Kind of an odd headline...
“rapid unscheduled disassembly” was cute the first time I heard it from Musk, but now it’s worn-out and trite.
I missed the live launch, but am wondering if debris from the booster blowing up may have caused the upper stage explosion ?
“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.”
Dead astronauts are in NASA’s future—with claims of “success”.
Mostly successful?
Mostly peaceful?
Mostly safe and somewhat effective?
You see the trend?
Now give me the participation trophy!!/LOL
Well it is a Prototype but it flew much better
This is incredible progress to see. The system has extended and will eventually become successful. Brings back so many great work memories.
All the other people making snarky comments have no clue about test flights and how the entire history of aviation was made possible by people not afraid to try and not afraid to fail.
The Man in the Arena speech by Teddy Roosevelt comes to mind here.
1) That was certainly the largest set of mach diamonds ever.
2) All 33 engines performed properly through boost. Success.
3) Clean stage separation. Success.
4) All six engines started properly. Success.
6) Second stage exited atmosphere. Success.
Snarky jackasses need to choke on their own dirty socks.
We won't know until the telemetry and video is analyzed but it appears that the booster stage did not get the expected engine burn pattern after staging. This would cause the trajectory to go outside the flight safety envelope which would initiate flight termination.
The second stage data requires more analysis. The only thing I could see was premature thrust termination.
Compared to the Atlas program that I worked on, these flights have been very successful considering the learning curve is usually based on failure analysis. The Atlas had so many initial failures that when one finally worked the launch crew renamed the missile the "AT LAST".
I fully understand how a launch that could look like a disaster could be the experience needed to prove that certain aspects are working, and others need to continue being fixed. My only complaint is how giddily happy the announcers were throughout the flight, rather than presenting honestly, “These worked, these didn’t, no one died thank God, now back to the drawing board to fix what’s still wrong.”
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
The world’s largest bottle rocket. Success!
“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
A successful failure. Only the government can do this.
It hit the Firmament.
A long way still to go. Keep going Mr Musk, you’re doing great things.
Starship test ship and booster explode.
Feds charge Elon Musk with littering.