3 ms·

You do want to blow up (not deliberately though) this thing once though. If no prototype ever blows up before you start going into production, you never know so

You do want to blow up (not deliberately though) this thing once though. If no prototype ever blows up before you start going into production, you never know some pieces of information you’d gave gotten from monitoring the failure process.

kfrzcode 4y ago
Always curious what sort of monitoring is used here, pressure valves, temperature, could we assume there's ultra-high-FPS cameras at every useful vantage point? Would there be any vantage point you could put a camera(or other sensor) that wouldn't get destroyed in a catastrophic unplanned disassembly?
- dotnet00 4y ago
  Probably not many high FPS cameras, but a large number of the tiles, especially in the most interesting areas probably have lots of temperature and pressure sensors. Similarly probably one regular camera in each tank and similar pressure and temperature sensing. With the engines, IIRC these are refined Raptors which don't have the "christmas tree" of instrumentation, so probably just pressure and temperature in all the key areas.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The simplest sensor is the eyeball - "oh shit it exploded, it wasn't supposed to do that" tells you that something somewhere was calculated incorrectly or wasn't planned for. And knowing you have an issue is half the battle.
Robotbeat 4y ago
They've blown up SO many Starship prototypes now, I can't keep track. It has to be like more than 6, especially if you include MK1, etc. (This isn’t supposed to be a dig at SpaceX… just a factual statement. I find this risk-tolerant approach to be inspiring, actually.)
skissane 4y ago
They really don't want it to blow up on the launch pad. They've put a lot of work into the ground service equipment, and depending on how bad the damage is, blowing up on the pad could set them back months. It also isn't clear if they will have completely finished all the protections on the launch equipment (cladding, deluge, etc) before this test flight, so blowing up on the pad this time around might actually be worse than if it happened in some future test instead. Once it is well-clear of the pad – blowing up is a lot less bad. But still, ideally they want it to make at as far through the flight plan as possible. If it blows up early in the flight, there's a lot of stuff that happens later they won't even get the chance to test this time around. Sure, they'll get the chance to test it next time around – but that'll be another delay in an already delayed project.

kfrzcode 4y ago

Always curious what sort of monitoring is used here, pressure valves, temperature, could we assume there's ultra-high-FPS cameras at every useful vantage point? Would there be any vantage point you could put a camera(or other sensor) that wouldn't get destroyed in a catastrophic unplanned disassembly?

dotnet00 4y ago
Probably not many high FPS cameras, but a large number of the tiles, especially in the most interesting areas probably have lots of temperature and pressure sensors. Similarly probably one regular camera in each tank and similar pressure and temperature sensing. With the engines, IIRC these are refined Raptors which don't have the "christmas tree" of instrumentation, so probably just pressure and temperature in all the key areas.
bombcar 4y ago
The simplest sensor is the eyeball - "oh shit it exploded, it wasn't supposed to do that" tells you that something somewhere was calculated incorrectly or wasn't planned for. And knowing you have an issue is half the battle.

Robotbeat 4y ago

They've blown up SO many Starship prototypes now, I can't keep track. It has to be like more than 6, especially if you include MK1, etc. (This isn’t supposed to be a dig at SpaceX… just a factual statement. I find this risk-tolerant approach to be inspiring, actually.)

skissane 4y ago

They really don't want it to blow up on the launch pad. They've put a lot of work into the ground service equipment, and depending on how bad the damage is, blowing up on the pad could set them back months. It also isn't clear if they will have completely finished all the protections on the launch equipment (cladding, deluge, etc) before this test flight, so blowing up on the pad this time around might actually be worse than if it happened in some future test instead. Once it is well-clear of the pad – blowing up is a lot less bad. But still, ideally they want it to make at as far through the flight plan as possible. If it blows up early in the flight, there's a lot of stuff that happens later they won't even get the chance to test this time around. Sure, they'll get the chance to test it next time around – but that'll be another delay in an already delayed project.