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[Merged] SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Explodes After Launch/Starship hop

Thermal said:
Haven't we had the whole "reliably getting that puppy up there" thing worked out for generations? Are they experimenting with a new technology or something?
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New technology. This aims to be fully reusable on a much cheaper, faster, and safer scale than the space shuttles were.

And this thing is huge. Apollo scale, or a little bigger.
 
I just watched the SpaceX YouTube broadcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI

Not shocking, but I was still hoping for success.

I do have a question, though: during flight, there was a point where you could see the individual engines on the booster from below (around the 46:20 mark). Not all the engines were lit. I know the design is intended to work even with a few engine failures, but they were also saying that at that point in the flight profile, around max Q, they had reduced thrust. Does anyone know if those engines shut off by design as part of reducing thrust, or if they shut down because of some problem?
 
crescent said:
New technology. This aims to be fully reusable on a much cheaper, faster, and safer scale than the space shuttles were.

And this thing is huge. Apollo scale, or a little bigger.
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I gathered that it is bigger than the Sat V, but I didn't think by enough to start square cubing novel problems. Exploding going up seems like one of the things we would have reliably resolved though. I suppose the reusability causes substantial engineering differences versus stage jettisoning though
 
Don't worry, kids! Ironman is safe!

ETA: Follow his next exciting adventures in Tony Stark Comics! Coming soon to a drugstore near you!
 
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SpaceX described the boom as "rapid unscheduled disassembly". :)

Reminds me of a report I once read on a design fault on an aeroplane which it said could cause it to make "premature or inadvertant contact with the ground".
 
Musk, in a tweet, called it “an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.”

In the weeks leading up to the flight, Musk gave 50-50 odds that the spacecraft would reach orbit.
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So it was a great success then? :confused:
 
Thermal said:
I gathered that it is bigger than the Sat V, but I didn't think by enough to start square cubing novel problems. Exploding going up seems like one of the things we would have reliably resolved though. I suppose the reusability causes substantial engineering differences versus stage jettisoning though
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From what I saw, it seemed like they had a problem at the stage separation. Rockets are typically designed so that you can blow them up on purpose if you encounter a problem, and while they didn't explicitly state that in the video, it wouldn't surprise me if they made the decision to intentionally detonate the thing. That's better than having a rocket full of fuel crashing back to earth in an uncontrolled manner.
 
It appeared to become thoroughly unstable before the end. Whether it simply fell apart or was aborted by the range officer we'll no doubt find out in due course.

edit, Blancolirio reported that it failed to separate at the end of the first stage flight and started to tumble so it was destroyed.
 
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Darat said:
It achieved its major milestone - which was the launch itself, this was never going to go into space.
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It was never going to go into orbit. They did plan on it going into space, and if everything had gone perfectly it would have. Given their rapid prototyping model it's OK that things didn't go to plan, but the plan was still space.
 
GlennB said:
Video below, fireworks about 5 minutes in. Quite why the crowd is whooping and cheering I have no idea.

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Because, as others have said, this was a remarkably successful first integrated test flight. They're applauding because they have a giant pile of flight test data.
 
Ziggurat said:
It was never going to go into orbit. They did plan on it going into space, and if everything had gone perfectly it would have.
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"This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today."

- Randall Munroe, Up Goer Five.
 
CNN reports:
The massive Super Heavy rocket booster, which houses 33 engines, lifted off and sent a massive boom across the coastal landscape as it fired to life. The Starship spacecraft, riding atop the booster, soared out over the Gulf of Mexico. About two and a half minutes after takeoff, the Super Heavy rocket booster was scheduled to expend most of its fuel and separate from the Starship spacecraft, leaving the booster to be discarded in the ocean. The Starship was meant to use its own engines, blazing for more than six minutes, to propel itself to nearly orbital speeds. The flight reached its highest point 24.2 miles (39 kilometers) above the ground and the explosion occurred about four minutes after liftoff, according to SpaceX. CNN news link
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As has been widely reported, a fundamental difference between SpaceX and Nasa is, SpaceX is okay with "fiery mishaps," arguing accidents are the fastest way to get data. NASA prefers slower, more methodical testing.

