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SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas

• sunjester 4y ago
  As planned. awesome.
• justeleblanc 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • censor_me 4y ago
    [dead]
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This was a test flight so it lasted long enough to do its job. They seemed quite pleased.
• bhouston 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • SonOfKyuss 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • censor_me 4y ago
        [dead]
    • bhouston 4y ago
      This article focuses on the failure and everyone is focused on the failure. I am saying that this is because many people don't understand that this is actually a success. A lot of people tend to take glee in things failing for Musk because of his views now, but this isn't really a failure, it is just a muted success. I am woke now because I don't support allowing harassment of others? This is the first time anyone has ever called me woke.
    • cool_dude85 4y ago
      [flagged]
    • RobLach 4y ago
      Everything is political, particularly the actions of leadership of a state-backed enterprise by a democratic government.
  • joseph_grobbles 4y ago
    27 of 33 engines fired. Performance was sub-nominal. When it was time for separation the vehicle did multiple clearly unplanned flips (during all of this the broadcast was talking about how great of a success this was, though the employees had quieted significantly knowing this was not going well). Add that Elon was looking pretty grim. Making it clear of the tower seems like a remarkably low bar, so if that really was the measure of success, this thing is going to be ready for missions in about three decades. Like what an incredibly low accomplishment that would be. And of course I feel overwhelmingly certain SpaceX doesn't consider this a success. The face-saving they put out for the sycophants to echo doesn't match the reality that this test proved extraordinarily little.
  • ptsneves 4y ago
    Musk has many issues, but what is the point of bringing his grudge with Trans? The rocket is a great success and in the grand scale of things is worth the ego grandstanding. The man has done nothing illegal and has accomplished a lot amazing things. Congrats to SpaceX, Elon, the Americans and Humanity. What good is freedom of thought and speech if one cannot exercise it? I probably drank the old american koolaid and have not yet had my sip of the new one.
    • shadowgovt 4y ago
      > What good is freedom of thought and speech if one cannot exercise it? I'm pretty sure that calling out a celebrity billionaire's transphobia is exercising one's freedom of speech.
    • version_five 4y ago
      You can see the other currently downvoted comment. It's like a religion that feels it needs to insert "God is great" or "in his divine wisdom" into every sentence, just to make sure nobody questions their piety.
    • bhouston 4y ago
      I think a lot of articles and tweets are focusing on the failure incorrectly. Their views are coloured by wanting to see Elon fail because they don't like his views. This was at least a muted success and not an outright failure and it is just a stepping stone. I was trying to say, yes, Elon has pretty bad views these days, but this is still at least a semi-success, not a set back or failure.
      • taylodl 4y ago
        SpaceX is successful despite of Elon Musk, not because of Elon Musk. SpaceX spends a lot of energy keeping Musks's insanity and emotional outbursts at bay. Tesla has also learned how to manage Musk, though not quite as successfully as SpaceX. Twitter is still figuring it out, but I'm sure that they too will learn how to manage Musk. I think it's useful to compare Musk with fire. Fire is useful, if controlled. Fire can be very damaging if not controlled. You have to control Musk while giving him the semblance that he's the one in control. Kudos to those who've successfully been able to pull that off.
  • unpopularopp 4y ago
    I don't get your comment. Feels like a disclaimer "Yes I know Musk is bad and I'm not bad, see I'm not bad because I mention Musk is bad, I'm not one of them. That being said it was a nice rocket launch" Are you doing this on all topics related to Musk?
    • bhouston 4y ago
      > Are you doing this on all topics related to Musk? My 10 year history on hacker news is there for all to see... why ask a rhetorical question, when you can just look.
  • slaw 4y ago
    [flagged]
  • the_lonely_road 4y ago
    The article you posted doesn't really support calling him "outright anti-trans". From the article you used as support: Twitter’s modified policy is a step back for the platform, especially when Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube don’t even maintain the same protections for trans people that Twitter once had. Last year, GLAAD gave each of these platforms fairly low scores in regard to LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression but noted that Twitter and TikTok were the only two platforms out of the bunch that had specific policies against deadnaming and misgendering trans users. So now the only major platform that has this policy is TikTok...famously 'woke' (silly term these days) companies like Google don't even seem to have this policy. The policy was only in place for the past few years at Twitter, so this in fact seems like its just a reversion to the mean rather than some kind of direct attack on trans rights.
    • bhouston 4y ago
      The final paragraph makes clear that he is pull back specific things that Twitter used to offer to trans people: > Twitter hasn’t completely pulled protections for trans users, however. Its Hateful Conduct Policy still explicitly prohibits attacking others based on “race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” but the choice to intentionally remove all mention of misgendering and deadnaming seems like a calculated jab at the trans community. I am not an LGBT+ person, but I also do not support targeted harassment of various segments of society just because they are different.
  • 127 4y ago
    > If you're not with us, you're against us
  • bushbaba 4y ago
    That’s off topic and mods should remove. Let’s not go into twitter and trans rights when the topic is on spaceX and their launch.
    • dumpsterlid 4y ago
      [dead]
    • Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
      Ignoring anti trans behavior by powerful people is default approval. I’m not saying everyone needs to include a disclaimer in every comment but you’re out of line for suggesting this is off topic and you should reflect on yourself for-why you’re so offended seeing people advocating for the rights of groups Musk is repressing.
  • Xeoncross 4y ago
    I think that article might be a little over-the-top. As mentioned in the article, Twitter has every protection that Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube have. In addition, Twitter's "Hateful Conduct Policy still explicitly prohibits attacking others based on “sexual orientation, gender, gender identity". I think the outrage is Twitter moving from the head of the progressive pack to inline with everyone else. Since there isn't really an alternative to Twitter for the business world, I'd rather it did it's best to be 'average', not overly conservative or liberal.
  • jmyeet 4y ago
    I think SpaceX fooled a lot of people (myself included) that Elon was some kind of genius of visionary. But given everything he has done and said and everything about his past that has come to light I C think it should now be clear that SpaceX is a success in spite of Elon not because of him. Whoever is actually running the show has effectively built an insulating wall around Elon to limit his influence, especially from day-to-day operations. A few months ago there was an unverified account of this from an alleged SpaceX intern. I can’t say it’s true but it certainly rings true. We’ve seen from Twitter he’s not much of a businessman (the deal he got himself into was terrible) and not he’s talking about software many of us here realize just how clueless he is about Tech. With SpaceX not many of us knew much about rocketry so you know what they say: in the valley of the blind the one eyed man is king.
  • jlmorton 4y ago
    I'm sorry to be pulled into commenting on a Great Culture War issue in a space thread, but this is really unfair framing. When someone, or a group refuses to ban something, that doesn't mean they support it. Just because the United States allows literal Nazis to speak about anything they want does not mean the United States supports Nazis, or is anti-Semitic. The exact same principle is true of Twitter. If you allow people to post anti-trans rhetoric, that does not in any way mean you are anti-trans.
    • bhouston 4y ago
      The last paragraph of the article shows how it is an outlier in terms of which groups can be targeted with harassment: "Twitter hasn’t completely pulled protections for trans users, however. Its Hateful Conduct Policy still explicitly prohibits attacking others based on “race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” but the choice to intentionally remove all mention of misgendering and deadnaming seems like a calculated jab at the trans community."
      • jlmorton 4y ago
        Yes, and that was what that line said before, too. The change removed a specific call-out for misgendering, and deadnaming. There were no specific call-outs for anything else. Is this a targeted jab? I have no idea, but it certainly doesn't make someone outright anti-Trans, particularly when the hateful conduct policy continues to ban dehumanization based on gender identity. Before: > Slurs and Tropes > We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.In some cases, such as (but not limited to) severe, repetitive usage of slurs, or racist/sexist tropes where the context is to harass or intimidate others, we may require Tweet removal. In other cases, such as (but not limited to) moderate, isolated usage where the context is to harass or intimidate others, we may limit Tweet visibility as further described below. > Dehumanization > We prohibit the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious disease, national origin, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. --- After: > Slurs and Tropes > We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. In some cases, such as (but not limited to) severe, repetitive usage of slurs, or racist/sexist tropes where the context is to harass or intimidate others, we may require Tweet removal. In other cases, such as (but not limited to) moderate, isolated usage where the context is to harass or intimidate others, we may limit Tweet visibility as further described below. > Dehumanization > We prohibit the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious disease, national origin, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
  • MisterBiggs 4y ago
    Stage separation likely only triggers when the engines stop
• simondotau 4y ago
  Success was defined as the rocket leaving the launchpad. Suggesting that this test “failed” is at best a mischaracterisation.
  • fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Failure doesn’t have to have a negative connotation, we just match it as so in our culture. The full mission plan wasn’t achieved and the rocket did in fact fail. That said, it achieved precisely what they hoped it would achieve as failure was an expected and acceptable outcome.
    • simondotau 4y ago
      The usage of “failure” as a way to describe not achieving the maximally ideal outcome makes no sense to me. I’ve never read or heard it used to mean that. It would have been a failure if the data logging failed to transmit, or if it had immediately exploded and destroyed the launch tower.
    • corobo 4y ago
      Absolutely! Applies to everything too, including the project you bought a domain for and didn't do anything with! You there, reading this comment, go and fail or go and turn autorenew off :P Failure > inaction. You can learn from failure.
      • fnordpiglet 4y ago
        Things are, they don’t fail or succeed in a qualitative sense. You can only fail against some objective measure. If you do nothing, you still haven’t failed. But you haven’t done anything either. If you try something and you establish an objective measure to achieve and it fails, you and your efforts _have not failed_. The positive action of doing still is, and the positive action of analyzing the failed objective still is, and it opens the way to another action as an evolution of the original action. But things just are what they are. They aren’t good or bad. Good or bad is your interpretation of the way things are. If you consider doing nothing good, then you succeed by not trying. If you consider trying good, then you succeed by simply trying.
• TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Very reminiscent of Soviet N1 rocket. Same concept. Similar problems.
  • bhouston 4y ago
    Can you share? I figure this is mostly just new system problems. When I write lots of new code my unit tests find a lot of bugs in the first pass, but you don't have that in complex dynamic mechanical systems. Simulation can only take you so far.
    • mlajtos 4y ago
      I don't think there is real historical footage, so this might do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZ5Ep06TTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZ5Ep06TTk
  • pinewurst 4y ago
    I had the same thought while watching! You could see the asymmetry in the lit engines as it climbed and I was wondering how long the control system could take it before losing it.
  • matzab 4y ago
    Well, the launch pad survived this one.
    • meepmorp 4y ago
      Yeah, starship has a ways to go to beat the N1's body count.
      • rsynnott 4y ago
        I'm not sure the N1 actually killed anyone? The second launch resulted in the rocket falling on and destroying the launch pad (one engine exploded on liftoff, the computer turned most of the other engines off), but I don't think anyone died.
  • 4y ago
• haunter 4y ago
  Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=2920s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI&t=2920s (the cheering is actually really funny cause the launch was already a success)
  • kgwxd 4y ago
    The cheering was annoying, it felt like it was being forced by some cringey hype man.
    • vvillena 4y ago
      Part of SpaceX company culture. All their launches are cheer-heavy. Even mission control gets rowdy at times.
      • samsari 4y ago
        I remember I think it was when they first landed the booster successfully, there was a big "USA! USA! USA!" cheer from mission control. I thought that was a bit of an ugly look myself.
        • fastball 4y ago
          What's wrong with cheering the name of the country which has allowed and fostered such a project to exist?
          • tetris11 4y ago
            For the same reason you would at other rallies...
        • 93po 4y ago
          yes the USA chant was cringe as heck but otherwise their cheering is fun
        • flippinburgers 4y ago
• fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I have over 600 hours logged on KSP and 200 hours on KSP2. This is pretty normal in my experience.
  • geocrasher 4y ago
    As somebody who's never become good at KSP, I've debated whether or not to get KSP2. Does it have better training so that you have clues how to get some of the initial things done so you can build up in career mode better?
    • fnordpiglet 4y ago
      I think you should look into it in two years. Right now it’s early access, and in this case early seems to mean “first successful merge to main that builds”
      • geocrasher 4y ago
        Thank you so much :)
    • moffkalast 4y ago
      Forget KSP 2 for now, watch Scott Manley instead and you'll be good at KSP 1 in no time.
      • geocrasher 4y ago
        Thank you so much :)
• panki27 4y ago
  It looked just like a regular launch in Kerbal Space Program at the end.
  • shadowgovt 4y ago
    Complete with "Why the hell are you tiling over I'm holding down the turn key as hard as I can", yeah. :)
    • cwillu 4y ago
      Some day I want a keyboard with pressure sensitive keys :)
  • geocrasher 4y ago
    I thought the same thing, as did many other rocket geeks including Scott Manley. I've lost track of the number of Kerbins I've uh... lost...
  • agloe_dreams 4y ago
    Pretty much, I'm sure most of us have at least once had a tumble at or above max-Q. I'm intrigued as per cause. Lots of Engine failures and spewed parts. It had a real slide on liftoff. An engine violently flashed and went pop about +25s. I do have to say, the thing requiring FTS after a violent flip well above supersonic speaks orders about structural work.
    • mwint 4y ago
      I wonder if, after seeing that performance, they'll decide to weaken (or more accurately, remove extra weight from) structure they don't need.
    • remarkEon 4y ago
      Is there a technical name for the "tumbling" phenomenon? When your first stage is almost out of fuel mass, so the CoG is not where it was when you launched and it's like you're pushing a bowling ball with a fishing pole instead of a giant steel beam, so you tip over.
• diamondfist25 4y ago
  It looked like a small pipe Bomb in the sky. Only 120 meters tall
• cryptoz 4y ago
  People always joke that a success like this will be blasted by the media as a failure, but it's the most predictable thing ever. Massive success today for SpaceX but the story is massive failure. So silly. I'm as anti-Musk as the next, but it's also weird to see so many people gleeful that Musk must be so embarrassed at this 'massive failure'. Like, how uninformed do you have to be to think that Elon would be humiliated by such a resounding success? Oy.
  • silveraxe93 4y ago
    Not just misinformed. How petty and I dunno, plain _evil_ do you have to be? This is a step into making humanity reaching the stars. Is seeing a guy you hate fail really all that matters?
    • foobar_______ 4y ago
      Thanks for saying this. Can people chill the fuck out and appreciate the world around them anymore? This was the largest rocket launch _ever_ from an American _private_ company using a novel launch configuration in the first fully integrated test _ever_ and people are complaining !?!?!? This makes me proud to be American, proud to be an engineer, and just stoked to be human. Let's show some humility and graciousness, people!
  • dmix 4y ago
    > but it's also weird to see so many people gleeful that Musk must be so embarrassed These people are pretty easy to ignore if you don't venture into certain parts of Twitter and Reddit. Who cares what they're social media-brained minds think. It's just another hot take.
  • valine 4y ago
    Also notable is that unlike most heavy lift rockets in history they have a functional assembly line that can rapidly churn these things out. We should only have to wait a couple months for the next test flight.
  • the_third_wave 4y ago
• ChrisBland 4y ago
  Test failed successfully
• rowanG077 4y ago
  [flagged]
• tjpnz 4y ago
  Parts falling off, engines going out, something getting inside the interstage. That ship was an absolute fighter.
  • eisvogel 4y ago
    I was thinking this as well... It spiraled seemingly forever without failing, while they hoovered telemetry off of it, until pressing the big red button. Massive fault tolerance at play. SpaceX is awesome in so many ways. Thanks Elon.
    • a4isms 4y ago
      Perhaps you mean, "Thanks Gwynne Shotwell." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell I think HN understands the difference between a charismatic leader who is good at laying out a vision and generating a tremendous amount of hype around it (like Steve Jobs) and someone who is an expert at actually realizing a vision (Steve Wozniak, Tim Cook). They may both be necessary for success, but if you are praising the rocket's engineering, you're praising the person who works tirelessly to manifest the vision.
      • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
        Thank you for sharing!
      • eisvogel 4y ago
        Shotwell is also awesome, that is certain. They all are. I personally think the first man down the ladder on mars should be a woman, and it would be great if it were her. However, Elon founded that company (and personally hired Shotwell) and has been a continual source of engineering inspiration, for several decades. His direction has pretty much forced the global automotive industry to go electric. People may not like some of the things he tweets, but at the end of the day, he is not going to be a historical footnote.
        • 4y ago
• cryptoegorophy 4y ago
  It appeared not all engines light up. Was it normal?
  • jfoster 4y ago
    No, it was a sub-nominal flight, but a successful test. (assuming they got the data they needed in order to learn from it, which is a pretty safe assumption)
  • badcppdev 4y ago
    Happens in 100% of Starship launches
  • falsenapkin 4y ago
    Sort of, the rocket has "engine out" capability. I don't think the number/configuration is known, but it is intended to perform as desired with more than one engine disabled.
  • LeonM 4y ago
    It was planned to leave the tower with 3 engines turned off. During flight two more engines appear to have flamed out (shut down). Starship is unique in that it has so many engines, which add redundancy. They can (re)start engines mid-flight. With the loss of 5 engines, this demo flight would have been fine. Though they will have some work to do on reliability.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• gnarbarian 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/live/-1wcilQ58hI?feature=share#t=45m https://www.youtube.com/live/-1wcilQ58hI?feature=share#t=45m video with timestamp
• justin66 4y ago
  Did the range officer destroy the rocket because it wasn't going to separate, or did the tumble destroy the rocket?
  • kortex 4y ago
    I strongly suspect the range safety officer pulled the trigger. It did a bunch of unexpected tumbles, so I think if it were flight termination system, that would have popped it earlier. I don't think it came apart of its own account, the RUD was quite rapid.
    • jaywalk 4y ago
      The Flight Termination System is controlled by the Range Safety Officer. And yes, it was pretty clear from the way the two stages exploded that it was the RSO activating the FTS.
      • kortex 4y ago
        By "Flight Termination System" I meant some automatic process, if such a system exists. It might just be a big red button at this point (since the goal is data collection). or maybe it's a very generous flight envelope, but the tumble took it far enough off course that it tripped.
        • jaywalk 4y ago
          That would be an Autonomous Flight Termination System, which does exist (and is used on many newer rockets including Falcon 9) but I'd bet that a human pushed the button in this case.
    • cubefox 4y ago
      I don't think a manual flight termination is considered a "RUD".
  • AviationAtom 4y ago
    A Wikipedia entry claims it was a commanded explosion. I hadn't yet been able to corroborate that elsewhere.
• bromuk 4y ago
  Fail? So much success, the fact that it got off the ground and is providing tonnes of data to ground control. Agile rocket building ftw.
  • perihelions 4y ago
    - "Agile rocket building" Waterfall of propellant-falling
  • mempko 4y ago
    It's good to see U.S. aerospace finally adopting Soviet style rocket building.
• koliber 4y ago
  Congrats on hitting the test goal. The double speak is funny though: > SpaceX call this a rapid unscheduled disassembly What would a regularly-paced scheduled disassembly look like?
  • Tade0 4y ago
    The type you do to examine wear after a successful landing.
  • TheJoeMan 4y ago
    RUD is an "industry term" :) https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10022/who-coined-the-phrase-rapid-unscheduled-disassembly https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10022/who-coined-t...
    • koliber 4y ago
      I did not know! Thank you.
  • mauvehaus 4y ago
    There'd probably be more wrenches and less fire involved for one thing. In the near-term it would also likely be done on the ground.
  • weberer 4y ago
    RUD is more of a joke term than doublespeak. Like FUBAR and SNAFU.
  • plasticchris 4y ago
    Hard ocean landing was the scheduled disassembly
  • tekla 4y ago
    Not double speak. Just terms you are not familiar with.
  • tzs 4y ago
    Was it an unscheduled disassembly? From the video it looks like the stages failed to separate and the rocket started tumbling. I'd expect the range safety officer to trigger the self-destruct at that point which would make the explosion newly scheduled rather than unscheduled.
• mabbo 4y ago
  People want to see 100% success in all things. But that isn't very economical. Compare the SLS to Starship. SLS has had a 100% success rate. One launch, one success. But it costs $2B per launch (and climbing) and has taken 12 years to get here. Plus, it's stealing pieces of the Space Shuttle, which was developed in the 70s over a long period of time. Starship will launch a half a dozen "failures" before they achieve success, but they will have a bigger, better launch system that's fully reusable and costs orders of magnitude less per launch. "Fail fast" applies to more than just software.
  • Kapura 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • mbernstein 4y ago
      The fail fast part should be finished before humans board it - the idea is to speed up development before that milestone and iterate rapidly.
    • Diederich 4y ago
      The described methodology has worked very well for the Falcon 9 stack, and it's carried quite a few humans safely to orbit. Iteration is key here. Nobody is talking about putting a human on Starship until it's quite reliable.
  • cryptoegorophy 4y ago
    How much did starship cost?
    • LeonM 4y ago
      Not known, as SpaceX is a private company, and the rocket is still being developed. But I'd say a whole lot less than $2B per launch ;-)
      • shadowgovt 4y ago
• s1artibartfast 4y ago
  If you watch the this launch video, It looks like there are projectiles coming up from the pad around 18s. I wonder if the launch pad or engines were damaged by explosion. https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1649043715686793218 https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1649043715686793218
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • falsenapkin 4y ago
    There was another view at the pad that had sizable bits of what looked like rock or concrete flying past it, camera went off line when the vehicle had barely left the ground. See the bottom right panel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg
    • s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Interesting!
  • baggachipz 4y ago
    I'm nothing resembling a rocket scientist, but the lack of flame diverters like you see for every other rocket launch has been a mystery to me. Every starship launch or static fire ends in concrete flying everywhere. That can't be good.
    • s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Indeed, it is not ideal. What you see as a result from a decision to solve that problem in parallel instead of before launches. SpaceX is actively working on their launch stand, just not delaying lunches until they have it worked out. There will be many iterations of it before it is final, just as there will be many iterations of the Starship with increasing capability
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  It got further than I expected but I wish these streams had less cheering or at least muted them.
• travisgriggs 4y ago
  One of the new graphics that showed up on the dashboard was that of the engines lit. There were at least 2 on the outer ring that were fed from TO, and a few more winked out during the flight. I’m curious how many off engines the system tolerates. How many do they anticipate regularly? I’ve never noticed if Falcon 9s periodically run as a Falcon 8 or 7? All and all, ‘‘twas an awesome sight. Kudos to all those cheering excited people.
  • sidewndr46 4y ago
    I think the regular Falcon 9 was designed to lose an engine every single launch.
  • seydor 4y ago
    At least 6 seemed to be off
    • Diederich 4y ago
      I think I saw at least one in flight engine relight. If true that's a capability I haven't heard about before.
  • mwint 4y ago
    My guess was for this flight it was "once off the pad, we will fly as long as it doesn't leave the envelope" since it's all about data collection.
    • seydor 4y ago
      Isn't that a safety risk with such a huge rocket?
      • panick21_ 4y ago
        The envelop is designed with safety in mind. If it leaves the envelop it has a certified self destruct system on board that will trigger and destroy the rocket.
• cubic_earth 4y ago
  Looking at the aerial footage before the launch, I was wondering why there is so much infrastructure so close to the pad. Clearly much of needs to be nearby, but perhaps those tanks should be 800 - 1000 feet from the pad and not ~200. After seeing the damage to some of that infrastructure caused by the launch, I am still wondering.
  • s1artibartfast 4y ago
    They are very limited in space due to environmental regulations so it is difficult to expand. It is also worth noting that liquid methane is not explosive by itself.
