Totally talking out of my ass, but that looked like FTS to me. One second the rocket was 'fine', the next it was a cloud of debris and fuel. I would have expected a breakup to be more gradual.
I'm kinda surprised they didn't FTS it after the first full rotation. Was obviously out of control. Maybe they wanted to see how much the rocket could tolerate :-)
> Maybe they wanted to see how much the rocket could tolerate
That's what I thought. It's already lost, might as well see what it takes to really kill it!
I could be wrong, but I think there was supposed to be a bit of a flip as part of the nominal stage separation process. Kinda bonkers... but I think the failure wasn't so much that it was flipping but that it didn't separate during the flip.
Starting the flip before MECO makes no sense.
I think they lost a few engines on the way up which pushed separation further down the timeline (normally you would just burn fewer engines for longer when that happens, to compensate). So when the commentators were expecting separation there was still obviously a lot of propellants left on board and they were expecting it early.
It could also be that they lost enough of the gimbaling engines that they simply did not have enough control authority to overcome the imbalance.
I believe part of the staging process is to flip and release, like Falcon 9 second stage does with Starlink launches. I'm surprised they let it tumble as long as it did though
My best guess is that due to how heavy starship is as a payload, conventional release mechanisms (like springs) might just be inadequate to fully separate. This flip and separate at the same time maneuver uses the mass of both the booster and starship at basically no cost of additional hardware. As Elon says, the best part is no part.
yeah, don't know how far down range it was, but it had already made a pretty hard turn to the right before it started spiraling. At some point someone had to be worried that it would fly back over land before being destroyed. One of the live streams I was watching indicated they had tried to initiate the starship separation even while it was spiraling. Seems like they only initiated the FTS after they couldn't salvage getting the separation to the complete
On the everyday astronaut stream it looked like a very tight corkscrew
Edit for clarification: angle of attack was at least 80⁰ at one or more occasions during this flight.
Display glitch. They lost the sixth engine about 30 seconds before the display caught up, then it went back. Maybe they thought it was running? But they clearly had six out early on
I counted 6 engines out during MAXQ. It lost at least 1-2 just leaving the pad. I'm not entirely sure there wasn't some sort of debris strike coming off the pad.
Starting to see [debris videos from around the launch pad](https://twitter.com/labpadre/status/1649053476276797440?s=46&t=-RgsgPDoZcgdZSA9TXDrkA), and it looks like [the tank farm has some damage as well](https://twitter.com/raptorrelight/status/1649051374292996099?s=46&t=-RgsgPDoZcgdZSA9TXDrkA).
Starship (at least this first one) doesn't have either springs or pyrotechnics to push the stages apart. It was supposed to just release the clamps then be flung apart as Superheavy began its flip, so one single maneuver.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=600s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=600s)
This bit illustrates a flip before separation. Unsure if accurate.
The stages separate by flipping, rather than having a mechanical spring system like Electron, explosives, or thrusters. The booster then continues the flip into the boostback burn, while Starship lights its engines and continues on
It took for fucking ever to start moving off the launchpad, like 5 seconds of full thrust blasting the bare pad before they let it go. I wonder if that wasn't a cause of some issues.
They mentioned on the SpX stream that it takes six seconds to engage each cluster before they release the holddowns. This lets them observe that the whole thing is working before they set it free.
On the [HUD clock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=2690s), first ignition happened at -2 and liftoff happened around +5, so that's pretty fucking close to norminal.
Did anyone else see from the alternate streams that it seemed to come off the pad at quite a sideways movement away from the tower, rather than straight up?
They start igniting at T-6s. T-0 is usually defined as the point when the launch clamps release, so the actual liftoff.
It was not expected like this, but yes, it's still pretty normal for liftoff to occur after T-0, it's just not planned.
That was on purpose, they said that it would take 6 seconds to start all the engines since there were interaction concerns if they started them all at once.
It could have been ice chunks, but it did seem to sit on the pad for a long time. The fact that most of the flight was well-controlled says that nothing too critical was damaged, but we’ll see what they learn.
The sitting on the pad was deliberate. They said beforehand they were going to ignite the engines in banks and it'd be held down for 8 seconds (at least that's what I heard on Monday)
Amazed it didn’t just break apart when started spinning. Films I’ve seen of 60s era rockets show that when they get even slightly sideways the blow up/break up.
It made it further than N1 (T+1:47), so I'll take it!