One observer said it looked to him like a major problem was detected by the spaceship's systems and the ship blew itself up. Moment SpaceX explodes below:
 

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Oh come on, I am as much againstthe edification of Elon as well as others...but projects of this magnitude will have failures. One learns from them.

Now... his TeslaBot though....
 
In other news, Twitter has announced that the word "explosion" and all its variants and synonyms will henceforth be restricted to paid Twitter Blue accounts.

Poe's Law advisory: no, not really.
 
SpaceX refers to it as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
SpaceX
@SpaceX
As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation
8:42 AM · Apr 20, 2023
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I was really just hoping that, after some decades of designing and building liquid fuel rockets, someone could get it right the first time. :(
 
JayUtah said:
That's a term of art in our industry. Also, when the rocket crashes into the ocean, we say "The payload was successfully inserted into hydrosynchronous orbit."
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I only worked with flight crews so that wasn't a phrase I heard bandied about. [emoji12]
But the 'rapid disassembly' must go back to the Redstone days... or a crack about the early Soviet attempts. [emoji1]

Black humor... as critical a supply in aerospace as coffee. [emoji106]
 
In a tweet, Musk called it “an exciting test launch of Starship!"
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Another BIG win for the E man!!!
 

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Gord_in_Toronto said:
I was really just hoping that, after some decades of designing and building liquid fuel rockets, someone could get it right the first time. :(
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It's new technology and new scale.
And don't forget United Launch Alliance had a massive failure on the test stand a couple of weeks ago. That's a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed, who've been doing this for decades.
 
Mixed Feelings: I love seeing Musk even more humilaited, but am afraid this will give more ammo to the Luddites who hate the idea of Space Travel.
 
Trebuchet said:
It's new technology and new scale.
And don't forget United Launch Alliance had a massive failure on the test stand a couple of weeks ago. That's a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed, who've been doing this for decades.
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Back in the late 50's, NASA had a number of humiliating failures early on in the Mercury program.
 
dudalb said:
And now Musk has that disasterous launch at Space X to deal with. Karma, baby, Karma.
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A such as I enjoy bashing Musk, the launch fulfilled SpaceX's objectivea, so it isn't fair to call it "disastrous."
 
The was no remote destruct capability. It looked like the Automated Flight Safety System worked.
 
a_unique_person said:
First flight of the massive booster and it functioned as designed.
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I am not sure that's correct. Obviously several of the engines in the booster failed.

But they are going to learn a lot. One of the first lessons might be that launch pads usually have flame trenches and sound dampening for a good reason. It is pretty much just a guess right now, but I think one or more of the engines may have been damaged at ignition by debris, flames, or sound.
 
dudalb said:
Back in the late 50's, NASA had a number of humiliating failures early on in the Mercury program.
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"The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe portrayed this very well, against the backdrop of the Cold War.
 
jadebox said:
I am not sure that's correct. Obviously several of the engines in the booster failed.

But they are going to learn a lot. One of the first lessons might be that launch pads usually have flame trenches and sound dampening for a good reason. It is pretty much just a guess right now, but I think one or more of the engines may have been damaged at ignition by debris, flames, or sound.
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I actually read an article about the flame dampening system, but I can't find it right now.

Basically, SpaceX got to waive off a bunch of environmental review under the Trump administration. So under Biden they had to do catchup. They started and have now apparently completed an EIS for use of the Boca Chica facility.

So they did that and got it approved for testing, but need to do more if they want to use it for commercial orbital launch. The flame trench thing is one of the items they need to complete, and seems to be the one that environmentalists are most angry as regards it not being completed prior to the test launches of the Heavy.
 
newyorkguy said:
This morning's SpaceX launch ended just minutes after liftoff when the rocket exploded. From the New York Times:
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I'm a bad person - my first thought when I saw the headline was to laugh.

