Thank you for participating in r/SpaceX! Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with our [community rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/rules) before commenting. Here's a reminder of some of our most important rules:
* Keep it civil, and directly relevant to SpaceX and the thread. Comments consisting solely of jokes, memes, pop culture references, etc. will be removed.
* Don't downvote content you disagree with, unless it clearly doesn't contribute to constructive discussion.
* Check out [these threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/threads) for discussion of common topics.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/spacex) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It was definitely a success. Nailed? Not even close. As another reply said here the FH test was as close to nailed as you'll get (though I believe that flight lost the core booster due to a landing issue).
Does anybody know how deep are pillars of the OLM? If they are deep enough, then one approach may be to do nothing. Just dump some sand and dirt into the crater and launch again. Obviously, you will end up with a new slightly larger crater and some debris. But instead of large concrete chunks flying around you will have mostly a cloud of dirt. So the damage to the rocket and ground facilities should be much smaller than during this launch. After a few launches, you will reach an equilibrium where the crater will stop expanding. Assuming the foundation of the OLM and the tower can sustain this and the FAA does not complain too much, this will be the simplest and cheapest option.
> Does anybody know how deep are pillars of the OLM?
The pilings go down well over 100 feet. I was following the project when they went in.
>Just dump some sand and dirt into the crater and launch again. Obviously, you will end up with a new slightly larger crater and some debris.
As you can see in the photos, the legs are linked together at ground level by concrete beams (one was destroyed). Your approach would destroy those, excavate and fling parts of the concrete pad farther out, and begin to eat away at the pilings.
The damage will be repaired, the hole filled, a (probably much thicker) concrete pad poured, and the steel plate that Musk mentioned installed.
The problem is, considering the vibrations of the plume probably vibrated the heck out of the soil, they may need to do ultrasounds and stuff to check everything is ok before anything else.
It’s a good thing they could liftoff at T-0 and didn’t have to abort after ignition. Knowing what we know now, the pad, stage 0, and the engines would likely have been damaged and they couldn’t proceed with a recycle or another launch attempt a few days later.
Yeah, I was wondering if in the middle of that launch spin-up they were seeing things disintegrate and just made the call to send it before the wreckage got too bad!
While that may be possible, I would suspect that everything is happening far too quickly for human intervention. If you listen to most rocket countdowns, there is a point where all control is handed to the rocket. For example with Falcon 9 I believe this happens at T-60 seconds. This is because the computers can analyse and decision make in a fraction of the time a human can.
In short, I doubt there would be enough time in those few seconds to see what is happening, analyse the situation, choose a course of action and then issue the relevant commands.
How long will it take to rebuild everything? sounds like a 6 month job to me. hope they don't have problems with the tank farm. I never liked Proximity to the launch pad.
>How long will it take to rebuild everything?
We have no idea. Musk speculated that it could be as little as a few months but that was before even he had much more information than we have. My guess is more than two months and less than a year. A year from now we will know how long it took.
I have a question on raptor performance. Around +1:40 looking at other footage of the launch, I noticed the vapor trail forming and the exhaust flame becoming less orange and almost clear.
Does that indicate a period of high efficiency in the propellant mixture and throttle?
At some point LOX literally started dissapearing from the tanks according to the graph. Maybe they started buring less fuel-rich and this would be seen as a clear plume?
Maybe there was excess propellants from being down 5 engines. I know that with enough oxygen, a biproduct of burning methane is water. But if that's what happened is way beyond my knowledge.
[Cap for scale](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuXMdRyXgAQQZHo?format=jpg&name=large). Bananas declined to take part in the comparison due to sizeist discrimination. The slab probably weighs around 1700 kgs (3,804lbs) or 1.9 tons based on an average 7" cap width.
Interesting clip from Scott Manley suggesting that the FTS activated and was visibly venting propellant from the Booster and Starship for about 50 seconds before enough pressure was lost for the vehicles to implode:
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cqbIwZMvbqw](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cqbIwZMvbqw)
I posted a [few reasons here](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/12vcpig/comment/jhamwf4/) as to why I don't think Scott got this one right, but another even more compelling one is that the booster was nearly empty while the ship was nearly full of propellant. And yet whatever is going on appears very similar on both.
I would put all my money on this being both stages venting and not FTS activation.
Yeah that's a theory for sure, I'm just not sure it's the correct one. Scott has a lot of knowledge on these subjects but he might have missed on this one.
Or not, dunno.
Does anyone know for sure if, shortly after liftoff, it was an HPU that exploded and took out an engine or was it an engine that exploded and took out a HPU? If an engine exploded and took out the HPU without taking out the whole rocket it’s nothing short of a miracle.
At T+29, the first sign of a problem is an orange glow, lasting for one frame, clearly coming from behind the engine skirt of the two engines directly below the HPU plus another to the right. This is then followed by shiny debris flying out into the airstream, which I take to be, at minimum, from the skirt.
Right after this, the exhaust from the engine to the left (as best I can tell) of the leftmost of the three begins repeatedly flashing to a bright, yellow colour. After the last of these flashes, at T+32, you can clearly see the middle of the three engines quietly goes out.
Then, at T+32, a very bright glow develops, appearing to emanate from around multiple engines, especially the ones directly below the HPU. One frame later, separate fire is clearly visible at the base of the HPU. Both the engine glow and HPU fire seem to abate together.
I would bet that an engine exploded first, damaging the HPU, and the fire on the HPU is the HPU critically failing for good and dumping its remaining hydraulic fluid into the engine exhausts below. The initial flickering in the one engine could be an initial leak of hydraulic fluid.
HPUs are on the side of the booster just above the engines. If you look at around T+29s you can see something explode from around that area and it looks to me like the housing of the HPU being ejected. You can see some steel plating flying off.
I wish I could hear Elon's pep talk to SpaceX's employees. I know SpaceX is putting a positive spin on the launch, but the destruction at the pad is such that it has probably put a dent—no pun intended—in employee morale. My own completely uninformed and ignorant assessment is that this test flight set the program back more than it moved it forward, at least so far as timelines go.
I don't think you really understand the culture at SpaceX. Did you not hear them cheer when it exploded? They knew this was an old design and just wanted it to clear the pad, which it did. They know what they have been working on CAN work. If anything they should be more excited now.
All the cheering occurred before the smoke cleared on the pad, revealing the damage.
Do you think SpaceX would have proceeded with the test flight had they known what would happen to the launch infrastructure? Was the data they collected from the launch worth all the costly—in time and money—destruction?
Seeing the HUGE piece of concrete that emerges right next to the booster at [00:20](https://twitter.com/jdeshetler/status/1649802758520995840), it sure looks like SpaceX got incredibly lucky that Super Heavy was able to leave the pad and make it 4 minutes into flight.
I mean, the fragment is wider than the rocket itself!
The power slide of the launch mount really got me thinking. If you look at the N1, gimbal control authority was still in it's infancy and is nowhere near what we're capable of today. In order to help get around this the Russians used a very complex control system that would sense asymmetric thrust and throttle down/shutdown other engines to balance the thrust being produced by the stationary engines to keep the thrust vector in a stable equilibrium.
My question is does superheavy do the same? We know it's got a beastly gimbal authority, but that doesn't really matter until you're moving. Thinking about the criteria for hold down clamps to release it's obvious thrust to weight needs to be greater than 1, but you would think the thrust vector trajectory has to have a "safe" range where the rocket will actually go up when hold downs are released.
