An always cool Falcon 9 launch (and other Space News)

[CarlBar]

@manikyath thanks for stepping in, you covered some points far better, just seen your reply after i hit post.

 

Personally for the booster, i think scott manley got it right, the hot staging caused the booster to experiance negetive G's and that messed up the fuel flow. Probably a mix of air in the lines and water hammer. They can probably get around that by reworking the relight sequence to use the header tankage for lighting, and then move fresh fuel and oxidiser into those tanks during the burn so it's still filled for the landing burn.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, CarlBar said:

Personally for the booster, i think scott manley got it right, the hot staging caused the booster to experiance negetive G's and that messed up the fuel flow. Probably a mix of air in the lines and water hammer. They can probably get around that by reworking the relight sequence to use the header tankage for lighting, and then move fresh fuel and oxidiser into those tanks during the burn so it's still filled for the landing burn.

something NSF pointed out iirc is that the explosion seemed to originate from roughly where the FTS was placed. wether one is connected to the other is unclear so far - perhaps the G-forces encountered just hit some treshold programmed into the FTS, perhaps a leak just happen to appear around where the FTS was and it went boom, perhaps the engines sucked in a bunch of gas which then upset the burn process.. lots of things could have happened.

 

knowing how real-world tests usually go.. it's probably something no one even considered could have been a problem, and a combination of most factors mentioned.

 

the most complicated thing about re-lighting rockets is that you need some initial G-forces to get the fuel back to a known state. this is why NASA elects to not re-light engines.

 

or.. because space agencies in general seem to be embracing kerbal terminology..

Quote

the negative gravioli went everywhere.

 

[wanderingfool2]

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

Anyway, the point I'm making here is that every explosion by a space craft, manned or not, contributes to negative sentiment towards the country that launched it. China blew up that one satellite in 2007 and added like 10,000 of the fragments to what's in orbit, there's 500,000 fragments of space debris already. Two events after that, also contributed as much junk into orbit as well.

Anyone who even cares about space knows SpaceX's starship blowing up is completely different than China blowing up a satellite in orbit.

 

Here's a hint, SpaceX's trajectory had it essentially rubbing the atmosphere so that if the flight was aborted it would burn up/crash into the ocean.  This explosion, other than the debris that does pollute the ocean (mostly the metals being the dangerous part of it), didn't produce any debris that needs to be tracked and accounted for.

 

The space community didn't like when China blew up the sat because it created debris that will remain in orbit for multiple years.  You are just regurgitating random facts acting like they somehow correlate.  No one with actual knowledge of space flights beyond what the media tells them would even consider the China thing anything close to what happened with Starship.

 

China also gets criticized for their rocket Long March as well BECAUSE they just let the thing deorbit uncontrolled (so you have issues where depending on what the atmosphere is like at the given time it could deorbit onto civilized land).  SpaceX also got into trouble with that, where part of the debris didn't de-orbit as planned and ended up in Australia.  Having things de-orbit in unsafe manors is what brings about negativity.

 

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

Nah , I disagree. I think there is sufficient computational power to simulate or use AI to test a billion permutations of variables that nothing should be exploding while it still remains within earth's gravity well. When things start being sent beyond the moon, then we no longer have sufficient data to simulate things.

 

Remember this image that floats up from time to time?

That's Margaret Hamilton next to the apollo project software she and her team wrote.

 

This is back when software had to be engineered and tested before the thing was built, in a time before software engineering was a thing.

Tell me how you don't know a thing, without telling me.

 

The fact you think this just really shows how clueless you are in current affairs in regards to the technology.

 

First, it took 350 people with 1400 man years...from what I gather it took at minimum 3 years to write/design/test (but 7 years before a manned test).  This was also a very primitive type of software that had to be done as well (in relation to today what they have to do).

 

Even then they flew with known faulty hardware knowing it could create an issue if it occurred but they chose it as the safer option than fixing it and retesting the entire system again.

 

Notice how they were TESTING the systems.  Need I remind you 3 PEOPLE DIED during the Apollo "testing" of the actual capsule, and 2 others died while training.

 

The simple fact is SpaceX does use simulations, they do test their designs in simulation.  It's an insult to the people who are working for SpaceX to act like they are somehow incompetent or their process is somehow worse than the old days.  They tested the flip maneuver in the simulation; guess what it didn't accurately depict what happens when you subject LOX and such with that much force.

 

Same with the ground during the first launch, their simulations, the half power test and calculations didn't account for the ground itself not being able to support the force (the concrete would have worked if the ground below the concrete hadn't given way).

 

 

To think that you can do everything in a simulation is a fools  errand and shows your absolute lack of understanding how these things are even being designed.