Thermal said:
Haven't we had the whole "reliably getting that puppy up there" thing worked out for generations? Are they experimenting with a new technology or something?
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Elon gotta Elon.

Quite why we're spending trillions of dollars to replace technology that we know works for something as huge as travel to the moon, I have no idea. Payloads don't appear to be significantly more, and the reusable nature is a red herring for moon missions.

alfaniner said:
SpaceX refers to it as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
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That is pure gold.
 
Trebuchet said:
It's new technology and new scale.
And don't forget United Launch Alliance had a massive failure on the test stand a couple of weeks ago. That's a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed, who've been doing this for decades.
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If the rest of the world designed stuff that went poof, poof, poof until they got it right, the poor firefighters would never have time to go home for lunch. Just saying.
 
The Atheist said:
I'm a bad person - my first thought when I saw the headline was to laugh.



Elon gotta Elon.

Quite why we're spending trillions of dollars to replace technology that we know works for something as huge as travel to the moon, I have no idea. Payloads don't appear to be significantly more, and the reusable nature is a red herring for moon missions.



That is pure gold.
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The only plus I see that the thing looks exactly like the rocketships pictured In Dare Dare in 1950. See https://www.flickr.com/photos/62726314@N07/51254408619 for example.
 
The Atheist said:
Quite why we're spending trillions of dollars to replace technology that we know works for something as huge as travel to the moon, I have no idea. Payloads don't appear to be significantly more, and the reusable nature is a red herring for moon missions.
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The US government is paying SpaceX about $3 billion to develop a lunar lander. That's dirt cheap. Most of Starship's development costs are being paid for by SpaceX, which plans to earn back those costs primarily through non-moon missions. If you want to complain about excessive costs, look to the Space Launch System (SLS), not Starship.

And we don't have the technology to travel to the moon anymore, at least not in the economic sense. All the tooling for the Saturn V production is long gone, it's an outdated design that we have no reason to return to, and it wasn't particularly safe to begin with. It's a matter of luck that the Apollo 1 launch pad fire was the only fatal accident.

The reusability of both Starship and the Super Heavy Booster is not a red herring at all, it's a really big deal if SpaceX can achieve it. Both are useful for a **** ton of other missions, not just the moon mission. Compare that with the SLS, which will probably never be used for any other missions.
 
Ziggurat said:
I just watched the SpaceX YouTube broadcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI

Not shocking, but I was still hoping for success.

I do have a question, though: during flight, there was a point where you could see the individual engines on the booster from below (around the 46:20 mark). Not all the engines were lit. I know the design is intended to work even with a few engine failures, but they were also saying that at that point in the flight profile, around max Q, they had reduced thrust. Does anyone know if those engines shut off by design as part of reducing thrust, or if they shut down because of some problem?
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Judging from the commentary, all the engines were supposed to be lit. But, like you pointed out, there is redundancy built into the system, this shouldn't affect the mission. Perhaps there was a failure of the separation system.


There is a reason the commentators were still fairly happy, most of the mission objectives were met despite the failure at the end.
 
Speculation from Harvard astrophysicist- pad was damaged during takeoff, chunks of concrete could be seen flying up damaging some engines and hydraulic lines, redesign of launch pad may be required
 
dudalb said:
Back in the late 50's, NASA had a number of humiliating failures early on in the Mercury program.
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That's true, but since then we've advanced well past the "every launch an explosion until we finally get it right" phase of rocket development. For instance, SLS's very first launch just worked, and its payload arrived at its destination.

SpaceX rockets explode so much during their development due to their choice of methodology, which is basically winging it and skimping on R&D to reduce time between headlines because that's how you keep investors happy.

The way rockets physically interact with the atmosphere is very, very, very well known; the physics are calculable and predictable. There's no scientific or engineering reason why you need exploded rockets to "collect data" in order to make sure you've designed your rocket correctly, that's just spin (no pun intended in this case).
 
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