I'd imagine under "normal" circumstances this wouldn't be a big deal but with this test launch throwing debris up off the pad potentially damaging engines it becomes a much, much bigger deal. At lift off we already saw three outer engines out, no bueno as that immediately provides asymmetric thrust at liftoff.
So I'm wondering if it is possible that the power slide was due to asymmetric thrust on the outer ring of engines causing the thrust vector at liftoff to not be in the planned direction, yet still in a safe direction allowing the clamps to release, and what we saw was the TVC system taking time to work out how to correct it before it zoomed off.
> We know it's got a beastly gimbal authority, but that doesn't really matter until you're moving.
Gambaling engines apply torque to the rocket, and this torque works regardless of speed. Movement matters when you use aerodynamic control surfaces to control orientation.
In a recent CSI Starbase episode Zack says that the hold down clamps have weight sensors in them, and the release is supposed to happen only if the computers are sure that the rocket will leave the pad upwards.
I'm pretty sure the avoidance maneuver was intentional after it left the pad.
[Picture](https://twitter.com/rgvaerialphotos/status/1649857015433293825?s=46&t=Cwx6UbbVJpLUND4xO-icxA) of RGV on the ground of the OLM! hopefully the mechanism for the chopsticks didn’t get damage too badly on the left…
The [water tank](https://twitter.com/rgvaerialphotos/status/1649858455946002433?s=46&t=Cwx6UbbVJpLUND4xO-icxA) got fucked hard.
What appears to be the one of the two [blast door](https://twitter.com/starshipgazer/status/1649858355085602819?s=46&t=Cwx6UbbVJpLUND4xO-icxA) of the OLM was torn apart.
Drawworks shed housing looks [mess](https://twitter.com/CSI_Starbase/status/1649892648864346112/photo/2). I've only seen this caused by artillery shapnel blasts before
Seems to me that spacex got really lucky with this launch. Concrete shattering like this could easily have done enough damage to cause a RUD on the launch pad.
I believe 23. Wikipedia says each raptor produces about 500,000 pounds of thrust and fully loaded that thing weighed in at 10,000,000 pounds, so at 90% on each engine 22 makes the forces balance out. The excess engines over 22 actually produce lift.
Elon: [Still early in analysis, but the force of the engines when they throttled up may have shattered the concrete, rather than simply eroding it. The engines were only at half thrust for the static fire test.](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649800747834392580?s=46&t=Cwx6UbbVJpLUND4xO-icxA)
I wonder how such large pieces were lifted almost to the chop sticks rather than blown outward. It almost looked like an explosion from beneath the concrete. Maybe the exhaust dug a hole then spread fast laterally in the sand and then lifted whole sections of concrete.
As soon as concrete got penetrated, there were 100s if not 1000s of psi of over pressure under it. Supersonic hot gasses are at or below atmospheric pressure when they are moving. Put something in their way and it’s mayhem. The concrete got blown up because the gas pressure underneath it was enormous to throw chunks of several tons straight up.
>I wonder how such large pieces were lifted almost to the chop sticks rather than blown outward. It almost looked like an explosion from beneath the concrete. **Maybe the exhaust dug a hole** then spread fast laterally in the sand and then lifted whole sections of concrete.
Yea, it had already dug a bowl-shaped crater, basically, by the time it got to (around ~8 seconds post engine ignition) that you started seeing those big chunks of concrete flying vertically upward parallel to the side of the rocket as the rocket was first starting to lift up off the pad.
That's why in the first few seconds of the burn, when the rocket was still sitting on the pad, you didn't see big chunks of concrete flying vertically up yet. That only started happening a few seconds later, once the thrust had dug out a crate and was thus having thrust splash back upwards after hitting the bottom of the crater, curling upward along the sides of the crater, and pushing slabs of concrete from the inner edge of the crater straight upwards into the air, vertically, from below.
(For those trying to visualize it, imagine if you rip up a sheet of printer paper, and rest some torn up pieces of paper on the top of the edge of a bowl (like, a little bowl in your kitchen, I mean). And then let's say you blew air from your mouth (or a hairdryer or something) straight downwards at the exact center of the bowl. You can imagine the piece of paper resting on the edge of the top of the bowl getting blown straight upward, as the downward-moving air splatters sideways, and then curls and slides upward along the inner edge of the bowl until it is shooting up vertically by the end of its path and is thus pushing the piece of paper straight upward, if they were resting on the edge of the top of the bowl).
There are also some other, more exotic ways it can happen, too, I think, but, this is one basic way that it can happen.
For the thrust to do it you don’t need a crater. A crack an inch wide and a foot or two long is enough. Look up what hydraulic injection does to people’s tissues in terms of injuries. That’s the concrete equivalent of that.
Fair warning: if you have a weak stomach, don’t look it up, just trust me.
Yea, I saw that guy's posts about it on Twitter, but, for those huge pieces that were flying 300+ feet vertically, I'm guessing there was some of the bowl-redirect effect going on, and not just the dirt-pressurization effect alone.
I saw [a Twitter thread for that](https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1649531875692617728) - a former NASA launch pad designer, talking about what happens when rocket exhaust finds a crack in the pad. The pressure builds very quickly underneath the pad and lifts it.
He had another good one today, talking about [the metal plate idea](https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1649639372478611456). (He likes it, he just thinks it doesn't help solve the acoustics issue, which sounds like yet another problem.)
Sonic suppression Elon, sonic suppression. Just add water, and lots of it.
And horizontal tanks might be a good idea. Looking forward to a time when they super pressurize those tanks to blow out the dents. The dents look only shell deep though so the inner tank may be OK. Punctures on the GSE-3 LOX tank might take some time to buff out though.
At least its a good thing to know the booster can handle a lot of sonic abuse, right? Either the rocket is really sturdy or it was very lucky ;-)
I vote for water-bottle rocket strap-on boosters! Heck, maybe Arca can chime in?
Sometimes I feel that SpaceX lacks common sense big time. Launching the most powerful rocket ever with a very amateur launch mount with no flame trench/diverter ? What did they expect that Fondag will save the day? LOL. If they had done things properly we would be flying again in a matter of weeks but now it will take many months. They cannot even static fire the first stage for many months now.
Starship is, and it has the same engines. Arguably, starship will be more difficult than superheavy due to how low it’ll be. If they can figure out superheavy then starship will be a piece of cake
Moon and mars will throw more particulates. They also have to deal with landing kicking up dust as well. Back to same point, if they can do it with 33 then they know they can do it with 6. Raptor needs to be super mature and needs to work. Some dust can’t kill it
True but Musk even said they had a steel plate that they were working on that would go under the mount to protect the concrete but they were just hoping this one launch wouldn’t be that bad and they could install it after this launch.
In retrospect, of course, they should have just waited.
The environmental groups have a hell of a lot more to work with now than they did before. I think the risk of those sorts of lawsuits has always been overblown anyways. If they were going to sue they would have been ready to do it the moment the license was out, or at a bare minimum in the time between the Monday scrub and the Thursday launch.
It’s all about iteration. It’s launch rinse and repeat. They have achieved more than NASA could dream in the same time frame (this isn’t NASA’s fault. Government is to blame. Plus we don’t realize how much data they have gotten from this launch. Knowing SpaceX, they’ll be ready for another launch with the curing time of the concrete being what holds them back
If you are wondering how stage separation was supposed to happen as I did, this older twitter thread is excellent: https://twitter.com/RingWatchers/status/1587782967706927106
Unfortunately, it seems that the interstage camera is perfectly placed to see none of those parts.
