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

[Uttamattamakin]

NOTE: 

What I plan to do with this thread is just collected any news that might be interesting regarding Space related technology in this thread.  New news will be marked as a solution.  To see the new news see the solution. 

Summary

Space X's Starship had a launch today which did clear the launch pad. The pad did better this time by a lot.  The first stage did explode "Rapid unplanned disassembly" according to Space x.  Second stage was clear and away when it did and seemed to be rocketing along ... until it too appears to have had a rapid unplanned disassembly.  On the bright side parts of it may have reached orbit. 

 

Quotes

Quote

SpaceX’s second test flight of its massive Starship rocket ended early Saturday when the vehicle’s spacecraft blew up, though the launch made it further than the company’s previous attempt.

 

SpaceX said it lost contact with the Starship spacecraft about 15 minutes after launching from the company’s spaceport east of Brownsville, Texas around 8 a.m. ET. 

The flight was intended to be a roughly 90-minute operation. Shortly after the launch, the Starship spacecraft separated from a huge booster and began to ascend on its own, according to a company livestream. 

After the spacecraft detached from the booster, the latter vehicle exploded. --Wall Street Journal

According to Space X

Quote

• Following separation, the Super Heavy booster successfully completed its flip maneuver and initiated the boostback burn before it experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly. The vehicle breakup occurred more than three and a half minutes into the flight at an altitude of ~90 km over the Gulf of Mexico.

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.
• The water-cooled flame deflector and other pad upgrades performed as expected, requiring minimal post-launch work to be ready for upcoming vehicle tests and the next integrated flight test.

 

My thoughts

This is much better than before but still far from good enough.  If NASA had SLS blow up twice they'd be done for.    Both of those systems have taken a toll on their launch structures.  Super heavy appears to have not even knocked over the cameras and the water deluge appears to have been enough without the flame trench.  Closer examination could change that but at least it wasn't the mass destruction that occurred before.  A real improvement. 

All engines stayed lit on superheavy.  

 

Superheavy blew up after hot staging of Starship.    Star ship was clear and away, it appeared to be clear and away by a lot when super heavy did explode.    

 

The above images show the explosion of Starship itself.  In real time Tim Dodd was not smiling like that when it blew up he was looking concerned and confused by the Space X people cheering.  He is due to ride on one of these around the Moon in one of the first missions, a private mission called "Dear Moon".   

 

Congratulations to Space X for doing a little better.  Bear in mind, for comparison.  No Saturn V ever blew up during testing.   No Space shuttle did during testing, sadly two did fail while manned.   In modern times SLS has not blown up once.   Falcon Heavy has not blown up once.  The numbers are small but for this number of launches this number of failures is not good.  

 

Sources

SpaceX’s Second Starship Test Flight Ends in Another Explosion - WSJ 

 

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

[Needfuldoer]

They are having a bad problem and will not go to space today.

[Uttamattamakin]

7 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

They are having a bad problem and will not go to space today.

Up goer 5 went up in one piece. 

Space X up goer went up in 5 ten thousand pieces.  

Seriously though its kinda sad.  I'm sure someone can make the multi-multi engine heavy lift work.  The USSR tried and failed with the N1 even after multiple launches.   Many smaller engines might just not be as good as having 3-5 biguns. 

[manikyath]

i'm still watching the NSF stream

 

their take on it is that for both of them it appears to have been the flight termination system.

- for the booster, it appears the boost back burn didnt go where they want it to go, so they 'terminated' it - doing a landing simulation on the booster was a bonus bin item anyways.

- for the second stage it's a bit less clear, but someone calculated that it might have missed it's planned trajectory, at which point it would be terminated for safety reasons.

 

but, the things on the checklist that did work:

- it cleared the pad

- the pad is instact

- hot staging seems to have gone well (so far nothing to show it didnt)

- the second stage did, in fact, get to space, as defined by the karman line.

 

as for the comparison to NASA missions that never blew up.. this is a testing vehicle, it was not meant to be recovered, and SpaceX's methodology of "real world testing" has proven to be far cheaper than nasa's methodology of "doing it once, and doing it right the first time".

 

either way, "ends in explosion" is the wrong way to describe it. they successfully launched, that's all they were looking for. they didnt make it trough the entire mission plan, but literally everything after hot staging was "optional, if we get there."