 

The startup procedures and the flip maneuvers (the ones that likely damaged the Starship and led to it's loss), all get tweaked and reprocessed in reflection of that data they collected.  Things like the true values of what the water hammer effect will be like can't be accurately calculated.  The fact that you have lets say an improper weld fail causing some issues or similar things.

 

Simulations are not perfect.  They never will be perfect and no matter how much money and time you spend throwing at it, it will never be a proper analogue to actually going out and destructive testing the thing.  The fuel slosh in the tank and ingestion of air caused one of the explosions of starship testing.

 

Simulations when talking about simulating extremes become more and more inaccurate

 

Even on Falcon 9; they lost one of the boosters after multiple flights because they didn't account for specific type of degradation of the plastics (or something similar to that).

 

6 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

As I recall when they were still testing Starship having it make short Hops and then land it never landed without eventually blowing up. 

SN15 landed successfully, then they moved towards working on the booster.  Either way though, the main outcome from all of those was to learn about the forces and what to expect from the ship while it ascends and does  it's flip maneuver.

[Arika]

6 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

You're right I won't believe My Lying Eyes and will instead believe the SpaceX statement that I quoted into the original post

Right, because you couldn't possibly have any bias whatsoever considering your work with NASA...

[manikyath]

here's a fresh video on the flight, of someone who collected some views out there and came to what they believe to be a pretty good guess:

 

TL:DR, their guess is this:

- the booster appears to have had some sort of failure on one of the inner ring engines, because data shows one didnt re-light, and after that the nearest engine of the center 3 failed, followed by the two neighbors on the inner ring, at which point FTS woud be kicking in because we're having hugely assymetric thrust. the assumption here is that the relative violence of the flip probably made fuel slosh, and gas made it into the engine's turbines.

 

- the ship he guesses might have gotten some damage during hot staging, causing a leak that eventually developed enough to push starship off course.

 

in my opinion, the theory on the booster sounds solid, and if it is that 'simply' changing the flight profile will probably be the resolution for this.

 

as for the ship.. it's a guess, it certainly wouldnt be the first time starship made an oopsie around the engines (that's where some of the hops had issues..) and this does sound like a scenario where FTS would take action on it's own. perhaps the solution would be to fire the center engines on sharship a bit later, so they dont have as much obstruction in front of them.

 

whatever it ends up being.. i'll be here for the next test flight (gonna just toss a guess at feb-mar 2024) to see what changes were made, and for the thread of glorious internet 'debate' we're undoubtedly going to be having.

[manikyath]

10 minutes ago, Arika said:

Right, because you couldn't possibly have any bias whatsoever considering your work with NASA...

if they work with NASA, i'd expect them to have an ounce of sense to realise rocket technology isnt a fight to the death, but an open market that NASA themselves are pushing to exist. more solutions is more better.

 

but then again.. theoretical asterophysics isnt rocket engineering, so maybe that means just as much as my badge of "battery technician" in this regard. at least i have experience working with things that explode

[wanderingfool2]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if they work with NASA, i'd expect them to have an ounce of sense to realise rocket technology isnt a fight to the death, but an open market that NASA themselves are pushing to exist. more solutions is more better.

 

but then again.. theoretical asterophysics isnt rocket engineering, so maybe that means just as much as my badge of "battery technician" in this regard. at least i have experience working with things that explode

Previous claims he says he says he works in the field...but then again he has failed multiple times in basic level statistical analysis stuff (when it relates to Musk).  I'm thinking it's more of a concept of having blinders on that prevents him from analyzing the facts.

 

9 minutes ago, manikyath said:

whatever it ends up being.. i'll be here for the next test flight (gonna just toss a guess at feb-mar 2024) to see what changes were made, and for the thread of glorious internet 'debate' we're undoubtedly going to be having.

The FAA is going to be the one that I think holds up the launch/licensing.  Even if SpaceX knows the exact issue right now, I be the earliest they could do it would be Feb, even if they are ready for the next booster/SN (they already are prepping it)

 

As for the booster, I have a few guesses, but the one that has stuck with me is that they water hammered the pipes when they did the engine shutoffs which caused cracking/leaks.  Then when the flip/relight maneuver happened it essentially put enough stress on the rest to cause massive failure and then eventually loss of pressure which lead to the FTS being automatically triggered.  If they do determine this is the case though, then the booster will just need a modified sequence without any hardware mods required.  My other guess was that after a prolonged burn like that the relight failed and caused damage; which then propagated and lead to more engine explosions.

 

For the SN, I don't really have any guesses; other than maybe an engine being damaged during hotstaging...but I kind of wonder as well if there was a fault in one the vacuum engines...that was the first time they really flew the engine for that extended period of time.  If there was damage due to hotstaging I would have though it would have become a lot more apparent very quickly on.  After all, it flew for nearly 4 minutes prior to the initial LOX leak (well probably LOX).  So my guess is that one of the pipes feeding the engine sprung a leak and the loss of gas eventually lead to it having air pockets form and shutdown (and termination of the engines).