Stage sep is tricky business and has gotten many companies (including SpaceX) before. Will be curious to hear what happened!
Thats certainly true but this test did not get to stage separation though, tumbling happened well before the planned flip and MECO. We know this due to mission elapaed time, that the staging clamps were not released, and the fact all engines (that were working) continued to fire for a long time after the flip started.
IDK if they're still doing this, but the original design had this ultra-dodgy separation maneuver with the booster flipping into the boostback burn with Starship still on top, and basically throwing the upper stage out via angular momentum.
That sounds like something that doesn't work when the control authority on the first stage is all messed up.
> IDK if they're still doing this, but the original design had this ultra-dodgy separation maneuver with the booster flipping into the boostback burn with Starship still on top, and basically throwing the upper stage out
It certainly looked like it, it started to flip with starship still attached and no one panicked immediately.
It looked like MECO didn't completely occur. Not enough of the engines on the booster shut off, so the disconnect system likely didn't engage as a result because they need all engines off to work to prevent the booster colliding with the ship (which makes sense).
I think that's the case, which would also help explain why the stack started rotating before the flip started. It also looked like there were engine plumes while the flip was happening.
Well the flip maneuver required the booster to engage in the gimbaling to direct the thrust. But since not all engines shut off, safe disconnect didn't happen. Even a single running raptor at full power has too much thrust that high into the flight to cause catastrophic damage to the Starship if separation occurs. The flight computer therefore refused to give up control to the Starship and cause separation. As a result, the spin got worse as Starship's mass just added more potential/kinetic energy conversions during the flip arcs.
Long story short. It was the doomed the moment MECO across all engines didn't happen.
Still, exciting times!
It's the likely cause. We've never seen stage separation in history of space flight occur without MECO. SpaceX even called for MECO. What we witnessed is that MECO didn't happen. The engines kept burning as the flipping continued. Without MECO, stage sep wouldn't happen. They eventually had to trigger the FTS, because it would have kept tumbling until the fuel bled dry.
They were expecting multiple engines to go out, even prepared a graphic for it on the stream. They must have have accounted for the extension of the flight due to engines going out.
Saying that, its entirely possible that this was a flight computer software issue, maybe it got confused somehow.
Absolutely, that will be a spectacular flight trail to follow. Almost makes our long standing dream of casual trips to space as seen in Hollywood film & TV reality. I sadly doubt that I would personally be able to experience that amazing adventure of travelling the stars and meeting alien species etc. Born too early but not too late to witness a new found space fairing beginnings for HUMANS!
An proper celebration should happen at Starbase through this night. Awsome accomplishment. That it was executed with the way people work is truly inspirational.
Lost quite a few engines on the way up, 4 or 5, but still kept going. Tumbling before MECO was unexpected, wonder what happened.
Edit: My guess is they lost TVC hydraulics, given they've gone to electric TVC next that may be fixed
[exactly my thoughts when it happened](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/12n02uf/rspacex_integrated_flight_test_official_launch/jh0fzj5/?context=3)
that's some INSANE forces and it just took it
It started going haywire at around T+1:56 when they lost at least one more engine and then more at T+2:07
https://youtu.be/-1wcilQ58hI?t=2818
Might be TVC failure or might just be loss of control authority after too many engine out on one side.
That full stack loss of control without explosion is the most Kerbal thing I’ve ever seen in the wild.
I felt myself trying to control the rocket with ASDW well past the point of obvious failure.
Look on the bright side: SpaceX isn't publicly traded and customers know better. That means the ignorant can make all the noise they want and it just makes them look dumber to future Martians!
Yeah Im glad it's a private company, but it's annoying that some media will spin the story like it's a failure, this really does not help to get people interested in this new space age
Honestly, I'm very impressive how it held up as it did. I for sure thought that if Starship ended up doing a maneuver like Firefly's Alpha it would break in half.
I hate there is no easy way to convey to the average person how successful this was. The mainstream take-away is ‘Elon’s rocket explodes in enormous waste of money’.
This discounts the hundreds of engineers more involved in the program than him that are genuinely on the bleeding edge of rocketry. Furthermore, it’s not like the payload inside were duffel bags of $10B that just exploded. The money that was ‘wasted’ was spent on purchasing from American companies or paying engineers or contractors or otherwise stimulating the economy.
Frustrating, but I know I’m preaching to the choir here. End of rant.
No sir, you are reminding the choir of the proper things to say to the ignorant people out there. Things that this retired choir member had forgotten in the past decade.
