wilderness, they just did. No lengthy environmental impact assessment process in the way.

Sure, but most of the (anyways rapid) turnaround time from Starship launch #1 to #2 was rebuilding and deluge system .. can't be more than a month or two max delay attributed to regulations.

The pad rebuild and deluge system install was in parallel with the other work. Give or take, it was complete by the end of July [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOtw3ucIKng

True, this was a major engineering obstacle that had to be overcome.

Well we have the Canaveral National Seashore to enjoy today, which was constituted from the undeveloped portion of the space program reservation. Otherwise, that area today might be a wall of hirise condos instead of a pristine coastal barrier island.

Perhaps, although not obvious that it's cash starved.

NASA's slow but meticulous approach has had a few failures, but also incredible successes such as the sky crane martian rover landing - got to get it right first time, tough to move fast and break things when the test environment is 100 million miles away!

Edit: Same goes for 1969's lunar lander - had to work first time.

Seems to be great for deep space missions but not launch vehicles.

More like it's better with little-noticed science programs which can get by with a minimal amount of politics involved... which to be fair includes the details of deep space missions. Big, flagship projects which attract more attention are where things fall to crap for the most part.

And NASA can be fast too. If I recall the Genesis of the Voyager missions correctly, someone noticed the once in a lifetime opportunity where the planet would align properly for a probe to visit a lot of them in using clever gravity assists. And from there NASA acted quickly to get funding, design and launch 2 probes that are still active today!

Still very impressive. We all know that adding more resources to a project does not necessarily make it go faster.

Measuring Apollo's start point in 1961 can be very misleading. Apollo was the culmination of a more or less continuous development process stretching back to the early 50s with the start of the ICBM programs.

For example, the F-1 engines that powered Saturn V first stage actually began development in the late 50s, with the first static firing happening in 1959. The (in)famous combustion instability challenges of the engine were solved by 1961.

Apollo had a tremendous running start in many areas - to say nothing of having the resources and know-how of the entire US military-aerospace-industrial complex at it's disposal. This isn't to minimize what an accomplishment Apollo was. I just don't think you can meaningfully compare the timelines of what SpaceX is trying to do with Starship, and what Apollo accomplished.

True, but in same way SpaceX has also been in the rocket business for over 20 years, and building upon know how and organizational expertise gained from the Falcon 9.

Wiki says Raptor development started in 2009-2012 with no predecessor, with first test firing in 2016.

Since this is a thread about pedantry (rocketry pedantry), I'll allow myself to be pedantic about words.

"A wiki" is a type of software. But when you use "Wiki" as a proper noun, referring to one specific instance, that's the name of Ward's Wiki, the original wiki, also known as wikiwikiweb, available at wiki.c2.com .

I'm guessing that you were not citing Ward's Wiki, but were rather citing some other site, in particular the site that contains this advice on citing it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_abbreviate_%...!

You should note the banner at the top of your reference:

This is a humorous essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously.

The humor tag is there because the community is self-aware that it's mildly pedantic. The views of the essay are held by a strong majority of the community at least. Nobody ever abbreviates Wikipedia as "wiki"; we have far too many wikis floating around and it would be confusing.

While we're at pedantry, English is a descriptivist language... I guarantee you that when I say "the wiki", approximately nobody thinks of Ward's.

(Yes, I think Wikipedia's Don't Abbreviate... page is just wrong about this.)

It's entirely context dependent. For me and the people I deal with (which deal with various wikis in our lives for both work and play), "the wiki" refers to the specialized wiki on the topic we are speaking (for work it's the work wiki, for the game were playing it's the wiki for the game, etc), and Wikipedia is used to refer to Wikipedia, because it's not specific to anything. If someone just mentioned "the wiki" or "wiki says" in a conversation and was intending to imply Wikipedia, it would just confuse me by making me think there's some specific wiki they were referring to that I missed previously or they weren't clear in communicating, unless we were specifically referring to Wikipedia earlier.

Starship didn't really start in a meaningful way in 2012. In 2012 there were at best some vague concepts of a large rocket and some initial concept ideas for Raptor. But at that time for Raptor they were still thinking about Hydrolox.

SpaceX simply didn't have the resource to fully invest in Starship until much later. Even by the early presentations around 2016 it was a tiny part of SpaceX and was prototyping with limited resources. Real ramp up of spending happened significantly later.

Your understanding of Apollo is also flawed. The F-1 engine started development as early as 1955, not 1961. So if anything your 2012 date would be more like 1955.

Starship is also twice as powerful as Saturn V and designed to be reusable in both stages. That's a significantly harder task. Had SpaceX just wanted to match Saturn V, that would have been significantly easier.

Well, whether you want to call it 8/9 years ('61-'69) or 14 ('55-'69), I don't think NASA looks too shabby landing men on the moon in that time frame without the decades of experience we have to draw on today, and with 1950's/60's technology, and so far no-one else has done it.

Nobody said it was 'shabby'.

The NASA of that time has been long gone for decades

Yeah they did less than 20 launches, had 6 successful missions, and then had to kill the program because the costs were too high at a $500B equivalent annual budget. Apollo 1 also burnt up and killed 3 astronauts on the ground.

Modern day NASA could not redo the Saturn V missions again. They lost the talent that achieved those missions a long time ago.

The Apollo missions were certainly an achievement worthy of getting memorialised.

I also think that, given the size of the Apollo landers, if SpaceX had actually wanted to they could've redone those missions years ago with a Falcon Heavy and a variant of the Crew Dragon design.

It also seems that Saturn V's performance wasn't flawless, even on crewed missions (though some of the problems were down to external factors like lightning or debris from Skylab): https://www.wired.com/2012/03/great-balls-of-fire-apollo-roc... .

Where did you get 2012 from? BFR wasn't announced until 2016

Apollo was also dual use military technology to accelerate the development

Apollo also killed three astronauts on the ground in the posthumously named Apollo 1, and almost killed at least three more with Apollo 13. Apollo 6 (the final uncrewed test) suffered from pogo oscillations and also had two engines go out in the second stage. Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill.

This is all to say, Apollo was an extremely risky program.

Apollo 11 had problems with the LM guidance computer, but was saved by Neil Armstrong's piloting skill.

This is a common misconception but mixes up at least three things.

1) Yes, Eagle was long, but not because of a software bug. The exact reason is unclear and there may have been multiple factors.

2) Yes, there were unexpected computer alarms but these were caused by a hardware bug that manifested because a switch was in an unexpected position. The software handled this appropriately.

Margaret Hamilton said: “To blame the computer for the Apollo 11 problems is like blaming the person who spots a fire and calls the fire department. Actually, the computer was programmed to do more than recognize error conditions. A complete set of recovery programs was incorporated into the software. The software's action, in this case, was to eliminate lower priority tasks and re-establish the more important ones. The computer, rather than almost forcing an abort, prevented an abort. If the computer hadn't recognized this problem and taken recovery action, I doubt if Apollo 11 would have been the successful Moon landing it was.”

3) Neil Armstrong did adjust the landing point late in the descent after noticing rough terrain. He utilized semi-automatic control to do this. Essentially adjusting the target point for the autopilot. Eagle wasn’t directly flown like an aircraft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

A great video on the AGC and Apollo 11 landing: https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM?si=Ypn6Gtp16_DEkpK9

I previously said that if the launch works through staging, SpaceX fans would declare it a success. Personally, that seems like a pretty low bar compared to things like Saturn V and even STS, both of which launched successfully to orbit the first time.

What you count as success depends on what your goal is. It's entirely possibly SpaceX could have thrown extra billions at it and had a higher chance of successful orbit, but that doesn't mean they deemed that the most efficient use of time and money to advance the project. Sometimes it's far less costly in time and effort to start it up and see where it fails rather than look it over another 20 times and wrack your brain for anything you've missed before.

When I think I've gotten pretty far in a program I'm writing and there's even a small chance of it partially functioning, I'll often fire it up to get feedback on the errors I wasn't aware of as early as possible. Some of those may indicate larger structural changes that are required in the worst case, and the earlier I can learn about those the better.

