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People need to make sure to maintain their expectations. This launch is not a failure if the rocket blows up soon after take off. They have an assembly facility

People need to make sure to maintain their expectations. This launch is not a failure if the rocket blows up soon after take off. They have an assembly facility built to build these vehicles quicker and quicker and every new vehicle is modified from the last. The only thing that would be a failure is if it blows up on/near the pad and damages the facilities they've built over the last two years or so that would put another delay in the testing regime. This rocket is significantly more "slapped together" than past rockets and has been designed in a way to minimize cost as much as possible. It would be extremely surprising in fact for this flight to be a complete success.

consumer451 4y ago
If it does make it to the planned apogee, I am curious what percentage of heat shield tiles will remain attached all the way to splash. My uninformed gut tells me that this might be a problem area.
- cubefox 4y ago
  Yeah, how the heat shield holds up seems one of the most interesting topics. But they only have very limited options of investigating damages on their first attempt, since they won't recover the upper stage. So they have to rely on sensor data and possibly photo/video. More recent prototypes don't even have a heat shield anymore. The heat shield will probably come into focus when they try to recover the upper stage. But initially their focus will be on recovering the lower stage, since it has way more engines, which makes it more expensive.
  - consumer451 4y ago
    > More recent prototypes don't even have a heat shield anymore Is this for a reusable Starship, or just the lunar lander mission for Artemis?
    - cubefox 4y ago
      For the partly reusable Starship, which will be used for orbital satellite launches well before Artemis 3. It seems they first just go for reusing the lower stage, similar to Falcon 9.
cubefox 4y ago
Even supposedly skeptical people are expecting too much, including the rocket exploding, and the launch attempt not being boring. More likely is a launch abort without anything interesting happening.
sbuttgereit 4y ago
I'd agree with this. When I need to take "look away" breaks from work, I check some of the streams focused on the SpaceX facilities in Boca Chica; so I've stayed pretty current with the happenings there and the progress with the program. I think I'd characterize the possible test launch results like this: 1) Significant failure: the rocket catastrophically fails on the pad, damaging the ground equipment significantly. 2) Program setback: the rocket clears the pad, but fails to reach Max Q and requires significant redesigns (we might see some built prototypes scrapped if that's the case) or if the ground equipment needs significant redesign or repair after launch; I exclude the addition of deluge from that since it probably won't be there for first launch, but is already planned for installation. 3) Somewhat successful: the rocket gets off the pad and fails to reach Max Q, but the failure is the result of some less fundamental issue such as valves getting stuck, etc. causing termination of the flight. 4) Success: the rocket gets past Max Q without significant issue. 5) Very successful: Ship achieves planned trajectory. And everything thereafter is just gravy (soft landings, tiles not falling off, etc).
- cubefox 4y ago
  Though you forgot the option where the launch is scrubbed due to technical problems and nothing happens. For example, SLS launched only on its third attempt, which was associated with a delay of 2.5 months.
  - sbuttgereit 4y ago
    Not forgotten, intentionally excluded. Aborts/scrubs are almost certainly going to happen and, in the vast majority of cases, the ability to correctly identify abort/scrub a launch attempt is part of success criteria: not a failure. Failing to abort when it should have aborted ends up in one of my other categories related to failure modes. All rockets, including those well out of their testing programs, will abort/scrub at some point. Just this past week a Falcon 9 mission out of Vandenberg AFB was automatically aborted at 3 seconds and then rescheduled a couple of times before successfully delivering its payload to orbit. I would count that a success: they didn't destroy the rocket, they didn't destroy the payload, and they got the payload to where it was suppose to go. Successful despite the abort. The only case I can think of where an abort would indicate a failure would be if they have to pull the rocket off the OLM and do extensive modifications or redesign on something. I don't anticipate that... that kind of problem almost certainly will end in some flight anomaly rather than an on-pad abort. We could say that the SLS rollback to the VAB was this kind of failure, but it was relatively minor... they fixed some stuff that they couldn't do so at the pad, but didn't really do any significant redesign or rebuild. I don't expect that sort of scenario for Starship. Starship isn't dealing with finicky liquid hydrogen and appears to be overall much more serviceable than SLS.

consumer451 4y ago

If it does make it to the planned apogee, I am curious what percentage of heat shield tiles will remain attached all the way to splash. My uninformed gut tells me that this might be a problem area.

cubefox 4y ago
Yeah, how the heat shield holds up seems one of the most interesting topics. But they only have very limited options of investigating damages on their first attempt, since they won't recover the upper stage. So they have to rely on sensor data and possibly photo/video. More recent prototypes don't even have a heat shield anymore. The heat shield will probably come into focus when they try to recover the upper stage. But initially their focus will be on recovering the lower stage, since it has way more engines, which makes it more expensive.
- consumer451 4y ago
  > More recent prototypes don't even have a heat shield anymore Is this for a reusable Starship, or just the lunar lander mission for Artemis?
  - cubefox 4y ago
    For the partly reusable Starship, which will be used for orbital satellite launches well before Artemis 3. It seems they first just go for reusing the lower stage, similar to Falcon 9.

cubefox 4y ago

Even supposedly skeptical people are expecting too much, including the rocket exploding, and the launch attempt not being boring. More likely is a launch abort without anything interesting happening.

sbuttgereit 4y ago

I'd agree with this. When I need to take "look away" breaks from work, I check some of the streams focused on the SpaceX facilities in Boca Chica; so I've stayed pretty current with the happenings there and the progress with the program. I think I'd characterize the possible test launch results like this: 1) Significant failure: the rocket catastrophically fails on the pad, damaging the ground equipment significantly. 2) Program setback: the rocket clears the pad, but fails to reach Max Q and requires significant redesigns (we might see some built prototypes scrapped if that's the case) or if the ground equipment needs significant redesign or repair after launch; I exclude the addition of deluge from that since it probably won't be there for first launch, but is already planned for installation. 3) Somewhat successful: the rocket gets off the pad and fails to reach Max Q, but the failure is the result of some less fundamental issue such as valves getting stuck, etc. causing termination of the flight. 4) Success: the rocket gets past Max Q without significant issue. 5) Very successful: Ship achieves planned trajectory. And everything thereafter is just gravy (soft landings, tiles not falling off, etc).

cubefox 4y ago
Though you forgot the option where the launch is scrubbed due to technical problems and nothing happens. For example, SLS launched only on its third attempt, which was associated with a delay of 2.5 months.
- sbuttgereit 4y ago
  Not forgotten, intentionally excluded. Aborts/scrubs are almost certainly going to happen and, in the vast majority of cases, the ability to correctly identify abort/scrub a launch attempt is part of success criteria: not a failure. Failing to abort when it should have aborted ends up in one of my other categories related to failure modes. All rockets, including those well out of their testing programs, will abort/scrub at some point. Just this past week a Falcon 9 mission out of Vandenberg AFB was automatically aborted at 3 seconds and then rescheduled a couple of times before successfully delivering its payload to orbit. I would count that a success: they didn't destroy the rocket, they didn't destroy the payload, and they got the payload to where it was suppose to go. Successful despite the abort. The only case I can think of where an abort would indicate a failure would be if they have to pull the rocket off the OLM and do extensive modifications or redesign on something. I don't anticipate that... that kind of problem almost certainly will end in some flight anomaly rather than an on-pad abort. We could say that the SLS rollback to the VAB was this kind of failure, but it was relatively minor... they fixed some stuff that they couldn't do so at the pad, but didn't really do any significant redesign or rebuild. I don't expect that sort of scenario for Starship. Starship isn't dealing with finicky liquid hydrogen and appears to be overall much more serviceable than SLS.