  • CydeWeys 4y ago
    They would much rather not have all that infrastructure close to the pad. This is a sub-optimal situation that they, more than anyone else, are acutely aware of. Sadly this is what they could get.
• seydor 4y ago
  Pity that the rocket did not separate. I wonder if spaceX has considered a scaled down, like half the capacity, which would still be huge
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    I doubt it, the size is what makes it economical in the long run. For anything smaller there's F9 or Heavy.
  • danpalmer 4y ago
    They actually did scale it down from the original plans in ~2015. I'm not sure if it's worth scaling down substantially from where it is. There is a certain scale that's necessary for the economics (payload vs dry-weight vs fuel) to work out, and ultimately they want to be able to put very significant amounts in orbit. They're currently targeting 150 tons, would it be worth targeting 50 tons? Probably not.
  • brucethemoose2 4y ago
    Like single stage? I don't think the booster can reach orbit by itself (much less carry something and come back).
• somenameforme 4y ago
  One interesting observation here is how long it took the ship to get off the pad from the T-0 mark. This is undoubtedly because some of the raptors on it apparently failed to ignite. I thought they were about to make a mess on the launch pad! I'm also curious about what technically finally got it off the ground - was there a sufficient, but low, level of acceleration, was it a matter of reducing the rocket's mass (by burning through fuel), was it a matter of some of the engines reaching some peak level of performance. Or, probably most likely, maybe just a combination of everything.
  • mwint 4y ago
    More likely, holddowns on the pad until everything was stabilized. Probably takes a few seconds to vector/throttle the other engines to compensate for the lost ones. E: convery's reply below makes much more sense.
    • convery 4y ago
      Clamps were released at T-10min. IIRC compensating for engines are pretty fast. But they hold the engines at just below lift/weight to run some more checks before fully powering up.
  • s1artibartfast 4y ago
    It is extremely heavy and the engines do not all light at once, they sequentially start over 6-8 seconds.
  • dzader 4y ago
    they said it would take ~6 seconds from engine ignition to takeoff in one of the streams. everything was working as planned at that point afaik
    • malfist 4y ago
      Ditto, this hover then takeoff was planned. That's why on the live stream you see T0 and then T+0:06 you see "liftoff". The hover was planned.
• the_third_wave 4y ago
  I suspect they'll install a larger water inundation system before the next launch of Superheavy seeing how as debris seems to have damaged a number of the first stage engines. Maybe a flame tunnel as well but at least something to keep the sound pressure and heat from breaking up the concrete under the launch platform which sets free debris which in its turn causes damage to the rocket and the launch facilities.
• gglon 4y ago
  According to https://www.metaculus.com/questions/14270/spacex-starship-orbit-in-2023/ https://www.metaculus.com/questions/14270/spacex-starship-or... its chances to reach orbit in 2023 have just risen from 85% to 90%. Therefore generally I would call the launch a relative success.
  • danpalmer 4y ago
    It looks like it has dropped 4% over the last week, so while the monthly trend is upwards, I'm not sure this launch, or the scrub a few days ago, have improved things.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • cubefox 4y ago
      Worth also noting that Elon "chronically overoptimistic" Musk said 80% himself, suggesting that Metaculus is too optimistic here.
• brodouevencode 4y ago
  I loved the excitement and the cheering of the crew more than anything. Those folks did a good job.
• colesantiago 4y ago
  space, launching and building rockets is hard. very hard.
  • outside1234 4y ago
    especially if the CEO is smoking weed
    • shagie 4y ago
      The 4/20 launch date was purely coincidence.
    • roflyear 4y ago
      It isn't like he's contributing to the company anyway
      • outside1234 4y ago
        He is clearly still contributing dates for launch.
        • meepmorp 4y ago
          I think this one is down to coincidence - iirc, it was meant to launch earlier this week but it got delayed. Maybe he made the final selection from several possible reschedule dates, though.
        • panick21_ 4y ago
          Its sad that we have threads this dumb on HN.
• LorenDB 4y ago
  My mind is so blown. Definitely disappointing, but let's be honest: this is a win for SpaceX, given that this was the first fully integrated flight test of a very complex, very unproven vehicle. (Yes, the ship has flown before, but this was the booster's first flight.) Did anybody else notice the Apollo-style maneuver to avoid the launch tower?
  • ahoka 4y ago
    How could this be a success? It was a catastrophic failure. Sorry but bullshitting releases only works in software.
    • georgeg23 4y ago
      Tons of data, including achieving max-Q
    • Coffeewine 4y ago
      It didn't blow up on the pad. They'll be happy to blow up dozens of these, hopefully incrementally perfecting the design each time.
      • 6d6b73 4y ago
        That's not engineering. What they did is identical to developers copying code from SO and running it to see if it works.
        • rcstank 4y ago
          How is it not engineering? They engineered it to clear the launch pad, and it did.
        • akritrime 4y ago
          That's exactly engineering. A complex system seldom has a 100% success on first launch, all engineering products are incremental success. There are thousands of small factors that can deviate a live test from their theoretical assumptions. The fact that they have got past the first hurdle for a completely untested product is worthy of appreciation. Just a few years back, everyone would have unanimously applauded the launch. But now, people are letting their personal bias about the CEO cloud their judgement about the achievements of the engineers working on the product.
• entropicgravity 4y ago
  Spectacular all the way around!
• hristov 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • generj 4y ago
    Explosions are fun. Once the stack was tumbling everyone in the SpaceX crowd knew the outcome (seeing as how they were standing behind Mission Control with better telemetry than is publicly transmitted they likely knew the rocket was going too slow or had too many engines out for an orbital speed test well before we did). So yeah, cathartic big boom. Nobody got hurt, no customer cargo lost, company and their jobs aren’t at risk. Why not have some fun looking at the explosion then go back to work?
  • panick21_ 4y ago
    Jesus you are a seriously disturbed person. I honestly think you should seek help.
• nomilk 4y ago
  Anyone reading the headline could easily be misled: this was a massive success. Some context: - This was the first "integrated test" of the Starship space craft with its booster - The whole thing together was 120 meters tall - It will be one order of magnitude larger than the current largest rocket in terms of carrying capacity (~150 tonnes if it needs to return the booster, 250 if it doesn't) - There's 5 more of these being built right now so the next tests can be done soon
  • sschueller 4y ago
    Saturn V was 110m tall and 140t in the 1960s.
    • nomilk 4y ago
      The height difference is not huge, but Starship is twice the weight and 1/10th the cost ($50b vs $5bn in 2022 USD)!
      • mempko 4y ago
        Starship at this point is mostly a shell. Internal human grade components aren't there yet. We have no idea what the final cost will be. But doesn't matter since NASA is the one paying.
        • 93po 4y ago
          What? This makes zero sense. The cost to create a crew capsule is extremely well understood because they've been made countless times before. Also to imply the cost of that would put any dent whatsoever into the 5b vs 50b comparison is ridiculous. The cost of adding a crew capsule is a rounding error on total cost.
          • edgyquant 4y ago
            Even a 100 man crew capsule?
• hersko 4y ago
  This was pretty much expected. This flight was to gather data and not much else.
  • jjoonathan 4y ago
    I hope it wasn't hydraulic steering that failed, because that's the part that was already obsolete = nothing to learn. Ah well. It didn't destroy the launch tower, and that's what counts!
• osigurdson 4y ago
  It sounds like they achieved what they were officially hoping to achieve. Everyone was cheering but Musk didn't look super happy imo.
  • 93po 4y ago
    Elon is on the record as saying that launches cause him massive anxiety so I'm sure it was difficult to be outwardly happy
    • RoyGBivCap 4y ago
      Also, Asperger's, which he's publicly admitted to having.
• intrasight 4y ago
  When it started doing cartwheels and the announcer said "beginning the flip for stage separation" I was like "WTF does that mean? That can't be nominal!"
  • jjoonathan 4y ago
    Well it is supposed to flip, but only one flip, not a tumble.
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    Nah it's the nominal KSP launch trajectory. You forget to add first stage fins, launch up to the gravity turn, do the cartwheel, separate and continue to orbit. Seems like they forgot to check their staging though.