What you count as success depends on what your goal is

Yes. My point is that the bar seems pretty low for Starship, and it's not clear why. Yes, some of the ways they are doing things are new, but overall, building large multi-stage rockets is 50s tech.

The "50s tech" was not based around easily reusable systems. It was all based on explosive bolts, solid fueled ullage motors etc.

On top of that the fuel was much easier to work with and did not involve needing to be able to handle pressurization and sloshing during flips.

It's 50's tech only in the same way that a Ryzen CPU is 70's tech.

Just for a minute, then, let's think like engineers and not Starman Jones. Granted it was a test flight: so what were the objectives of the flight, how man y of them did it achieve, and how many were not? Get beyond calling it a success or failure and talk about what worked and what didn't.

the fuel was much easier to work with

This is a technical detail where I hard disagree. The oxidizer was liquid oxygen, so that's the same. The fuels were either RP-1 or hydrogen. Methane is somewhere in between those two in difficulty. kept at -180 °C, compared to -253 °C for hydrogen, and LOX is LOX. In the Saturn V, sloshing of the RP-1 led to the Pogo Effect, but that was solved[1]. Granted it didn't involve the maneuvers of the Starship first stage, but in some ways it was worse, because it happened during full thrust at the end of the boost stage, not after separation. You can read a lot more about NASA's experience with pogo at [2], but it's worth noting that it continued to crop up as late as Apollo 13, when the 2nd stage center engine shut down early as a result.

Yes, SpaceX is doing some things new, but the engineering experience is definitely something from the 50s and 60s.

1. https://www.nasa.gov/history/50-years-ago-solving-the-pogo-e...

In terms of objectives, the stated primary objective was to get through staging without blowing up. That was a success. The secondary objective was getting to reentry for the Ship - testing the heat shield, which was a failure.

the stated primary objective was to get through staging without blowing up.

So I was more or less correct at the top of the thread when I said, "if the launch works through staging, SpaceX fans would declare it a success", and I consider that a low bar.

I think you might build a rocket that was less prone to blowing up, but it might not be as efficient.

You might also not be able to build it with a room full of idealistic youths running on inspiration.

I guess if you're a Longtermist, killing a 100 people on a flight to Mars is nothing if you save the human race.

In the span of ~50 years, we've gone from "sending men to the Moon" to "barely sending an empty rocket to the orbit".

Isn't science great?

Let's pretend NASA is a carmaker company.

It successfully builds Golf 2, one of the most versatile cars ever made. That car can do everything and go anywhere.

Now, say that NASA wanted to upgrade that car after 50+ years. And now, that car can't even go 50 miles before requiring a refill.

Are we supposed to believe how the new car is better? Are we even supposed to believe that Golf 2 worked as well as NASA said it did?

Hell no.

50s, and even 60s era Rockets were smaller, with fewer engines and didn’t attempt crazy aerobatics while stopping and restarting engines.

cratermoon, you strike me as a rocket enthusiast. Take a look at a little-known rocket called "Falcon 9". Had more test failures than most rockets had launches. You can use that to help strengthen your argument that they really don't know what they're doing over there

Good point. They've been very successful with the Falcon 9. You'd think they have things like structural integrity, boost-back maneuvering, and how not to blow up figured out by now, but apparently SpaceX has different engineers working on Starship. At least the Raptor engine seems to work well. If it doesn't get concrete and rebar in it, and the fuel and oxidizer don't leak from the tanks.

Wonder if hot staging caused issues with both vehicles or it was two separate issues.

I could believe that hot staging might've affected the booster, since it seemed to blow up right as it tried to light the engines again for boostback. But I don't think the ship would've made it so long if it were seriously damaged by the hotstaging.

Damage to the grid fins mechanism is a potential failure mode here. Even a small amount of damage to the flight control systems could make the procedure uncontrollable and eventually trigger the FTS.

At this altitude, the vehicle is pretty much in the vacuum and grid fins have absolutely no control authority. It could have resulted in failure later on but not at that point where the booster blew up.

Saw that Scott Manley video that came out right after that and it looks like fuel issues to engines probably caused it. All but one engine started up, but they started failing after that.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7LYw6gU65ac

Then it's not hot staging but maybe sloshing of fuel in the tank just simply.

How could hot staging affect the engines of the booster? If it affected the tanks then the three engines still running through separation would also fail so no flip-around could be possible with no thrust to go with.

The booster experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly after boostback burn following the successful stage separation

Below orbit is a strange way to put it. Orbit is more speed then height. Google says it was going 1,400 mph when it was lost. Orbital speed is around 17,600 miles per hour.

The goal was something just under orbital speed.

Not that this wasn't totally amazing. Hopefully the launch pad wasn't damaged and they can crunch the data and have another test that gets further soon.

The readout showed 20k km/hour towards the end. It was definitely near orbital speed.

You might be looking at the first stage’s data.

Edit: 24,124 km/hr when telemetry stopped on the stream; 15k mph.

A 'k km' is an Mm, so 24 Mm/h , (or 6.67 km/s , if you'd like to go full SI)

Technically correct but not really clear of it helps clear communication in this context. SI natives think of a "kilometre" as its own thing (in the same way one thinks about a "mile") rather than thinking about it as a thousandfold multiple of a metre.

I think you googled the April launch. Starship was going 24000+kmh, needed 27000, it was like 20-30 seconds away from successfully inserting itself into its target orbit.

They also weren't targeting orbit but just bellow it.

It was doing ~24,000km/h which is ~15,000mph.

Well the technical term is "suborbital", which literally means "below orbital". (It's the energy that's below orbital, not the height...)

Interesting re: good result...I've sort of lost track because the program's timeline has been extended several times: what sort of results are they shooting for?

Good one. :-) SLS, anyone?

Good one? Silly Lizard String?

Consider a more substantial contribution the next time, this reeks of some sort of internalized battle the rest of us don't know about, and projection of it onto others.

If you're trying to elevate the discussion here, I recommend you stop being so aggressive and sarcastic when chastising someone for being playful

Fully reusable rockets ?

I believe the primary goal was stage separation. Secondary goals were for the booster to make a controlled splashdown, and Starship to make almost a complete orbit, before splashing down near Hawaii.

So they achieved the primary goal, which is a good result.

It could even be argued that they got pretty close to one of the secondary goals. Starship was fairly close to shutting off its engines. If it would have completed that part of the flight, the next hour or so it would just be coasting. Physics alone would guarantee they'd end up near Hawaii.

Gathering data and making orbit. Plan was to return the booster near the launchsite and make a water splash down. The ship should make a single suborbital flight with orbit velocity to simulate reentry and should have splashed down near hawaii.

Yea, I've not seen up close shots of the launch facility yet, but it looks like it's all still there without massive amounts of destruction either.

It's amazing what happens when you apply 60 year old solutions (water deluge).

There are obviously similarities, but there are also important differences between SpaceX's solution and a conventional water deluge system.

The primary purpose of the water here is not to dampen the sound/energy, but to cool the metal plate below the rocket.

I thought the system they use here is unlike anything used before.

Everyday Astronaut was able to reconnect to their robo-cam and pan over the launch area. No damage visible. Not only did the cameras at the launch pad survive, they didn't even get their tripods knocked over.

There does appear to be a large dent in one of the large tanks (LOX?) near the launchpad.

that happened during the first test I believe

"The super booster experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly".

Neat phrase for the booster explosion in the mesosphere.

Also worth mentioning that all engines on the first stage successfully ran until separation of the second stage. On the first flight, a number of engines didn't light and more shut down early.

1st stage turned around then exploded. Second stage is doing well so far.

Edit had the second sentence wrong

And the fact that it survived long enough for the second stage to get on its way was incredible in itself. We'll see how it goes!

Both the booster and ship have been destroyed. SpaceX can keep claiming these RUDs are 'fine' and 'we're getting data', but the rest of the industry does not consider it normal or a "success."

Hotstaging didn't "work" until they can demonstrate the Starship vehicle survives orbital insertion, re-entry, and landing without damage or malfunction caused by the hotstaging.

