Posted on 11/18/2023 7:38:57 AM PST by FarCenter
The second test launch of SpaceX's Starship got off to a successful start Saturday, with the booster separating from the spaceship, but both then exploded shortly after over the ocean.
"Such an incredibly successful day," a SpaceX announcer said. "Even though we did have a… rapid unscheduled disassembly of both the Super Heavy Booster and the ship."
The largest rocket ever built -- Elon Musk hopes it will one day be used to colonize Mars -- blasted off from the company's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas shortly after 7:00 am local.
Unlike the previous such attempt in April, the booster rocket separated successfully from the mega ship, but then blew up, followed shortly by the spaceship itself.
Bill Nelson, head of the NASA space agency, which is awaiting a modified version of Starship to land humans on the Moon, said Saturday's attempt showed progress.
"Congrats to the teams who made progress on today's flight test," he said on X, formerly Twitter. "Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Today's test is an opportunity to learn -- then fly again."
"It was a fantastic partial success," space scientist Laura Forczyk told AFP. "It surpassed my expectations."
Compared to the first attempt to fly the spaceship in its fully stacked configuration back in April, Spaceship made it further into flight Saturday, with the booster breaking away from the ship before disintegrating.
"As you could see, the Super Heavy Booster has just experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly; however, our ship is still underway," an announcer said.
As the booster fell off, the upper stage started what was meant to be a partial trip around the Earth -- it was scheduled to fall into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii after 90 minutes -- but it too blew up.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
In the 1950s when they blew up rockets they did not have press agents crowing about “success”.
In those days they knew it meant they had some hard work ahead of them.
A lot of fuel onboard the booster: yes ... they had flipped it, and were starting the “return to launch site” maneuver when it blew. Falcon-9 also has a lot of fuel on board at that phase of landing.
All 33 engines running properly: Yes ... I’m convinced that the booster engine problems on Launch 1 were caused by launch pad debris.
Agree: big questions now are revolve around what failed after all the successful milestones.
A lot of people here do not understand prototype testing AT ALL and are displaying a poisonous combination of arrogant snark and abysmal ignorance.
In regards to any Musk endeavor, the media will always portray it in a negative light. This test launch was a big step forward
- All first stage Raptor engines performed nominally - in comparison to the many that failed on the first due on large part to launch pad design that allowed back pressures to damage them
- The “hot” separation went well. The first stage did fail during rotation maneuvers, very possibly due to damage from the second stage separation. SpaceX was expecting damage and this will provide critical data on how to reinforce for future tests.
- The six Raptor engines on the second stage performed flawlessly. An unknown situation caused the auto destruct to kick in at / near the moment of engine shut down. Possible software glitch.
This mission was nearly fully successful in all aspects - considering that this is only the second flight of the whole rocket. Musk has a lot of smart engineers on the project and to advance so far as quickly as they have is a credit to this project
They’d be a lot farther along, and able to run a faster prototype spiral, if the FAA didn’t have its head up its thermal exhaust port.
The bottom apparently exploded when trying to reignite its engines for reentry, well after separating from Starship.
It might have had something to do with the “hot separation” (ignition of Starship engines before separating, to force separation)
The really frustrating part, for the test engineers, is having to rely on telemetry only ... you don’t get to examine the wreckage.
The big thing was it didn’t do anything that would let the FAA stop the next flight over safety concerns.
Good point.
The world’s largest bottle rocket. Success!
They didn’t have naggers like you either.
If they had press agents claiming success for the latest explosion even five year old me would have been “nagging” them....
;-)
Good posts, thanks .. and roger that yugely re the FAA!
“The second test launch of SpaceX’s Starship got off to a successful start Saturday, with the booster separating from the spaceship, but both then exploded shortly after over the ocean.
“Such an incredibly successful day,” a SpaceX announcer said. “Even though we did have a… rapid unscheduled disassembly of both the Super Heavy Booster and the ship.””
LOL
The “Nasaspaceflight” ewetewb channel is currently live with cameras pointed at the apparently undamaged launch structure.
Hmmm ... No flying chunks of concrete ... all 33 engines fired properly. Coincidence, I’m sure.
Good job on the redesign, rebuild of the launch structure!
In the 1950s when they blew up rockets they did not have press agents crowing about “success”.
—
In the 50s they were working on one-offs. Every problem had to be solved before the next one was launched.
Starship testing is based on rapid prototyping to failure. Which means rapid launches where some problems are solved and others are not before the next launch.
There were many successes in today’s launch worth cheering about.
Second stage made it to 24,000 KPH before telemetry died. 26,000 KPH is orbital velocity. Second stage went pretty much the whole way. The hot staging was a success. The first stage was terminated. The engine malfunctions were likely due to pressure loss in the methane tanks due to the heat from the first stage.
This was a wildly successful launch all things considered.
CNN reports that Starship was given a destruct signal when SpaceX lost telemetry contact, to ensure it didn’t go off course. So Starship was predominantly a success. Figure they will add communications redundancy for next time.
“This was a wildly successful launch all things considered.”
I heartily agree. They learned a lot for the next test.
First, you have to go to what SpaceX defines as their mission on these test flights.
They have CONSISTENTLY said their goal is not perfection, it’s FAIL FAST - it’s a different engineering philosophy, thus they move 10x faster and get results 20x less expensive than NASA.
Educate yourself on the cost to orbit for SpaceX Falcon9 (249 and counting successful missions to orbit and landing) vs NASA. Literally they are approaching 1000 times less costly than NASA.
And folks like you just throw rocks.
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