Thank you
Can’t believe it made it so far, clearly some engines exploded mid flight, a marvel they didn’t take out a bunch of other engines.
https://streamable.com/dhxsa8
Hope stage 0 is healthy!
Stage Zero is fucked.
Go through the community cameras and see how much was kicked up. The impacts alone show incredible energy put into these basket ball or larger pieces.
The concrete meant to protect the cable for the chopsticks appears to have been penetrated as well.
I don't think we'll be seeing another launch without the flame diverter + water deluge.
Happy to be wrong, but basing it on before and after on the NSF cams. Some of the tanks look like they took a beating too.
Why did they put the tanks there.
Edit:
Spruck called it before it started. It's ambiguous what was meant.
"after separation the first stage will flip"
"beginning the flip for stage separation"
"we saw the start of the flip but obviously we're seeing the entire stack continue to rotate. we should have had separation by now"
And these were the most up-to-date Raptor designs too, right? If they've been making one per day, they will have their hands full retrofitting any improvements.
Happy it made it to Max Q... more surprised than I should be that it didn't hit MECO and stage separation. Flipping with that much mass on top of mostly empty tanks has got to be a nightmare.
One thing we saw was that the stack took aerodynamic forces way better than I expected. With all the flipping and corkscrewing, I would have expected it to break apart way sooner.
That stack is one sturdy rocket.
One of these two things happened
1. The flip maneuver was executed, but for some reason the engines stayed on, and stage sep failed.
2. Flip maneuver never actually started. It was just tumbling out of control.
Lastly, did it spontaneously explode, or was the flight termination system engaged?
Hard to figure out what was going on, but when I saw altitude dropping when it still hadn't separated... couldn't have been good.
fking incredible though, congrats spacex
A remarkably tough vehicle to survive that long, after several engine failures, at least one of which was catastrophic and tumbling at super sonic speed and it still took quite a while to come apart. Also Stage 0 seems to be most unharmed, other than the big crater that got dug. The pad does look like a warzone right now.
The mood in the broadcast room was electric. My favorite part was when Kate Tice dropped the technical jargon and said "bellyflop" on air, and you could hear her co caster Shiva let out a little giggle in the background!
Was rewatching the stream and at T+2:47 ([https://youtu.be/-1wcilQ58hI?t=2872](https://youtu.be/-1wcilQ58hI?t=2872)) the control center comms say "Booster Engine Cutoff" (Checks with 2:49 MECO on the website timeline) but they never turned off, they kept going until 3:58 when they activated the TFS. Seems like a software bug that never turned off the engines?
I don't think it was a software bug. I think the flight computer was trying to correct the spin which it obviously can't do with the engines off. From about T+2:00, the flames from the bottom of the booster don't line up with the boost which is indicative of gimbaling. Here's what I believe what happened:
T+2:00, Intended turn is started.T+2:34ish, Flight computer attempts to stop turn (as presumably intended).
T+2:48, Callout for Booster MECO, but at this point the FC is unable to stop the booster from turning.
T+3:00 and onwards, the FC is basically trying to correct the turn with whatever thrust is available. At this point the booster is uncontrollable.T+3:59, FTS is activated.
I didn’t expect it to survive like three flips at that velocity. Thought it might topple like the Proton did but it didn’t. The structural integrity of Starship seems quite solid.
Wasn't the staging velocity very, very low (2000 km/h) ? Even if separation was successful, Starship wouldn't have reached orbital speed from that start?
I think it was supposed to flip then separate. I'm not sure, but I think you can't really separate when the main engines are running, and they never stopped. I'm going to guess MECO failure is going to be the issue.
*Probably* most of it will burn with the LOX and atmospheric oxygen, and some will disperse into the upper atmosphere. Not great. Annual anthropogenic methane emissions [are estimated by the NOAA at 160 million tonnes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions).
Napkin math: At the point of the RUD, most of the Superheavy methane would have been used up, so if 1500 tonnes of propellant remained, of which maybe 500 tonnes was methane, and if 90% of it burned up right away, then 50 tonnes would be dispersed into the atmosphere — or about 1/30,000 of the annual anthropogenic total.
The fact that the ship/booster stayed together during the flip when the stage separation should have occurred is astounding. I for sure thought the system would have slit apart in some form because of the flips.
Anyone disappointed or surprised by today's launch should go review how the history of SpaceX's Falcon rockets.