The industry laughed it up as Falcon 9 failed landing repeatedly. (https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ) Then they shifted to “ok but do it 10x”. They aren’t laughing now.

They’ve lost as many Starships as NASA lost Space Shuttles so far, with no deaths. It’s a test program for now.

Ask the “rest of the industry” about how Boeing’s Starliner is going. That’s what failure looks like.

This is not about laughing or not. This is about if it was objectfully a successful test or not.

If you want to take the stance that any test is a success that's fine but remember this depends on what your definition of success is.

The other thing to keep in mind is that past success is not always a good predictor of future success.

There's no "objectively" here. It's all feels.

Objectively, this test successfully demonstrated the water deluge system, an intact launch pad, all engines on the first and second stage igniting and staying lit, stage separation, hot staging, and a long burn nearly to orbital speeds. That's a pretty good list of ticked boxes.

They very openly stated they didn't necessarily expect it to get all the way to splashdown. You can argue that's PR, but their history has objectively been one of incremental progress (again, see Falcon 9's landing attempts) via repeat testing.

Personally, I'd consider a mission failed if a) it carries a real payload it's supposed to get somewhere and doesn't, b) it breaks due to a previously known issue, or c) it breaks sooner than the last test. I'd also consider it entirely fine to have "reach goals" in a test.

They went longer, faster, further, and more successfully than the first test. I'm happy calling that a win, and I suspect SpaceX will as well.

Objectively, for any test to be judged a failure or success you have to define the outcome you want upfront. If you do not any amount of mental gymnastics you you after the test does not matter.

It does not matter you call it a win if you are not respecting other opinions that this is a fail.

SpaceX very clearly stated just prior to launch that their goal was for the rocket to get through hot-staging because the hot-staging process they had large unknowns. Sure their flight plan went well beyond that, but I don't see how having an aspirational plan that goes beyond "we'll blow it up after hot-staging", also likely required for the FAA, defeats the "successful" qualification of the test.

Here's NASA the day before launch:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/what-nasa-wants-to-see...

"Tomorrow is a test and we’re going to learn a lot either way," Lisa Watson-Morgan, who manages NASA's Human Landing System program, told Ars in an interview this week. "We’d love to see it go off perfectly, but frankly, if it doesn’t, it’s still going to be a great learning event, and it still will give us progression on the schedule for the different flight tests, and then we’ll know the areas we need to more deeply penetrate.”

And on top of all of that, there’s a laundry list of firsts that are being achieved here: first flightworthy full-flow staged combustion engine, largest vehicle launched, largest number of engines working in concert, first vehicle built with full reusability factored into its design from day one.

Every launch where more is nominal for longer is new territory and an achievement.

SpaceX and NASA were extremely clear what the definition of success for this flight was.

It was a resounding success.

Naysayers offer a problem for every solution, can't stand these types. This is an enormous achievement for SpaceX.

Move fast and break things, amiright?

It's good enough for NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/white-sands/dest...

We've crashed production probes into Mars, we've burned astronauts alive, we've had the supposedly "safe" options like Boeing's Starliner have fundamental problems even making it to orbit. Space has always been this way.

Starship's more akin to taking the Bell X-1 up for a spin than flying a 787 around, for the time being. Problems are expected at this point in the program, or we'd be sending people on them already.

This is a false dichotomy.

On one side we are talking about how the "space industry" is most moving slowly and how spacex is doing great things.

On the other side we are saying that this is good enough for nasa (who is the establishment when it comes to space) and yolo bro.

On one side we are defending nasa because priorities, but on the other side we're cheering on spacex who is ultimately sucking at the big fat government tit.

i'm not sure anyone is aiming at burning people alive and just because it happened does not make it a justification moving forward.

I don't know why you're being a contrarian here. Booster completed it's primary mission. Main vehicle survived long enough to show viability. Multiple technologies were proven beyond a reasonable doubt to work.

Shuttle was 1.6 billion a launch. This is gonna be 100 million a lunch even if you let the booster blow up every time.

This test is in line with how every new rocket is developed. You really need to Google the 50s and 60s of space flight and see how many rockets were lost in those days.

Yet they still got to the moon.

Quite reasonable incremental testing program.

Then they got the double heavy landing, which was mindblowing seeing it the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3KEg6b6bE

This. Especially with NASA. The more infrequently you launch the more the expectation is that there are no failures so the more time you take to avoid failures and so it recurses into launching SLS once every year and half or taking 10 years to launch J. Webb.

I understand a lot of it is politics and government spending but it would be nice if NASA could get a case of go fever every once in awhile. So long as humans aren't involved.

I understand if there were more failures there'd be less money for big projects -but I think we should take the chance to see if that money would end up being spent on more smaller quicker projects.

The way you dismiss SpaceX's accomplishments is just hilarious. As if you are some "insider" in the space industry. ROLF. SpaceX is awesome and inspiring in what it is doing.

Are we reading the same comment? I don't see any dismissal of previous accomplishments. Why is calling this failure a failure bad? You need failures to learn and hopefully be successful eventually.

Do you mean this was a launch failure or a test failure? It was obviously a launch failure, but even the most optimistic wouldn't have expected anything else. As for whether the test was a failure: since it successfully did a bunch of things that didn't work the last time, why would you say it's a failure?

A failure would have been scattering the pad all over again, and not getting to stage sep. Or worse.

You have to define upfront what you want to get from a test. After that you go back and see if what you got is what you expected.

Optimistic/Pessimistic does not really matter.

By this criteria, I would say failure/partial failure or partial sucess. There is no way this was a success.

Also, everyone can call this what they want. The thing that grinds my gears is not respecting that other people do have a different opinion.

They did define what they wanted; several incremental goals, not just one. You can watch the pre-launch video to hear it for yourself.

Years before Covid, my neighbor had an "opinion" that vaccines were unnecessary/dangerous, so she wouldn't get vaccinated. Just like you, she said "you have your opinion, and I have mine." In today's woke culture, that makes me the bad guy for not respecting her opinion, mansplaining, etc.

But opinions don't trump facts. At least, they shouldn't

i don't see what vaccines have to to with any of this.

also, as cool as "facts" are it really bothers me when people take their opinion and present it as fact or as truth. you see: the truth is something abstract and usually, not always, but usually there is a matter of interpretation and a gradient of the truth. I'm not speaking of well researched things that have mountains of evidence behind them. I'm speaking about people having really strong opinions without understanding the evidence behind it and without understanding the nuances of what applies when. It's really fashionable to shit all over other people when they don't agree to a T with what you are saying but IMHO it's the wrong thing to do - being curious and actually unpacking what they are trying to say if they can have a civilized discussion and logic actually works with them is the way to go.

"By this criteria, I would say failure/partial failure or partial sucess. There is no way this was a success."

Not only it is not success, it is a massive failure when compared to the magic technology from the 60's.

Space industry is the only industry that is moving backwards, it seems.

Your opinion is wrong though. I'm sorry you can't see that. Not all opinions are right.

Before the launch, on the stream, SpaceX were saying that getting through staging was their primary goal this time. Everything else was bonus. So clearly it was a success on the primary mission.

Pretty similar to how a lot of NASA's missions have requirements like lasting 90 days on Mars. If that is reached, the mission was a success, even though they obviously don't just stop having objectives after that.

The “rest of the industry” isn’t doing anything at all.

IMO this is the coolest thing the rest of the industry is doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzqhZLgpiv0

That is just space hardware porn.

Notably founded by ex-SpaceX and ex-Blue Origin employees.

Rocketlab might end up as the AMD to the Intel of SpaceX.

I'm sorry, what's that, something about failure? I can't hear you over the thunderous roar of cheers from the Spacex engineering team after stage separation.

https://youtu.be/w9OsSN2kJrk?si=FZ30c9jmkMOmYo3n&t=180

Certainly doesn't sound like the folks who built the thing thought it was a failure.

Are the folks that build it the most objective observers?

You can call a duck an eagle all day long but that does not make it an eagle.

Only one word for a troll, though.