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Many smaller engines might just not be as good as having 3-5 biguns. 

what makes you assume multiple smaller engines was the problem? they went all the way to hot staging, at which point most of the work of the bajillion engines was done without fault.

[RollinLower]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

"ends in explosion" is the wrong way to describe it.

what did they call it again? Rapid unscheduled disassembly?  

[manikyath]

Just now, RollinLower said:

what did they call it again? Rapid unscheduled disassembly?  

RUD is a meme.. but the point is that "ends in explosion" implies it ended in disaster, which it defenately wasnt.

 

in fact.. FAA was very worried about the flight termination system after the first flight didnt really terminate all that well.. so in a way the FTS working so well is a major milestone.

[Uttamattamakin]

26 minutes ago, manikyath said:

what makes you assume multiple smaller engines was the problem? they went all the way to hot staging, at which point most of the work of the bajillion engines was done without fault.

The challenge with multiple smaller engines is all of the plumbing that has to go into all of them.  They all have to burn fuel exactly the same rate.  Any little bit of difference across all of those engines can lead to an imbalance that can lead to leaks, and BOOM.  Any thrust differential leads to different stresses on the craft and BOOM.  This is just easier with more larger engines.  That is why most rockets of this size go with bigger engines. 

 

24 minutes ago, manikyath said:

RUD is a meme.. but the point is that "ends in explosion" implies it ended in disaster, which it defenately wasnt.

 

Explosion just means a very fast uncontrolled expansion of gasses which releases a large amount of energy.  Explosions don't have to be disasters.  

 

24 minutes ago, manikyath said:

in fact.. FAA was very worried about the flight termination system after the first flight didnt really terminate all that well.. so in a way the FTS working so well is a major milestone.

Perhaps.  We'll know more in the fullness of time.   Just remember the intention is for this thing to carry people.  It's not good for a craft that is meant to carry human beings to blow up.  For every "RUD" Star ship should need to fly 10 times and not RUD with an unmanned payload. 

[Senzelian]

4 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It's not good for a craft that is meant to carry human beings to blow up.

Yup. If there were teams, I'd be on Team NASA and SLS. Also f*ck Elon. Just f*ck him. 

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The challenge with multiple smaller engines is all of the plumbing that has to go into all of them.  They all have to burn fuel exactly the same rate.  Any little bit of difference across all of those engines can lead to an imbalance that can lead to leaks, and BOOM.  Any thrust differential leads to different stresses on the craft and BOOM.  This is just easier with more larger engines.  That is why most rockets of this size go with bigger engines. 

yes.. very true.. but again - what makes you assume smaller engines were the problem here?

 

4 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Perhaps.  We'll know more in the fullness of time.   Just remember the intention is for this thing to carry people.  It's not good for a craft that is meant to carry human beings to blow up.  For every "RUD" Star ship should need to fly 10 times and not RUD with an unmanned payload. 

yes.. but again.. it's a test vehicle, landing it was *optional*. it's the equivalent of honda doing a crash test on a car, and people going "oh, look, it's toast.. wouldnt want to have been in that, dont buy a honda."

 

Just now, Senzelian said:

Yup. If there were teams, I'd be on Team NASA and SLS.

but there arent teams.. NASA  is planning on relying on starship for some aspects of the mission they're designing SLS for.

 

1 minute ago, Senzelian said:

Also f*ck Elon. Just f*ck him. 

true...

[Eigenvektor]

48 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

what did they call it again? Rapid unscheduled disassembly?  

Yep, a RUD

 

19 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It's not good for a craft that is meant to carry human beings to blow up.

Which is why it's being tested. So it doesn't happen once humans are on board.

[soldier_ph]

Business is booming

 

/s

[Sauron]

Quote

Also in October, apparently frustrated by the long regulatory process, senior SpaceX officials, including William Gerstenmaier, the company’s vice president for build and flight reliability, conducted rare media interviews arguing that regulators aren’t keeping up with the pace of industry. Gerstenmaier and other space industry executives also participated in a US Senate hearing, which did not include FAA officials, calling for streamlined regulations and more FAA resources for issuing launch licenses. Meanwhile, Musk complained on X about all the rules and regulations. “Each passing year, we tie ourselves down with more and more strings, until, like Gulliver, we can no longer move,” he wrote.

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.