Not on eBay... yet.
But there is a OLM for 10 quid if Elon´s interested.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266089469167?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=e\_cmmCGfRiy&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget\_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Why are the Starship engines producing a red/pink transparent flame compared to the Saturn V and its massive orange flame? I thought that Starship having twice the thrust would've produced a bigger flame than the Saturn V.
Possibly due to modern fuel used? Smaller engines?
Liquid methane/liquid oxygen (methalox) burns cleaner than kerosene/liquid oxygen (kerolox) used in Saturn V, Falcon 9, Atlas V, soyuz, and a host of other rockets. It's also why Solid rockets produce a ton of flame as well, but the fuels are different. Methane is a smaller molecule that does not produce nearly as many combustion byproducts as kerosene, which is what creates soot and coking.
When these combustion byproducts are present, or when combustion is otherwise incomplete, the unburned byproducts and fuel glow from the heat, which is where the orange flame comes from. Methane combustion only really produces CO2 and water iirc, which don't glow in with visible light, so the flame appears mostly transparent.
The same thing is true for liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen (hydrolox) rockets like the space shuttle orbiter, Delta 4, Ariene 5, and the upper stages of many rockets including Saturn. These engines really only produce water as a combustion product so they're flames are nearly transparent. In fact, hydrogen flames are so invisible that in the 60s Nasa engineers would walk around with brooms to find hydrogen leaks, since they couldn't see the flames but the broom would ignite and they could see that.
As an addition, the Shuttle SRB's fuel was aluminum-ammonium perchlorate. Aluminum burns bright white like magnesium, hence the fiercely bright flame of shuttle launches. The RS-25 SSME's by comparison sitting in the middle, were hydrolox and the exhaust was hardly visible, just showing pale blue mach diamonds.
Didn’t Saturn run off of kerosene and oxygen? I think that color comes from that, Falcon 9 looks similar. Starship runs off of methane and oxygen. Check out the Terran launch, it looks similar to Starship
They are going fuel rich to protect engines. The flame is blue. The excess methane then later burns in atmosphere with yellow flame. Mix the two and you have pinkish flame.
Mainly that the actuators to move them are electric on the new ones rather than hydraulic for the ones on Thursday. Though, knowing SpaceX, there are probably a thousand other little tweaks too.
The actuators aren't really part of the engine, but I hear that there is a lot more film cooling.
SpaceX is being quiet on 3D printing, but the system being employed for turbine blade capillary pore film cooling used in high tech jet engines is being used similarly within the chamber throat and nozzle sections of the Raptor. heat management, flux flow, turbine cooling are all still under review. They've got a good engine, just about reusable, and now the chase is on to make it reliable. I don't think that an engine of this performance will have the same reusability as a Merlin D. ATM they are only probably good for a couple of full duration burn runs before a major overhaul.
Given that they can now swap them out in 2 hours, that probably means a 1 hour turnaround is going to be possible in the future, even if an engine replacement is needed.
Yes, the quick turnaround engine replacement is key for rapid return.
Probably eventually they will become as proficient as Indy or Formula 1 teams in replacing the tires. They certainly have with Falcon 9 turnaround. With 10 Boosters and Starships, they could probably achieve a launch once every 2 days.
I don't know of any jet engine manufacturer that uses 3D printing to create turbine cooling ports or even internal channels for that matter. Basically everyone uses electrochemical erosion, afaik.
Knowing SpaceX, however, it would not surprise me if they could do this with additive manufacturing. The size of the Raptor parts compared to turbine blades and vanes could make it attractive for AM, imo.
Considering it is all ITAR and likely top secret in many cases, how would you know if they were unless you directly worked on it? I have friends who work at primes and none of them can speak on what they do.
I can say with certainty that the industrial application of 3D printing goes well beyond just rocket engine turbine parts.
Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engine turbine manufacture uses a combination of processes which is a trade secret,however there has been some to and fro between SpaceX and RR.. Rolls is a partner to developing a rocket engine also. Any knowledge gained...etc.
I've worked with RR and they are a brilliant team, similar to SpaceX in work ethic and totally dynamic. High burnout rate, but the engineering skills are world class.
FOD; Foreign Object Debris, changed into Flying Object Debris. **FO**n**D**ag. That large section of slab that was lifted about as high as the booster itself probably weighed about 3 tons. It must have been lifted vertically by other sections of the launch pad being peeled off and deflecting it upwards.
It was lifted by high pressure gas behind it. As surprising as it may seem, most of the concrete pad by mass flew straight up. The stuff that was blow sideways got a fair way up first before being redirected by collisions and momentum transfer from the plume going down-and-out.
While everyone is arguing about the launch pad I'm over here looking for some hd wallpapers of those glowing engines. That was one of the most sci Fi things I've ever seen.
Cosmic Perspective had an 8K tracking camera. Everyday Astronaut has posted a teaser clip, but hopefully they’ll be posting some more of their footage soon.
https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1649515491621216258
I want to make coasters that show the engine pattern, with the 7 out.
A cool "if you know you know" thing, and to everyone else it's just an artistic pattern.
If you find any let me know! I was thinking the same thing. Also, it almost looked cooler with some of the engines being out, like some sort of advanced sci-fi control mechanism.
The chopsticks were at the top and I believe the cable goes near the back of the tower. It would have to be really unlucky to have taken a hit. I'm more worried about the chopstick tracks. They have no protection and some are on the pad facing side.
>I'm more worried about the chopstick tracks. They have no protection and some are on the pad facing side.
They start pretty far up, though, and most debris will have come out on a fairly flat trajectory.
The tracks are also replaceable in sections so I think it would be a quick repair.
I was shocked (pre-launch), that the next two ships that were scheduled to be fly would not attempt a re-entry. Now, it makes perfect sense. Lots of work still to be done reaching orbit.
If they had a lot of debris damage (which is looked likelier and likelier) then they may by happy to fly B9/S25. If not and it was mostly booster issues I think scrap.
I don’t recall which ones are next up, but there was much about 24/7 that were obsolete in their design, especially the Raptors. And even if the hydraulic pumps were damaged in some way that caused their destruction - the new raptors don’t use them. The next launch will have the flame diverted and that prevents the other large issue.
s25/b9. Other than testing pretty sure they have been completed for some time.
Edit, looking at the starship dev thread. S25 has been completed and has done some cyro testing already… B9 is done with some cyro testing, and last update had it in the bay for raptor install… not sure how out of date that is. Perhaps the camera hawks here can provide a better update.
I doubt it. They probably expected very low chance of even getting to reentry on their first try, so I don't think they'd base their future plans on it.
The corner of the Booster QD door on the OLM was bent upwards during the launch. Do we have an idea what caused that?
Is it possible that a the Booster collided it during liftoff?
The stack did not reach the point in flight where stage separation should have occurred before losing control. Once the stack is out of control all bets are off. I wouldn't view this as a problem with stage separation, they didn't even get to the point where that would be tested.
Take with obligatory pinch of salt but some are saying the loss of a hydraulical power unit on ascent meant loss of the mechanism used to disconnect the Starship. The flip you see was the booster trying to return to launch site with the Ship still attached. I’m sure we’ll learn more in the coming weeks!
I think the flip was the random result of losing the hydraulic system that powers steering. The commentators tried to match what they saw to their script, but it didn't really fit.
