Unscheduled Disassembly

hank

SpaceX’s inaugural Starship flight yesterday ended with controllers pressing the “self-destruct” button 4 minutes into flight after several of the main booster’s 33 rocket engines failed to ignite and the craft veered violently out of control. SpaceX termed the ending an “unscheduled disassembly”. Musk makes news in the business world daily, owning Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Boring and other companies. He was co-founder of PayPal.


Musk Business Mistakes You Should Avoid - Business.com

Starship Learning Experience Ends in Explosion - NYT

FAA Grounds SpaceX Starship Rockets - Politico

WABAC

That guy is blowing himself up.

One thing I keep an eye on now is Musk exposure.

Guy

LOL!

rforno

If your publicly declared measure of success for a rocket launch is not blowing up your launchpad, you are not qualified or competent to be CEO of a rocket company.

Old_Joe

Oh, I dunno about that... lots and lots of launch pads got blown up in the early days of rocketry. I'm not a Musk fan by any means, but he deserves some slack on his rocket research.

Mark

@Old_Joe - I have to wonder if he's conferring with that stable genius about what might have gone wrong.

gman57

I read an article about earlier rockets and multiple engines. They scrapped them due to not being able to get them all synced and working at the same time. Getting 33 ALL working together and have nothing fail... good luck with that IMHO. Saturn V had 5 and those suckers used 40,000 pounds (2230 gallons) of fuel PER SECOND!!! from what I've read. Wow, I just read if they get the Starship working it'll be twice as powerful as a Saturn V.

hank

gman57 said:

I read an article about earlier rockets and multiple engines. They scrapped them due to not being able to get them all synced and working at the same time. Getting 33 ALL working together and have nothing fail... good luck with that IMHO. Saturn V had 5 and those suckers used 40,000 pounds (2230 gallons) of fuel PER SECOND!!! from what I've read.

I happened to see the launch on Bloomberg. They cut away from programing for a few minutes. A long range telephoto lens camera clearly showed about 20 engines lighted up. Had me wondering since I knew it had 33. Then the thing began veering sideways and every which way - clearly unstable. The BB talking heads carried on as if nothing was wrong. Even after it clearly blew up in the sky they thought it was still going. So I finally switched channels to one where they at least realized it had failed.

Well, I’d never bet against Musk. Hard as it is to imagine, I suspect he’ll get the chinks ironed out. The FAA was investigating. Possibly they waited too long to hit the destruct button. Might have presented danger to air traffic or populated areas.

Old_Joe

"Getting 33 ALL working together and have nothing fail... good luck with that"

@gman57- I'm thinking exactly the same thing.


"I have to wonder if he's conferring with that stable genius about what might have gone wrong."

@Mark- I sure hope not. He needs to confer with a rocket genius, not a horse genius.

sma3

I have read several commentators claiming that it failed because they did not build a flame diversion trench or sound absorption system, because it would have taken several years and much $$$. Consequently the massive rocket dug a 30 foot deep hole in the ground throwing debris up into the rocket itself, along with the vibrations from the engines damaged it

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-launch-first-person-experience

hank

Above all else, SpaxeX is about making money. As proof of that, they’ve raised my Starlink internet price from $99 to $120 monthly over the past 2 years and have begun throttling high bandwidth users like myself.

From @sma3 ‘s linked article -

“SpaceX has also sold three private flights on Starship, the first to billionaire Jared Isaacman for his Polaris program. The others include a trip around the moon for Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who has picked a team — including space YouTuber Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut — to join him, as well as a separate flight that includes Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist.”

There seemed to be some extreme vibration while passing through the maximum dynamic load region right after launch. Hard to tell how much was camera related. Could have knocked out some engines.

hank

Heads up!

Another test scheduled for Friday. / SpaceX Gets FAA Approval for Do-Over Starship Launch

CNN https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/world/spacex-starship-launch-license-faa-scn/index.html

Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-15/spacex-s-starship-gets-go-ahead-to-resume-launches-from-us-faa

The Bloomberg article mentions a new launch precaution - blasting huge streams of water upward to dampen shock waves as the monster rocket lifts off. What could possibly go wrong?

Derf

@hank : Interesting ! First link worked, second link. nota.

hank

Yes - Bloomberg can be hard to access. I subscribe. But with enough effort I think others might get in to the article. Actually, Bloomberg is the better of the two.

Apparently that high pressure water shower is intended to dampen the shock waves and prevent damage to homes, businesses, etc. miles away as happened last time. If I recall, the beast has 33 engines. One wonders how much further advanced in rocketry other intelligent species across the universe must be. To many, I’m sure, setting this jumbo methane filled tank ablaze must resemble in some ways Henry Ford’s Model A. Or maybe, horse or human-drawn carts. Likely, there’s a better way to do this that humans haven’t yet discovered. How many here would want their a** sitting atop that thing?

(BTW - I’m scheduled for my first ride on a 737-Max early next year. Hope that got that auto stick & rudder gizmo all figured out by now.)

Crash

...What these avaiation companies are allowed to skate by with... (737-MAX.)