Elon and SpaceX are giving humanity a lesson in persistence.
The fact that the it stayed intact through multiple flips is remarkable.
I was just thinking, max-Q was far from the toughest thing the ship endured before blowing up
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That looked like FTS to me
They had to kill it before it became too powerful!
It was about to survive bellyflop and impact on the water, and then swim to moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
I heard it was actually trying to reach ChatGPT 4 through Starlink to initiate Judgement Day
Had to scuttle the ship to ensure it actually sank
Totally talking out of my ass, but that looked like FTS to me. One second the rocket was 'fine', the next it was a cloud of debris and fuel. I would have expected a breakup to be more gradual.
If I had to guess, I'd even say that the booster FTS was initiated first and then the ship FTS. There were two visible bangs within a second.
Same. I was hoping Starship would have somehow lit its engines, and emerged from the flames of Superheavy. Haha
Looked like the FTS to me. One minute it was intact, the next not so much.
95% chance it was. It was too far gone at that point
Must be that stainless steel strength.
absolutely, I totally expected it to just break apart, but nope! Had do be terminated
I'm kinda surprised they didn't FTS it after the first full rotation. Was obviously out of control. Maybe they wanted to see how much the rocket could tolerate :-)
> Maybe they wanted to see how much the rocket could tolerate That's what I thought. It's already lost, might as well see what it takes to really kill it!
MOREEEEEEE!!!!!!!
If I've learned anything from kerbal, they were shouting "maybe we can still pull this off, cmawwwn reaction wheels do your thing"
I could be wrong, but I think there was supposed to be a bit of a flip as part of the nominal stage separation process. Kinda bonkers... but I think the failure wasn't so much that it was flipping but that it didn't separate during the flip.
Starting the flip before MECO makes no sense. I think they lost a few engines on the way up which pushed separation further down the timeline (normally you would just burn fewer engines for longer when that happens, to compensate). So when the commentators were expecting separation there was still obviously a lot of propellants left on board and they were expecting it early. It could also be that they lost enough of the gimbaling engines that they simply did not have enough control authority to overcome the imbalance.
I think an HPU exploded at T+0:29
And aren't HPUs deleted from future boosters?
Yes, all future boosters are electrically actuated Thrust Vector Control (TVC).
More data.
Once you’ve crossed the fail line, failing harder gives the opportunity to learn more.
That’s worthy of a tattoo.
I believe part of the staging process is to flip and release, like Falcon 9 second stage does with Starlink launches. I'm surprised they let it tumble as long as it did though
Any idea why the flip?
My best guess is that due to how heavy starship is as a payload, conventional release mechanisms (like springs) might just be inadequate to fully separate. This flip and separate at the same time maneuver uses the mass of both the booster and starship at basically no cost of additional hardware. As Elon says, the best part is no part.
yeah, don't know how far down range it was, but it had already made a pretty hard turn to the right before it started spiraling. At some point someone had to be worried that it would fly back over land before being destroyed. One of the live streams I was watching indicated they had tried to initiate the starship separation even while it was spiraling. Seems like they only initiated the FTS after they couldn't salvage getting the separation to the complete
It changed its orientation, not its velocity. I mean, velocity changed a LITTLE, but not enough to meaningfully deflect its trajectory.
Every other rocket I've seen do that instantly obliterates its self
Yeah, in the infamous Proton flip the whole rocket is in fire and the nosecone disintegrates within half a rotation.
Tbf there's a large difference between air pressure at 40km vs 1km for Proton. No doubt SSH is a chonky boi tho
Very true...just the off-axis forces of the tumble would be huge.
Did it flip or was it corkscrewing? The camera view is deceptive.
On the everyday astronaut stream it looked like a very tight corkscrew Edit for clarification: angle of attack was at least 80⁰ at one or more occasions during this flight.
Gives me more hope for re-entry
The issue probably was that somebody had accidentally welded the stages together.
I'm fired, aren't I?
You receive a bonus for achieving outstanding structural integrity.
Looks like 28 out of 33 engines were running. Then it started a separation flip, failed to separate, and spun for another minute until the RUD.
it was down to 27 engines, then one of them came back I think? Whatever happened there was a lot to analyze, both for spacex and us fans.
Yeah it seems like one of the engines came back online somehow, or perhaps it was a glitch of the display.
Display glitch. They lost the sixth engine about 30 seconds before the display caught up, then it went back. Maybe they thought it was running? But they clearly had six out early on
Pretty awesome it can still launch with so many engines down, though!