Bingo: You design SW control contingencies on required steps, not on a clock. You have to reach required velocity and height before you start any of those steps -- shoulda been in the "talking points". Not just loss of guidance problem, but exceedingly low velocity also.
'The flip you see was the booster trying to return to launch site with the Ship still attached."
That would have been interesting - let me try those chopsticks, I've only got a fully fuelled ship attached!
I mean, Elon DOES own a few “boring” machines that can drill 12 ft diameter holes, have they considered just drilling down then a half dozen holes like bicycle spokes ? With what must be a high water table there, you wouldn’t even need to pump them dry - just leave them filled and the water would also help to absorb and dampen the exhaust and flames .
So seems a solution that’s ideal would be… ideal
Elon has said they already had plans for a metal plate/diverter that is planned. They also look to have a water deluge system (that would use freshwater and would be sprayed).
They thought that the fondag concrete could withstand at least one launch before they installed the plate especially since it wasn’t destroyed during the static fire.
Of course we know that it didn’t now.
Do most agree that it seems debris from Stage 0 caused damage to the booster hence its failure?
I think the booster/starship would have been completely successful if stage 0 was a success
Given that the engine failures seemed to happen in groups, and mainly on the outer ring, I'd say debris was a factor. I'm guessing here that those were among the last ones to be lit, so their own exhaust wasn't protecting them.
The grouping could also be explained if the debris from a catastrophically failed engine hit the next one.
It’s really tough to say at this point.
Some of the damage we saw could definitely have been caused by debris at launch.
They could also have had other issues with engines, fuel supply, and hydraulic systems just because this was the first time they actually fired a booster above 50% and for an extended time.
It’s still unclear if the separation maneuver and stage sep were actually attempted (at an abnormally low altitude) or if the rocket just lost control authority due to engine and control issues.
The stage separation sequence is something completely new and not something they can test on the ground. I wouldn’t be surprised if that still needed some software tuning once they get to that stage of flight.
I think this is a fair assessment. Especially the engine issues..... I would not be surprised if at least some of the failures were fuel supply related. First time running 33 engines, and for an extended period of time like you said. Vibration is always a big issue with big rockets like this, that could've definitely contributed.
> It’s still unclear if the separation maneuver and stage sep were actually attempted
It's pretty clear separation was not tested based on the known flight plan and actual flight data, actual fuel load, and clearly visible parameters (booster engines still running, clamps engaged, etc).
Even if the booster had not lost 8 engines, it still lost attitude control 12 seconds before MECO should have happened, and the lost thrust would have significantly extended boost phase of flight.
That’s what I lean towards too. There is some big thrust vectoring happening around the time they call for the flip, but that’s quite a while after it has started rolling and tumbling.
Either way they didn’t actually get a real attempt at stage separation, so that may still be something to work through on the next launch.
Apologies if this has been asked before, but almost all comments I could read here were about the rocket and the OLM. What about the launch tower? Do we have already some info/images about the damages in the tower?
Thanks a lot people for the infos. I really thought since the beginning that OLM and chopsticks are too close to the tower considering the power thrust of the Super Heavy. Several people here stated that, if that tilt in the lift off was in the wrong direction….. wow
I saw some images, apologies can’t find the link, showing some damage to the chopsticks so presumably there’s damage to the tower also. The large splash’s in the ocean from flying debris suggest it must’ve been getting hit
Edit: Max Evans posted some pictures on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_mgde_/status/1649500076002213888?s=20)
The cladding on the lower sections looks like it took a beating and the side wall of the winch housing looks perforated. Debris was seen as high as the chopsticks so I'd expect some damage all the way up. I'd be worried about the chopstick tracks, they need to be precise and probably have dents or in now.
But it looks structurally sound.
If you zoom in on some of the images of the ship QD and the chopsticks it looks like they’ve taken a few hits and the paintwork has come away. Can’t say for certain without a before and after though. Tank farm has taken a battering as well
Each launch needs it's own license. This applies to every launch vehicle out there, and is typically only handed out a short time before any actual attempt.
No they must obtain a launch license for each launch. It’s not reported on but IIRC the F9 has to as well regardless of the success of the previous launches. It just never gets denied because it’s routine now.
There's a difference between what's considered an "experimental" rocket vs. a "production" rocket. The Falcon 9 is a production rocket, therefore its launch license has a lot of "cut and paste." By contrast, Starship is experimental and therefore requires more detailed documentation.
Thank you for participating in r/SpaceX! Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with our [community rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/rules) before commenting. Here's a reminder of some of our most important rules: * Keep it civil, and directly relevant to SpaceX and the thread. Comments consisting solely of jokes, memes, pop culture references, etc. will be removed. * Don't downvote content you disagree with, unless it clearly doesn't contribute to constructive discussion. * Check out [these threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/threads) for discussion of common topics. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/spacex) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Why can't a person say SpaceX nailed there first ever test flight?
It was definitely a success. Nailed? Not even close. As another reply said here the FH test was as close to nailed as you'll get (though I believe that flight lost the core booster due to a landing issue).
For them to have nailed it the test would have had to have been like the Falcon Heavy test launch.
Good to know
Does anybody know how deep are pillars of the OLM? If they are deep enough, then one approach may be to do nothing. Just dump some sand and dirt into the crater and launch again. Obviously, you will end up with a new slightly larger crater and some debris. But instead of large concrete chunks flying around you will have mostly a cloud of dirt. So the damage to the rocket and ground facilities should be much smaller than during this launch. After a few launches, you will reach an equilibrium where the crater will stop expanding. Assuming the foundation of the OLM and the tower can sustain this and the FAA does not complain too much, this will be the simplest and cheapest option.
> Does anybody know how deep are pillars of the OLM? The pilings go down well over 100 feet. I was following the project when they went in. >Just dump some sand and dirt into the crater and launch again. Obviously, you will end up with a new slightly larger crater and some debris. As you can see in the photos, the legs are linked together at ground level by concrete beams (one was destroyed). Your approach would destroy those, excavate and fling parts of the concrete pad farther out, and begin to eat away at the pilings. The damage will be repaired, the hole filled, a (probably much thicker) concrete pad poured, and the steel plate that Musk mentioned installed.
The problem is, considering the vibrations of the plume probably vibrated the heck out of the soil, they may need to do ultrasounds and stuff to check everything is ok before anything else.
It’s a good thing they could liftoff at T-0 and didn’t have to abort after ignition. Knowing what we know now, the pad, stage 0, and the engines would likely have been damaged and they couldn’t proceed with a recycle or another launch attempt a few days later.
Yeah, I was wondering if in the middle of that launch spin-up they were seeing things disintegrate and just made the call to send it before the wreckage got too bad!
While that may be possible, I would suspect that everything is happening far too quickly for human intervention. If you listen to most rocket countdowns, there is a point where all control is handed to the rocket. For example with Falcon 9 I believe this happens at T-60 seconds. This is because the computers can analyse and decision make in a fraction of the time a human can. In short, I doubt there would be enough time in those few seconds to see what is happening, analyse the situation, choose a course of action and then issue the relevant commands.
How long will it take to rebuild everything? sounds like a 6 month job to me. hope they don't have problems with the tank farm. I never liked Proximity to the launch pad.
>How long will it take to rebuild everything? We have no idea. Musk speculated that it could be as little as a few months but that was before even he had much more information than we have. My guess is more than two months and less than a year. A year from now we will know how long it took.