 

Space flight as a private for-profit enterprise is a stupid idea. The incentive is to make shit cheap rather than safe and this is the result.

[Uttamattamakin]

30 minutes ago, manikyath said:

yes.. very true.. but again - what makes you assume smaller engines were the problem here?

On Starship there was a visible jet/leak.  Tim Dodd saw it on his high res cameras and I saw the feed he had and I agree.  Such a leak is consistent with some sort of plumbing issue.    More pipes, more joints, more things that can leak.  

You know rockets like this can be good on the ground,  work well on a test at sea level etc.  They have such dynamcis, so many pressure changes etc etc... any flaw even a small one that would not be a problem otherwise can be a reason to go BOOOM. 

 

30 minutes ago, manikyath said:

yes.. but again.. it's a test vehicle, landing it was *optional*. it's the equivalent of honda doing a crash test on a car, and people going "oh, look, it's toast.. wouldnt want to have been in that, dont buy a honda."

This wasn't a crash test.  In a crash test Honda aims the car at a wall.  

Space X Planned for this go to most of the way around the Earth and splash down.  Had they stated up front this was going to be a flight termination system test ... that would be one thing it wasn't.    

There are silver linings in those clouds. 

Space X made sure of that. 

[Uttamattamakin]

9 minutes ago, 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.

 

Space flight as a private for-profit enterprise is a stupid idea. The incentive is to make shit cheap rather than safe and this is the result.

Simple rule don't fly on a spacecraft that a billionaire wouldn't. 

[manikyath]

15 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

On Starship there was a visible jet/leak.  Tim Dodd saw it on his high res cameras and I saw the feed he had and I agree.  Such a leak is consistent with some sort of plumbing issue.    More pipes, more joints, more things that can leak.  

leak, or vent? i feel like if there was a leak the guys at NSF (who have essentially documented every vent on every rocket they can point a camera at..) would have caught it..

 

and again.. starship itself isnt the one with a bajillion engines, and if it was leaking anything at a point where it would have been visible to a camera, they'd have aborted WAY before it getting into space.

 

17 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Space X Planned for this go to most of the way around the Earth and splash down.  Had they stated up front this was going to be a flight termination system test ... that would be one thing it wasn't.   

they planned for it to go around the earth, in the case it went up alright. so in that aspect it's much closer to a crash test than to what you think this flight to be. their process revolves around rapid prototyping, they will figure out what went wrong with this one, and try again in a few months time fixing whatever went wrong.

 

and yes.. it didnt go around the world, but last time around you were here making a huge fuss about how they cant do this because they'll cake the nearby city in dust every time.. and i thin it's safe to say your impressions after flight 1 were proven wrong with flight 2, so i suggest we wait until flight 3 to see if you'll be proven wrong again.

 

SpaceX has proven they can turn something that was seen as impossible into routine..

way back when people said they could never reliably recover their falcon boosters, and today they are landing on barges at sea with stunning reliability, and turn-around times that beat international shipping.

and again, way back when they were just starting at boca chica people said the "watertower" would never fly.. and they've today proven their grain silo will in fact get to space.

 

it's not nearly production-ready yet, but with each test they make at least the expected amount of progress, which is their goal. if this thing would make it around the world on attempt number 2, i'd think there would (and should) be genuine worry about just how perfectly the stars aligned that day.

 

and in case you're unaware.. this way of doing things is notably cheaper than the way NASA designs new rockets. it's just that if the NASA would go out in the desert and blow up some prototypes, they get people like you pointing fingers and saying "NASA do bad, no more tax money for big boom".

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Simple rule don't fly on a spacecraft that a billionaire wouldn't. 

there's something about a submarine here...

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

ear in mind, for comparison.  No Saturn V ever blew up during testing. 

Blew up, no. But Apollo 1 caught fire and 3 men died. Apollo 13 almost ended badly as well. Then as you mentioned 2 shuttles lost with crew. NASA has had its failures. 

 

NASA and a Space X are two separate things. Space X is just a company. NASA is part of the government and if they funded it like they did during the Cold War, we could easily make it back to the moon. But the issue is NASA doesnt have the public support it once did. We beat the Russians and thats all that mattered at the time. 

[StDragon]

3 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Many smaller engines might just not be as good as having 3-5 biguns. 