    • jjoonathan 4y ago
      Spacebar got stuck, couldn't stage.
    • marvin 4y ago
      Imagine how magnificent it would have been if they managed stage separation after doing a 360 cartwheel, via some sick on-the-fly manual intervention. I was half hoping for it.
      • intrasight 4y ago
        I think many watching were hoping for it
  • alexobenauer 4y ago
    More info on why that's necessary here: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/17878/why-does-the-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-do-a-180-flip-for-reentry https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/17878/why-does-the... Edit: "that" = one flip; not the many we saw today.
    • 4y ago
• cs702 4y ago
  ...more or less as expected.
  • firstlink 4y ago
    Indeed I think anyone who's paying attention can expect Musk to fail every time
• SkyMarshal 4y ago
  Actual video here if you want to see it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/live/-1wcilQ58hI?t=45m https://www.youtube.com/live/-1wcilQ58hI?t=45m
• 6d6b73 4y ago
  That's not engineering. What they did is identical to developers copying code from SO and running it to see if it works.
• Uptrenda 4y ago
  It looked like a bunch of parts had fallen off during take-off. Not to bring up a tragedy so casually: but I'm reminded of when a piece of foam damaged an insulation tile on Challenger. It does speak to the robustness of their design that it was able to make it to separation without issues. I do kind of agree with simondotau, too. Saying that the rocket just 'failed' doesn't take into account what they did get right. I think it's kind of disappointing that the media chose to take the opportunity to put down everyone involved in this activity for a cheap click. What they're doing is important and tremendously complex. This kind of thing just makes me hate the media even more.
  • jaywalk 4y ago
    Columbia was the shuttle that was doomed by a piece of foam. Challenger exploded due to a failed O-ring on one of the SRBs.
• ianai 4y ago
  Let’s not move the goalposts. This company develops differently than historical aerospace. Success was defined as blowing up any point beyond the launch pad. It made it well past max-q which is the point of highest atmospheric stress on the rocket.
  • ShamelessC 4y ago
    What provoked this response? The headline makes no assertions about success or failure. It is extremely literally a description of what occurred. It’s one thing to feel defensive about a misleading headline. This is just fanboyism.
    • jjoonathan 4y ago
      It invites unreasonable expectations. That's not a theoretical problem, you can see examples all over this thread.
      • ShamelessC 4y ago
        The problem in that case is that HN users commonly don’t read the article to get the full story. From TFA: > SpaceX staff still cheered as Starship went down in flames. Successfully lifting the 400-foot-tall rocket off the launch pad is still a big step forward to its ultimate goal of one day ferrying humans to the moon and Mars, the company said. > "With a test like this, success comes from what we learn," the company said in a tweet. "Today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary."
        • jjoonathan 4y ago
          I suspect HN users read the article more often than most. I sure did. I stand by my assessment that the headline invites unreasonable expectations, and that it matters. A little, not a lot. Shrug.
          • ShamelessC 4y ago
• MeteorMarc 4y ago
  Good moment to watch the Apollo launch failure in Koyaanisqatsi again: https://vimeo.com/400276071 https://vimeo.com/400276071 from 9:47
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    Or the Atlas ones from The Right Stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwi_0DEd_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwi_0DEd_0
• bonetruck 4y ago
  But it got off the pad and through max Q. Awesome achievement regardless!
  • bryanlarsen 4y ago
    I don't think it actually hit max Q. I know the announcers announced it, but they were following a script. It should have been at max Q at the time, but with the loss of 3-6 engines it would not have been going as fast as scheduled.
• hindsightbias 4y ago
  FAA will be wanting to talk to that Range Safety Officer. Waiting for it to break up on it’s own can’t be a best practice.
  • gvb 4y ago
    As long as the trajectory of the vehicle stays within the "safe trajectory box", the range safety officer has no reason to blow the rocket up. SpaceX acquired a huge amount of data that would have otherwise been lost if the RSO was "quick on the trigger." Example of a different rocket failure where the range safety officer let the rocket survive until it exceeded the safe trajectory box: "Astra Rocket 3 LV0006 drifting launch & failure (NASASpaceFlight footage)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxVoBlgzZlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxVoBlgzZlQ
    • hindsightbias 4y ago
      You can’t assume you can trigger a system after it has undergone extreme structural loads or failure. So waiting until that happens while rocket is, charitably, careening does not ensure staying in any box. I doubt they had any uplink or downlink during that mode so there’s no data to be had. Prediction: the FAA will come down hard on them.
      • greedo 4y ago
        So if you "can't assume you can trigger a system" in this situation, you rely upon an automatic system, not a RSO. Which is exactly what SpaceX did. I'm sure this was fully documented in the approval process.
• marcuskaz 4y ago
  "a rapid unscheduled disassembly" - what a phrase for an explosion
  • dzader 4y ago
    generic term - lot of time aerodynamic forces rip the vehicle apart and isn't an "explosion"
    • 7e 4y ago
      Well, it wasn’t disassembled either. That implies you can reassemble it. This just a funny phrase designed to cover an embarrassing situation. SpaceX just farted in an elevator.
      • GenerocUsername 4y ago
        They didn't fart in the elevator, the pressure change caused by rapid elevation gain caused an unexpected gas vent event
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • wilg 4y ago
    For people who don't know, this phrase is intended as a joke. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10022/who-coined-the-phrase-rapid-unscheduled-disassembly https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10022/who-coined-t...
• pruthvishetty 4y ago
  Better headline: SpaceX successfully launches the biggest rocket in history.
  • abledon 4y ago
    LOL they are still salty about the 'publicly funded' tag
    • bmitc 4y ago
      As they ahould be. SpaceX and Tesla have received substantially more taxpayer money than NPR. Also, they weren't labeled as "publically funded". They were labeled as "U.S. state-affiliated media". That is untrue and is a political hit at the behest of Musk.
      • colordrops 4y ago
        The taxpayer money is not a handout though, services are expected in return. It's not a subsidy, despite all the misinformation out there.
        • bmitc 4y ago
          Both Tesla and SpaceX have absolutely received grants, not just contracts and loans, from the government. Just last year, SpaceX requested and applied for $886 million grant from the FCC, which is nearly three times the annual budget of NPR. They were denied for that particular one, but they appealed the decision, complaining about it. I'm not sure what misinformation you are referring to. It is a matter of fact that Tesla and SpaceX have received billions of dollars of government contracts, highly preferential loans, grants, subsidies, and tax incentives. Another example, from Tesla's own report submitted to the SEC in 2020: > As part of various governmental responses to the pandemic granted to companies globally, we received certain payroll related benefits which helped to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our financial results. This was at a time in which Musk was railing against government bailouts. Tesla never gave more details on the government handouts this particular line was referring to. It goes on and on.
• BitwiseFool 4y ago
  Regrettably, I was unable to watch the launch live. I'm looking forward to seeing the footage and hearing about all the analysis that will go into understanding what happened.
• awb 4y ago
  Any guess as to how big the debris field is and what risk there is to people on the ground? Does the flight plan just take it over largely uninhabited land?
  • brucethemoose2 4y ago
    It launches on the Texas coast near the Mexican border, going towards the ocean, for this very reason.
  • mkaic 4y ago
    The launch site is right on the coast and the flight path took it over the ocean, with a strict exclusion zone for boats enacted beforehand.
  • trollied 4y ago
    The launchpad is right next to the Gulf Of Mexico. It launches straight over water.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• jtchang 4y ago
  I can't believe I am alive to witness this. I can imagine 100 years from now a SpaceX plaque will be in some museum timeline with this very event being one of many "failures". It's so hard to put that into perspective when you are actually living these events. I think partly because society has been conditioned to expect success out of all things when in reality true technological progress is rarely a straight line.
  • throwaway4aday 4y ago
    and all the haters will be forgotten, deservedly so.
• GiorgioG 4y ago
  It seems the issue was the rocket failed to separate at the designated time.