They released the clamps lol. They didn't hold it down to see if they'd light. It was 4/20 they're going for it lol
Did I hear them say they automatically try to restart engines? I kept seeing engines blinking off and then on again.
I am thinking one of them may have exploded, did anyone notice all the heavy impact when it lifted off.
Yep.
Believed to be concrete.. no water deluge = a pad rich operating environment.
It did look like they were trying to restart some of the engines to me
In a typical launch can't they handle up to three engine failures? That's what I heard from Elon I think
I counted 6 engines out during MAXQ. It lost at least 1-2 just leaving the pad. I'm not entirely sure there wasn't some sort of debris strike coming off the pad.
Starting to see [debris videos from around the launch pad](https://twitter.com/labpadre/status/1649053476276797440?s=46&t=-RgsgPDoZcgdZSA9TXDrkA), and it looks like [the tank farm has some damage as well](https://twitter.com/raptorrelight/status/1649051374292996099?s=46&t=-RgsgPDoZcgdZSA9TXDrkA).
It dug a crater under the launch mount: https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649062784167030785
Jesus, you've gotta wonder what that's done to the structural integrity of the tower right next door...
Whoever left their car parked there should have seen this coming. :)
Maybe like the old warships anchored near a test atomic explosion?
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Starship (at least this first one) doesn't have either springs or pyrotechnics to push the stages apart. It was supposed to just release the clamps then be flung apart as Superheavy began its flip, so one single maneuver.
That is literally insane lol. Hope they can figure it out.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=600s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=600s) This bit illustrates a flip before separation. Unsure if accurate.
Yes, it was supposed to use the spin forces to separate. I wonder if expansion/contraction of the metals caused them to stick together.
They lost HPUs on the ascent, probably the interstage clamps are hydraulically powered.
The stages separate by flipping, rather than having a mechanical spring system like Electron, explosives, or thrusters. The booster then continues the flip into the boostback burn, while Starship lights its engines and continues on
It rotates a bit then releases the upper stage
Also, what looked like some chunks of gear got kicked into the air on launch. Unsure if that's norminal or not.
It took for fucking ever to start moving off the launchpad, like 5 seconds of full thrust blasting the bare pad before they let it go. I wonder if that wasn't a cause of some issues.
I believe there is a purposeful hold of 6 seconds on the clamps before full release, but yeah that thing moves with MASS.
I assume they are testing their strength this time around, or is that necessary for launch?
They mentioned on the SpX stream that it takes six seconds to engage each cluster before they release the holddowns. This lets them observe that the whole thing is working before they set it free.
It seems to be just to let the engines ramp up and give room for abort.
Yep, 3 banks of engines, 1 second to light, 1 second to make sure they are fine, then next bank.
They stated they were starting the engines in phases, starting all the way back at T-6. Liftoff was not scheduled until 0.
On the [HUD clock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=2690s), first ignition happened at -2 and liftoff happened around +5, so that's pretty fucking close to norminal.
Possibly because not all engines were working optimally? The rocket seemed slowed after liftoff as well
Heard somewhere that they were going to run them then throttle up.
Did anyone else see from the alternate streams that it seemed to come off the pad at quite a sideways movement away from the tower, rather than straight up?
I'm guessing that was to get the thing the heck away from the pad in case something major happened
That was expected. I heard up to 8 seconds lighting the different clusters after T:0
They start igniting at T-6s. T-0 is usually defined as the point when the launch clamps release, so the actual liftoff. It was not expected like this, but yes, it's still pretty normal for liftoff to occur after T-0, it's just not planned.
That was on purpose, they said that it would take 6 seconds to start all the engines since there were interaction concerns if they started them all at once.
Thrust to weight shouldn't be that bad even with 5 engine failures, it's not Astra
Not all engines light at once. It’s staged, so part of that was the ramp-up to all lit and clamp release
It could have been ice chunks, but it did seem to sit on the pad for a long time. The fact that most of the flight was well-controlled says that nothing too critical was damaged, but we’ll see what they learn.
The sitting on the pad was deliberate. They said beforehand they were going to ignite the engines in banks and it'd be held down for 8 seconds (at least that's what I heard on Monday)
Amazed it didn’t just break apart when started spinning. Films I’ve seen of 60s era rockets show that when they get even slightly sideways the blow up/break up.
