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Exactly, the two untested things were stage zero (all the new ground infrastructure) and stage one (booster). I think it's clear one of their biggest lessons i

Exactly, the two untested things were stage zero (all the new ground infrastructure) and stage one (booster). I think it's clear one of their biggest lessons is that the construction of the launch mount is wrong, and it REALY needs a flame diverter. Take a look at this photo: https://mobile.twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1649062784167030785 https://mobile.twitter.com/LabPadre/status/16490627841670307... That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was not an expected possibility. It is a very costly mishap and could mean completely rebuilding the launch mount. With the excavation and rebuild, that could be months or even as long as a year. On top of that there was significantly more debris making its way to South Padre, the political fallout (pun intended) will be significant, and could cause issues with launch licenses going forward.

tellurion 4y ago
One of the response to that tweet has a before pic for comparison: https://twitter.com/intrepidpursuit/status/1649070760198131715 https://twitter.com/intrepidpursuit/status/16490707601981317...
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Need to see the numbers before passing judgement. Dirt is cheap compared to concrete. Depending on how many cycles the concrete is expected to last it may be cheaper both short and long term to just have "ablative dirt" and bulldoze around afterwards "reloading" the launcher. There's also other variables like how long it takes for the engines to stabilize and the launcher to release the rocket, weight of rocket, etc that would go into it.
- samwillis 4y ago
  The issue is that that dirt and rocks flying around damages all the other expensive equipment at the launch site. There is going to be some very dead kit down there. They can't do that every time. But big dust clouds also upset people, and SpaceX can't afford to fall out with the locals.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Locals? Don't they own 99% of Boca Chica by now?
    - samwillis 4y ago
      South Padre, about 5 miles away has been covered with a layer of dust.
      - fundad 4y ago
        It's not just dust it's pollution and it's going to cause long-term health problems.
        DiggyJohnson 4y ago
        What? This is quite the claim to make so confidently.
        gridspy 4y ago
        Methane rocket exhaust is steam and CO2. Where did the "pollution" come from? Are you suggesting they buried polluted dirt in the launch pad to distribute later? It's just like construction dust. It's unpleasant and inconsiderate but it's not highly toxic or a pollutant.
        fundad 4y ago
        I mean the concrete dust that got airborne as it was being blown apart. It's airborne silica and is toxic which is why construction workers wear masks when producing it.
      - philwelch 4y ago
        I was on South Padre Island watching the launch, and I was stuck in traffic on South Padre Island for almost an hour afterwards, and I did not observe this. It’s possible that some of the dust reached South Padre or Port Isabel, but neither seemed to be “covered” in it.
- causi 4y ago
  It wasn't "ablative dirt". It was a massive reinforced concrete pad that was pulverized and blown to kingdom come.
sbuttgereit 4y ago
I agree with this assessment and probably the biggest problem in the test. After that, they still have a fair way to go on Raptor reliability; I was a bit disappointed with the number of engine outs: clearly the engines have not arrived. I think the big win of the day was the overall resilience of the vehicle. It seemed to handle (what looked to be) possibly explosive engine failures and kept going and stayed intact... even through the tumbling. I think this is a case where the engineers can look at the numbers and calculate for a limited variety of well defined (and foreseen) scenarios, but that they continue to fail to have an intuitive sense of the power of the thing that they built. Given the complexity of the real world, they can "engineer" themselves into an undue sense of certainty about what will happen when they light a rocket of this power... and I think we see the result of that. As an aside, this is precisely where I think we'll some of the biggest failings for LLM based AI... it can get you some nice words to describe a situation and may be able to do all the calculations... but having that gut feeling that maybe there's more to a situation than the numbers would have you believe is still something that humans can do better (though not SpaceX this time around). In closing, if I had a binary choice of "successful" or "unsuccessful" for this test... I'd still probably call it successful. But only just; it's a very qualified success given some of the test parameters SpaceX had set for themselves. (of course we could find out about even more damage to "stage 0" which might shift my assessment... but we know that they're in the process of putting in a deluge system at least already, so I'm being a bit more charitable regarding expectations than I might otherwise be.)
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  The Raptor issues may well be just a symptom of the concrete issue; large chunks flying up into complicated plumbing isn't ideal.
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    This will be more of an issue on landing (the moon, mars, mercury, the bricks in red square).
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
samwillis 4y ago
Thinking about this a little more, that was the longest duration burn with all engines. I imagine it's a bit like water behind a dam, a small leak very quick grows into a catastrophic failure. A small fault in the concrete slab grew into a catastrophic blow out. I worry about the integrity of the massive concrete piles they put in.
DanTheManPR 4y ago
I was surprised to see so much equipment right next to the launch vehicle in the video. Would all that have gotten damaged during the launch?
kortex 4y ago
Woof, that's a hole! Yeah I completely forgot "w", all the stage 0 stuff. There's only so much you can test with wet dress rehearsals, at some point you need to just launch a fully loaded rocket from it and see how it behaves. > On top of that there was significantly more debris making its way to South Padre Tim Dodd got coated in dust and sand (probably pulverized concrete) kicked up from the launch well outside the exclusion zone (iirc his studio is just over 5km). That's not just a bad sign from the engineering and politics/perception point of view, but I'm sure EPA has some feelings on that amount of rapid unscheduled geology.
- chasd00 4y ago
  > Tim Dodd got coated in dust and sand i don't see that being that big of a deal, winds blowing west to east and no one would have ever even thought about it.
vannevar 4y ago
>That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was not an expected possibility. Interestingly, this post predicting exactly this kind of damage was flagged on HN just days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 I think it's unlikely that SpaceX wasn't aware of the damage that would be caused. They have a pretty good engineering team, and that aspect didn't involve an anomaly, it was the vehicle operating as planned at launch. But admitting the inadequacy of the launch facility would've undoubtedly led to significant delays. Fortunately for SpaceX, the rocket blew up, which will draw media attention away from the damage on and around the launchpad.
- almost_usual 4y ago
  I still don’t understand why that post was flagged so quickly.
  - ASalazarMX 4y ago
    > SpaceX's Texas Rocket Is Going to Cause a Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks It might be the over-the-top title didn't do it any favors. It's in a gray zone between truth and click bait.
    - brookst 4y ago
      And yet here we are in a thread discussion how the rocket did more damage than anyone thought. That article was always going to be flagged, strictly because of its content. Maybe it could have snuck in with a headline like "Great news, SpaceX wisely found ways to launch rocket 20% more powerful than they planned for", but I doubt it.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
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    - 4y ago
fzeroracer 4y ago
It's been wild to see people here try and spin this as a success story, because the rocket launch was missing things known to be required and the end result was as you mentioned. Massive destruction of the surrounding area which is going to require months of rebuilding and tons of $$$.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Pouring more concrete is not very expensive. It takes a month to cure completely, but the next test is multiple months out regardless. By that time they'll have the deluge equipment installed.
- ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  Because they achieved what they were trying to do? They said if it got 50 seconds into flight it was a success and it did. No Spin, they literally mentioned this objective before the flight, it's more wild for people to suggest that it wasn't despite it exceeding it's objectives.
  - politician 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    I listened to Musk give a QA about this last week before the initial launch date. He very clearly defined success as reaching orbit, and stated that success wasn’t likely.
ca_tech 4y ago
I had a long history of supporting live events like this. One of the most common phrases we heard from the engineers was: "Well... that didn't act like the model" That is why we test real things in the real world. While the rocket did not operate as expected, so much information from this launch is going to go back into engineering.