  • Aperocky 4y ago
    It seems to be flipping before that, means nothing to separate if it was rolling.
    • GiorgioG 4y ago
      It was supposed to flip and separate in the same motion.
• 7e 4y ago
  Feynman’s comments on the poor Space Shuttle design process apply double to this rocket.
  • Diederich 4y ago
    Heavy/Starship design process is poor? Can you expand on that?
• mhandley 4y ago
  I'm really interested to see the hole it dug under the launch mount. The NASA SpaceFlight van took a direct hit from a fast moving chunk of concrete. https://twitter.com/JerryPikePhoto/status/1649052722698784771 https://twitter.com/JerryPikePhoto/status/164905272269878477... https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649053476276797440 https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649053476276797440 Edit: it really did dig a crater (this was flat concrete under the pad before): https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649062784167030785 https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649062784167030785
  • bob1029 4y ago
    I wonder if this was expected or not. This video immediately comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMbUeO4iGhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMbUeO4iGhY (Why SpaceX Cares about Concrete) This probably explains why some of the engines didn't make it off the pad. That is some incredible damage.
    • adastra22 4y ago
      Depends on what you mean by "expected." It was absolutely not supposed to happen, although a lot of people in the industry have been shouting "we have flame trenches for a reason!"
      • zizee 4y ago
        They didn't want it to happen, but they definitely knew it was a strong possibility.
    • uguuo_o 4y ago
      I have done work for NASA on this problem through SBIRs. The risks have been known for a long time, and to my team the extent of the damage was not surprising. NASA/SpaceX just don't have the computational tools to assess these types of risks at this time.
  • baq 4y ago
    Why dig a flame trench if you can have your test article make one for you. Efficiency!
• nsxwolf 4y ago
  When is the next attempt? Days, weeks, months?
  • ericd 4y ago
    Sounds like they're aiming for a few months: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649050306943266819?cxt=HHwWhsDRoYyhzeItAAAA https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649050306943266819?cxt=...
• destitude 4y ago
  People seem to have forgotten (or simply have no clue) how all the previous SpaceX projects worked. Also seem to be ignoring the fact they are by far the most successful launch company today so I think they know what they are doing.
  • mkaic 4y ago
    Exactly! Falcon 9 is not only the most-launched rocket in history, it's also the most reliable rocket in history! And people got all caught up in sensationalism when Falcon 9 explosions were still common, too — I guess it doesn't drive ad revenue to wax on about the value of iterative design and rapid, frequent failures.
• atlgator 4y ago
  Pretty sure they terminated it when the separation phase didn’t go as planned.
• josh_today 4y ago
  [dead]
• kfrzcode 4y ago
  I'm astounded to see the coverage on this bury the lede; today was historic in that Starship has 2x the thrust of Saturn V, i.e. this was the biggest rocket ever. And they did it, extremely successfully. Their goal was to get the thing off the pad without ruining Stage 0 (launch/pad). Now the newer, shinier revisions get to go up and we'll see orbit attained this year probably. We'll have private Starship missions to the moon in the next president's term of office.
• kortex 4y ago
  Initially posted this as a reply, but going top-level, cause the hot takes are too spicy for my liking. So the plan was to test x, y, and z. Launch sequence and takeoff, stage separation and Starship engine light, and the post-launch stuff like booster wet landing, reentry, and heat tiles. The booster by itself is not aerodynamic, so the only way to test x is with a starship on top. And if you have starship, you might as well test y and z. But it's not a primary goal. Any more effort in polishing y and z is "premature optimization". X was the test. SpaceX did the X, we got max Q. On the most recent SmarterEveryDay video on encasing a Prince Rupert's drop in glass, sculptor Cal Breed talks about the moment when a process fails. He could stop there and restart, saving some time, but instead all the pressure is off, and he "makes as many mistakes as possible" for the rest of the build. Quote is towards the end, but the whole vid is worth a watch. https://youtu.be/C1KT8PS6Zs4 https://youtu.be/C1KT8PS6Zs4 https://www.calbreed.com/ https://www.calbreed.com/ Edit: also, they needed the flight plan all the way through "total success" in order to file with the FAA. You can't just have "oh sweet, 100% of booster things worked, we now have a suborbital craft careening on a parabolic trajectory". I didn't read a flight plan, but I imagine they must have spelled out each possible outcome exhaustively.
  • spuz 4y ago
    That's an interesting point about the flight plan - if the intention of the flight was to test the vehicle at max Q, then the rest of the plan is almost a contingency. SpaceX: We expect the vehicle to reach 40km at which point it will probably blow up. FAA: Ok but what if it doesn't blow up? SpaceX: Well I suppose we could separate the stages. FAA: And then what happens? SpaceX: Well I suppose we could try to land the first stage and launch the second stage into the ocean... etc etc.
    • s1artibartfast 4y ago
      It's not even about the FAA requirements, it is just bare minimum engineering to ask where will this rocket go if it doesn't blow up mid-air?
      • lazide 4y ago
• foxyv 4y ago
  I can't believe it made it off the pad! The fact it made it up to stage separation is crazy. That was the first flight with all the Super Heavy engines at once. I'm just blown away right now. 33 Raptor engines firing all at once without a single failure! The original hoppers had trouble running 1-3 raptors at once! There is just so much that could go wrong with this design and they knocked it out of the park! I'm betting SpaceX is pretty freaking happy right now.
  • kawfey 4y ago
    > without a single failure well..at least 8 engines failed on the way up. At least a majority of them were lit! There was lots of very heavy debris that left the pad and flew hundreds of feet away upon ignition; I have a feeling that some debris came back up and hit an engine or two.
    • foxyv 4y ago
      I kind of meant the kind of failure that results in the engines going off like a bundle of dynamite sticks when their neighbors get frisky. But yeah, 8 is a bit much. Any idea what the debris was?
• jppope 4y ago
  Terrible title. This should have been reported as a major accomplishment... in the title. Many people won't read the article, and without doing so they would never know that this was a win.
• kernal 4y ago
  The launch was nominal.
• armatav 4y ago
  That’s progress!
• beefman 4y ago
  Disgracefully negative headlines and coverage of this historic event from AP, BBC, and NPR this morning.
  • RoyGBivCap 4y ago
    Watching so-called adults throw tantrums over people they hate being allowed a voice is such a disappointment.
• oconnor663 4y ago
  > minutes after launch But not seconds! :)
• davidw 4y ago
  I continue to think that this is cool stuff, while being very, very dismayed by what he's doing with Twitter. I don't understand what the attraction of the latter is for someone with the wherewithal to work on spaceships.
  • mkaic 4y ago
    Agreed. It's incredible to me how good Musk can be at running SpaceX and simultaneously how bad he can be at running Twitter — strengths and weaknesses, I suppose...
    • bottlepalm 4y ago
      I use Twitter, not much has changed for me. Tweets still work, my feed still works, what’s the issue?
      • mkaic 4y ago
        More frequent outages, ads in replies, a rather silly new verification system, viewcounts being visible on tweets, Musk publicly mocking a disabled employee, etc. I don't hate Elon, but the dude should really leave Twitter ASAP. He's an engineer, not a people person — I don't think he should be in charge of a social network, a service entirely focused on social interaction.
        • bottlepalm 4y ago
          Meh, I haven't experienced any of those things. The view count is useful for me at least, less of a black box. The old Twitter didn't really seem to care about adding new features.
  • cubefox 4y ago
    He has released a lot of "Twitter files" data regarding highly questionable FBI interference and things like Twitter Trends manipulation in the past. And he has released large parts of the recommendation algorithm. And there is now a tab "following" which only shows you the tweets of the people you follow. And most importantly, free speech seems to be upheld much better than in the past, where people got blocked for extremely questionable reasons. So all-in-all, he seems to be doing great. The one thing that is worse is that replies show now mostly people with blue checkmark instead of tweets with a lot of likes or followers.