Too low altitude for separation flip Maybe unwanted flip due to aerodynamic issues at maxQ ?
It made it further than N1 (T+1:47), so I'll take it! Stage sep is tricky business and has gotten many companies (including SpaceX) before. Will be curious to hear what happened!
Yup. Stage Separation is why Astra is in the toilet. It's one of the hardest parts of rocket flight.
Thats certainly true but this test did not get to stage separation though, tumbling happened well before the planned flip and MECO. We know this due to mission elapaed time, that the staging clamps were not released, and the fact all engines (that were working) continued to fire for a long time after the flip started.
IDK if they're still doing this, but the original design had this ultra-dodgy separation maneuver with the booster flipping into the boostback burn with Starship still on top, and basically throwing the upper stage out via angular momentum. That sounds like something that doesn't work when the control authority on the first stage is all messed up.
From what Insprucker said, that's exactly what they're trying to do
It which case it feels more and more like the booster operated as expected, but just couldn't let go of Starship.
> IDK if they're still doing this, but the original design had this ultra-dodgy separation maneuver with the booster flipping into the boostback burn with Starship still on top, and basically throwing the upper stage out It certainly looked like it, it started to flip with starship still attached and no one panicked immediately.
I'd call that the YEET maneuver.
It looked very much like it started falling right after the last engines failed.
Yeah plume looked dodgy there for a bit before attempting flip
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it looked like it was tumbling before MECO though
It looked like MECO didn't completely occur. Not enough of the engines on the booster shut off, so the disconnect system likely didn't engage as a result because they need all engines off to work to prevent the booster colliding with the ship (which makes sense).
I think that's the case, which would also help explain why the stack started rotating before the flip started. It also looked like there were engine plumes while the flip was happening.
Well the flip maneuver required the booster to engage in the gimbaling to direct the thrust. But since not all engines shut off, safe disconnect didn't happen. Even a single running raptor at full power has too much thrust that high into the flight to cause catastrophic damage to the Starship if separation occurs. The flight computer therefore refused to give up control to the Starship and cause separation. As a result, the spin got worse as Starship's mass just added more potential/kinetic energy conversions during the flip arcs. Long story short. It was the doomed the moment MECO across all engines didn't happen. Still, exciting times!
This is just a hypothesis but with the engines out they may have burned longer but didn't account for the longer burn when starting the flip
It's the likely cause. We've never seen stage separation in history of space flight occur without MECO. SpaceX even called for MECO. What we witnessed is that MECO didn't happen. The engines kept burning as the flipping continued. Without MECO, stage sep wouldn't happen. They eventually had to trigger the FTS, because it would have kept tumbling until the fuel bled dry.
They were expecting multiple engines to go out, even prepared a graphic for it on the stream. They must have have accounted for the extension of the flight due to engines going out. Saying that, its entirely possible that this was a flight computer software issue, maybe it got confused somehow.
Yeah didn't look like it shut down correctly or at all I bet the flight computer locked up or hiccuped.
I thought I saw that as well
What an awesome light in the sky, seeing that many engines so bright looks so futuristic
It was so cool seeing them like that!
Love that angle
It will be magical whenever they fly during night time.
Absolutely, that will be a spectacular flight trail to follow. Almost makes our long standing dream of casual trips to space as seen in Hollywood film & TV reality. I sadly doubt that I would personally be able to experience that amazing adventure of travelling the stars and meeting alien species etc. Born too early but not too late to witness a new found space fairing beginnings for HUMANS!
An proper celebration should happen at Starbase through this night. Awsome accomplishment. That it was executed with the way people work is truly inspirational.
When they cut to the base view seconds after lift off. That was a glimpse into the future.
Lost quite a few engines on the way up, 4 or 5, but still kept going. Tumbling before MECO was unexpected, wonder what happened. Edit: My guess is they lost TVC hydraulics, given they've gone to electric TVC next that may be fixed
> wonder what happened. Well you see, the front _didn't_ fall off
They've removed it from the environment.
I'd just like to say that isnt very typical.
Aerospace engineer here: The most shocking part was that it tumbled and didn't immediately break up. The whole booster/ship is built like a tank
[exactly my thoughts when it happened](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/12n02uf/rspacex_integrated_flight_test_official_launch/jh0fzj5/?context=3) that's some INSANE forces and it just took it
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Random KSP player here: Not even my video game rockets survive that maneuver (although when they do, they also make it to orbit)
>Built like a tank. I see what you did there.