Except objectively they stated ahead of time that a success would be stage separation, everything else is gravy. I had this same argument on HN after IFT-1. Folks were trying to argue that it was a failure because it blew up before orbit, when Elon was saying the whole time that just getting off the pad would be a success.

Are the folks that build it the most objective observers?

Even the Administrator of NASA is happy with the progress. [1]

Objectively, it was a success.

[1] https://twitter.com/SenBillNelson/status/1725875275769028836

Come on man they did a lot better than last time. How dare you bring any negativity here

Are there any rules against having a different take on things?

No, but there are also no rules against being told your take sucks and downvoting bad takes is original intended behavior on this website.

I'm not totally sure Space X cares what the rest of the industry thinks. This is next-level space engineering compared to what's come before. Who's opinions are we concerned about? ULA? Arianespace? Those companies can't even blow up a space craft successfully because they can't launch them (see, SLS, Ariane 6).

"This is next-level space engineering compared to what's come before."

What an odd thing to say. Are you suggesting that Starship is next-level when compared to Saturn V?

Hehe. I guess people nowadays lack any sort of historical perspective.

I'm totally sure that SpaceX does not care what the rest of the industry (what's left of it) thinks.

The rest of the industry doesn’t build dozens of ships in a massive assembly line. Blue Origin hasn’t even completed a single full test prototype ship yet.

And if you go look at NASA during the Space Race era of the 60s, they blew up plenty of ships.

And there's tons of video about V2 blowing up which is where we got our 1960s tech from

The 1960s tech also blew up a lot as well.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/USAF_ICB...

Blowing up lots of rockets to figure out how not to blow up rockets is traditional rocket development. The "get everything perfect the first time so it never blows up even once" tactic is forced on NASA because Congress is dumb.

It's been so long that anything new has happened that it's easy to forget what it takes to move things forward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8

but the rest of the industry does not consider it normal or a "success."

True. The rest of the industry also can’t seem to muster a reusable orbital class first stage. So far evidence is with spacex. Their RUDy development seems to have born fruit before.

The rest of the industry doesn't really matter, they aren't landing and reusing boosters. Nor are they developing any rocket system this quickly.

Found the guy who works at ULA :)

What new things have the rest of the industry done lately?

The rest of the industry is being wholly outcompeted by SpaceX so not sure if their assessment is anything to go by today.

Or just take a look at "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

Failure comes before success. If you fear failure, and are unwilling to face it, then you have no business striving for success.

I thought everyone here knew about this. Every software bug is a failure. Going through and squashing every one is the path to success.

Super Heavy/1st stage exploded after separation and turn. The important part, Starship/2nd stage, was doing fine but appears to have been eaten by the Space Ghoul around T+10 min.

Looks like it's not doing fine anymore.

It's firing nominally on all engines up in rocket heaven

Yup, typo

2nd stage was terminated by the automated flight termination system right before the coast phase. Saw some interesting flaring/clouds coming from second stage engines a bit before the final big cloud.

A new era of humanity just started.

Tell me about this new era while I am sitting homeless in my minivan…

There were people suffering when Sputnik launched, or when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It doesn't reduce the magnitude of the event.

Sorry for whatever you are going through, though. Hope you get through it.

That was my point, you talk about new eras, but nothing changes. Who is this new for? You, me, or the billionaires who make lives like mine horrible?

It’s all spectacle, and where will it all lead? We landed men on the moon, and haven’t been back. What is SpaceX going to use for going to Mars? Are you gonna be the one that’s going or are they gonna leave you behind to rot here on this burning planet?

You would have said the same thing about airplanes at the turn of the 20th century and dismissed them as fads for rich people. Or about computers. Or the internet. And yet here you are.

you talk about new eras, but nothing changes.

And yes, it does affect my life. I have dreamed my whole life of this stuff happening. After growing up in a "third world" country, I navigated the byzantine US immigration system, went through a decade+ of training, to finally be here and working at a new-space company right at the beginning of this new space age. The industry that I am working at right now would be in a completely different place (and a lot smaller) without SpaceX. It also wouldn't exist without the advances made for Apollo and the Space Shuttle program.

What is SpaceX going to use for going to Mars?

Starship probably.

Are you gonna be the one that’s going

Maybe. There is a non-zero chance now that the system that will achieve it is that much closer to being operational. You are missing the step change in cost that this will enable.

or are they gonna leave you behind to rot here on this burning planet

It does not have to be one or the other. The "burning planet" will be solved just like we solved every other challenge facing our species.

You are obviously going through some stuff and seem to be in place where you cannot appreciate the good things that are happening in this world. But that does not change the fact that they are.

What you’re telling me here is that you’re just being selfish. This is good for you so it should be good for all of humanity. I’m sorry, but it’s not.

I appreciate a lot of good things when they happen. I’m saying this this is not a good thing. Do you think it’s a good thing because it made your life better. But you’re only seeing it from your perspective. You don’t have a holistic view of the world.

This is good for you so it should be good for all of humanity. I’m sorry, but it’s not.

You asked me how it impacts me and I answered.

But you’re only seeing it from your perspective. You don’t have a holistic view of the world.

You are failing to see the holistic view yourself because you seem to be having a bad time. Lowering the cost of mass-to-orbit by a couple of orders of magnitude significantly changes what can be done in space. This includes truly massive satellites (e.g. https://www.k2space.com/) that can provide services for Earth that were not possible before. In-space manufacturing of materials that cannot be made easily on Earth. Moving polluting industries off the surface, mining of resources from space (for use in space or on the surface if it is valuable enough) and much more. It is a feed-back loop that will compound into massive changes.

All of that and more will impact the whole of humanity in a very positive way.

Why do we need satellites and space to care about each other? I don’t need a massive satellite in space, I need somewhere to live. A massive satellite in space is not going to provide me a house. And it’s not gonna provide any time before my death. Which is being hind because I’m homeless. Which is being hasten because, I have no healthcare.

Don’t you understand? You’re all surprised about my negative comments but I’m sure you would be feeling the same if you were in my position right now.

Gps uses satellites, and basically the only high speed internet you can get without a house is starlink. Both get better with starship

You’re all surprised about my negative comments but I’m sure you would be feeling the same if you were in my position right now.

There are things that do not benefit you right at this moment. That does not mean that they are not a boon to society at large and a net-positive for this world.

A significant fraction of the billions of people on this planet have had their life changed positively due to advancements in space technology - in all probability including you. And it will continue to do so. I am sorry that you are not in a place where you can appreciate that and be happy about it. I hope it changes for you.

And how is some company launching a rocket involved in you not being able to get housing? I understand your frustration but you can’t just blame anything for it.

Mars is a horrible place to live so I'll take Earth any day. But it would be nice if humanity doesn't get wiped out if we get unlucky with an asteroid.

In the meantime, we're already well into ecological collapse (I think we've lost something like 3/4s of the earth's species?) and existential-threat-level climate change which in fifty years or so will be so bad we'll be dealing with near constant humanitarian crises...with no sign of improvement on either front. Decarbonization isn't happening nearly fast enough and industrial pollution is chugging along.

Frankly, I don't see human society surviving long enough - or perhaps better put, maintaining a necessary level of societal development - for us to develop the tech to establish a self-sufficient colony capable of independent growth and to get us to a planet with the resources to make such a thing possible.

It's hard to make rocket parts when everyone is living in shacks made of sticks and mud and leaves.

Hang on. You said you were living in a minivan - a vehicle which took a few technological leaps to be able to develop and build, so you could live in it.

You also appear to have an internet connection and a means to use it. Again, technological leaps were required for you to be able to whine on HN.

Perhaps - if you're so utterly sincere and serious about saving the planet as you appear to be - you should be living in the nearest available cave? After all, that minivan is likely to use an internal combustion engine and runs on dead dinosaurs; let alone the plastics and metals and silicon used in said minivan's assembly.

See, this is what I don't get about eco-heros like you appear to be - even if you are homeless, you're still, right now, utilising every single technological leap that it took to get you to the stage of even just living in your minivan and complaining about rocket development on the internet. This, to me, reeks of hypocrisy.

I don't think it has to be either-or. We can work on saving Earth while also trying to travel to other planets.

