Posted on 04/20/2023 8:39:48 AM PDT by Morgana
Elon Musk's SpaceX's Starship exploded into a ball of fire on 4/20 during its second failed orbital launch in a week.
The world's largest and most powerful rocket – which was unmanned - lifted off in South Texas and successfully cleared the launchpad, its first milestone.
But the craft was sent into a tailspin when the booster - called Super Heavy - failed to separate from the rocket in mid-air.
The mission ended at around four minutes when the failure sent both stages crashing toward Earth, imploding mid-descent over the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite the failed launch, the team at SpaceX reportedly cracked out champagne bottles and chanted 'go Starship' after the rocket's explosion. The entire Starship program cost around $3billion.
The companies leadership - including Musk - has repeatedly stressed the experimental nature of the launch and said any result that involved Starship getting off the launchpad would be a success.
Musk himself claimed last month that there was a 50 percent chance his spacecraft could explode during the launch.
The billionaire congratulated the SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship' about 20 minutes after the explosion.
'As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,' SpaceX tweeted.
The company shared on Twitter that its team will review data and work toward another flight for the rocket.
'With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,' SpaceX tweeted.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“a rapid unscheduled disassembly” LOL.
Rapid Elevation Deprivation.
“Musk himself claimed last month that there was a 50 percent chance his spacecraft could explode during the launch.”
It’s part of the process.
“a rapid unscheduled disassembly” LOL.
AKA Re-Kitting.
4 minutes of flight isn’t bad for a first attempt.
The rocket was basically obsolete. They have innovated far past it, so used it to learn what they could.
Catch fire like a Tesla.
Looked like several engines failed to ignite. And, when the engines gimbled and flipped the vehicle over for stage separation, they got stuck and the rocket pinwheeled.
Rocket science is hard.
Take note: It was a successful launch. This was a historic event.
The science-ignorant media just sees the flames at the event and wants to laugh at Musk.
The explosion occured after the primary mission was complete. If it could keep going, more goals were planned, and they would be nice to have, but it was a success, not a failure.
Keep watching how this is covered, it tells you everything.
It had major Separation Anxiety.
A C++ launch, having left the new launch tower intact, and made it past Max Q before exploding.
There was only a 1 previous booster test for 5 seconds with 31 engines firing. Full thrust of 33 through the launch was not assured.
Making it past Max Q or Maximum Mechanical Stress was another huge milestone. Separation would have been the next milestone.
Great success, SpaceX!
Next tine will be even more successful in the test-to-failure cycle.
Too bad the launch ultimately failed, but hopefully enough data was secured to enable corrections so that ultimately manned flight to Mars, (and elsewhere) is possible. For it is only when Man can live off the planet will he be a successful species. Good Luck Elon
It cleared the tower and it flew through max Q. Successful day.
Sabotage?
Not bloody likely.
Who’d do it? The Chinese?
The thing about Musk is he throws a lot of things at the wall, many of which fail. But he does it quickly, applies changes to incorporate lessons learned and comes out swinging. What I’ve learned about him, from losing money betting against him, is that he’s a degenerate gambler, but a really smart guy who really does learn from his mistakes. What’s more, he learns in a way that isn’t just about platitudes, but is effective in overcoming those mistakes, way late and way over-budget, but ultimately successful in coming out with a working product. What differentiates his products from the rest is that they are typically things that customers want to buy, at scale, that nobody else can quite replicate with remotely the same features and price.
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