tellurion 4y ago

One of the response to that tweet has a before pic for comparison: https://twitter.com/intrepidpursuit/status/1649070760198131715 https://twitter.com/intrepidpursuit/status/16490707601981317...

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

Need to see the numbers before passing judgement. Dirt is cheap compared to concrete. Depending on how many cycles the concrete is expected to last it may be cheaper both short and long term to just have "ablative dirt" and bulldoze around afterwards "reloading" the launcher. There's also other variables like how long it takes for the engines to stabilize and the launcher to release the rocket, weight of rocket, etc that would go into it.

samwillis 4y ago
The issue is that that dirt and rocks flying around damages all the other expensive equipment at the launch site. There is going to be some very dead kit down there. They can't do that every time. But big dust clouds also upset people, and SpaceX can't afford to fall out with the locals.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Locals? Don't they own 99% of Boca Chica by now?
  - samwillis 4y ago
    South Padre, about 5 miles away has been covered with a layer of dust.
    - fundad 4y ago
      It's not just dust it's pollution and it's going to cause long-term health problems.
      - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
        What? This is quite the claim to make so confidently.
      - gridspy 4y ago
        Methane rocket exhaust is steam and CO2. Where did the "pollution" come from? Are you suggesting they buried polluted dirt in the launch pad to distribute later? It's just like construction dust. It's unpleasant and inconsiderate but it's not highly toxic or a pollutant.
        fundad 4y ago
        I mean the concrete dust that got airborne as it was being blown apart. It's airborne silica and is toxic which is why construction workers wear masks when producing it.
    - philwelch 4y ago
      I was on South Padre Island watching the launch, and I was stuck in traffic on South Padre Island for almost an hour afterwards, and I did not observe this. It’s possible that some of the dust reached South Padre or Port Isabel, but neither seemed to be “covered” in it.
causi 4y ago
It wasn't "ablative dirt". It was a massive reinforced concrete pad that was pulverized and blown to kingdom come.