The prospect for building a self sustaining colony on Mars in the foreseeable future is essentially zero. And even the largest disasters on earth are unlikely to kill quite everyone.

So the most likely outcome of a metaphorical or literal asteroid hit on Earth is that it would still leave thousands, millions, or billions of survivors on Earth, while leaving it unable and/or unwilling to sustain maintenance missions to Mars, so the Mars colonists would starve or otherwise die slowly, despite being technically unaffected by the original disaster.

The kind of scientific advancements needed to sustain on the moon or mars will tremendously improve our abilities to be sustainable here on Earth. You are willfully ignorant or naive.

Ha! I’m naïve? What are you saying that we’re going to turn the Earth into a Mars or moonlight planet? And we’re all gonna have to live in bubbles? Do you think that’s the answer? Talk about pessimistic and negative…

Not what I am saying. Let me roll my eyes at your willful strawmanning.

But right now there seems to be virtually zero activity in the life support side of things (Biosphere 2 was more than 30 years ago, and was not exactly a rousing success), and the rocket motor side is not particularly helpful to sustaining life on earth.

But there's still more than a month to go until 2024. I'm sure everything will come together in time. </s>

Yea it's not about new eras. Hold on a sec "Hey Siri, navigate to the nearest Costco". Yea nothing has changed for the average person as a result of first space launch

The moon landings are historically seen through an almost exclusively middle class, white eye. The "magnitude" was definitely reduced if you were poor and/or black.

The "magnitude" of the US Space Shuttle program was definitely reduced for me even as a white kid; I got to watch the shuttle launch on a TV rolled into the classroom, and then go right back to reading my mangled, outdated science textbook, watching my teacher write on a chalkboard with chalk he had to purchase himself because our school district apparently couldn't afford to buy enough, because it was more important that we have more, and better, nuclear bombs and missiles to transport them than Russia.

We went to the moon. The rest of the world did things like set up universal healthcare for its citizens, build housing, non-punitive criminal justice systems, public transit, etc.

So you believe if there was no moon program then we would magically have universal healthcare, housing, non-punitive criminal justice systems. Very ignorant take

If people had more humanity, they would be focusing on getting universal healthcare housing, and a non-punitive justice system before we focus things like putting a few humans on a rock in space.

Why is it that the most difficult things to do are the most caring things?

https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/why-explore-space

“Why everyone needs a vacuum”written by a vacuum cleaner salesman.

That letter was written over 50 years ago, and we still have homelessness. We still have poverty, people are still starving, we still have idiotic, ideological wars, and separation of wealth. So when’s the return on the investment going to actually happen?

So when’s the return on the investment going to actually happen?

It already did many times over what it cost. And continues to deliver.

I lived in SF for 5 years. I'll go ahead and stick with the punitive justice system, thanks.

Ow wow. I had no idea space or for that matter science did not exist for non-white people. Fascinating.

Yup. We basically lose all our melanin on the day that we accept a job offer in the space industry.

The rest of the world

Can you define that a bit more before I ask further questions?

I grew up poor and in an underfunded school system as well. The ever-present reminder of this was buckets collecting drips from leaks in roofs. At one point in high school we exhausted our paper budget. Some teachers were able to locate a bunch of dot-matrix tractor-fed printer paper in a supply room and so we students helped to separate the perforations so we could have individual sheets of paper.

That school was publicly, though poorly, funded. I also had Pell grants for college, subsidized medical insurance, a free bus pass, an apartment made affordable through adequate supply of housing, a criminal justice system that has so far protected me from violence.

I have no chips on my shoulder from any deprivation, and appreciate everything that helped me to get where I am today, which I don't think would have been possible anywhere else in the world.

It could be the era when you strike it big with your new T-shirt business, propelled to fame by an instantly classic design featuring the words "One giant leap for mankind" over a soaring Starship, followed by the inevitable "One small step for me" below.

When (launch window opening)

* 4 hours from now

* 5 AM Pacific Time

* 7 AM Central Time (local)

* 8 AM Eastern Time

* 2 PM Central European Time

Live Media

* Official yet channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceX

* Labpadre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIJTeeZj7k4

* NASASpaceflight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg

* EverydayAstronaut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6na40SqzYnU

* TheLaunchPad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0preOnsuo4

* TechniquesSpatiales(FR): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI4cKoSD-Jg

Ressources

* Mission sheet: https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...

* Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18pCXD709TI

* https://x.com/SpaceX

* https://x.com/elonmusk

* https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/17uyblj/rspacex_int...

The SpaceX website also includes a live stream but it seems to be broadcast via Twitter:

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...

Edit: this stream works without having to login to Twitter

Does it requieres a X(exTwitter) account? I'm going to miss it. :(

I am watching it here: https://www.youtube.com/live/6na40SqzYnU?si=t8iwk8rO3lAtF6wj

Everyday Astronaut on youtube.

Their commenting be like:

Oh my god!

Their commenting be like

Their commenting _is_ like.

Otherwise, I agree.

Normally I wouldn't do this, but since you were downvoted without explanation:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=be%20like

Indeed, absolutely unbearable.

Thanks! I had started watching what I thought was the SpaceX live stream on YouTube but turned out just before launch to switch itself into some computer generated video of a fake Elon trying to scam people about crypto. Ended up switching to the Everyday Astronaut stream to watch.

I would recommend using the Nasa link posted above, since it's on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOI35G7cP7o

the Nasa link

*NASASpaceflight

NASASpaceflight.com (and their Youtube channel) has no affiliation with NASA.

All these years I thought it was an official channel. When I first saw their logo it also reminded me of National Science Foundation that just cemented my (now corrected) belief.

No worries, it happens to the best of us. And also me. :)

For years I was completely baffled why the National Science Foundation had to certify the wire shelving in my apartment...

https://www.srs-i.com/blog/all-about-nsf-certifications-shel...

When I first saw this branding, I was also confused.

It's extremely sketchy, and I wish NASA would do something to protect their trademark.

It's not NASA, but an independent group. There are others, like Everyday Astronaut.

I am watching without a Xitter account:

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...

In my head, the X is pronounced “sh”

1 PM UTC, for those looking for the one universal time reference.

PM? Part milliliter?

Milli- is "m" and "M" is mega-. You'll be off by 9 orders of magnitude if you confuse the two.

But keyboard wise, it's just holding down shift vs not holding down shift when typing. The difference in real life between m and M is less than you think :)

Post meridiem.

Fortnights? Check. Furlongs? Oops.

Providing Central European Time but not UTC/GMT is really weird

Exactly my thought.

But the real issue is why don't have browsers an integrated way of doing these computations by reading some HTML tags and also providing input widgets to make sure that it is universally readable by machines. Like <datetime ts="1700310507" ref-tz="Europe/Amsterdam" /> (if the event's timezone is Europe/Amsterdam, only for informational purposes)

JavaScript language and browsers have tons of facilities for dealing with date times in sensible ways, including displaying a `Date` object in the local time zone and local preferred formatting.

SpaceX designed their page to display specific time zones for whatever reason.

Yeah... Windows 95 did it, why not the modern web browser?

Providing any second timezone but not UTC/GMT is really weird. I don't want to have to figure out what other countries are doing with their daylight savings, just give me UTC and I'll know my current offset.

1700312400 in Unix time ;D

There's a direct media stream that VLC can open (with network stream):

https://prod-ec-us-west-2.video.pscp.tv/Transcoding/v1/hls/O...

----

Much better quality, slightly better latency. Seems like it comes from the Periscope transcoding infrastructure. Found it on reddit here: https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/17uyblj/rspacex_int...

404 - NOT FOUND

Its over ...

Yeah I realized that right after posting. Looks like I got confused with the timezone, I expected it to be one hour later.

I recommend using an app that tracks that for you. I use SpaceXNow.

Well, neither is the rocket.

More of a 500 class error on the rocket however.

Try / Catch / Explode.

Edit: This is basically how automated FTS works, folks. Follow parameters of the flight, and if an "exception" occurs, solve the situation by exploding the rocket over a safe spot, before it veers too much off course.

