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SpaceX's Starship explodes on launch attempt

JMB802

JMB802

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www.cnn.com

SpaceX's uncrewed Starship explodes on launch attempt

SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket ever constructed, exploded midair shortly after it launched in Texas. No one was on board the rocket today.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

The inaugural flight test is expected to complete nearly one full lap of the planet, ending with a splashdown off Hawaii.


Oops. The feed focused on Musk sitting front and center in the control area felt like I was watching a modern version of The Emperor Wears No Clothes.
 
Not unexpected, nor necessarily an undesirable outcome. SpaceX blew up a lot of rockets before their first success launch, and crashed a lot of boosters before they successfully landed one on a barge in the middle of the ocean.
 
JMB802 said:
www.cnn.com

SpaceX's uncrewed Starship explodes on launch attempt

SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket ever constructed, exploded midair shortly after it launched in Texas. No one was on board the rocket today.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

The inaugural flight test is expected to complete nearly one full lap of the planet, ending with a splashdown off Hawaii.


Oops. The feed focused on Musk sitting front and center in the control area felt like I was watching a modern version of The Emperor Wears No Clothes.
Click to expand...
Back when my sons were young, you should have seen some of the spectacular failures we created when making model rockets. LOL!! The boys thought that was almost as cool as when we had our first successful launch.

Each failure launched the creation of a solution.
 
Rocketry is not suitable for mass transit. Just like vacuum tubes.
 
It was an interesting launch to watch. Now...interesting is not always good.

They lost about 3 engines at launch, and you could see the liftoff was not as planned. But, it cleared the tower, and a few minutes into it you could clearly see that it lost about 6 engines. So, when it reached the point of first stage separation, they were clearly not where they wanted to be. Then....it started to tumble. I was amazed that, aerodynamically it stayed together for as long as it did. Not sure if they blew it up, or it did on its own.

Still, it was the most powerful rocket to ever take off, about double the Saturn V and about 50% more than the failed Soviet N-1 rocket.

What did in the N-1 on each of its 4 flights was that they had too many engines and back then, they didn't have the computers to synchronize them all at once.

I always worry that so many smaller engines means exponentially more issues than fewer big engines.

But, there is a lot to learn from this, just like the inaugural launch of the Relativity 3D Terran launch failure a few weeks back.

There will be a Falcon Heavy launch in a few days, a big one, they aren't even going to recover the 3 first stages because its a heavy, weird payload.
 
Moon said:
Not unexpected, nor necessarily an undesirable outcome. SpaceX blew up a lot of rockets before their first success launch, and crashed a lot of boosters before they successfully landed one on a barge in the middle of the ocean.
Click to expand...
Very true and now they have successful launches constantly, as in several per month. Just looking at the launch schedule on the SpaceX website is impressive and nearly all of those on the monthly schedules are successful.
 
gbg3 said:
Very true and now they have successful launches constantly, as in several per month. Just looking at the launch schedule on the SpaceX website is impressive and nearly all of those on the monthly schedules are successful.
Click to expand...
Yep, this is just part of the process with new technology. People expecting a perfect launch on the first attempt had unrealistic expectations.
 
That's the second biggest recent Musk explosion, the biggest is Twitter.
 
Omlette/Eggs. Knowing SpaceX they'll use this as motivation to get it right.
 
JMB802 said:
www.cnn.com

SpaceX's uncrewed Starship explodes on launch attempt

SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket ever constructed, exploded midair shortly after it launched in Texas. No one was on board the rocket today.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

The inaugural flight test is expected to complete nearly one full lap of the planet, ending with a splashdown off Hawaii.


Oops. The feed focused on Musk sitting front and center in the control area felt like I was watching a modern version of The Emperor Wears No Clothes.
Click to expand...
He's the left's James bond super villain lol
 
Moon said:
Yep, this is just part of the process with new technology. People expecting a perfect launch on the first attempt had unrealistic expectations.
Click to expand...
Rockets are not a new technology.
 
I think the decision to recycle the launch clock back to 40 seconds after the first hold may have been a mistake, but, its an inaugural test flight, no payload was lost, and they can glean a lot of data from this.

The first SpaceX rocket the Falcon 1 had its first three launches fail. They launched from Meck island, part of the Kwajelein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. But each of the three launchs failed at a progressively later point. First launch was under a minute, second launch didn't have a first stage separation, and the third had an issue where when the first stage separated, it got sucked back in when the second stage fired. The fourth launch was a success, building on each launch before it.
 
... could be worse.
 
beefheart said:
I think the decision to recycle the launch clock back to 40 seconds after the first hold may have been a mistake, but, its an inaugural test flight, no payload was lost, and they can glean a lot of data from this.

The first SpaceX rocket the Falcon 1 had its first three launches fail. They launched from Meck island, part of the Kwajelein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. But each of the three launchs failed at a progressively later point. First launch was under a minute, second launch didn't have a first stage separation, and the third had an issue where when the first stage separated, it got sucked back in when the second stage fired. The fourth launch was a success, building on each launch before it.
Click to expand...
They had a similar progression with the landing tests with Starship last year (or was it 2021?).
 
SpaceX took it all in stride:

”Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation.”
 
Moon said:
I bet you say the same thing about Falcon and Falcon Heavy.
Click to expand...
Those are just rockets going into space. We've been doing that for decades. He doesn't do it any better or cheaper than anyone else has.
 
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