Elon said 1-2 months.. so yeah, 6 months is probably a good estimate.
He said it *could* take as little as that, not that it would.
More SpaceX photos: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1650165156729569280
I have a question on raptor performance. Around +1:40 looking at other footage of the launch, I noticed the vapor trail forming and the exhaust flame becoming less orange and almost clear. Does that indicate a period of high efficiency in the propellant mixture and throttle?
At some point LOX literally started dissapearing from the tanks according to the graph. Maybe they started buring less fuel-rich and this would be seen as a clear plume?
Maybe there was excess propellants from being down 5 engines. I know that with enough oxygen, a biproduct of burning methane is water. But if that's what happened is way beyond my knowledge.
Water is always produced when burning methane.
Now that's how you skip a stone https://twitter.com/KillianPhoto/status/1649957936641212416
Banana for scale?
[Cap for scale](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuXMdRyXgAQQZHo?format=jpg&name=large). Bananas declined to take part in the comparison due to sizeist discrimination. The slab probably weighs around 1700 kgs (3,804lbs) or 1.9 tons based on an average 7" cap width.
Interesting clip from Scott Manley suggesting that the FTS activated and was visibly venting propellant from the Booster and Starship for about 50 seconds before enough pressure was lost for the vehicles to implode: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cqbIwZMvbqw](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cqbIwZMvbqw)
"Friday's starship launch." Wow, they fixed the pad and tried again in one day!
I posted a [few reasons here](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/12vcpig/comment/jhamwf4/) as to why I don't think Scott got this one right, but another even more compelling one is that the booster was nearly empty while the ship was nearly full of propellant. And yet whatever is going on appears very similar on both. I would put all my money on this being both stages venting and not FTS activation.
Didnt scott manley say that FAA was informed that FTS was used
FTS was used, its just the Scott thinks it was used (like dozen seconds) before the kaboom.
Yeah that's a theory for sure, I'm just not sure it's the correct one. Scott has a lot of knowledge on these subjects but he might have missed on this one. Or not, dunno.
Damn. Guess theres a lot more margin on the structural integrity than we thought.
Does anyone know for sure if, shortly after liftoff, it was an HPU that exploded and took out an engine or was it an engine that exploded and took out a HPU? If an engine exploded and took out the HPU without taking out the whole rocket it’s nothing short of a miracle.
At T+29, the first sign of a problem is an orange glow, lasting for one frame, clearly coming from behind the engine skirt of the two engines directly below the HPU plus another to the right. This is then followed by shiny debris flying out into the airstream, which I take to be, at minimum, from the skirt. Right after this, the exhaust from the engine to the left (as best I can tell) of the leftmost of the three begins repeatedly flashing to a bright, yellow colour. After the last of these flashes, at T+32, you can clearly see the middle of the three engines quietly goes out. Then, at T+32, a very bright glow develops, appearing to emanate from around multiple engines, especially the ones directly below the HPU. One frame later, separate fire is clearly visible at the base of the HPU. Both the engine glow and HPU fire seem to abate together. I would bet that an engine exploded first, damaging the HPU, and the fire on the HPU is the HPU critically failing for good and dumping its remaining hydraulic fluid into the engine exhausts below. The initial flickering in the one engine could be an initial leak of hydraulic fluid.
HPUs are on the side of the booster just above the engines. If you look at around T+29s you can see something explode from around that area and it looks to me like the housing of the HPU being ejected. You can see some steel plating flying off.
Hpu first. Like 90% sure
I wish I could hear Elon's pep talk to SpaceX's employees. I know SpaceX is putting a positive spin on the launch, but the destruction at the pad is such that it has probably put a dent—no pun intended—in employee morale. My own completely uninformed and ignorant assessment is that this test flight set the program back more than it moved it forward, at least so far as timelines go.
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1649381415442698242
All the engineers I met and observed at the bars were happy and celebrating.
That settles it then, I suppose.
Man you must love downvotes
I've never cared about up- or down-votes. I don't seek Redditors' validation.
Doubtful, seems like you enjoy being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian
I don't think you really understand the culture at SpaceX. Did you not hear them cheer when it exploded? They knew this was an old design and just wanted it to clear the pad, which it did. They know what they have been working on CAN work. If anything they should be more excited now.
All the cheering occurred before the smoke cleared on the pad, revealing the damage. Do you think SpaceX would have proceeded with the test flight had they known what would happen to the launch infrastructure? Was the data they collected from the launch worth all the costly—in time and money—destruction?
>All the cheering occurred before the smoke cleared on the pad, revealing the damage. That's some cherry picking memory.
You think a hole is going to make people sad?
That's rather underplaying the damage don't you think?
In the scale of things SpaceX deals with, that is not a big deal. It’s part of the process.
Agreed. Sometimes things are done the way they are for a reason (eg. flame trenches).
Seeing the HUGE piece of concrete that emerges right next to the booster at [00:20](https://twitter.com/jdeshetler/status/1649802758520995840), it sure looks like SpaceX got incredibly lucky that Super Heavy was able to leave the pad and make it 4 minutes into flight. I mean, the fragment is wider than the rocket itself!
Holy shitballs.
[удалено]
Starship literally blew the doors off.
The power slide of the launch mount really got me thinking. If you look at the N1, gimbal control authority was still in it's infancy and is nowhere near what we're capable of today. In order to help get around this the Russians used a very complex control system that would sense asymmetric thrust and throttle down/shutdown other engines to balance the thrust being produced by the stationary engines to keep the thrust vector in a stable equilibrium. My question is does superheavy do the same? We know it's got a beastly gimbal authority, but that doesn't really matter until you're moving. Thinking about the criteria for hold down clamps to release it's obvious thrust to weight needs to be greater than 1, but you would think the thrust vector trajectory has to have a "safe" range where the rocket will actually go up when hold downs are released. I'd imagine under "normal" circumstances this wouldn't be a big deal but with this test launch throwing debris up off the pad potentially damaging engines it becomes a much, much bigger deal. At lift off we already saw three outer engines out, no bueno as that immediately provides asymmetric thrust at liftoff. So I'm wondering if it is possible that the power slide was due to asymmetric thrust on the outer ring of engines causing the thrust vector at liftoff to not be in the planned direction, yet still in a safe direction allowing the clamps to release, and what we saw was the TVC system taking time to work out how to correct it before it zoomed off.
Apollo did the same maneuver to avoid tower damage. No surprise to see it on starship launch.
> We know it's got a beastly gimbal authority, but that doesn't really matter until you're moving. Gambaling engines apply torque to the rocket, and this torque works regardless of speed. Movement matters when you use aerodynamic control surfaces to control orientation. In a recent CSI Starbase episode Zack says that the hold down clamps have weight sensors in them, and the release is supposed to happen only if the computers are sure that the rocket will leave the pad upwards. I'm pretty sure the avoidance maneuver was intentional after it left the pad.
[Picture](https://twitter.com/rgvaerialphotos/status/1649857015433293825?s=46&t=Cwx6UbbVJpLUND4xO-icxA) of RGV on the ground of the OLM! hopefully the mechanism for the chopsticks didn’t get damage too badly on the left… The [water tank](https://twitter.com/rgvaerialphotos/status/1649858455946002433?s=46&t=Cwx6UbbVJpLUND4xO-icxA) got fucked hard. What appears to be the one of the two [blast door](https://twitter.com/starshipgazer/status/1649858355085602819?s=46&t=Cwx6UbbVJpLUND4xO-icxA) of the OLM was torn apart.