[manikyath]

14 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The FAA is going to be the one that I think holds up the launch/licensing.  Even if SpaceX knows the exact issue right now, I be the earliest they could do it would be Feb, even if they are ready for the next booster/SN (they already are prepping it)

i mean.. the FAA holds anything that might have a chance of falling on people's heads, this is something that NSF does a very good job of explaining over and over again; the FAAhas no "opinion" or "stake" in anything.. they are a regulatory body whose job it is that anything that goes in the air has an "as great as possible" chance of doing so without causing harm to anyone or anything else.

 

ignoring the big looney's ideology on the FAA, it does appear that they're the slowest link in the chain, potentially due to some staffing/funding shortages.. but the FAA being slow at least means they're doing their job reviewing stuff and sending requests and/or remarks to SpaceX to meet regulatory approval.

 

bonus footage of NSF's cameras being absolutely hammered by the shockwave:

(also, jack beyer is still a god at tracking rockets with a camera on a tripod..)

 

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, CarlBar said:

. The Chinese ASAT test had people hot and bothered both because no one really wants space to become a battleground, and because all the debris stayed up for an extended period of time. This wasn't military saber rattling and all of the material re-entered within hours at the latest.

 

 

 

https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers

Quote

Not all objects are tracked and catalogued. The number of debris objects estimated based on statistical models to be in orbit (MASTER-8, future population 2021)

36500 space debris objects greater than 10 cm
1000000 space debris objects from greater than 1 cm to 10 cm
130 million space debris objects from greater than 1 mm to 1 cm

https://www.space.com/china-rocket-disintegrates-space-junk-cloud

https://www.space.com/nasa-esa-space-chiefs-condemn-china-rocket-debris-crash

 

Can't keep launching things and having it blow up because the debris stay in orbit for decades, not hours.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

i mean.. the FAA holds anything that might have a chance of falling on people's heads, this is something that NSF does a very good job of explaining over and over again; the FAAhas no "opinion" or "stake" in anything.. they are a regulatory body whose job it is that anything that goes in the air has an "as great as possible" chance of doing so without causing harm to anyone or anything else.

 

ignoring the big looney's ideology on the FAA, it does appear that they're the slowest link in the chain, potentially due to some staffing/funding shortages.. but the FAA being slow at least means they're doing their job reviewing stuff and sending requests and/or remarks to SpaceX to meet regulatory approval.

I do understand where the FAA has reservations and such.  The issue I have though is the amount of red tape that needs to be hopped through and the general slowness.  After SN15 it took nearly a year for them to evaluate the facility for the full Starship testing campaign (which included the deluge system).  Which meant any meaningful process was effectively put on hold during that one year period).

 

It wasn't even really the evaluation of the effects on it that created an issue either...it was the feedback portion, so the studies by the FAA had already been completed...they effectively had to let anyone who wanted to voice their opinion and they needed to effectively treat each opinion as a valid opinion and take that into consideration.  This was something the FAA had initially stated would take like 2 months (meaning the earliest launch would have been Dec 2021).  Then they delayed the hearing, iirc environmental groups were trying to voice their concerns, then the 2 month mark got delayed and delayed until like 2022

[Uttamattamakin]

5 hours ago, Arika said:

Right, because you couldn't possibly have any bias whatsoever considering your work with NASA...

That's right baby I work with NASA and ESA.  Hmmm who else works with NASA

 

Maybe because I work with NASA, and ESA, on an unmanned project (and would love to be the 3rd person from my little suburb to go to space)... I'd like to not see more astronauts get blown up or burned up or any other such thing.     Falcon 9 had to spend a long LONG time proving itself.   It did.  It is a wonderful system.  The way to build a manned system is to take a proven unmaned platform and scale it up, which is what Heavy is.    What might be needed is a real Falcon ... Superheavy.  At least for carrying the people.  That said we have SLS for that.

Starship IMHO would be great for cargo, for sending big things.  I agree on that.  People, In the state it is in and will be in for a long time is a NO. 

 

Here is a really good breakdown. 

That there was black smoke streaming from the launcher shows something went wrong right away.  Plus loosing heat shield tiles is not good. 

An interesting video from Florida was in the video above ... which shows that if Starship going up was the FTS it didn't do a very good job since a HUGE piece stayed together. 

 

 

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

SN15 landed successfully, then they moved towards working on the booster.  Either way though, the main outcome from all of those was to learn about the forces and what to expect from the ship while it ascends and does  it's flip maneuver.

Ah yes thanks for reminding me.  I remember that one landed and seemed ok then fell over and BOOOOOM.  Another landed stayed upright... was ok for a time then BOOOOM.  So if one landed and was ok and no BOOOOOOOOM  that's good. 

 

The craft to look out for IMHO is the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser.  

