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Er, the spacecraft launch showered residential areas 6 miles away with debris. It also put endangered species at risk. When something like that happens there's naturally going to be investigations before more launches are allowed.
I suspect Mr. Musk is trying to develop rockets like they're software. Make it, deploy it, woops, change it, it'll be fine. That's OK if you want to literally throw money at engineering, but, and I've worked in those kinds of hardware environments, the engineers lives are sh*t. Plus, hardware, mechanical (in this context) and electronics is really quite complicated. Mistakes get made even when care is taken. If you rush things...RUD. But it's his money and sometimes it's the fastest way to get to something that works.
 
I suspect Mr. Musk is trying to develop rockets like they're software. Make it, deploy it, woops, change it, it'll be fine. That's OK if you want to literally throw money at engineering, but, and I've worked in those kinds of hardware environments, the engineers lives are sh*t. Plus, hardware, mechanical (in this context) and electronics is really quite complicated. Mistakes get made even when care is taken. If you rush things...RUD. But it's his money and sometimes it's the fastest way to get to something that works.

It's also the fastest way to get people living miles from the launch site killed.
 
Unfortunately, the SpaceX Starship is an integral part of NASA's Artemis mission to send astronauts back to the Moon, so I suspect the mooted 2025 date will now move well out to the right.
 
Marcus House gives an excellent, thorough, overview of the launch, and the damage done to the launch pad itself.
I always enjoy his weekly updates, even if I do tend to skip some of the later bits.
 
Plenty of work to do before Starship launches again.

SpaceX must take a series of steps before it can launch its mega rocket again, after its debut ended in an explosion, US federal regulators said on Friday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it closed its investigation into SpaceX’s failed debut of Starship, the world’s biggest rocket.

The agency is requiring SpaceX to take 63 corrective actions and to apply for a modified FAA licence before launching again.

The FAA said multiple problems led to the April launch explosion, which sent pieces of concrete and metal hurtling for thousands of feet and created a plume of pulverised concrete that spread for miles around.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in the accident’s aftermath that he improved the 394ft rocket and strengthened the launch pad.

A new Starship is on the redesigned pad, awaiting lift-off. It will fly empty, as before.

During the initial test flight the rocketship had to be destroyed after it tumbled out of control shortly after lift-off from Boca Chica Beach.

The wreckage crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/s...in-until-fixes-are-made-faa-says-1524501.html
 
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Wasnt that dandy?

And dont they look like Good Old Boys instead of the formality of NASA?
 
I stopped watching too soon, when one of the commentators said he thought it was on hold until tomorrow.
Starship did launch and reached space at a peak altitude of 149km and 24,124 km/h. Then contact was lost.
I guess that does count as a qualified success?
 
How many times can you say dumb ?

As I understand it SpaceX wanted to separate the stages on a never tried “hot separation” where they turn on the spacecraft engines and “ blast away “ the booster.

Is SpaceX in their right mind. ?

Well, the vibrations of this process caused the guidance system to go down which triggered “auto destruction “.

As I said stupid !
 
You should give them a call Charlie, tell them all you know about rocket science.
 
After I wrote the above post, it has come to me that the Russians have been using “ hot separating of stages “ which produces no break in the thrust and very efficient.
 
It was done years ago with one of the early American space shots but it did not matter in that case as they did not care about the first stage
 
For those who would like some real expert analysis of the flight, please take a look at Scott Manley's excellent video:


I'm no rocket expert like Scott but I'm been following rockets and particularly SpaceX's Starship development for some years. I'm not a fan of Musk in any way, shape or form as a person (in short, he should stick to engineering and otherwise keep his mouth shut) but I do fully recognise that the SpaceX engineers and support staff are an incredibly talented group of very hard working people.

Despite the media trampling on almost everything that SpaceX does (often due to Musk hatred) it's not surprising that they combine their 'talents' of generating even more Musk hatred along with their normal distortions of the facts and inherent negativity to create yet another "Starship Failed!" narrative.

FWIW, despite both the booster and the ship eventually exploding, this second Starship flight test was a considerable improvement on the first one in April. Some bullet points on this second flight test:

The pad wasn't severely damaged this time, in fact there was only relatively minor damage and that was mostly to some easily fixed wiring on the 'arms' (nicknamed the 'chopsticks') which lift and cradle both ship and booster, plus the separate ship Quick Disconnect arm sustained some damage (this is used for fueling, power and telemetry to just the ship/second stage), and some storage tanks that were already dented received some additional dents from the shockwave on launch

The newly installed water deluge system worked extremely well (it was mainly this which prevented any pad damage)

All 33 booster engines lit and stayed lit until most were commanded to shut down at the planned stage separation

Booster and ship maintained their planned trajectory and speed AND passed through Max-Q with no incidents (Max-Q is when a rocket experiences maximum dynamic pressure, therefore there are major stresses on the vehicle)

The new Hot Stage Separation of ship and booster went very well (first time that SpaceX have tried this)

The problems only started after stage separation when the booster started its planned reorientation and the Flight Termination System (FTS) was activated due to some problems - Scott's video explains that well and what he suspects went wrong

The ship continued just fine until about 5 minutes later when it was about to shut down its engines for the coasting phase, something happened resulting in rapid fuel loss, apparently triggering its FTS. Again, see Scott's video for details on this

Compare and contrast with the first flight in April - this second flight achieved a great deal more.


So, all in all, it was a great success. Of course it didn't achieve the hoped for semi-orbital insertion of the ship, but maybe next time ...... I trust SpaceX's fantastic engineers to resolve issues as progress is made with this huge ship via SpaceX's usual rapid reiteration and testing.
 
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It's takes some power to launch 5000 tons vertically from a standing start to space, impressive.
 
It's takes some power to launch 5000 tons vertically from a standing start to space, impressive.
I wonder how many transatlantic flights it's equal to in terms of CO2, particulates etc.
 
Just to clarify, SpaceX's highly successful Falcon 9 is the rocket that uses Liquid Oxygen and Rocket Grade Kerosene (RP-1). On the other hand, the much newer, much larger and far more powerful Starship uses Methalox.

Methalox (Liquid Methane and Liquid Oxygen) is the cleanest rocket fuel after hydrogen, here's a very comprehensive analysis and comparison:

https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution/

from that article:

"So to summarize. How bad are rockets for our air and the climate? Compared to other forms of transportation, each rocket that launches is not great per se. You certainly would not want to ship simple packages via rockets, but the cost will always keep that off the table. But compared to even a small player in CO2 emissions, like the airline industry, rockets currently do not even compare at all! We would need several orders of magnitude more launches to even begin to need to factor in their contributions compared to other industries."
 
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