SpaceX Rocket

[citoyen]

Isn't it supposed to be re-useable?

[SoreTween]

Muskrat has been saying for a long time that for first flight all he cares about is not destroying what he calls 'Stage zero' - the ground infrastructure.  Building a new rocket is easy, they're set up to do that day in day out.  Tanks farms, towers and all the rest of it - not so much.  Today's reaction from him & the team is far from a hasty move along, nothing to see here.  There's a two part Everyday Astronaut interview touring Boca Chica with Musk, it's interesting for many reasons.

[SoreTween]

Isn't it supposed to be re-useable?

Eventually but that was never the plan for this test article.  Design wise it is was way out of date.

[rogerzilla]

He'll probably flog the bits on eBay as souvenirs.

[quixoticgeek]

Don't park too close to the launch pad ...

https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649053476276797440

J

[Kim]

I'm wondering if they seriously expected it to blow up on the pad, which by all accounts is now in need of a bit of refurbishing.  Normally a launch pad has a flame trench and deluge system to contain all the FIRE...

Still, the booster, which has never flown before, did an admirable job - plusminus the six engines that shut down for some reason.  It's probably not the booster's fault that it didn't really know what to do with itself after staging failed (and presumably they let it spin around for a bit to collect data before hitting the Big Red Button).

We shouldn't underestimate how significant an innovation the Raptor engine actually is, and I don't think any of the Raptor 2s had actually flown before now?

[TimC]

I'll wait for Scott Manley's analysis, but I think most in the industry will see that as a remarkably successful test. They'll have gathered huge amounts of useful data before the RUD. Even if the flight had been completed as hoped, none of the vehicle or its parts were ever intended to be recovered so the loss was expected.

[chrisbainbridge]

I was coming to say something similar to TimC.  I know this was Elon and we all want to pile on but this was by all accounts highly successful for what they wanted to demonstrate which was lift off and passing this specific junction of maximum force or something.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Worth remembering that spacex is actually run by Gwynne Shotwell.

Doubt Lone has much to do with it, apart from providing cars to be flung into space.

[L CC]

Worth remembering that spacex is actually run by Gwynne Shotwell.

Doubt Lone has much to do with it, apart from providing cars to be flung into space.

Apparently not so. Mr Smith has a weird fascination with Musk and according to his biographer, Musk is right in there at everything in SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter....

[quixoticgeek]

https://youtu.be/w8q24QLXixo

Stage 0 really didn't come out of that well...

Reusable rockets, non reusable launch pad...

Next up flame redirection, and mist systems ?

J

[TimC]

As expected (and linked by QG) Scott Manley’s analysis is very interesting. As he says, they wanted to avoid having diverters as they need to show the rocket can lift off an unprepared site (moon or Mars) without damage. Think they’re going to have to go back to the drawing board on that one. The aerodynamics of the whole vehicle are odd, and rely on precise controllability of thrust vectoring to keep it on track, and of course the engine failures compromised that. I suspect they may need to add aerodynamic controls to the first stage, which (if large enough) would allow a degree of thrust failure without loss of control. That would need an entire redesign of the launch pad, which is non-trivial.

[SoreTween]

I suspect they may need to add aerodynamic controls to the first stage, which (if large enough) would allow a degree of thrust failure without loss of control.

They are looking at reducing the movable surfaces that cause the ascent instability in the first place.  They cause other problems too, mainly they are complex shapes & intersections that require heat shielding.  That's not to say they won't need some kind of aerodynamic control but it is very musk Musk's mantra to eliminate complexity first and only add more (in this case aerodynamic structures) where unavoidable.

Here's the 2021 muskrat tour mentioned above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA8ZBJWo73E

Here's a 2022 update, the first includes Musk saying the upper flaps may be deleted & lots of other discussion around them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ux6B3bvO0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP5k3ZzPf_0

[TimC]

I need to set aside a couple of hours to watch those!

[Kim]

As he says, they wanted to avoid having diverters as they need to show the rocket can lift off an unprepared site (moon or Mars) without damage.

Yes, but that would be the Starship on its own, not the booster.  That's a lot less thrust and doesn't seem to have destroyed the pad in their previous tests.

Sorting out the launch pad at the current site would appear to require non-trivial amounts of civil engineering.  There's a reason that it's an unpopulated area, after all.

[andrewc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZwElJpTTs


Well the Starship got up.   A pity about the Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of the booster.......

[quixoticgeek]

seems they lost the starship too...

as in they don't know where it is, not as in boom, Tho boom may also have happened...

J

[Canardly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZwElJpTTs


Well the Starship got up.   A pity about the Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of the booster.......

Is this also known as Kaboom?

[quixoticgeek]

Is this also known as Kaboom?

Yep.

J

[spesh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZwElJpTTs


Well the Starship got up.   A pity about the Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of the booster.......

Is this also known as Kaboom?

Yes Rico, kaboom.

[DaveJ]

Watching it, it looked as if the Starship had also had a rapid unscheduled disassembly too, several minutes before they acknowledged that they'd lost it too.  Big white flash, not as big as the Booster one, but still quite bright.
The Booster had two thirds of its engines running before it gave up. The other third were all together.  I guess that would cause it to tumble violently. Falcon doesn't run all of the first stage engines at that point, so I wonder whether Booster was supposed to be running so many.

[quixoticgeek]

Watching it, it looked as if the Starship had also had a rapid unscheduled disassembly too, several minutes before they acknowledged that they'd lost it too.  Big white flash, not as big as the Booster one, but still quite bright.
The Booster had two thirds of its engines running before it gave up. The other third were all together.  I guess that would cause it to tumble violently. Falcon doesn't run all of the first stage engines at that point, so I wonder whether Booster was supposed to be running so many.

According to everyday astronaut, it was supposed to run 3 at that stage...

J

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

When will it carry a crew?

[Mr Larrington]

[Flite]

Reminds me of the Tom Leherer song:

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department, " says Wernher von Braun.