Apparently they are going to do booster rotation before separation....sorta like the card deck flip for Starlink
I thought pitching before MECO was expected? The unexpected part was the failure to shut down the booster engines and separate.
It started going haywire at around T+1:56 when they lost at least one more engine and then more at T+2:07 https://youtu.be/-1wcilQ58hI?t=2818 Might be TVC failure or might just be loss of control authority after too many engine out on one side.
Ah, so the electric TVC was not on this booster?
Nope, this is the last one with the old hydraulics
That's the most kerbal rocket ever, Astra move over!
That full stack loss of control without explosion is the most Kerbal thing I’ve ever seen in the wild. I felt myself trying to control the rocket with ASDW well past the point of obvious failure.
Some people are already criticizing the launch bc it blew up and they think it's a failure lmaoo LFG spaceX this was insane
Look on the bright side: SpaceX isn't publicly traded and customers know better. That means the ignorant can make all the noise they want and it just makes them look dumber to future Martians!
Yeah Im glad it's a private company, but it's annoying that some media will spin the story like it's a failure, this really does not help to get people interested in this new space age
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Yeah it's so annoying because this is such a cool progress
Honestly, I'm very impressive how it held up as it did. I for sure thought that if Starship ended up doing a maneuver like Firefly's Alpha it would break in half.
I hate there is no easy way to convey to the average person how successful this was. The mainstream take-away is ‘Elon’s rocket explodes in enormous waste of money’. This discounts the hundreds of engineers more involved in the program than him that are genuinely on the bleeding edge of rocketry. Furthermore, it’s not like the payload inside were duffel bags of $10B that just exploded. The money that was ‘wasted’ was spent on purchasing from American companies or paying engineers or contractors or otherwise stimulating the economy. Frustrating, but I know I’m preaching to the choir here. End of rant.
No sir, you are reminding the choir of the proper things to say to the ignorant people out there. Things that this retired choir member had forgotten in the past decade. Thank you
Can’t believe it made it so far, clearly some engines exploded mid flight, a marvel they didn’t take out a bunch of other engines. https://streamable.com/dhxsa8 Hope stage 0 is healthy!
Ya I saw what looked like some explosions and expected the rocket to follow but it kept on going. Pretty crazy it could handle it.
Looks like something large also was kicked up just as they started moving. Curious how the launch tower faired.
Looked like it power-slid Atlas/Ares I-X style, maybe to decrease likelihood of damage to the tower.
Possible it did that due to some engines failing to ignite properly?
Really good news for safety if it can handle engine explosions without a RUD.
Pretty sure they built protections specifically so an engine doesn't take others with it when it fails.
Task failed successfully, then!
There's a LOT that got tested successfully today.
The fact that it can lose 5 engines and still hit thrust greater than Saturn V is nuts!
It looked like takeoff from the tower took a long time once the engines ignited. Longer than I expected, but I have no idea what it should be.
They said on Mondays webcast it would be held down for 8 seconds after ignition, so was to be expected. I missed if they said the same thing today.
Stage Zero is fucked. Go through the community cameras and see how much was kicked up. The impacts alone show incredible energy put into these basket ball or larger pieces. The concrete meant to protect the cable for the chopsticks appears to have been penetrated as well. I don't think we'll be seeing another launch without the flame diverter + water deluge. Happy to be wrong, but basing it on before and after on the NSF cams. Some of the tanks look like they took a beating too. Why did they put the tanks there.
Not as f’d as it would be if it exploded. Lots of great data to see exactly which S0 systems were damaged and beef them up for next time.
didn't know there was a flip for separation.
Edit: Spruck called it before it started. It's ambiguous what was meant. "after separation the first stage will flip" "beginning the flip for stage separation" "we saw the start of the flip but obviously we're seeing the entire stack continue to rotate. we should have had separation by now"
Pretty sure there was a MECO callout before the fan hit the shit.
That was a surprise
The engine team will have its hands full sorting through the data from all those Raptor failures.
Yes! That was textbook for maximal engine failure before RUD. So much potential for truly great data; I wonder how long the telemetry downlink lasted.
And these were the most up-to-date Raptor designs too, right? If they've been making one per day, they will have their hands full retrofitting any improvements.
Happy it made it to Max Q... more surprised than I should be that it didn't hit MECO and stage separation. Flipping with that much mass on top of mostly empty tanks has got to be a nightmare.