• SergeAx 4y ago
  What's really dreading for me, is that the first launch showed, that the problem of synchronous work of many engines, which doomed N1[0], was not solved. SpaceX knew about it from the start and placed it's bet on 50 years of technological advances. I don't want to think about the scenario where that bet is lost. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
  • panick21_ 4y ago
    Falcon Heavy has 27 engines, Starship 33. Its not that different. And if anything Starship has a simpler engine configuration. This is not some unsolvable problem.
    • SergeAx 4y ago
      Falcon Heavy has 3 packs of 9 engines, each pack is thoroughly tested. They can treat the whole package as 3 sources of thrust, manipulating them as a one (which they actually do). Every booster has its own fuel tanks, lines and so on. Also, I don't remember a single engine failure during Falcon Heavy launches. Today we had 8 (?) of them.
      • panick21_ 4y ago
        Falcon Heavy as complete system is still far more complex. You still need to coordinate all these cores. There is a reason every designer goes to single core as systems grow larger. SpaceX actually had initially planned to do a very large 3 core and then rejected it. And Falcon Heavy was building on 10 years of Falcon 9 knowlage and an incredibly reliable engine. Falcon Heavy was launching from a perfectly designed launch pad that didn't throw up huge chunks of debris everywhere. Its incredibly that people are way to fast to jump to doomsday conclusion from one test.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• dweinus 4y ago
  Came here to see fan boys call an explosion a success; did not disappoint. This rocket is compared often to the Saturn V. Number of times the Saturn V exploded: 0. "Fail fast" for launching satellites is one thing, but this is meant to safely carry people.
  • stetrain 4y ago
    This launch was not carrying people. This system will not carry people from launch until dozens or potentially hundreds of successful flights have occurred. SpaceX probably also has experience with crew safety given their track record with crew flights for NASA. This test was not a total success nor a worst case failure. SpaceX were pretty clear on their expectations and this fell within them.
• blake929 4y ago
  I get that there are multiple endpoints being tested here and some of them may have been satisfied, but I feel like I'm living in a bizarro world on hacker news where people are arguing that multiple failed engines, a failed stage detachment and an exploding rocket worth millions of dollars and and carrying a large number of limited supply raptor engines is a "massive success". Can we just call it for what it is? Mixed results maybe? Is that not a fair assessment?
  • sidibe 4y ago
    Why can't you just be satisfied and just bask in the warm glow of SpaceX like the rest of this thread? In all seriousness I don't follow space stuff much so I give the benefit of the doubt when 99% of posters give rave reviews... but I also know who is in charge of this company and the same thing was happening with Tesla a few years ago with every announcement/demo getting 99% of HN people giddy and just a few shouted down people saying "but..."
    • renewiltord 4y ago
      Really doesn't seem that way https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17397271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17397271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16587249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16587249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16328676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16328676 Pretty even mix of enthusiasm and doomsaying. There's even people saying that Tesla will go bankrupt and Apple will absorb them.
    • Kiro 4y ago
      What's wrong with Tesla?
  • Kiro 4y ago
    I was under the impression that none of it was ever planned to be recovered. I.e. nothing was really lost here since it would have been destroyed either way.
    • mkaic 4y ago
• supportlocal4h 4y ago
  Somewhere there is a team that is over the top happy about an incredibly successful explosion. Their job was to make sure that if flight path deviated beyond some threshhold that the whole vehicle would be blown into tiny parts that would become ballistically safe. They were on the edge of their seats on how well that would work. They saw the lift off team celebrate their success. They saw the booster team fist pumping. They saw the concern from the separation team and their own anticipation spiked. They saw the flight correction team studying realtime data intensely and taking some pride that all that spinning was semi-controlled. The anxiety for the demolition team had to be through the roof. Then, finally, it happened. The system they had spent so much effort to design and integrate finally deployed. It didn't fire prematurely. It didn't fail to deploy. It got everything exactly right. There is still a ton of data to evaluate, and some improvements to be made. But that unnoticed team from the back of the shed at the back of the lot is celebrating picture perfect execution. Here's a salute to real engineers doing real work, getting it exactly right, and getting no credit. Well done.
  • xwdv 4y ago
    One demolition team member had commented that his butt was clenched the whole time and when he finally saw the rocket explode it was like a euphoric release.
    • javajosh 4y ago
      I have to say, "rocket demolition guy" has got to be one of the coolest job titles in the world.
    • moffkalast 4y ago
      I guess he finally learned how to use the three seashells.
  • hackernewds 4y ago
    This reads strangely like a PR damage control post
    • 4y ago
• whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  The journalist narrative on this is petty and pathetic, all over some little blue icons... Astounding feat of engineering.
• aquanext 4y ago
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• pfannkuchen 4y ago
  I am really surprised at the negativity, it makes me want to stop coming here. How many here are actual engineers by profession? The default state of any novel engineering project is “not working”. Rockets are very hard among engineering projects. Failure here would look like the rocket doing nothing visible, perhaps a little bit of smoke. Neutral is the rocket exploding. Success is the rocket moving at all. The rocket actually flying and then making it to the point of attempting first stage separation is a shockingly amazing level of success for the first test run. The media should be congratulating the team and optimistically looking forward to future tests.
  • mkaic 4y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree. My engineering teacher in high school always used to tell us to fail fast and fail often and I think SpaceX has that down to a T — because failing in engineering isn't really failing, it's an integral part of the development process! Why spend countless billions trying to make sure everything goes exactly right on the first try when you could achieve an even higher final quality by just accepting that a few of your spaceships are going to explode, and that explosions are learning opportunities? In summary yeah, this launch was a massive success!
  • RetpolineDrama 4y ago
    >How many here are actual engineers by profession? Almost none, because "software engineers" aren't _actual_ Engineers! (ducks for cover) But really, this was a huge step in the right direction on the cutting edge of propulsion science and spaceflight. SpaceX will iterate and in a few months/years everyone here will be telling you how "they always knew it would work" and "starship succeeding was obvious"
    • jpgvm 4y ago
      Can confirm, am "Software Engineer" but from a family of Real Engineers™, what we do on a day to day basis only resembles engineering in the weakest sense. Both professions iterate on failure but Real Engineers actually spend a significant amount of time studying each failure and drawing strong conclusions based on collected data. We can do that (and sometimes do) but usually just hack it and re-run the tests until it works, can't really do that with a physical test though unless you have reduced your problem down to a small test article (something programmers should always do because it's cheap and easy). Our field is young and lacks the rigorousness of Real Engineering. We probably don't want to adopt all of it because our cost and risk profiles are hugely different but there is a lot to learn from Real Engineers about how to iterate better and get better bang for our buck out of our failures.
• electrondood 4y ago
  Lots of reactions to this, forgetting that the price of success is X failures. Achieving reusable booster rockets "cost" X exploded ones.
• pizlonator 4y ago
  This write-up is so bad. It’s almost like a caricature of bad takes. If I wanted to show someone an example of why journalists suck at their jobs, I think this would be exhibit A. This rapid unscheduled disassembly was a huge success for SpaceX and everyone involved should be so proud. What a kick ass display of engineering prowess. That’s what the take should be, not “they tried to fly for an hour but it blew up after some minutes”.
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    That might be overselling it. They should be happy with the result, and ready to attack the problems discovered so the next flight might be more successful. And sure, proud that they got it off the ground, though as a fairly mature rocket company I'd have figured that was table stakes. But an actual kick-ass display of engineering prowess in recent memory was launching and deploying the Webb telescope.
    • mkaic 4y ago
      IMO both Webb's deployment and this Starship test can both be kick-ass displays of engineering prowess. Kick-assery doesn't have to be exclusive to fully-completed deep-space missions!
      • pizlonator 4y ago
        Yeah totally! I’m not trying to say that other cool shit wasn’t also cool. Just that this launch was awesome. Huge rocket. Cleared the pad. Did a bunch of flips and blew up. Wow!!!