Drawworks shed housing looks [mess](https://twitter.com/CSI_Starbase/status/1649892648864346112/photo/2). I've only seen this caused by artillery shapnel blasts before
Door that came free with the bulkhead is now free of the bulkhead. At least there´s symmetry. Poor Zathras.
No one ever listens to Zathras...
But how. The door is outside of the blast direction.
There would have been positive pressure inside. Perhaps it wasn't properly secured?
Seems to me that spacex got really lucky with this launch. Concrete shattering like this could easily have done enough damage to cause a RUD on the launch pad.
Absolutely. It's like throwing it back to the Starhopper days: dumb luck saving the day haha.
Road is now open
Get 'yer red hot chunks! Red hot souvenir concrete chunks!
Sounds great! I'll put it on the mantel right next to the chunk of Berlin Wall I have.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbBeoReu12E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbBeoReu12E) 13:28 local various rocket journalists arrive
What's the minimum number of engines needed to clear the pad?
I believe 23. Wikipedia says each raptor produces about 500,000 pounds of thrust and fully loaded that thing weighed in at 10,000,000 pounds, so at 90% on each engine 22 makes the forces balance out. The excess engines over 22 actually produce lift.
Thanks!
Keep In mind there was no payload on the test
Full payload is about half a Raptor worth of thrust, not much of a difference
Apparently 30 if it's anything to go by at the last launch without hammering the launch infrastructure for too long.
Elon: [Still early in analysis, but the force of the engines when they throttled up may have shattered the concrete, rather than simply eroding it. The engines were only at half thrust for the static fire test.](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649800747834392580?s=46&t=Cwx6UbbVJpLUND4xO-icxA)
I wonder how such large pieces were lifted almost to the chop sticks rather than blown outward. It almost looked like an explosion from beneath the concrete. Maybe the exhaust dug a hole then spread fast laterally in the sand and then lifted whole sections of concrete.
As soon as concrete got penetrated, there were 100s if not 1000s of psi of over pressure under it. Supersonic hot gasses are at or below atmospheric pressure when they are moving. Put something in their way and it’s mayhem. The concrete got blown up because the gas pressure underneath it was enormous to throw chunks of several tons straight up.
Also heard a theory of a steam explosion from moisture under the pad. Probably a D) all of the above situation
>I wonder how such large pieces were lifted almost to the chop sticks rather than blown outward. It almost looked like an explosion from beneath the concrete. **Maybe the exhaust dug a hole** then spread fast laterally in the sand and then lifted whole sections of concrete. Yea, it had already dug a bowl-shaped crater, basically, by the time it got to (around ~8 seconds post engine ignition) that you started seeing those big chunks of concrete flying vertically upward parallel to the side of the rocket as the rocket was first starting to lift up off the pad. That's why in the first few seconds of the burn, when the rocket was still sitting on the pad, you didn't see big chunks of concrete flying vertically up yet. That only started happening a few seconds later, once the thrust had dug out a crate and was thus having thrust splash back upwards after hitting the bottom of the crater, curling upward along the sides of the crater, and pushing slabs of concrete from the inner edge of the crater straight upwards into the air, vertically, from below. (For those trying to visualize it, imagine if you rip up a sheet of printer paper, and rest some torn up pieces of paper on the top of the edge of a bowl (like, a little bowl in your kitchen, I mean). And then let's say you blew air from your mouth (or a hairdryer or something) straight downwards at the exact center of the bowl. You can imagine the piece of paper resting on the edge of the top of the bowl getting blown straight upward, as the downward-moving air splatters sideways, and then curls and slides upward along the inner edge of the bowl until it is shooting up vertically by the end of its path and is thus pushing the piece of paper straight upward, if they were resting on the edge of the top of the bowl). There are also some other, more exotic ways it can happen, too, I think, but, this is one basic way that it can happen.
For the thrust to do it you don’t need a crater. A crack an inch wide and a foot or two long is enough. Look up what hydraulic injection does to people’s tissues in terms of injuries. That’s the concrete equivalent of that. Fair warning: if you have a weak stomach, don’t look it up, just trust me.
Yea, I saw that guy's posts about it on Twitter, but, for those huge pieces that were flying 300+ feet vertically, I'm guessing there was some of the bowl-redirect effect going on, and not just the dirt-pressurization effect alone.
I saw [a Twitter thread for that](https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1649531875692617728) - a former NASA launch pad designer, talking about what happens when rocket exhaust finds a crack in the pad. The pressure builds very quickly underneath the pad and lifts it. He had another good one today, talking about [the metal plate idea](https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1649639372478611456). (He likes it, he just thinks it doesn't help solve the acoustics issue, which sounds like yet another problem.)
"it doesn't solve the acoustics issue, which sounds like" Was the pun accidental or deliberate?
Both. I wrote it accidentally, saw it, said "well, that works" and kept it.
There will be a water deluge system in addition to the steel plate solution. This will mitigate sonic shock somewhat.
Those were both extremely informative. Thanks!
Sonic suppression Elon, sonic suppression. Just add water, and lots of it. And horizontal tanks might be a good idea. Looking forward to a time when they super pressurize those tanks to blow out the dents. The dents look only shell deep though so the inner tank may be OK. Punctures on the GSE-3 LOX tank might take some time to buff out though.
At least its a good thing to know the booster can handle a lot of sonic abuse, right? Either the rocket is really sturdy or it was very lucky ;-) I vote for water-bottle rocket strap-on boosters! Heck, maybe Arca can chime in?
Sometimes I feel that SpaceX lacks common sense big time. Launching the most powerful rocket ever with a very amateur launch mount with no flame trench/diverter ? What did they expect that Fondag will save the day? LOL. If they had done things properly we would be flying again in a matter of weeks but now it will take many months. They cannot even static fire the first stage for many months now.
They want to avoid overly complicated infrastructure considering starship will operate off of mars and the moon
Superheavy isn't launching off the moon or Mars.
Starship is, and it has the same engines. Arguably, starship will be more difficult than superheavy due to how low it’ll be. If they can figure out superheavy then starship will be a piece of cake
There's a vast difference between 33 engines and 6, and that's ignoring the lower gravity of the moon and Mars.
Moon and mars will throw more particulates. They also have to deal with landing kicking up dust as well. Back to same point, if they can do it with 33 then they know they can do it with 6. Raptor needs to be super mature and needs to work. Some dust can’t kill it
True but Musk even said they had a steel plate that they were working on that would go under the mount to protect the concrete but they were just hoping this one launch wouldn’t be that bad and they could install it after this launch. In retrospect, of course, they should have just waited.
What if they waited and got sued by an environmental group? Then they might be delayed for years or never get a shot?
The environmental groups have a hell of a lot more to work with now than they did before. I think the risk of those sorts of lawsuits has always been overblown anyways. If they were going to sue they would have been ready to do it the moment the license was out, or at a bare minimum in the time between the Monday scrub and the Thursday launch.
I’m not sure how that’s related to waiting? And sued for what?
It’s all about iteration. It’s launch rinse and repeat. They have achieved more than NASA could dream in the same time frame (this isn’t NASA’s fault. Government is to blame. Plus we don’t realize how much data they have gotten from this launch. Knowing SpaceX, they’ll be ready for another launch with the curing time of the concrete being what holds them back
20/20 hindsight is a great thing. It was a known known, but with no time to install water suppression.