As expected, the launch is now complete. I won't spoil the results :D

Fantastic, much better quality. Thank you.

For those who almost never use VLC (like me), don't download and then open the file. Instead open VLC, Update it from its ancient version, and then File, Open Network Stream, paste in

https://prod-ec-us-west-2.video.pscp.tv/Transcoding/v1/hls/O...

then click Play. Enjoy.

It’ll open natively in Safari too.

Not mobile safari.

Worked on my iPhone 12 Pro ios17.1.1. My apologies if it doesn’t work for others, stock config.

My iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 17 shows a Play button crossed with a line in gray over a black background instead of loading, on Safari. Is there something else I need to do for it to work there?

Thanks! Watching with mpv.

Fwiw mpv would also open the normal twitter link, thanks to yt-dlp

Seems like it comes from the Periscope transcoding infrastructure.

It's literally from Twitter livestream; they are just re-skinned Periscope.

You can even replace highlatency to lowlatency for better latency.

That's nice.

Imagine if the standard was this, a link that is opened by a native media player, rather than 14MB of js for a shitty stuttering inconsistent mess.

Too late now, but this also worked for streaming to Chromecast via VLC (which worked seamlessly from my Linux PC by just hitting Playback -> Renderer -> <my chromecast> and then opening it.

Sounds like they lost both stages but it was glorious. Still progress. This will add another 6 months to a year before another try...

Why so long? Will they need to go through another round of FAA approval? Or?

They need to redesign the bottom half of the rocket so it doesn't blow up during staging, and figure out what happened to the top half and fix that.

They don't necessarily have to redesign the booster. The booster completed its primary mission of boosting successfully. It survived long enough that it seems reasonable to say that if they wouldn't have attempted boost back it would successfully coasted to a splash in the ocean. So the SuperHeavy booster can likely be used as is, if they're willing to spend an extra ~$50M per mission on not recover the booster.

I guess it depends on the test program priorities. If Elon has promised everyone a succulent ham if they can get Starship to orbit before some deadline, then you're absolutely right. If instead they want to get the most out of every flight test, then they'll take the time to fly a fix for the "bottom half blows up" issue.

So more booms by Christmas?

I is a lot more complicated than that.

There is a trade off between data per flight, total timeline, and overall cost.

I dont think data per flight is the driving goal. There are lots of unknown, and if you stop completely for every problem, you are aren't learning about new problems.

As long as they get the ship up and make some progress, it isnt critical if these boosters blow up or sink the bottom of the ocean as planned

They have 4 boosters built and 3 more in production, and FAA license for 20 launches per year. My guess is that if the fix takes substantial time, they will work it into future production and keep going with what they have.

Pretty sure NASA doesn't care about losing the booster for a moonshot mission. Shuttle was 1.6 billion per flight.

Having a rocket explode next to the shuttle might be a bit too much danger though imo.

Plus you get extra tonnage from not having to save enough fuel for landing.

It wont be six months. Also, your comment makes it seem like they would have redesign the whole first stage, which is highly unlikely. This is the first time they've tried to do a hot staging and it might be something relatively easy to fix related to that.

For the second stage, my guess is they triggered the FTS due to the telemetry issues or just for safety's sake, i.e. they didn't want to take any risk with the lack of telemetry.

For the second stage, my guess is they triggered the FTS due to the telemetry issues or just for safety's sake, i.e. they didn't want to take any risk with the lack of telemetry.

Most likely it was on board automatic FTS.

Complete nonsense. Which anyone with even cursory interest in Starship's development can confirm.

They will need to find out what happened. Develop, build and test new hardware to fix what did not work. And wait on the new FAA review.

This is the old one: https://www.faa.gov/media/72816

Most of the content of that report is about the deluge system for the launch pad. Since it tentatively appears that this worked, I have high hopes for much more expedient environmental reviews of future test flights.

6 months is very short in rocket time.

just look at Ariane 6...

Eh. The first integrated test was on 17th April '23. With everything that went wrong, including the huge damage to the pad and all of the (slightly hysterical) speculation and outrage that followed, it took them 7 months (almost to the day) to refly.

This time, after a vastly more successful and competent second test, you think it'll take even longer to refly?

SpaceX will likely be ready within a couple of months; then you add the regulatory approvals.

My guess is 2 to 3 months unless they need a big redesign. They've already built the next vehicle. The ground system seems to work. Safety works perfectly so NASA and FAA would be happy

IIRC they're aiming for the next one to be between ~February-April.

What is the benfit of hot staging?

To expand on KennyBlanken's answer:

Rockets generally want their fuel to be sitting on the bottom of the tank, where the engines are. That's easy enough when the rocket is sitting on the ground and when the engines are firing, but once the rocket starts coasting/decelerating (e.g., when the engines turn off due to reaching the end of their burn) the fuel may drift away from the fuel intakes, resulting in the engines ingesting vapor/gas the next time the engines turn on. Rocket engines are designed with a pretty specific operating environment in mind, so ingesting vapor/gas instead of fuel usually leads to the engines expressing their displeasure in a very vocal fashion.

This poses a challenge for staging. The naive way to stage is to turn off the previous stage's engines then ignite the next stage's, but the time between the first set of engines turning off and the second set of engines reaching a sufficient thrust level to keep the fuel at the bottom of the tanks may be enough for the fuel to drift away from the fuel intakes, especially if staging occurs lower in the atmosphere or after an extended coast period.

One way of addressing this issue is to use "ullage thrusters" - small rockets that maintain a small amount of forwards acceleration during staging to keep the fuel at the bottom of the tanks. This is what the Saturn rocket did between the first/second stages.

Another way is to "hot stage" - ignite the new set of engines before the old ones cut out. This is what the Soyuz does (and is why its stages are connected with a lattice - to let the exhaust out), and is what Starship was trying out this time. This can be simpler than using ullage motors since there are fewer pieces, but also poses some additional challenges in that the first stage needs to survive the second stage's exhaust for long enough.

The last way is to use RCS thrusters for a period to settle the fuel. This was used by the Saturn third stage before trans-lunar injection, but can really only be used once you're in orbit.

It also makes the rocket more efficient, because any time spent coasting with no engines lit is time that gravity is acting on the rocket and slowing it down.

By always accelerating (with engines lit), hot staging improves the payload to orbit about 10%. So it's well worth doing.

Less gravity losses is another advantage, that's true.

I think it'd be interesting to see a breakdown of that 10% improvement number. Hot staging in and of itself resulting in a 10% additional payload capacity seems large enough that I feel it's rather odd that it isn't more commonly used. I'm curious how much of it is due to "direct" improvements from reduced gravity losses and how much is due to "indirect" improvements like (maybe?) not needing to save as much fuel for boostback.

A comparison against what a "Saturn-style" staging that uses ullage motors might achieve could make for a fun addition as well.

Well, the old staging method tried in the last launch was to rotate the entire vehicle stack and "fling" the ship off. That obviously has a performance penalty in that you're not going to be pointing in the correct direction when you come off. I don't know if the 10% was compared to that or compared to a hypothetical "straight" staging with pushers, though.

I think that was not intended, it's just that the control of the rocket was lost. The plan was just a normal stage seperation, just like on the Falcon.

Given how successful our Saturn package was, it seems curious to me that we wouldn’t just follow the ullage motor method.

One needs to put success into perspective. Saturn V only launched a very small amount of times and had some near misses in that time. How successful it would have been if it had flown 100+ times is a question.

Also, If you are not reusable you have much more margin to play with. SpaceX is optimizing this thing to an incredible amount. Liftoff thrust is 2x as much as Saturn V and they are aiming at 3x as much. Total payload to orbit is 2-3x larger while being reusable.

SpaceX could have done what they did on Falcon 9 (200+ successful launches in a row) but Hot-Staging like the Soyuz is also successful.

SpaceX optimizes for long term performance and operational simplicity. Ironically that leads to more Soviet way. The N1 would also have used hot staging.

Ullage motors as they were on Saturn V (and in most other cases) are solid fueled. Making them incompatible with reuse. SpaceX emphasize reusable systems even when not recoverable because that allows for testing of the exact flight hardware (eg mechanical separation systems over explosive bolts).