sbuttgereit 4y ago

I agree with this assessment and probably the biggest problem in the test. After that, they still have a fair way to go on Raptor reliability; I was a bit disappointed with the number of engine outs: clearly the engines have not arrived. I think the big win of the day was the overall resilience of the vehicle. It seemed to handle (what looked to be) possibly explosive engine failures and kept going and stayed intact... even through the tumbling. I think this is a case where the engineers can look at the numbers and calculate for a limited variety of well defined (and foreseen) scenarios, but that they continue to fail to have an intuitive sense of the power of the thing that they built. Given the complexity of the real world, they can "engineer" themselves into an undue sense of certainty about what will happen when they light a rocket of this power... and I think we see the result of that. As an aside, this is precisely where I think we'll some of the biggest failings for LLM based AI... it can get you some nice words to describe a situation and may be able to do all the calculations... but having that gut feeling that maybe there's more to a situation than the numbers would have you believe is still something that humans can do better (though not SpaceX this time around). In closing, if I had a binary choice of "successful" or "unsuccessful" for this test... I'd still probably call it successful. But only just; it's a very qualified success given some of the test parameters SpaceX had set for themselves. (of course we could find out about even more damage to "stage 0" which might shift my assessment... but we know that they're in the process of putting in a deluge system at least already, so I'm being a bit more charitable regarding expectations than I might otherwise be.)

ceejayoz 4y ago
The Raptor issues may well be just a symptom of the concrete issue; large chunks flying up into complicated plumbing isn't ideal.
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  This will be more of an issue on landing (the moon, mars, mercury, the bricks in red square).
  - ceejayoz 4y ago

samwillis 4y ago

Thinking about this a little more, that was the longest duration burn with all engines. I imagine it's a bit like water behind a dam, a small leak very quick grows into a catastrophic failure. A small fault in the concrete slab grew into a catastrophic blow out. I worry about the integrity of the massive concrete piles they put in.

DanTheManPR 4y ago

I was surprised to see so much equipment right next to the launch vehicle in the video. Would all that have gotten damaged during the launch?

kortex 4y ago

Woof, that's a hole! Yeah I completely forgot "w", all the stage 0 stuff. There's only so much you can test with wet dress rehearsals, at some point you need to just launch a fully loaded rocket from it and see how it behaves. > On top of that there was significantly more debris making its way to South Padre Tim Dodd got coated in dust and sand (probably pulverized concrete) kicked up from the launch well outside the exclusion zone (iirc his studio is just over 5km). That's not just a bad sign from the engineering and politics/perception point of view, but I'm sure EPA has some feelings on that amount of rapid unscheduled geology.

chasd00 4y ago
> Tim Dodd got coated in dust and sand i don't see that being that big of a deal, winds blowing west to east and no one would have ever even thought about it.

vannevar 4y ago

>That massive hole in the ground should not have happed, and I suspect that was not an expected possibility. Interestingly, this post predicting exactly this kind of damage was flagged on HN just days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 I think it's unlikely that SpaceX wasn't aware of the damage that would be caused. They have a pretty good engineering team, and that aspect didn't involve an anomaly, it was the vehicle operating as planned at launch. But admitting the inadequacy of the launch facility would've undoubtedly led to significant delays. Fortunately for SpaceX, the rocket blew up, which will draw media attention away from the damage on and around the launchpad.

almost_usual 4y ago
I still don’t understand why that post was flagged so quickly.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  > SpaceX's Texas Rocket Is Going to Cause a Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks It might be the over-the-top title didn't do it any favors. It's in a gray zone between truth and click bait.
  - brookst 4y ago
    And yet here we are in a thread discussion how the rocket did more damage than anyone thought. That article was always going to be flagged, strictly because of its content. Maybe it could have snuck in with a headline like "Great news, SpaceX wisely found ways to launch rocket 20% more powerful than they planned for", but I doubt it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - 4y ago

fzeroracer 4y ago

It's been wild to see people here try and spin this as a success story, because the rocket launch was missing things known to be required and the end result was as you mentioned. Massive destruction of the surrounding area which is going to require months of rebuilding and tons of $$$.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Pouring more concrete is not very expensive. It takes a month to cure completely, but the next test is multiple months out regardless. By that time they'll have the deluge equipment installed.
ChildOfChaos 4y ago
Because they achieved what they were trying to do? They said if it got 50 seconds into flight it was a success and it did. No Spin, they literally mentioned this objective before the flight, it's more wild for people to suggest that it wasn't despite it exceeding it's objectives.
- politician 4y ago
  [flagged]
- edgyquant 4y ago
  I listened to Musk give a QA about this last week before the initial launch date. He very clearly defined success as reaching orbit, and stated that success wasn’t likely.

ca_tech 4y ago

I had a long history of supporting live events like this. One of the most common phrases we heard from the engineers was: "Well... that didn't act like the model" That is why we test real things in the real world. While the rocket did not operate as expected, so much information from this launch is going to go back into engineering.