But there are issues with it's intended launch vehicle.  Though in theory it could be mated to a wide variety of rockets. 

[manikyath]

4 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Maybe because I work with NASA, and ESA, on an unmanned project (and would love to be the 3rd person from my little suburb to go to space)... I'd like to not see more astronauts get blown up or burned up or any other such thing.     Falcon 9 had to spend a long LONG time proving itself.   It did.  It is a wonderful system.  The way to build a manned system is to take a proven unmaned platform and scale it up, which is what Heavy is.    What might be needed is a real Falcon ... Superheavy.  At least for carrying the people.  That said we have SLS for that.

what i find amazing is that you can say things like this, and not realize that what you are describing they 'should' be doing... is what they ARE doing...

- starship will not be a manned launch system initially, due to the lack of LES.

- this long time process of proving itself on falcon 9.. is what you are now ctiticizing on an (early) prototype test flight of starship.

 

and exactly.. we have SLS to put humans up, just like we have falcon heavy to go to the ISS. now.. if NASA has their own human launch system, why do they use spacex? right.. BECAUSE IT'S CHEAPER.

 

i'm amazed at the amount of knowledge you claim to have, yet how narrow minded you keep your opinions on this topic.

or maybe the thing you're working on with space agencies has nothing to do with the details of the launch system?

[CarlBar]

14 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers

https://www.space.com/china-rocket-disintegrates-space-junk-cloud

https://www.space.com/nasa-esa-space-chiefs-condemn-china-rocket-debris-crash

 

Can't keep launching things and having it blow up because the debris stay in orbit for decades, not hours.

 

Starship never reached orbital speed though, sending somthing up high does not put it in orbit. You have to get a fairly high velocity around the earth to get it to stay up. Starship deliberately did not do this so that if they activated the flight termination system the bits would all fall back down more or less immediately.

 

12 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

That there was black smoke streaming from the launcher shows something went wrong right away.  Plus loosing heat shield tiles is not good. 

An interesting video from Florida was in the video above ... which shows that if Starship going up was the FTS it didn't do a very good job since a HUGE piece stayed together. 

 

That black smoke is not visible after a few seconds of it, most likely someone left a cover or other minor item somwhere they shouldn't and thats the residue burning off. Otherwise the trail should have continued all the way to destruction.

 

To hit some other points discussed in the video:

 

1. The heat shield tiles falling off isn't great, but it's been clear the heat shield component isn't a priority item to get right for a while now. There's been no real development that we've seen to address the matter.

 

2. Just because the burst of gas that preceded the explosion wasn't allready burning says very little about the reason for it. the area it came from is the methane tank. Any gas cloud from there will initially be pure methane, until it disperses sufficiently for the oxygen concentration to rise it can't ignite.

 

3. It's also extremely unlikely to be a structural failure. We know from the first flight test that even with the tanks depressurising the booster can survive extreme tumbling stresses without imitate failure. It took the tanks severely depressurising to cause a complete structural failure. The booster simply wasn't sufficiently stressed to cause that kind of failure from aerodynamics. That leaves either an internal overpressure event or an external factor. The only possibble external force is the flight termination system. And an internal event would require a deflagration or detonation within the methane tank, which would have introduced enough oxygen and heat into the initial gas burst for it to be lit. Since we know the initial gas burst was unlit and internal factor is not plausible.

 

4. The fact the PR folks didn't know what was going on says very little. We allready knew the flight engineers are focused on the rocket and don't keep the PR folks updated. We saw the same with the first flight. Likewise the fact that no one on the ground commanded it means little. FTS have automatic parameters that will set it off.

 

5. The fact that the booster would have probably fallen safely within the designated splashdown zone doesn't actually mean all that much as far as FTS activation goes. The automatic systems tend to be programmed with a high degree of leeway. A significant trajectory deviation, (which an early end to the boostback burn would have caused), is exactly the kind of thing an FTS is supposed to trigger on by itself.

 

6. The large chunk of starship surviving is itself a testament to the structural strength of the design. Though it is itself undesirable i'd point out that SpaceX did physical tests with special test articles of the new FTS and the FAA signed off on the new design as being adequate. SpaceX did their homework and the FAA double checked it. This is a classic example of the kind of thing you only find out in these full scale circumstances.

[Uttamattamakin]

19 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

1. The heat shield tiles falling off isn't great, but it's been clear the heat shield component isn't a priority item to get right for a while now. There's been no real development that we've seen to address the matter.

If their intent was to have Star Ship survive re-entry in once piece and splash down in a targeted area of the South Pacific... away from people and shipping lanes... then this is a big issue.    It means that even if it hadn't exploded it would've failed catastrophically on re-entry.

