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 ...
My criticism is not of the test launches.
My criticism is of the “spinner” press agents.
It hit the Firmament.
If I were inclined to wager, I’d place a small bet against 100 in 2023, but hope to lose the bet.
Next Falcon-9 is a Starlink deployment, scheduled for tomorrow.
A long way still to go. Keep going Mr Musk, you’re doing great things.
It’s called a RUD it happens, go back and try again
I agree that descent was probably supposed to use the inner engines. The failure of some of them to reignite, or stay lit, is something they will probably be looking at.
Musk needs Starship to lift his Starlink V2 satellites. Falcon can only lift the “V2 mini” version.
Starship can also act as a space station module, and a way to recover failing large satellites.
With a low enough cost-to-orbit, we can do things like another Webb Telescope.
All true, but doesn’t erase the market for small and medium lift launch vehicles. It opens new possibilites.
A worthy read is “The Right Stuff”, by Tom Wolfe. Loved the “Shepherd’s Prayer”.
These are proto-types not production rockets, spacex tests to fail and keeps upgrading the next booster and starship.
Well they have 3 launch pads 2 at Kennedy and 1 at Vandenberg so a 100 launchs in a year is very due able starlink helps too
Nope. Far apart from each other. Both exploded from flight termination software and hardware.
The booster deviated from it's scheduled return trajectory, and was automatically terminated. Quite a while later, the upper stage ship deviated from it's suborbital trajectory and the flight termination software triggered the termination of the ship. All it takes is for the ship to be off one degree of it's orbit, for it to hit Hawaii rather than land in the water nearby. Safer to terminate it than try to nudge it back on trajectory.
Yes, and thanks for that.
A couple posters upthread explained it as well, as I’d not yet seen video re Starship having done it’s sep and gotten waaaay downrange.
Musk and the SpaceX team are doing amazing work, and would be even further along if the worthless Feds would get the hell out of their way.
Agree. Not just worthless Feds, but state, county and city government also are incompetent and many are worthless. State transportation departments can't fix highways so they contract it out, and private companies get it fixed in a fraction of the time and cost that the state projected. Gets worse at the city level. But the Feds are worst at overspending, delaying progress, and screwing up things in general.
I am surprised the feds let them launch the 2nd test flight as quick as they did. Rebuilding the launch pad and making improvements to the rocket in a matter of 7 months is awesome.
Exactly, calling a double blow-up a success is disengenous and lame.
Detail what happened, including positive progress over the first attempt, but rate it a success? Not so much.
One can’t honestly gussy-up the events with happy-face cheerleading and maintain any credibility.
Next time should be better and hopefully an actual success.
Onward, Elon and company!
I do love watching the prototype testing for these big rockets. The failures are always expected, surprising, and spectacular.
Can’t wait for the next launch.
Better stand back!
Bingo!
He is subsidized, heavily and contracted by NASA.
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