Posted on 04/20/2023 8:12:51 AM PDT by Red Badger
Story by mguenot@businessinsider.com (Marianne Guenot,Morgan McFall-Johnsen,Kate Duffy) • 13m ago
SpaceX launched its new Starship mega-rocket on Thursday after a frozen valve stopped the first attempt. The mega-rocket exploded about three minutes into its flight but managed to clear the pad. Musk previously said he estimated a 50% chance of success. SpaceX launched its new Starship mega-rocket toward space for the first time on Thursday, after canceling its first attempt due to a valve issue.
Stacked atop its Super Heavy booster at SpaceX's new launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, the black-and-silver vehicle was poised to prove itself as the biggest, most powerful rocket ever built.
The rocket successfully roared off the launch pad at 8:33 a.m. Central Time, but blew up about three minutes into the flight, at the point when it was due to separate from its booster.
Starship is the rocket on which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is hinging his biggest aspirations — including building and populating a human settlement on Mars. NASA, meanwhile, is counting on Starship to land its next astronauts on the moon as soon as 2025.
The company live-streamed the flight attempt, in the broadcast embedded below.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
“The mega-rocket exploded about three minutes into its flight but managed to clear the pad.”
LOL
Yep, all part of the process.
If anyone’s seen the special on Elon , he was 1 or 2 more falcon explosions away from going broke. He was heavily leveraged at that point and he said as much. He was so into what he was doing at space x he was using his other companies to support what was going on at space x.
Well it was a TEST flight, just getting off the pad and through MaxQ was a success. The lack of separation made all else problematic I think it was a great first try.
Agree. I really don’t understand the snide remarks from obviously ignorant people. Saying nothing would be better.
They blew it up when the boosters failed to separate at about 10 miles. Better to blow up before orbit because debris would have scattered over the earth instead on f staying local. This launch was a huge success!
The annou b cers used that expression because they thought it was funny. They did not have a clue..
Sub-sub-orbital.......................🤦♂️
I wondered if they had redundancy of engines....but did note that too. You could see it start to go wrong.
Fun lol.
Calls into question the wisdom of using...what was it I read? 30 engines?
A single engine plane is more reliable than a dual or tri-motor plane.
Compared to all the USAF/NASA early tests? Pretty much a success.
Yes, it was successful in comparison to those.
That’s why it’s called a ‘test’.................
One of their mottos is “fail fast and move on”...
Partial postmortem..... Raptor exploded causing the APU which provides hydraulics to gimbal the engines blew.. total loss of engine control which caused the tumble ... failure to separate also due to holding pins being hydrophilic also.
from Nasa Space flight youtube feed
How much did this rocket cost? Just the hardware...
Looks like they learned a lot for the next launch. At least it got off the pad - cleanup crews we’re ‘estatic’.
33 engines. There’s no way to achieve the thrust necessary with one engine. They will achieve success, watch.
SpaceX called it a “rapid disassembly” LOL. Talk about lipstick on porcines. IOW, it fell apart during the uncontrolled flipping. This was merely a launch test to see if, in Elon’s words, 1. It could launch; it did. 2. it would melt the launchpad on launch. It didn’t.
Great diagnostic information!
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