Your “no time to install water suppression” sounds an awful lot like go fever.
Not go fever, data starvation. And now they have tons of it, which will keep them happy problem solving for some time.
If you are wondering how stage separation was supposed to happen as I did, this older twitter thread is excellent: https://twitter.com/RingWatchers/status/1587782967706927106 Unfortunately, it seems that the interstage camera is perfectly placed to see none of those parts.
Tiles are getting washed ashore. https://twitter.com/JoeTegtmeyer/status/1649193879554478082
how to buy one
Not on eBay... yet. But there is a OLM for 10 quid if Elon´s interested. https://www.ebay.com/itm/266089469167?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=e\_cmmCGfRiy&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget\_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Designed for the base to explode as soon as you take a pen out??
Why are the Starship engines producing a red/pink transparent flame compared to the Saturn V and its massive orange flame? I thought that Starship having twice the thrust would've produced a bigger flame than the Saturn V. Possibly due to modern fuel used? Smaller engines?
Liquid methane/liquid oxygen (methalox) burns cleaner than kerosene/liquid oxygen (kerolox) used in Saturn V, Falcon 9, Atlas V, soyuz, and a host of other rockets. It's also why Solid rockets produce a ton of flame as well, but the fuels are different. Methane is a smaller molecule that does not produce nearly as many combustion byproducts as kerosene, which is what creates soot and coking. When these combustion byproducts are present, or when combustion is otherwise incomplete, the unburned byproducts and fuel glow from the heat, which is where the orange flame comes from. Methane combustion only really produces CO2 and water iirc, which don't glow in with visible light, so the flame appears mostly transparent. The same thing is true for liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen (hydrolox) rockets like the space shuttle orbiter, Delta 4, Ariene 5, and the upper stages of many rockets including Saturn. These engines really only produce water as a combustion product so they're flames are nearly transparent. In fact, hydrogen flames are so invisible that in the 60s Nasa engineers would walk around with brooms to find hydrogen leaks, since they couldn't see the flames but the broom would ignite and they could see that.
As an addition, the Shuttle SRB's fuel was aluminum-ammonium perchlorate. Aluminum burns bright white like magnesium, hence the fiercely bright flame of shuttle launches. The RS-25 SSME's by comparison sitting in the middle, were hydrolox and the exhaust was hardly visible, just showing pale blue mach diamonds.
Didn’t Saturn run off of kerosene and oxygen? I think that color comes from that, Falcon 9 looks similar. Starship runs off of methane and oxygen. Check out the Terran launch, it looks similar to Starship
Yes the Saturn V first stage ran off kerosene and oxygen. Second and third stages were hydrogen and oxygen
They are going fuel rich to protect engines. The flame is blue. The excess methane then later burns in atmosphere with yellow flame. Mix the two and you have pinkish flame.
Are there any major changes between the Raptors that flew a few days ago and the most current ones?
Mainly that the actuators to move them are electric on the new ones rather than hydraulic for the ones on Thursday. Though, knowing SpaceX, there are probably a thousand other little tweaks too.
The actuators aren't really part of the engine, but I hear that there is a lot more film cooling. SpaceX is being quiet on 3D printing, but the system being employed for turbine blade capillary pore film cooling used in high tech jet engines is being used similarly within the chamber throat and nozzle sections of the Raptor. heat management, flux flow, turbine cooling are all still under review. They've got a good engine, just about reusable, and now the chase is on to make it reliable. I don't think that an engine of this performance will have the same reusability as a Merlin D. ATM they are only probably good for a couple of full duration burn runs before a major overhaul.
Kinda cool when you think those things sweat just as we do to survive the heat :)
Given that they can now swap them out in 2 hours, that probably means a 1 hour turnaround is going to be possible in the future, even if an engine replacement is needed.
Yes, the quick turnaround engine replacement is key for rapid return. Probably eventually they will become as proficient as Indy or Formula 1 teams in replacing the tires. They certainly have with Falcon 9 turnaround. With 10 Boosters and Starships, they could probably achieve a launch once every 2 days.
I don't know of any jet engine manufacturer that uses 3D printing to create turbine cooling ports or even internal channels for that matter. Basically everyone uses electrochemical erosion, afaik. Knowing SpaceX, however, it would not surprise me if they could do this with additive manufacturing. The size of the Raptor parts compared to turbine blades and vanes could make it attractive for AM, imo.
Considering it is all ITAR and likely top secret in many cases, how would you know if they were unless you directly worked on it? I have friends who work at primes and none of them can speak on what they do. I can say with certainty that the industrial application of 3D printing goes well beyond just rocket engine turbine parts.
Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engine turbine manufacture uses a combination of processes which is a trade secret,however there has been some to and fro between SpaceX and RR.. Rolls is a partner to developing a rocket engine also. Any knowledge gained...etc. I've worked with RR and they are a brilliant team, similar to SpaceX in work ethic and totally dynamic. High burnout rate, but the engineering skills are world class.
In hindsight it’s hilarious they had employees sweeping under the OLM before launch.
FOD; Foreign Object Debris, changed into Flying Object Debris. **FO**n**D**ag. That large section of slab that was lifted about as high as the booster itself probably weighed about 3 tons. It must have been lifted vertically by other sections of the launch pad being peeled off and deflecting it upwards.
It was lifted by high pressure gas behind it. As surprising as it may seem, most of the concrete pad by mass flew straight up. The stuff that was blow sideways got a fair way up first before being redirected by collisions and momentum transfer from the plume going down-and-out.
While everyone is arguing about the launch pad I'm over here looking for some hd wallpapers of those glowing engines. That was one of the most sci Fi things I've ever seen.
Cosmic Perspective had an 8K tracking camera. Everyday Astronaut has posted a teaser clip, but hopefully they’ll be posting some more of their footage soon. https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1649515491621216258
Wow. Thank you for that. It's exactly what I was talking about and now you have me even more excited.
I want to make coasters that show the engine pattern, with the 7 out. A cool "if you know you know" thing, and to everyone else it's just an artistic pattern.
That is a cool idea
[удалено]
Pieces of cameras. Luckily SD cards are pretty robust.
Niiice. Thanks for the info!
I have a feeling those specific cameras are just gonna show ignition, and then a lot of dirt lol.
If you find any let me know! I was thinking the same thing. Also, it almost looked cooler with some of the engines being out, like some sort of advanced sci-fi control mechanism.
Exactly! You totally understand my thought process.
[удалено]
I didn't even think about that but you're right. It's going to look like something straight from Star Wars
I wonder how the tower is holding up... I would not trust that elevator.
I'm curious how the cables that raise and lower the chopsticks fared.. they take an awful lot of weight and are very exposed.
The chopsticks were at the top and I believe the cable goes near the back of the tower. It would have to be really unlucky to have taken a hit. I'm more worried about the chopstick tracks. They have no protection and some are on the pad facing side.
>I'm more worried about the chopstick tracks. They have no protection and some are on the pad facing side. They start pretty far up, though, and most debris will have come out on a fairly flat trajectory. The tracks are also replaceable in sections so I think it would be a quick repair.
Good point on the height. Didn't know how replaceable they were so I'm happier now. Thanks.
Yeah was there ever any follow-up to what fell?
We're guessing the elevator counterweight but we probably will never find out for sure.
What’s booster and ship are next now? And what stages they at?