19 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

2. Just because the burst of gas that preceded the explosion wasn't allready burning says very little about the reason for it. the area it came from is the methane tank. Any gas cloud from there will initially be pure methane, until it disperses sufficiently for the oxygen concentration to rise it can't ignite.

Agree.

19 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

3. It's also extremely unlikely to be a structural failure. We know from the first flight test that even with the tanks depressurising the booster can survive extreme tumbling stresses without imitate failure. It took the tanks severely depressurising to cause a complete structural failure. The booster simply wasn't sufficiently stressed to cause that kind of failure from aerodynamics. That leaves either an internal overpressure event or an external factor. The only possibble external force is the flight termination system. And an internal event would require a deflagration or detonation within the methane tank, which would have introduced enough oxygen and heat into the initial gas burst for it to be lit. Since we know the initial gas burst was unlit and internal factor is not plausible.

We do see small explosions in the engine compartment followed by an explosion near the junction of the fuel and oxidizer tanks.  This is a point in favor of it being the FTS ... at least being involved if not being triggered. 

19 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

4. The fact the PR folks didn't know what was going on says very little. We allready knew the flight engineers are focused on the rocket and don't keep the PR folks updated. We saw the same with the first flight. Likewise the fact that no one on the ground commanded it means little. FTS have automatic parameters that will set it off.

That is a good point.  IT would be better if Space X would have someone with real knowledge do their play by play.   Like this.  With also a live feed of some of what is said in mission control. 

 

It feels like if Challenger happened and was a Space X mission they would've cheered loud,  Called it a RUD, and while chunks of Tim Dodd were still on the way down people would try to spin it as a success.  

My attitude towards this stuff comes from the knowledge that it is intended for this thing to be a manned space craft by 2025.   Manned By 2025. I'd just like to see more solid success and less well butting about it. 

 

19 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

5. The fact that the booster would have probably fallen safely within the designated splashdown zone doesn't actually mean all that much as far as FTS activation goes. The automatic systems tend to be programmed with a high degree of leeway. A significant trajectory deviation, (which an early end to the boostback burn would have caused), is exactly the kind of thing an FTS is supposed to trigger on by itself.

It didn't seem that was the case though.  We see that it suffered propellant slosh causing some engines not to ignite.  We also see clearly in the video explosions in the engine bay.  That's not normal.  It wasn't all things were normal and nice and "oh lets test the FTS". 

 

19 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

6. The large chunk of starship surviving is itself a testament to the structural strength of the design. Though it is itself undesirable i'd point out that SpaceX did physical tests with special test articles of the new FTS and the FAA signed off on the new design as being adequate. SpaceX did their homework and the FAA double checked it. This is a classic example of the kind of thing you only find out in these full scale circumstances.

So the FTS going off but not destroying a big chunk  (the portion which would be where crew would be in a real operational starship) is great.  

 

Lemme ask you when a similar portion of the Space Shuttle survived in both the Challenger Explosion and the Columbia breakup on re-entry should NASA have crooned about how strong that proved the Shuttle orbiters were? lol

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It didn't seem that was the case though.  We see that it suffered propellant slosh causing some engines not to ignite.  We also see clearly in the video explosions in the engine bay.  That's not normal.  It wasn't all things were normal and nice and "oh lets test the FTS". 

no one is saying that what happened on the boost back burn is normal. what happened up until that point appears to have been smooth sailing, something went wrong on the boost-back burn, and -presumably- FTS took control of the situation.

 

9 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

So the FTS going off but not destroying a big chunk  (the portion which would be where crew would be in a real operational starship) is great.  

 

Lemme ask you when a similar portion of the Space Shuttle survived in both the Challenger Explosion and the Columbia breakup on re-entry should NASA have crooned about how strong that proved the Shuttle orbiters were? lol

not the point he was making...

the point is that apparently starship is MUCH stronger than even the FAA expected, the FAA wouldnt have signed off on the new FTS if they werent confident of it's capabilities "on paper", and this is something that likely wouldnt have been discovered if it hadnt occurred in a full scale prototype. *obviously* it's problematic that the FTS didnt properly blow it to bits, but you'd rather have that happen in a suborbital test flight, than on a finished design that now suddenly has a major flaw.

 

in other words, the FTS struggling is a major problem to resolve for test flight 3, but the FTS struggling proves that the booster design itself is very solid. on top of that it's a good thing that this flaw was revealed in an early stage.

[wanderingfool2]

18 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

An interesting video from Florida was in the video above ... which shows that if Starship going up was the FTS it didn't do a very good job since a HUGE piece stayed together. 

It's statements like these that makes me think either you don't work at NASA, or you have a job that's not related to what you are talking about and supposed touting yourself as an expert.