• SubiculumCode 4y ago
  I'm pretty Disgusted by the news spins on the SpaceX test launch Elon's antics have soured SpaceX's news coverage, and those who hate Musk are cheering the explosion as proof that Elon sucks. Elon may, but SpaceX is rad, and this was a huge success. Politics makes us stupid
• Buttons840 4y ago
  [Spoiler ahead] Watched the live stream, I knew they had a bad problem when it appeared the engines were facing upwards. My time with KSP has taught me that no matter how well you think the flight is going, the rocket is still more than eager to return to earth given the chance. I wonder what actually caused the explosion? Did they scuttle it after a few flips? Did a tank break after a few flips and unplanned stresses? I guess we don't know yet.
  • sebsebmc 4y ago
    It actually was expected to do a flip and perform stage separation. It was a problem when it kept trying to flip and Starship didn't separate. The explosion at the end was the Flight Termination System. In case of uncontrolled flight you detonate the rocket to keep it from flying somewhere dangerous.
    • tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
      From a PR perspective, I'm surprised that they don't have a procedure where they announce that they're considering to terminate, then announce that they'll blow it up, before actually doing it, if time allows. I think there is a significant difference in public perception between "it blew up during the test" and "the test wasn't going to go anywhere good so they blew it up".
  • 3-cheese-sundae 4y ago
    If it starts pointing toward space you are a having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.
• anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  Great prediction. > The most likely outcome is that something will go wrong during this flight.
• eatmyshorts 4y ago
  Watching the mission, I noticed that engines kept shutting down. There are 33 of them. When they had turned off 7 of them, with 26 engines remaining lit, it started to lose control. The engineers all seemed ecstatic about the mission. I have to wonder if they weren't intentionally shutting off engines to see how many could fail while still retaining control. If that was indeed tested, the answer appears to be 6--they can operate nominally with 27 engines lit.
  • panick21_ 4y ago
    It didn't start to lose control because the engines. It tried to do a stage separation flip and the stage didn't separate. Only then was it doing something that might have been out of control, or maybe it was trying to do the seperation again. Control can be maintained with very few engine. I depends if its center engines or outer ring. Only the central cluster can gamble, 2 or 3 of those should be able to handle to rocket depending how full it is. With only outer engines the could use differential thrust but the rocket isn't really designed to do that. The Soviet N1 used differential thrust only. SpaceX prefers gimbled engines.
• diebeforei485 4y ago
  News media headlines are being quite unfair for a test. They know it's a test launch, but they choose this sort of headline anyway, probably because "rocket man bad". Maybe SpaceX should have painted "TEST" on all sides of the rocket so the flow of information to the public is immune to biased media. Like a shunt in a circuit.
• abudabi123 4y ago
  Learning from this failure the second stage can gain ailogic for stage sep to recover after release knowing five or more 1st stage engines failed on the way up. Looked like the rud happened at the 4:04 mark, poetic.
• callumprentice 4y ago
  Anyone know how the controlled demolition works? I imagine something more sophisticated than a "radio controlled bomb" but maybe KISS.
  • rhcom2 4y ago
    I was curious too. I found: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Booster#Range_safety_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Boo... - https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/5775/how-are-self-destructs-implemented-in-rocketry https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/5775/how-are-self-... tldr: shape charges for solid boosters, dumping fuel for liquid
    • callumprentice 4y ago
      Excellent. Thank you.
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• realworldperson 4y ago
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• realworldperson 4y ago
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• eminence32 4y ago
  I can't really judge if this was a success or a failure or what it means for SpaceX. But as an observer, I have to say it is fun to be able to watch launches of massively complex rockets, in real time, in very high quality video streams, even when they explode.
• billbrown 4y ago
  Isn't "spilling" methane directly into the stratosphere problematic?
• holler 4y ago
  For anyone curious here's my video from watching the launch live at Isla Vista park on South Padre Island. It's hard to state just how loud and insanely massive Starship is in general and compared to Falcon 9 (which I was fortunate to see launch twice recently). My bones shook and my ear drums felt like they might burst. Incredible experience watching and meeting people from far and wide. Highly recommend getting out to a future launch if you can! https://youtu.be/1snFbRby7Ew https://youtu.be/1snFbRby7Ew
  • dizzant 4y ago
    Great video, thanks for sharing!
    • holler 4y ago
      No problem!
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• limaoscarjuliet 4y ago
  For a moment there, I thought Elon threw a cartwheel in right before separation just to show off :-) Congratulations SpaceX! Big success!
• throwaway202303 4y ago
  Hey everyone time to show your political affiliation. Are you red pilled/republican or right of centre, maybe you get your news from Fox. let’s praise Elon for an amazing test flight. If you’re progressive, left wing, get your news from msnbc, lets join together in mocking a gigantic failure as Elons rocket explodes in the morning sky. There is no need to investigate the facts, pick a side and let rip.
• vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago
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• m3kw9 4y ago
  Hearing the cheers from the team after the explosion, it seems like good news
• roeles 4y ago
  I was surprised that max q happened at a velocity well below mach 1. The falcon 9 rockets traveled around mach 1 when they passed max q if I remember correctly.
• MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  Something optimistic: "Skating away, skating away, skating away On the thin ice of the new day" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5D9HZyYI6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5D9HZyYI6g (still it's a sad event :-( ) ... i think it's the ghost of the Soviet N1 project - it's quite a challenge to have more than a dozen engines working togather; all of these engines start to responate - it's downhil from thereon... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9fkYIrRwbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9fkYIrRwbo
• gumballindie 4y ago
  5 kt lifting off into orbit is pretty darn impressive - well done to those that worked on it! In my view this was a total success, far from failure. Imagine laughing at this while the best you can do is deploy some lame JS to a server, while these people built this awesome machine.
• LarsDu88 4y ago
  People these days are spoiled and get disappointed when a rocket doesn't land, lol. Only one company makes rockets that can land.
• joefigura 4y ago
  Rockets always blow up on the first launch :) It's a machine that's ~95% fuel by mass. Explosion is the default outcome, not exploding is a triumph of engineering.
• omgomgomgomg 4y ago
  Well, this rocket blew up faster than twitter. I simply would thank everyone for the very good contributions on this matter, it provided highly interesting insights.
• sourcecodeplz 4y ago
  It definitely wasn't a failure. Have you people even watched the stream? That thing was huge, it barely got off the ground. Congrats to the SpaceX team and to America really, whole world was watching.
• mnot 4y ago
  > At liftoff, the rocket kicked up huge plumes of sand and dust around the pad. In Port Isabel, about 10 miles (6 kilometers) Oh come on, AP
• mavu 4y ago
  Went POOOFH faster than twitter, but much less entertaining.
• nytesky 4y ago
  Wait, how come I can’t find the jokes about starship going up in smoke on 4/20? Are they being moderated away?
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• dbg31415 4y ago
  Having everyone in the video cheer when it blew up was weird to me. I guess it’s progress... but feels like catastrophic failure isn’t really something to cheer. Just reminds me of Challenger blowing up. Y’know? Not a good feeling to watch these things explode.
• rurban 4y ago
  Bullshit article. It talks about the missing engines (I saw 6 of 33 not igniting), causing the failure, whilst we saw the seperation to fail in 3 180° attempts. A minor thrust loss cannot explain the seperation failure. Also the starship raptors didnt ignite at all. Also the huge hole at the launch site could have been avoided.
• mystertea 4y ago
  Call this a hot take, but it seems news media are painting a disingenuous picture with this incident, casting it in the light of a failure when it clearly was not one; the goal was only to get the rocket to clear the launch pad, as stated in the video. The article even states (a few paragraphs down) how Musk said not blowing up the launch pad would be a win, and quotes industry experts on how the launch signified good progress. Yet even so, the title and attempted takeaway is FAILURE, ROCKET EXPLODES MINUTES AFTER LAUNCH. You can even identity little attempts to cast further dispersion around the positive news, to throw the lemmings off the scent: small business owner's windows broke gasp; RICH people are already booking tickets (see, this isn't for you, average Joe, you're excluded); A little girl CRIED on seeing the launch, etc etc. This is not journalism; this is maybe 40% news and 60% propaganda. Disgusting how blatant it is, and how so many (ostensibly) intelligent people fall for it.