Several reasons for having 33 smaller engines. They can be mass produced, serviced, and provide additional fault tolerance for when a few flame out. If one of 3 goes out, not good. 2 of 3, bad day.

The first time Starship launched, it blew the pad apart that concrete fragments are thought to have destroyed a few of the engines during liftoff. You can see this in the original footage, yet it still took flight until it was manually terminated.

[HenrySalayne]

3 hours ago, manikyath said:

their take on it is that for both of them it appears to have been the flight termination system.

Not to mention an actual working flight termination system is a HUGE step in the right direction.

Demonstrating that is probably a big relieve to anyone.

[manikyath]

Just now, HenrySalayne said:

Not to mention an actual working flight termination system is a HUGE step in the right direction.

Demonstrating that is probably a big relieve to anyone.

that's one of the "well at least X" quotes that was said on the NSF stream when they terminated the booster. "at least the FAA can be relieved that the issues with the FTS were resolved."

[CarlBar]

I think the perfect description of this test is better than feared worse than hoped. They had plans all the way to splashing both components down in the ocean, but their major goal to call it a success was stage separation. Everything after that was a bonus, (a bonus they had plans for, but they where fine if it failed any point after that). Personally i have to wonder if there wasn't an issue with throttling and/or relight on the engines. Those would be required for parts of the mission plan they didn't get to.

 

I also think at this point that worries over the engine count are overblown. i had worries when Falcon 9 first debuted, i didn't think they could get high performance rocket engines to that level of reliability. But they've proven me wrong, and we've seen them launch many Falcon Heavy's at this point, those have 27 engines burning during launch, not quite as much as the Booster on Starship, but well up into the high count range, and they've had excellent reliability. I'm sure there will be teething issues of course, as we've seen. But it's not a matter of long-term concern anymore for me.

 

I'm also not worried by the vehicle loss here. This kind of iteration, often with many failures, was exactly how old school prototyping used to be done. people forget that, in the annals of historical development there's nothing here to get worried over. It's been abnormal for most of the last century because we've gotten good enough at doing it others ways to make them the most cost effective. But the more out onto bleeding edge you go the more of an issue it becomes to do that. I can totally believe it's more cost effective this way.

 

In that regard as well, we know future boosters allready built have several major design changes, even if this one had made it all the way to splashdown, they'd probably have had to repeat the whole thing with one of the later ones anyway dues to how significant some of the changes are. So it's probably even less of a negative than it appears.

 

4 hours ago, Senzelian said:

Also f*ck Elon. Just f*ck him. 

 

100% on this, but i'm not going to hate on his companies just because i hate the man.

[Eigenvektor]

3 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

This wasn't a crash test. In a crash test Honda aims the car at a wall.

It was, nevertheless, a test flight. Not a "let's crash it against the wall" type of test but still a "let's see how far we get" type of test.

 

If they'd declared it safe for human space travel and had had actual passengers on board, you'd have a point. It's simply a different way of developing a new rocket system. Less time in the lab, more time on the flight pad.

 

1 minute ago, CarlBar said:

100% on this, but i'm not going to hate on his companies just because i hate the man.

This. The guy deserves the hate, SpaceX does not.

[HenrySalayne]

A good early analysis from the one and only Scott Manley.

Interestingly the AoA changes significantly shortly before the hot staging manoeuvre (1:15 to 1:22). I don't know if this was intentional or another problem.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Blew up, no. But Apollo 1 caught fire and 3 men died. Apollo 13 almost ended badly as well. Then as you mentioned 2 shuttles lost with crew. NASA has had its failures. 

 

NASA and a Space X are two separate things. Space X is just a company. NASA is part of the government and if they funded it like they did during the Cold War, we could easily make it back to the moon. But the issue is NASA doesnt have the public support it once did. We beat the Russians and thats all that mattered at the time. 

As Starship gets closer to a functional platform, I'm not surprised we're going to see more and more that simply don't understand SpaceX's testing approach for this project.  Frankly, destructive testing has always been the "logical" path with spaceflight gear, but, since the entire economy of it works as much on perception among politicians as it does on technical realities, it's pretty obvious why we haven't seen it done before.

 

The public also never sees how many design studies leading to engineering R&D that come to a failure point and have to roll back to study and delay a project for 6 months occur. Then we wonder why the James Webb took 20+ years to get deployed. Context for the project always matters, but the front-facing optics are completely different.