 

Do you even know what a FTS is intended to do?  Let us look at what NASA's website has to say

https://public.ksc.nasa.gov/kscsma/nasa-flight-termination-system-fts-design-requirements/

Quote

FTS Design

– FTS must render each power stage and / or any other propulsion system, including any that are part of a payload, non-propulsive
– If flight analysis determines the public is not endangered, an FTS may not be required

Notice how it talks about disabling the propulsion system; which in this case it did.  There is a reason why they setup a zone where debris can call, and why they also setup a zone where they can still use the FTS to abort a mission.  The debris witnessed would have fallen in a zone that was already designed.

 

Say it with me slowly since you don't seem to understand; the flight termination system is not supposed to blow it up to the point where there aren't any large segments the flight termination system is there to prevent the rocket from straying from it's trajectory (when things like engines fail).

 

18 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Maybe because I work with NASA, and ESA, on an unmanned project (and would love to be the 3rd person from my little suburb to go to space)... I'd like to not see more astronauts get blown up or burned up or any other such thing.     Falcon 9 had to spend a long LONG time proving itself.   It did.  It is a wonderful system.  The way to build a manned system is to take a proven unmaned platform and scale it up, which is what Heavy is.    What might be needed is a real Falcon ... Superheavy.  At least for carrying the people.  That said we have SLS for that.

Can you stop with all this ridiculous "I work at NASA" followed by a terrible take that is mind numbly silly and shows you have a bias.

 

It was a test mission, they knew there would be a good chance it wouldn't survive...even the hotstaging they knew there could be a decent chance it failed miserably and the FTS would have to be triggered right then and there.

 

If you want to bring up your precious SLS, the one that has been delayed for like a decade and had multiple issued up until launch days (and some that were serious)...and after a single successful flight (after it had failed a previous green test where the engines shutdown early), they are planning for a manned mission on the second launch.

 

Seriously, how narrow minded do you have to be to not understand that there is a reason why they are doing unmanned tests; Explosions doesn't mean failure in the general testing approach.  Especially when flying a rocket that uses Methalox for fuel which hasn't really been done too much in the past.

 

  

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

My attitude towards this stuff comes from the knowledge that it is intended for this thing to be a manned space craft by 2025.   Manned By 2025. I'd just like to see more solid success and less well butting about it. 

And SLS was supposed to launch in 2018; the space suits were supposed to be ready by now.  The FAA stuff also delayed the entire Starship stuff probably by a year.  Seriously, one of the earlier launches of Starhopper was delayed because the online FAA staff that was required to be there for the launch didn't make it for the launch window.

 

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

That is a good point.  IT would be better if Space X would have someone with real knowledge do their play by play.   Like this.  With also a live feed of some of what is said in mission control. 

Please do yourself a favor and stop talking hairbrained details.  The presenters were Quality Systems Engineer, Space Operations Engineer, and the Principle Integration Engineer.  They do have real knowledge of it; it's just that they don't sit in essentially the war room monitoring all the vehicle information because they are the ones doing the presenting.  There are things they likely aren't supposed to speak about either, which is why they don't broadcast from the control room always.  The thing you seem to also miss is that the FTS occurred close enough to the timing that they were expecting engine shutoff; so for them all they could see on their screens could be what they expect to be the shutoff (and at that time they were also expecting to switch to Starlink views)...so please think before you speak.

[manikyath]

14 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's statements like these that makes me think either you don't work at NASA, or you have a job that's not related to what you are talking about and supposed touting yourself as an expert.

oh, i'm sure they're on some team related to some unmanned spacecraft, as stated...

 

i'm just also quite sure they're either:

- not anywhere near the tech being discussed in this thread, but using their credentials out of context to try and win an argument.

- some junior that 'fell upwards' into a team that's actually working on propper stuff, but as being a junior goes, probably not a key member on the team.

 

and either way.. the credential is meaningless.. because the presumption that someone on a forum could point out how this rocket will never work and is entirely unnecessary hugely insults the hundreds of engineers that are designing it, the FAA staff who are giving it the green light to perform test flights, and the NASA execs that gave it development funding as part of their own campaign.

[sazrocks]

On 11/18/2023 at 8:31 AM, Sauron said:

Yeah I sure am glad there are regulations preventing your flying dynamite sticks from carrying people any time soon, William. I hope they tie you down a little tighter next time, just to be sure.

You're misinterpreting the point that was being made. Let's look at another quote from the same talk:

Quote

Gerstenmaier attributed regulatory hangups in part to a lack of staffing, saying the FAA’s licensing department is in “great distress” and “needs twice the resources it has today.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/world/spacex-testimony-senate-faa-regulations-scn/index.html

 

Here we can see that SpaceX is actually lobbying for more resources being directed towards the FAA, not less. SpaceX has made statements indicating that they have had to choose which launches to prioritize because they know that the FAA reviewing one license of theirs would mean other licenses would be delayed because of a lack of staff. This isn't how the system should work.