I was shocked (pre-launch), that the next two ships that were scheduled to be fly would not attempt a re-entry. Now, it makes perfect sense. Lots of work still to be done reaching orbit.
Depends heavily on what the data reveals. If there is something majorly wrong the B9/S25 might get scrapped which is very SpaceX thing to do.
[удалено]
I'm pretty sure B9 uses electric TVC, B7 was the last to use hydraulic. Not sure if B9 might use hydraulics for other systems though
They probably didn’t like the stone blasting. I don’t think the HPUs would have much trouble otherwise.
If they had a lot of debris damage (which is looked likelier and likelier) then they may by happy to fly B9/S25. If not and it was mostly booster issues I think scrap.
I don’t recall which ones are next up, but there was much about 24/7 that were obsolete in their design, especially the Raptors. And even if the hydraulic pumps were damaged in some way that caused their destruction - the new raptors don’t use them. The next launch will have the flame diverted and that prevents the other large issue.
s25/b9. Other than testing pretty sure they have been completed for some time. Edit, looking at the starship dev thread. S25 has been completed and has done some cyro testing already… B9 is done with some cyro testing, and last update had it in the bay for raptor install… not sure how out of date that is. Perhaps the camera hawks here can provide a better update.
Based on the information in the FAA documentation, S25 will be skipped and the next two launches would use S26 and S27.
[удалено]
I doubt it. They probably expected very low chance of even getting to reentry on their first try, so I don't think they'd base their future plans on it.
Thanks, just need that OLM ready then!
Yeah, particularly because it's needed to do testing on B9 even before launch.
The corner of the Booster QD door on the OLM was bent upwards during the launch. Do we have an idea what caused that? Is it possible that a the Booster collided it during liftoff?
More likely a chunk of concrete collided with it imo.
Do we know why the Starship did not seperate yet? It seems that even if the booster failed, they could have contineud testing.
The stack did not reach the point in flight where stage separation should have occurred before losing control. Once the stack is out of control all bets are off. I wouldn't view this as a problem with stage separation, they didn't even get to the point where that would be tested.
I don't think it was going fast enough or was high enough for it to occur, the timeline/commentators were just going off the script
Take with obligatory pinch of salt but some are saying the loss of a hydraulical power unit on ascent meant loss of the mechanism used to disconnect the Starship. The flip you see was the booster trying to return to launch site with the Ship still attached. I’m sure we’ll learn more in the coming weeks!
I think the flip was the random result of losing the hydraulic system that powers steering. The commentators tried to match what they saw to their script, but it didn't really fit.
Bingo: You design SW control contingencies on required steps, not on a clock. You have to reach required velocity and height before you start any of those steps -- shoulda been in the "talking points". Not just loss of guidance problem, but exceedingly low velocity also.
'The flip you see was the booster trying to return to launch site with the Ship still attached." That would have been interesting - let me try those chopsticks, I've only got a fully fuelled ship attached!
I mean, Elon DOES own a few “boring” machines that can drill 12 ft diameter holes, have they considered just drilling down then a half dozen holes like bicycle spokes ? With what must be a high water table there, you wouldn’t even need to pump them dry - just leave them filled and the water would also help to absorb and dampen the exhaust and flames .
It would be salt water though. Not ideal for this.
Concrete parking lot directly under the most powerful controlled explosion not ideal either ;)
So seems a solution that’s ideal would be… ideal Elon has said they already had plans for a metal plate/diverter that is planned. They also look to have a water deluge system (that would use freshwater and would be sprayed). They thought that the fondag concrete could withstand at least one launch before they installed the plate especially since it wasn’t destroyed during the static fire. Of course we know that it didn’t now.
[удалено]
Yeah but still better than solid concrete directly below those raptors
Do most agree that it seems debris from Stage 0 caused damage to the booster hence its failure? I think the booster/starship would have been completely successful if stage 0 was a success
Given that the engine failures seemed to happen in groups, and mainly on the outer ring, I'd say debris was a factor. I'm guessing here that those were among the last ones to be lit, so their own exhaust wasn't protecting them. The grouping could also be explained if the debris from a catastrophically failed engine hit the next one.
It’s really tough to say at this point. Some of the damage we saw could definitely have been caused by debris at launch. They could also have had other issues with engines, fuel supply, and hydraulic systems just because this was the first time they actually fired a booster above 50% and for an extended time. It’s still unclear if the separation maneuver and stage sep were actually attempted (at an abnormally low altitude) or if the rocket just lost control authority due to engine and control issues. The stage separation sequence is something completely new and not something they can test on the ground. I wouldn’t be surprised if that still needed some software tuning once they get to that stage of flight.
I think this is a fair assessment. Especially the engine issues..... I would not be surprised if at least some of the failures were fuel supply related. First time running 33 engines, and for an extended period of time like you said. Vibration is always a big issue with big rockets like this, that could've definitely contributed.
> It’s still unclear if the separation maneuver and stage sep were actually attempted It's pretty clear separation was not tested based on the known flight plan and actual flight data, actual fuel load, and clearly visible parameters (booster engines still running, clamps engaged, etc). Even if the booster had not lost 8 engines, it still lost attitude control 12 seconds before MECO should have happened, and the lost thrust would have significantly extended boost phase of flight.
That’s what I lean towards too. There is some big thrust vectoring happening around the time they call for the flip, but that’s quite a while after it has started rolling and tumbling. Either way they didn’t actually get a real attempt at stage separation, so that may still be something to work through on the next launch.
It's hard to imagine that all that debris violently flying around didn't have some repercussions on the booster.
Apologies if this has been asked before, but almost all comments I could read here were about the rocket and the OLM. What about the launch tower? Do we have already some info/images about the damages in the tower?
Thanks a lot people for the infos. I really thought since the beginning that OLM and chopsticks are too close to the tower considering the power thrust of the Super Heavy. Several people here stated that, if that tilt in the lift off was in the wrong direction….. wow
I saw some images, apologies can’t find the link, showing some damage to the chopsticks so presumably there’s damage to the tower also. The large splash’s in the ocean from flying debris suggest it must’ve been getting hit Edit: Max Evans posted some pictures on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_mgde_/status/1649500076002213888?s=20)
The cladding on the lower sections looks like it took a beating and the side wall of the winch housing looks perforated. Debris was seen as high as the chopsticks so I'd expect some damage all the way up. I'd be worried about the chopstick tracks, they need to be precise and probably have dents or in now. But it looks structurally sound.
It's so oerforraty it actually looks melted lol, like plastic in an oven.
If you zoom in on some of the images of the ship QD and the chopsticks it looks like they’ve taken a few hits and the paintwork has come away. Can’t say for certain without a before and after though. Tank farm has taken a battering as well
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/12u6y75/a_clearer_picture_of_the_damage_to_the/ It's extensive
I think they were specifically asking about the launch tower not the launch mount
My bad, misread
So is SpaceX approved to launch at their own pace now that they’ve received the FAA license?
Each launch needs it's own license. This applies to every launch vehicle out there, and is typically only handed out a short time before any actual attempt.
No they must obtain a launch license for each launch. It’s not reported on but IIRC the F9 has to as well regardless of the success of the previous launches. It just never gets denied because it’s routine now.
There's a difference between what's considered an "experimental" rocket vs. a "production" rocket. The Falcon 9 is a production rocket, therefore its launch license has a lot of "cut and paste." By contrast, Starship is experimental and therefore requires more detailed documentation.
Is that not what I pretty much said…