A reusable approach would involve some form of gas thruster, so might as well just try hot staging.

Ullage motors have to be solid - this way they don't need ullage themselves to fire - or to be fed from separate tanks - this is another reasonably complex subsystem which needs to be refueled somehow between flights. If ullage motors are solid, that needs to be re-loaded between flights. So, overall the ullage system is a certain complexity to design, build, refuel, a weight to carry in flight - clearly some drawbacks.

Hot firing simplifies things in this regard.

Hot-staging is amazing tech. It's odd how Russia is so good at rocket science. Until Falcon, they had the highest thrust-to-weight engine, Soyuz is insanely reliable at this point, and they generally just punch above their financial weight class.

Their previous method didn't work at all.

You never stop accelerating. Escape faster. Less time fighting gravity.

Less time spent not firing engines, no need for separation hardware (e.g. hydraulic pushers), no need for ullage thrusters (settling fuel before lighting stage 2).

10% increase in payload

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/64713/how-is-hot-s...

Fantastically cool explosion

Maintaining velocity / acceleration.

What I don't see mentioned: at the end of the day, Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. The core / the most important part of that goal is obviously to recover the 1st stage (not throw it away) and to recover it safely and with minimum delays. That's why, once operational, almost all starships will have their booster return to launch site. To return to launch site, you need to keep some of the fuel in the booster to flip it, do a boostback burn and a landing burn ( starship boosters do not need entry burns but they will need landing burns that are not suicide burns ending with hoverslams like falcon does, but basically end almost at zero velocity, hivering as the tower arms close around it).

The primary reason for hot staging is that without it, they had to turn off all engines, mechanically "push" the ship away from the booster and then light the ship engines. Say this takes 5 or 10 seconds. During this time, the entire system is not accelerating anymore, but it's still screaming away from the launch site (because to go to orbit, you don't just go "up", you mostly go "sideways", that's why you often hear "vehicle pitching down range" during broadcasts) and to get the booster back to the launch site you then have to spend more fuel to get back to the launch site - you have to counteract all that time you spend moving away from the launch site.

With hot staging you get to the velocity you need to get the first stage to orbit sooner, because the system never stops "pushing", and there's less distance you need to cover to get the first stage back to the launch site. With means you need less fuel that remains in the first stage after stage separation, which means you can use more fuel during the first stage firing (and therefore put more mass to orbit).

Second stage lost, looks like the flight termination system did its job. Unknown as to why yet. Going to be very very interesting to see the data that's released from this as well as all the higher quality video/stills that surface.

AFTS activation indicates deviation from planned trajectory. It's unusual, being so late in the burn.

Could be a guidance issue, but SpaceX should be pretty good at that by now. Could be engine underperformance, but we got nominal callouts and it would have to be pretty bad for AFTS to notice with minutes left, so that seems unlikely.

I'd guess engine control (due to damage during staging) is the main suspect. We say the thrusters fighting pretty hard there at the end, which supports that idea.

I dunno, it looks like a nominal shutdown to me. The speed readout shows rapidly decreasing acceleration just as the engine displays go out instead of the telemetry suddenly going stale as you'd expect if it just blew up during the burn. Then, after the acceleration has gone to zero, the telemetry goes stale, so my guess would be on something going wrong during shutdown (ullage collapse when the propellant sloshes forward as the engines shut down maybe, this was a problem during the first landing test.)

AFTS seems unlikely this late in the burn, I think they said it was in terminal guidance and it's very hard to laterally change the impact point in any meaningful way with that much velocity. But I agree, it definitely looked like something's venting near the end, too.

Starship engines were cut off at 8:03, while the nominal mission profile in Wikimedia mentions SECO at 8:33. The speed at cutoff was ~24000 km/h at an altitude of ~150 km. Without the AFTS, the Starship would have crashed somewhere in the Atlantic.

Yes, good point, the velocity was too low. Yet it looked like all the engines just shut down nominally.

Manley's fluid hammer theory from rapid shutdown is compelling. Also would explain the large vapor clouds; plumbing exploded.

I wonder if something happened at around T+7:39. There is a rather sudden and large plume when the starship should've been in steady state.

Isn't an exploding rocket in space a bad thing - ie debris everywhere? I know space is big but aren't there now a few thousand more pieces of space junk to track. I suppose they're worried about a starship landing on someone's home - but still seems a tad premature.

it was not in orbit yet so I think everything should fall back down to earth.

As long as it hasn't achieved orbit, all the pieces will end up on an elliptical track with the lowest point inside the atmosphere. Some stuff might get flung way up, but it would still need another maneuver (requiring working engines) near the highest point to circularize the track to prevent it from coming back down.

There's not much ambiguity for when to destruct. It's just: has it gone far enough off course that it could free-fall outside the predetermined borders where it's acceptable to crash? Then it's time to blow it up so it doesn't fly any farther.

It's more of an issue when the thing exploding is in orbit. This was a (just) suborbital launch, and I think the first stage was quite a bit slower/ lower than orbital at the point that it exploded, meaning it'll all just fall to Earth

Good trivia question: Is this the first rocket launch to have two separate RUDs?

Do second stage failures on other rockets, where the booster is a guaranteed rapidly-scheduled-destruction count? :P

No because that wouldn't be unscheduled.

@dang: can you please fix the link? It's supposed to be https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB

Maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg (NASASpaceflight) would be better, as it's accessible without any login-wall and doesn't require creating an account to view.

That’s third-party/unofficial (and unaffiliated with NASA, despite the name) coverage. AFAIK they do not have access to all the cameras/drones/animations that the “real” SpaceX coverage does.

Isn't it better that there is any feeds, than none? The Twitter/X link is not accessible for people outside the platform...

Can’t you watch it here without an account? https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...

That seems to work perfectly fine and the ideal submission link then, straight from the source and no login required.

You can watch it directly on spacex without logging in to X

Please. We (everyone I know) hates the login requirement. Switch to YouTube or whatever (https://invidious.io.lol/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg) and make it a 0-hassle, 1-click affair.

@dang is a no-op. Email at hn@ycombinator.com if you want to reach the mods.

I recreated a thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38318763

But it is marked as dupe (HN seems to have already queried it and classified as broken link)

It’s astounding that until very recently it was standard practice to put humans on top of untested, first-of-kind rockets.

Well, to be fair, NASA is much more risk-averse than SpaceX.

That’s why everything takes so much longer, the “classic” way.

But the way SpaceX does things, gets seriously good results, quite quickly (and gives us some great videos of stuff getting blowed up).

I think it's the other way around. NASA flew the shuttle 135 times and lost two of them, but they kept going after the first failure. And both failures followed NASA being advised of the root cause before the orbiters' destruction, and NASA management ignored the advice. Meanwhile the safety track record for Falcon 9 exceeds that of the shuttle, and it exceeded it before humans were put on top of Falcon 9. The Apollo program did very few launches and yet they put humans on top of it. No, I think what you might say is that NASA in the 60s cared a lot less about safety than SpaceX do today, though perhaps NASA today cares a lot more about safety than NASA 20 years ago (and definitely than 60 years ago).

Lip-service to safety versus actual safety that looks unsafe.

I deal with bureaucracies a lot and this is how they do everything: it has to look good, but they don’t actually care to make things good.

E.g.: fill out a ton of paperwork about how secure the web application is against hacking, but nobody reviews the source code for vulnerabilities. Or they fill out the paperwork and report the app as “secure” even when third parties like me are listing vulnerability after vulnerability.

The report is what mattered, not reality.

OFFICIALLY, on paper, the Shuttle was very safe.

It was five nines "safe".

GP might have meant that NASA is more risk-averse in the business sense of the word risk, as in they don't want to risk failure, therefore they don't risk success. SpaceX definitely doesn't have that sort of risk aversion.

What are you referencing???

We haven't fully stopped. The Orion that flew in SLS's first flight didn't test the life support system, the second launch is already going to carry a crew.

"very recently" is more than 40 years ago, when the Space Shuttle made its first flight in 1981. That's closer in time to Sputnik than it is to today.