Quote

"I think people assume because Falcon flies every four days on average that that licensing process is kind of a well-oiled machine," one SpaceX official said. "Certainly AST has made it work, and we have made it work, but I can assure you that it is very challenging. It's very cumbersome. In many cases, we have deferred work that is associated with those programs because we know if we put those documents in front of FAA it is going to redirect their attention away from our Starship program, and vice versa. There is a very real problem here, with resourcing, where our programs are competing with each other."

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/citing-slow-starship-reviews-spacex-urges-faa-to-double-licensing-staff/2/

 

On 11/18/2023 at 3:32 PM, Uttamattamakin said:

Furthermore, Scott Manly points out that Starship was well within it's flight envelope and so this would NOT have been an automated flight termination system caused explosion. 

Scott was incorrect here; the AFTS terminated the second stage (starship):

Quote

• The flight test’s conclusion came when telemetry was lost near the end of second stage burn prior to engine cutoff after more than eight minutes of flight. The team verified a safe command destruct was appropriately triggered based on available vehicle performance data.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-2

 

Personally, this makes sense because the AFTS would likely need to trigger if the vehicle did not have sufficient velocity to make it to orbit (and thus would be risking debris landing in Africa, etc.).

On 11/20/2023 at 6:14 AM, Sauron said:

You can't run a space rocket company like any old tech startup. Failure here means loss of life.

It doesn't mean loss of life in unmanned tests. No one is planning on putting people on the 3rd launch of starship, or the 20th launch. Before people fly on starship there will have been dozens of successful flights. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see over 100 launches of starship before people fly on it. One could argue that weeding out issues that can cause a LOM or LOC early on through a fail-fast approach could result in a safer vehicle overall. SpaceX understands what it means to build and maintain a safe crewed vehicle through Dragon, and broadly their philosophy has been to test components in the real world rather than just simulate endlessly.

On 11/20/2023 at 5:39 PM, Kisai said:

Nah , I disagree. I think there is sufficient computational power to simulate or use AI to test a billion permutations of variables that nothing should be exploding while it still remains within earth's gravity well. When things start being sent beyond the moon, then we no longer have sufficient data to simulate things.

This is not possible even with modern simulation platforms. You can test parts of the vehicle (or even the whole vehicle in limited parameters), but there is absolutely not enough computational power to simulate all the complexities of a literal rocket to the point that "nothing should be exploding while it still remains within earth's gravity well".

19 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

That's right baby I work with NASA and ESA.  Hmmm who else works with NASA

 

Maybe because I work with NASA, and ESA, on an unmanned project (and would love to be the 3rd person from my little suburb to go to space)... I'd like to not see more astronauts get blown up or burned up or any other such thing.     Falcon 9 had to spend a long LONG time proving itself.   It did.  It is a wonderful system.  The way to build a manned system is to take a proven unmaned platform and scale it up, which is what Heavy is.    What might be needed is a real Falcon ... Superheavy.  At least for carrying the people.  That said we have SLS for that.

Your philosophy of "The way to build a manned system is to take a proven unmaned platform and scale it up" is at odds with the two examples you gave. Falcon 9 doesn't have any heritage in manned launch vehicles; it was designed from scratch. SLS on the other hand does have some nominal flight heritage (SRBs, SSMEs), but considering that the SRBs have been modified and other than those components the vehicle is brand new, I'd say it's not exactly a good example of simply scaling up an existing system.

19 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Starship IMHO would be great for cargo, for sending big things.  I agree on that.  People, In the state it is in and will be in for a long time is a NO. 

I'm not sure who is arguing against that. It's clear that starship is not human rated and will not be* for a looong time. F9 had 84 launches before it first carried crew; I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar quantity of starship launches before it carries crew either.

 

* HLS Starship is in a bit of a unique position because it doesn't actually need to be human-rated for ascent or re-entry, only for lunar orbit and the lunar surface. Therefore a lot of the risk associated with manned launch and landing aren't on the critical path for HLS. Even then we will definitely see a bunch of successful starship flights before HLS is manned.

[Sauron]

46 minutes ago, sazrocks said:

Here we can see that SpaceX is actually lobbying for more resources being directed towards the FAA, not less. SpaceX has made statements indicating that they have had to choose which launches to prioritize because they know that the FAA reviewing one license of theirs would mean other licenses would be delayed because of a lack of staff. This isn't how the system should work.

I'm sure the bureaucracy could be more efficient, however I'm also sure that ensuring things are being done properly is very challenging and having the government divert more funds to an agency specifically to get licenses faster to a private business is probably not warranted. Would not be a problem if the entire project was developed by government agencies.

 

Also seems like more reasons to not botch test launches just to make a deadline.

[wanderingfool2]

10 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I'm sure the bureaucracy could be more efficient, however I'm also sure that ensuring things are being done properly is very challenging and having the government divert more funds to an agency specifically to get licenses faster to a private business is probably not warranted. Would not be a problem if the entire project was developed by government agencies.

 

Also seems like more reasons to not botch test launches just to make a deadline.

Except that it's not about "botch test launches".  SN15 was successful and they tried getting the approval for the Starship itself; and it took nearly a year for the FAA to do everything.  This wasn't even any analysis that they were necessarily doing; they were just parsing over complaints/feedback from the public in regards to the impacts to them from having Starship.

 

As I mentioned as well, they delayed one of the SN launches not because they weren't ready but because the FAA inspector couldn't get there in time.

 

It's not even just SpaceX that has mentioned this as well.  All of the major launch providers have mentioned it.  The way that FAA has been setup, and some of the red tape that have been put in place is hampering their ability to process things correctly.

 

As an example, with the most recent launch, they required a reassement from the FWS...the only thing is is that FWS didn't even start their investigation into it until after it was pretty much announced (despite that they could have started months back and not had a problem).  Then  you have each Falcon 9 launch requiring a bunch of paperwork each time, and a massive no fly and no marine activity zone for each launch.  The Falcon 9 launches at a cadence where the size required by the marine zone has become a sticking point.  SpaceX isn't the only one that has run into issues like this as well.

 

As we advance more and more towards massive amounts of rockets being fired we need to ensure there are enough people on the backend to support this; the general funding to the FAA and the general direction by the FAA hasn't really kept up with the times so as a result they are lagging behind in that.

 

Here is a video that went roughly over the recent senate hearing regarding the FAA

 

[manikyath]

23 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I'm sure the bureaucracy could be more efficient, however I'm also sure that ensuring things are being done properly is very challenging and having the government divert more funds to an agency specifically to get licenses faster to a private business is probably not warranted. Would not be a problem if the entire project was developed by government agencies.

in theory allocating more funds to the FAA would be a great 'relief' on all parts of aviation, and given there is an uptick in commercial space travel it would make sense to have an uptick in the FAA's "theoretical troughput".

 

however, it needs to be said that just "adding more money" doesnt necessarily make a government instance work faster... with feat of crossing into politics i might even carefully say that it may possibly just result in a less efficient government instance.

 

the issue at hand might be more that an uptick in several aspects of aviation that has lead to a general shortage of "people who know what they're doing" at the FAA.

things such as:

- drones becoming much more common, and more people might be interested in things that outgrow the 'maximum unlicensed size'

- youtubers doing stupid shyte in ulltralight aircraft... has to be said this at least has *an* impact.

- an uptick in commercial spacetravel, not just from SpaceX, but also from many other angles like the virgin galactic flights (the amount of exceptions they had to apply for to make those happen was insane, at some point they were looking into a variance for the design of the runway..)

 

and i do agree that "adding more money" isnt the solution, but doing nothing at all wont make the problem go away either.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, sazrocks said:

 

This is not possible even with modern simulation platforms. You can test parts of the vehicle (or even the whole vehicle in limited parameters), but there is absolutely not enough computational power to simulate all the complexities of a literal rocket to the point that "nothing should be exploding while it still remains within earth's gravity well".

 

Please show me a quote from someone who works at NASA saying so.

[BabaGanuche]

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Please show me a quote from someone who works at NASA saying so.

Please show us a quote from someone at NASA that that is it is possible to perfectly simulate an entire rocket in flight.

[Kisai]

4 minutes ago, BabaGanuche said:

Please show us a quote from someone at NASA that that is it is possible to perfectly simulate an entire rocket in flight.

 

https://software.nasa.gov/software/category/propulsion

 

Gee, seems they have software that does exactly that. 

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/simulating-nasas-rocket-launch-artemis-moon-missions/

https://www.nas.nasa.gov/SC23/research/project12.html

 

 

[Uttamattamakin]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's statements like these that makes me think either you don't work at NASA, or you have a job that's not related to what you are talking about and supposed touting yourself as an expert.

 

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Can you stop with all this ridiculous "I work at NASA" followed by a terrible take that is mind numbly silly and shows you have a bias.

Never claimed to work FOR NASA  I do however work with them, and ESA and hundreds of astrophysicists around the world.  We are working on a project called the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.  An unmanned system which will measure gravitational waves produced by things like black holes merging.  'That is a fact if if you, or anyone else, believe it or not is not so important.    

 

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

....

Hey man I just delivered the news.  People can choose to like it or not.  Space X's vehicles managed to blow up.  Even from Space X's own words, not just the presenters but their written statement, the booster explosion was a RUD not a FTS activation.    Also an FTS is not supposed to just shut down the engine.  It's supposed to ensure that the spacecraft is so destroyed that any pieces will not harm those on the ground.    Remember these things are so high up and going so fast that the FTS could activate when they are half way to Africa or Europe (Depending on the trajectory and inclination).