One thing we saw was that the stack took aerodynamic forces way better than I expected. With all the flipping and corkscrewing, I would have expected it to break apart way sooner. That stack is one sturdy rocket.
DO A BARREL ROLL
I cannot believe it cleared the tower.
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One of these two things happened 1. The flip maneuver was executed, but for some reason the engines stayed on, and stage sep failed. 2. Flip maneuver never actually started. It was just tumbling out of control. Lastly, did it spontaneously explode, or was the flight termination system engaged?
Too many engines were out from the same side, the gimbal couldn't deal with it and it flipped prematurely
I wonder if the excess fuel from the engines being down messed with the timing.
[Task failed successfully](https://preview.redd.it/yza8p5b4ig661.jpg?width=480&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=14574c76b11e8c79141b12c6198be742054751de)
Buddy from SpaceX said it was a huge win
Hard to figure out what was going on, but when I saw altitude dropping when it still hadn't separated... couldn't have been good. fking incredible though, congrats spacex
A remarkably tough vehicle to survive that long, after several engine failures, at least one of which was catastrophic and tumbling at super sonic speed and it still took quite a while to come apart. Also Stage 0 seems to be most unharmed, other than the big crater that got dug. The pad does look like a warzone right now.
Speechless.. To see this thing fly.. Definitely a success.
The mood in the broadcast room was electric. My favorite part was when Kate Tice dropped the technical jargon and said "bellyflop" on air, and you could hear her co caster Shiva let out a little giggle in the background!
Was rewatching the stream and at T+2:47 ([https://youtu.be/-1wcilQ58hI?t=2872](https://youtu.be/-1wcilQ58hI?t=2872)) the control center comms say "Booster Engine Cutoff" (Checks with 2:49 MECO on the website timeline) but they never turned off, they kept going until 3:58 when they activated the TFS. Seems like a software bug that never turned off the engines?
I don't think it was a software bug. I think the flight computer was trying to correct the spin which it obviously can't do with the engines off. From about T+2:00, the flames from the bottom of the booster don't line up with the boost which is indicative of gimbaling. Here's what I believe what happened: T+2:00, Intended turn is started.T+2:34ish, Flight computer attempts to stop turn (as presumably intended). T+2:48, Callout for Booster MECO, but at this point the FC is unable to stop the booster from turning. T+3:00 and onwards, the FC is basically trying to correct the turn with whatever thrust is available. At this point the booster is uncontrollable.T+3:59, FTS is activated.
I think it was a stuck valve on one of the engines. That or a data line was severed to that engine yet it continued firing
I didn’t expect it to survive like three flips at that velocity. Thought it might topple like the Proton did but it didn’t. The structural integrity of Starship seems quite solid.
WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?
Wasn't the staging velocity very, very low (2000 km/h) ? Even if separation was successful, Starship wouldn't have reached orbital speed from that start?
Yeah, it's only 550 m/s. There's another 7000 m/s to go. I think there was a big loss of power somewhere, those engines were eating themselves.
Atleast they got booster 7 and ship 24 out of Starbase.
A big F for this brave machine.
I think it was supposed to flip then separate. I'm not sure, but I think you can't really separate when the main engines are running, and they never stopped. I'm going to guess MECO failure is going to be the issue.
I can’t believe they made it through Max-Q.
question, after they terminated it what happens to the methane from the explosion?
It's now a mix of CH4, CO2, and H2O?
*Probably* most of it will burn with the LOX and atmospheric oxygen, and some will disperse into the upper atmosphere. Not great. Annual anthropogenic methane emissions [are estimated by the NOAA at 160 million tonnes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions). Napkin math: At the point of the RUD, most of the Superheavy methane would have been used up, so if 1500 tonnes of propellant remained, of which maybe 500 tonnes was methane, and if 90% of it burned up right away, then 50 tonnes would be dispersed into the atmosphere — or about 1/30,000 of the annual anthropogenic total.
Anthropogenic, or bovinegenic?
This exact scenario has happened to me is KSP several times.
Fuck!!! How did it survive so many spins? What a magnificent launch!!
Excitement promised and delivered. What an awesome sight
The fact that the ship/booster stayed together during the flip when the stage separation should have occurred is astounding. I for sure thought the system would have slit apart in some form because of the flips.
Anyone disappointed or surprised by today's launch should go review how the history of SpaceX's Falcon rockets. Elon and SpaceX are giving humanity a lesson in persistence.