...THAT was a big explosion.

They did not go to space today. But they got REALLY CLOSE.

They actually went well into space, given the conventional boundary of 100km.

The rocket was mostly empty, so it wasn't all that powerful. Imagine the power if it explodes fully tanked.

Everyone who does special effects for science fiction movies should watch that explosion.

Yeah that was nuts

Can't wait to see the high quality images and video from that. Wow.

Really surprised by how the Raptors performed! Genuinely didn't expect that they'd have them all lighting up properly already.

I believe this flight used the old Raptor engines, and not the new simplified ones.

Pretty sure they used Raptor V2 which simplifies from V1; Raptor V3 I believe is simpler still, but that's still being tested at the SpaceX MacGregor TX facility.

Yeah this is a huge positive. Perfect performance of all 33 engines, up until the boost back anyway.

I think the engines worked perfectly. The booster broke up in the middle, at least it looks like it on the everyday astronaut feed.

No green hue is the flame is definitely a good thing, considering the first few flights the Raptors clearly consumed themselves!

Yeah that stood out to me too. Hopefully they'll drop some info on what the metrics said, but that looked like a full healthy set to me.

Did anyone else just see something fly down on the stream? About T+8:30. I wonder if it was part of the exploded first stage.

I thought I saw an explosion but they seem unsure

Naw, there was that cloud of dust I saw, but this was like a black falling object.

Interesting, did not catch that

It's at 46:55 here: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1725861547065684095

I took some screenshots: https://ibb.co/1GvddL5 https://ibb.co/28BSxwG https://ibb.co/KmccttG

Could be a bird, but doesn't really look like it to me.

booster confetti

I understand that having these prototype rockets blow up may be a cost-efficient way of improving the design. However, I still wonder how much of that was really expected, and what it says about the project progress. Also, how many successful launches will they consider enough before putting people's life at risk. I wouldn't feel super confident going into that rocket after having seen it blow up many times.

The first planned use for Starship will likely be launching Starlink satellites. And there's no immediate plans to directly launch with humans on board.

I'd personally ballpark that there will be well over 20 launches before anything regarding humans is considered.

It seems like the ship was terminated due to being off-course (which couldn't be corrected once its propellant was burned through). It succeeded in reaching space, it seemed to reach almost-orbit (they deliberately made it slightly slower, to avoid becoming a giant piece of space-junk if they happened to lose contact/control), so they've almost got it working as a traditional rocket.

All of the crazy stuff they're planning, like returning and catching the booster, having the ship re-enter and land/get-caught, in-orbit refuelling, etc. will probably take a while to get right; but those are all "bonus features" that other rockets/companies don't bother with. I imagine it will be launching satellites pretty soon (next year?), at least in-house Starlinks, since refuelling, re-entering, landing, etc. can be done after the payload is safely deployed; and returning/catching the booster only takes place after safe separation (as we saw today, when the ship kept going after the booster's spectacular demise)

It will take a while to human-rate it. I imagine we'll start by seeing crews transferring to Starships that launch uncrewed (e.g. like the HLS for Nasa); eventually we'll probably see crew launch, once it's established a decent track record. I'm unsure if we'll ever see people in the landing flip; I'd rather eject beforehand and parachute down!

The Falcon 9 rocket started off the same way. They blew up on launch and on landing multiple times early in its development, but has now become perhaps the most reliable and certainly the most reusable rocket model in history, with hundreds of launches per year now with no incidents.

A picture of the flight path

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi...

(taken from this website: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2023/11/new-starship-launch...)

____

In animation form:

https://twitter.com/spencertetik/status/1725769578544803975

So they are trying a boostback. Are they going to try to land it or?

NVM they said they were just going to let it splash.

Ideally they wanted the booster to touch down on the ocean.

Thanks. Cool to see the whole path.

Does anyone know how the start was filmed? The first shot was a drone, but after that it nearly looked like either cgi or another rocket flying next to it.

Maybe something like this:

https://curious-droid.com/393/nasa-filmed-apollo-shuttle-lau...

Thanks, this could be it

Video feed switched to ground tracking cam.

Impressive, but does anyone know where will the debris from the second stage re-enter?

A rough estimate from Jonathan McDowell (well known for tracking lots of space objects and launches) is that the debris landed north east of the Turks and Caicos islands.

https://nitter.net/planet4589/status/1725873032244195495

Edit: a newer update shows direct evidence of the debris field area https://nitter.net/planet4589/status/1725917544114974995#m

The flight termination system detonated the ship so it was blown into small enough pieces that they all likely burned up on reentry. Might find a heat tile at the bottom of the gulf.

I have loved watching space x launches for years. And here I am, scrolling around on my phone and I can’t for the life of me find a stream that opens- this is just so sad

You could watch someone's capture on YT, I didn't wake up in time myself dang.

At 2:30 https://www.youtube.com/live/A8Z9LUX7fg0?si=r3brlpnVw5xoAgr_

I'm hoping that this one makes the 2nd stage partial (or full?) orbit. This thing is a gamechanger.

Reaching true orbit wasn't in the plan for the test. Seems like they got close to their plan, but something went wrong.

Looks like they terminated the flight. I honestly thought they were going to make it and get reentry data.

What is the sudden change in the exhaust plume at occurs here [1] at 149km / 17650 kph? I believe that's squarely in the thermosphere, and there aren't any step changes in temperature/pressure at that point that I'm aware of. It would make sense if that were near the mesopause, but that's around 100km.

Maybe it's something on SpaceX's side of things, a change in the burn profile? Perhaps it's related to losing the Starship about a minute later.

[1] https://youtu.be/w9OsSN2kJrk?t=446

Yeah, this is a good question. It could be from the engines, but nothing should change at that point that I can think of, since it's well before shutdown. It might also start to vent something, intentionally or not.

I hope they tell us.

I think what you are seeing is a sudden burst of poorly combusted and/or unburned fuel as the engines are cut off. The engine telemetry indicators in the bottom right of the screen show engines off shortly after the plume.

Can't wait to see if the pad survived!

If it did, they might make another attempt sooner than expected.

It appears to have fared much better at least in terms of the metric that the various streaming cameras near the site that were damaged last time are fine this time.

Definitely did better than last time!

I blinked and the first stage disappeared.

Why did you do it

My apologies, won't blink again.

Link should be updated to https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1725637151176659003 or https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-... (no login required)

Fixed now. Thanks!

(Submitted URL was https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB but our software got caught in a redirect to a login.)

Starship re-entering over Puerto Rico:

https://twitter.com/eliassob/status/1725871782186381474

Or what's left of it, anyway.

Does this one have a flame deflector?

I believe so. It also has some water cooling thing that sprays the pad

Lost contact with the Starship at t+08:43, more or less

Seems like a solid B, yes?

Amazing

Overall it looked like a good launch. But I think the world ended up with a bunch of space debris at around 150 km above earth, which will eventually come down (hopefully won't land on someone's head, or backyard), since it wasn't travelling at orbital velocity.

They hotstaged the booster! That was freaking awesome!

Even Thunderfoot was impressed: https://www.youtube.com/live/BLlctxJnxy8?si=4NOk13foG-cIPbQL...

If you want to watch it on your iPhone in PIP, open the link in a browser like Firefox Focus and you can continue to read HN. :)

Stage 2 flight termination? :'(

Stayed up all night looking forward to this. Fingers crossed for success on hotstaging - I think that's what everyone is most worried about. I read that due to the continuous thrust with hotstaging they can carry more payload with that design, rather than losing upward momentum during stage separation.

Gosh this is exciting.

Oblig, I can't wait until these are happening every day!!

Send it!

Lift-off

Incredible. What a time to be alive

That was a beautiful launch. Would love if someone filmed in HDR to see the brightness and hue of the exhaust more accurately.

Is this thing launching from Mars? wow

SpaceX on Twitter: "T-40 seconds and holding. This is a planned hold. Teams are using this time for final checks. All systems continue to look good for today’s flight test"

Seems like the link I posted does not work well. Here is the broadcast link after login redirect:

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB